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Ok, back to data and reviews ...
here is one more that has been proposed, a cheap Selectel VPS. As seems usual with russian VPS providers this one was a mixed experience too. The first big grain of salt was right at the beginning. Selectel's registration process is confusing and cumbersome. Like many russian providers they ask for a phone number but unlike most I know of they also use it for verification and demand to fill in the last digits of their phone number calling you - but with a twist: it doesn't work with (at least west- and central-) european numbers, so you are stuck. Happily though there is a support button on the page which allow you to open a ticket which I did; sometime later I got a response and they had activated my account manually. So, no show-stopper but quite cumbersome and time wasting, but OK, you have to go through that only once.
After that I could finally order the rather cheap VPS but to do so I had to go through another somewhat cumbersome and confusing process that, in the middle of the ordering process, forced me to go to a different page in order to transfer funds to my Selectel account before I could continue and finalize ordering. The good news is that I needed to only transfer RUB 200 (~ €2.25).
The next (rather large) grain of salt was their OS selection. While they do offer the major linux distros (and up to date it seems) they only offer those. No ISO support. I asked their support and got a dry "We do not support ISOs" (with VPS I guess). Nor Windows btw.
Selectel uses yet another panel, but it works well and actually is one of the nicest and most useful I've seen so far. For example you really get to see all relevant data on their server overview page, number of vCores, memory size, size and type of drive (SSD), your IP and network mask + gateway IP and even the reverse DNS, and an optional SSH (public) key. Really nice and useful, well done Selectel!
Now, let's look at the performance, first processor and memory, based on over 100 runs:
That's a bit worse than VPSina and reg.ru, about on par with VpsVille and better than the other ones. Oh and they clearly tell you the procesor model rather than playing "Qemu virtual processor" games, nice. Also you get hardware support for AES and random as well as nested virtualization.
What I definitely don't like is the extreme single core spread.
On to the drive:
Hmm, that's worse than all others except for the super-cheap gcorelabs thingy.
The benchmark runs did however complete quite quickly, so the only remaining block, the network, should be quite good.
Let's have a look:
And yes, indeed their connectivity is very good for a russian provider. Not important per se for most of us but a good indicator of the node bandwith: Moscow is almost 2.5 Gb/s avg and max of almost 5 Gb/s, so this node highly likely has dual 10 Gb/s ports, very nice!
And the rest is quite nice, too, with the major european targets being about or above 200 Mb/s, the East coast a bit above 100 Mb/s, the West coast and Asia in the 60 - 70 Mb/s range and even HongKong with a bit over 50 Mb/s.
Finally, here's the updated overview table:
Summary: This (model) is not a competitor on the higher end but rather one to the supercheap gcorelabs, ihor hosting, firstbyte, etc. VPS and besides the slower disk it can even compete with e.g. sale-dedic and VpsVille both of which are more expensive.
For me no ISO support is a showstopper and that's why I won't keep the VPs although I really enjoyed it. But if you are a "debian and be done" or "CentOs and be done" person, this is a very attractive option, and btw. they seem to offer a WordPress template too (although for that I'd strongly suggest a larger VPS).
On the other hand Selectel is more expensive than all the other providers in this thread as soon as you want a VPS with 1 GB memory or more or even 2 vCores.
As reg.ru is mercilessly email spamming me since I unblocked them I won't keep my (quite nice) VPS; one can block only the spam and get only the VPS related emails but for me it's a question of principle, I simply refuse to buy from spammers.
So, VPSina is the winner, at least for the moment, though I don't hold my breath for something as good or better but cheaper coming up mainly for two reasons: (a) it seems unlikely, and (b) VDSina IMO has fewer and less disturbing quirks than the other providers (in this roundup). But again, this Selectel thingy is a nice and decent cheap option if (a) you are willing to accept a cumbersome registration process, (b) value connectivity above other factors, and (c) don't mind a slowish SSD.
https://reestr.rublacklist.net/
https://ntc.party/t/popular-websites-and-services-which-are-blocked-in-russia/135
Also many email services are blocked: https://ntc.party/t/email/400
You can, however, circumvent them in most cases, without using any tunneling/proxy/VPN. Check GoodbyeDPI and zapret.
Just a quick update I put here because unfortunately the "The Russian server seems to be difficult to pay" thread is closed.
Unfortunately I had to experience a sh_t-ton of basically spam both from Selectel and (to a somewhat lesser degree) from VpsVille so they ended up on my "avoid, do not buy from them" list.
