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If I had a $15 budget for just a VPS, I'd just eat the difference and try to find a sub $25 dedi.
Dallas may be as suitable as any other location for serving both USA and Europe.
The HostDoc NVMe + HDD offers in that location provide superior potassium and possibly a custom configuration - but I'm not sure if op expects a provider to hold their hand and change their diaper on a regular basis ... maybe not the best match if so.
Also drserver may have some low-priced dedicated servers in Dallas. Though I expect the HostDoc vps would be more performant for op's application due to NVMe and more grunt from cpu.
As others have mentioned already - whatever effort to setup a test on any of the several viable suggestions made in this thread already seems likely to be more productive than spending more time posting details of the problems observed with current (possibly sub-par) provider at this point.
I am willing to spend up to 30 a month for a server. Like everyone else I am trying to get the most "bang" for my buck.
I don't need my hand held at all. I do not have any experience with leasing a VPS. So I do not know what is bad good or great and what should be expected in terms of performance.
I have thought that a VPS would be extremely close performance wise as a local VM if the specs are similar. a VPS is a VM after all yes? Maybe it's not. Maybe my assumption on this is incorrect.
If a host machine has 16 cores and 2 of them are allocated to a VPS are the cores shared? or are they dedicated to only that VPS?
I can second the vultr choice. I have been spening quite a bit of time on the DNS aspect of hosting and I use them for my high end clients. I'm typically getting a ~2ms DNS lookup. You can can custom config to your needs. I have found their support to be very efficient as well.
Just want to comment on the PHPbb setup. Are you doing any caching, Varnish ? have you thought of comparing a LEMP stack? Your comments on spiking and loads suggest your server is not an issue. Optimising mySQL ( i'm still stuggling with this ) could be a solution. Does PHPbb offer a debug report. Query timings?
You should have a look at LunaNode.
Kdschlosser, from the kinds of questions you are asking, you DO need handholding, and we are recognizing that and steering you towards places that are better suited for your needs. If you want max "bang" (hardware resources) per "buck" you are going to have to deal with the usual limitations of dirt cheap hosting: all the issues you complained about regarding ticket response, network and hardware flakiness, etc. Many of us (this is LET and it is a cheapskate forum so we cheapskates gravitate here) are indeed after that, and we are experienced enough to understand the limitations and decide (based on the project requirements) to (some of the time) buy it anyway. If you aren't ready to deal with that, you have to pay a bit more, the usual "pick any two".
I don't understand why you are hesitating about Vultr: with the $50 credit you can spin up the $20 or $40 plan for free, at least for long enough to decide if it works for you. I really think if your software is set up properly, you should be fine with their $5 plan except for needing additional disk space. You don't have a high traffic or high computation site by any stretch.
Cores in cheap VPS are almost always shared and are usually actually "vcores" (basically half of a physical core). On decent hosts there is enough headroom that you can usually use the whole core when you need it, but if you do a long-running computation they will eventually slow it down or suspend you. Vultr and DO both offer dedicated core VM's as premium products and they cost a lot more. Netcup's are amazingly affordable but they are in Germany, are monthly-only, have various issues with complicated cancellations and charging you EU VAT even if you're not in the EU. Really you do not need dedicated cores for what you are doing.
VM and VPS are basically interchangeble terms for our purposes, though VM usually refers to the whole machine being virtualized (e.g. KVM) so you run your own kernel, while VPS is often containerized (OpenVZ). OpenVZ works fine as long as the resources aren't overallocated.
If you want to try out a dedicated server for a while, this looks very good at $0.07 an hour: https://www.nocix.net/cart/?id=302&hourly=true
For some reason, hosting in Europe is much cheaper than in the US. So if your customers are in EU you might try Hetzner, Netcup, etc. OVH has some good hardware deals but notoriously bad support so they are probably not a good choice for you.
@exception0x876 can you do something in Quebec with the above specs? Let's say 2x your usual i7-SSD plan. Kdschlosser, I'm pretty sure the above would be at OVH Beauharnois (BHS), in Quebec, equivalent to eastern US in terms of network latency. See wishosting.com for the plan I mentioned.
