All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
GarnetNetworks - Amethyst 1GB KVM VPS review (Limited time offer: $2.02 first/MO then $5.05/MO)
Hello! My name is Tor and I come from Norway, recently got my hands on a GarnetNetworks Amethyst VPS. This is my first review so please don’t judge me too hard, I have been looking at others so I know a little bit of what I’m doing.
Specs:
Disk: 50 GB MegaRAID10
Cores: 2x (Intel® Xeon® Processor E3-1270 v3 (8M Cache, 3.50 GHz)
Memory: 1 GB – 1024 MB
IPs: 1x IPv4 (1 IP is plenty, suggest tunnelbroker.net for IPv6)
Bandwidth: 512 GB (they provide more if you send them an email proving you use the bandwidth legitimately)
Speed: 1 Gbps (Only if you have the Virto network card properly setup)
Virtualization: KVM, don’t know if you can oversell this but I don’t think so.
OS: Windows & Linux since its KVM, it allows you to bring your own Windows license if you are interested in this.
Panel: The normal and most used SolusVM running nodes as “Slaves”.
Location/datacenter: It’s hosted by ColoCrossing on their Buffalo, NY datacentre.
These tests are all done on Debian 7 which I reinstalled just before I did this test.
Now, let’s begin shall we:
(I'll copy the text from SSH to make it easier for you but still have pictures.)
Since I’m a member of FreeVPS and this bench is very popular, let’s run their benchmark:
(Please keep in mind peak hour and my node Slave4, these might be inaccurate)
root@smnk:~# wget freevps.us/downloads/bench.sh -O - -o /dev/null|bash
CPU model : QEMU Virtual CPU version (cpu64-rhel6)
Number of cores : 2
CPU frequency : 3400.016 MHz
Total amount of ram : 1009 MB
Total amount of swap : 0 MB
System uptime : 2 min,
Download speed from CacheFly: 14.9MB/s
Download speed from Coloat, Atlanta GA: 12.9MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Dallas, TX: 4.77MB/s
Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, JP: 1.97MB/s
Download speed from i3d.net, NL: 3.65MB/s
Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, NL: 3.40MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 1.22MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 3.81MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 4.19MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 21.0MB/s
I/O speed : 235 MB/s
Since speedtest.net is popular I did a test on that too (It’s also not guaranteed because it’s designed for home lines not servers):
Here is the CPU info, it says QUEMU instead of Intel Xeon-* but that’s because of KVM:
root@smnk:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 13
model name : QEMU Virtual CPU version (cpu64-rhel6)
stepping : 3
microcode : 0x1
cpu MHz : 3400.016
cache size : 4096 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 4
wp : yes
flags : fpu de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx lm pni cx16 hypervisor lahf_lm abm
bogomips : 6800.03
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 39 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
processor : 1
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 13
model name : QEMU Virtual CPU version (cpu64-rhel6)
stepping : 3
microcode : 0x1
cpu MHz : 3400.016
cache size : 4096 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 4
wp : yes
flags : fpu de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx lm pni cx16 hypervisor lahf_lm abm
bogomips : 6800.03
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 39 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
I/O test (to confirm the FreeVPS bench results):
root@smnk:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=testfilex bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 4.56933 s, 235 MB/s
Here is the speedtest.net results:
root@smnk:~# python speedtest-cli.py --share
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Testing from ColoCrossing (***.*.**.***)...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by FrostGaming (Buffalo, NY) [16.56 km]: 9.219 ms
Testing download speed........................................
Download: 737.71 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed..................................................
Upload: 261.96 Mbit/s
Share results: http://www.speedtest.net/result/3000044714.png
If anybody is interested I can add UnixBench 5.1.3 later.
GarnetNetworks is not so known on the VPS market (It recently started). It offers quite good resources for such a low price, if you want to try it to see its power I recommend you to use their limited time “$2.02 USD” offer. Link: http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/13500/garnet-networks-budget-promo-sale-lifetime-first-month-discount/p1
I'd personally give this VPS 7-8/10
Amazing value for such price, but I can't quite get the CacheFly and those speeds to match the results from speedtest.net. It's most likely normal since the server I tested to was the same network and not the others (or bits-bytes?).
Comments
I also have a VPS from them, this case Diamond package (4 cores, 4 GB RAM, 100 GB space, 2 TB bandwidth). I am currrently using Windows server 2008 r2 iwth zPanel and RDP, and what I can say, I never manage to use more than 2 GB RAM (even with peak usage).
Everything "just works", and with the Virtio card I use to get over 1100 MBPS in single speed tests. I have posted a few reviews online, both on Free VPS and Subnetweb, and as far as I can say I like how things are run over at Garnet.
Did I say the connection sometimes burst to 10 Gbit/s?
About that burst up to 10 Gbit/s, I'm not sure when you get that as I haven’t seen it (Haven’t been checking - you know, who needs constant bandwidth usage these days? except those who run download servers) but I assume non-peak time when it's not used.
You can use the Virtio card to get those speeds, and yes it's mostly at 3AM when I get those speeds.
10Gbit/s?
LOL
Sorry, I couldn't help myself.
Virtio driver shows as 10Gbps on Windows. It's not 10Gbps. You cannot get 1100Mbps on a 1Gbps connection.
I used to get then on a single speedtest, but it must have been in local network. That was just a speedtest.net result.
The 10Gbps burst is only used if the entire node is under heavy network load. A single user will never actually use the "10 Gbps burst" speed.
Of course, a VPS of this pricing would never reach more than 1 GB/s.
Makes total sense, I myself do with a 100 Mb/s (+) connection which it is capable of.