Instead I got myself a second (and newer) and SSD based 'ferrum' VPS with 1 vCore, 1 GB memory, 20 GB SSD, and unlimited traffic @ 200 Mb/s. Btw, both an additional vCore and additional RAM are dirt cheap at about €1 especially at the current exchange rate but I didn't need more.
ihor support was great and quite quick (less than 15 minutes). I needed them because somehow their "install from your own ISO" didn't work properly (or I failed to understand how it works). Uploading the ISO worked like a charm (modulo progress info) but the BIOS didn't offer me a "start from ISO" option. ihor's support made that work fine for me. Nice!
My first impression wrt node and disk is positive but I won't say more until I've completed 50 or so benchmark runs.
Payment via Paypal worked without any problems.
@jsg Perhaps you noticed Clo, the FirstVDS.ru cloud service. According to my experience, it's pretty stable and prices are quite average.
Selectel is too noisy, and amongst the most expensive providers I saw.
Thank you but for me personally ihor is my preferred low end russian provider. Based on first early results the new node is faster than the old one too and the SSD seems to be quite nice too and so is connectivity.
I would even have tested FirstVDS.ru but if I'm not mistaken they just recently had their (some? all?) customer data leaked/hacked. Please correct me if I'm wrong. So, my appetite to test/benchmark them is quite modest at least for the time being.
Well formulated, quite diplomatically. For me, frankly, I meanwhile book them under "spammers", just like reg.ru.
I'll come back with results of the ihor 'ferrum' VPS once I have enough results (but it looks promising so far).
Just to say that I once had network issues on ihor, like a bit of packet loss (visible on most tests, from multiple locations).
I put a ticket in and after 45min it was fixed.
Always had quick responses from them so far (not a customer anymore, but they have added Finland as location, my experience is for their Russian DC).
Yes, their support is astonishingly quick for such a cheap provider and professional.In English too btw.
My VPSs are in the Moscow DC too. I have no data or experience wrt other ihor DCs.
They are Russian at their core 😉
If they have a credit deposit system, I'd load at least the amounts to cover a year of service and take advantage of the exchange.
So, here's a mini review of ihor based on my new 'ferrum' server with SSD (the old one has HDD).
Processor and memory, and particularly crypto performance, aren't great at all. No significant changes compared to old (already reviewed) VPS. Connectivity however is quite nice for a russian VPS. I've inserted it into the table:
(Note: LAX had about 86% failure rate. San Jose nearby achieved 51.2 though, so it might be a target issue. And London is misleading (ca 60% failure rate, same target provider as LAX) because Paris is ca. 170, Milano still ca 140, Oslo ca. 175, etc. so actually connectivity to Europe is quite good and better than sale-dedic, gcorelabs, and VpsVille)
I'm quite happy with the connectivity modulo the VPS being limited to 200 Mb/s but also costs only ca. € 2.50/mo which is comparable to Selectel, which has better processor and mem as well as better connectivity but a much worse disk. The reason I prefer the ihor VPS though is that ISOs are no problem with ihor, one doesn't get spammed, and also needs not jump through hoops to register. To put it plainly, I don't care about 1 or even more Gb/s to Moscow and major russian cities only, what I care about is general connectivity and there most russian "1 Gb/s" (or even more) providers aren't much better than ihor. So, all factors considered, for me ihor is the preferred really cheap russian provider. Feel free to look above at other providers I tested if "cheap" isn't your priority.
Here's the data for those interested, based on a bit over 75 runs:
Now, on to the tasty part, the SSD. I'll tell it right away: That VPS comes with a very decent disk. Only 1 of the other VPSs I benchmarked was faster reading 1MB blocks, sequentially, buffered (and sync as well). The same is true for 4k4T write seq., sync! So, this ihor VPS has the 2nd fastest disk of the bunch and it's not even a NVMe. Very nice!
Here's the data:
TL;DR: I wouldn't recommend that VPS for major websites, not even because the processor and memory really aren't great but mainly because RSA and AES results are clearly poor. For anything else (as in my use case) where disk and connectivity are the decisive factors, this is a very nice VPS for the rather low price. Add to that the fact that ihor doesn't send spam, offers very decent and friendly support (also in English), generally is easy to deal with and also supports customer uploaded ISOs, so I'm a very happy customer of ihor and like my new VPS a lot. But again, we're talking about a russian provider which to the best of my knowledge sadly invariably translates to stoneage processors at least in the low end segment.