OK I did some digging and came up with a proper explanation of the various virtualization types
There is no such thing as a "dedicated core" when running a KVM VPS
the easy definition of a KVM VPS is a sandbox environment. it doesn't matter what is stated as far as "allocated cores" or "dedicated cores" because in the end the KVM host software is not a hypervisor. it is a program. just like apache. or mysql. The only real differences between a containerized VPS and a KVM VPS is an acronym that makes the people leasing them think that what they are getting is something better then a Containerized VPS and one has a shared kernel and another does not. and not a damned thing else. everyone still shares the cores in the CPU and the memory. so when the term "slice of the pie" is used for a KVM VPS it is complete bullshit, you are still only getting the pepperoni.
a hypervisor based VPS (VM) does not run on top of an OS it is the OS (loosely speaking). and when 2 CPU cores are allocated. no one else can use them. they are yours. this is what dedicated is. no one else can use it. And I have seen the term hypervisor used in the description of the host that is running the KVM VPS.
they all will oversell the machines in relationship to what they are saying they are selling you. they do it up to the point in which people start to complain. the so called "bad" hosts simply do not care if you complain. and the "good" hosts will move resources around but in the end they are still not giving what they are selling. which does not make them a good host. the same thing goes with the "allocated" HDD space. it's all expanding volumes and they play the odds that not everyone is going to fill their drives to capacity. so if for some reason all of the VPS's on a server go and fill the drives. the server will have a very large issue. because you are not actually getting what you are paying for, the simple definition of this is FRAUD.
So I am going to leave you folks to your thing. and I guess I am off to go and locate a dedicated server. I need to make sure that if resources are needed they are going to be available. At least with containerized VPS it is an up front thing about sharing everything. and the KVM VPS is just a way to to get more money from you without giving you a damned thing more.
I am afraid your understanding is not sufficiently thorough. Yes, KVM is fundamentally shared resources, but if managed well it performs for most use cases at a fraction of the cost of a dedicated.KVM also offer you control of kernel, something worth paying extra for.
If resources on tap is such a big concern, then you have to pay more for a dedi, period.
Good luck with your budget, as we say around here.
Certainly possible, thanks for the mention.
premium PMS ... @deank is nigh
If you happen to have a sister who has experience pulling a plow, I know of a Romanian man who can help you out with a discount on a server. Other than that, wait until deank comes along with his forecast for the end..
But didn't the OP's opening post already say it all?
Yeah, his first post had PMS written all over it.
If you can't get your point across within 5 lines, you have issues.
OP has a very reasonable budget.
I second @willie 's recommendation to give wishosting KVM in CA a try if OP is willing to learn to administer their own Linux host.
Wishosting's 'KVM SSD i7' package in Quebec can be doubled up to give 4gb ram 80GB ssd disk.
It may not be exactly 1Gbit always.
But AFAIK, Wishosting nodes in canada probably dont have that 250mbit throttling anymore( after the OVH lineup's bandwidth upgrades.)
My own tests: I can see more than 500mbit IN when testing download from Ramnode NYC's 1GB test file
from my Wishosting storage KVM [uptime 393 days]
And testing iperf3 TCP data OUT from my storage KVM to an Incero VPS(Dallas) , I see:
ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr
[ 5] 0.00-10.04 sec 705 MBytes 589 Mbits/sec 1441 sender
[ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 702 MBytes 589 Mbits/sec receiver
Similar experience here. I have seen over 500mbps inbound although officially I am supposed to have 250. I seriously recommend @exception0x876 withthe suggestion from @willie
OP has a reasonable budget for a reasonable solution, but is currently after a dedicated server. Good luck with that unless budget and headache tolerance (DIY setup, backups, monitoring etc.) are increased considerably. On the other hand having a near-idle dedi is nice, since you can launch a big computation task whenever you feel like it.
OP, dedicated core KVM's absolutely do exist if you're willing to pay for them (e.g. OVH public cloud). Most KVM's don't make any pretense of offering them and buyers (should) know they are getting shared cores, so there is no fraud.
I'd optimize your stack first, so that you can more to a serious host knowing what specs you really need.
Nginx + php-fpm with full page caching (+ memcached or nginx for objects for example) should help.
You could also do more benchmarking to know where your bottleneck is. It could be database accesses.
Throwing more hardware is often not the best decision on the long run.