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OVH vs Tempest dedicated
Hi,
I'm looking to host an smtp relay as well as websites 20-30 for small businesses, I'm looking at dedicated servers in the $50-100 range although I would like to stick closer to $50 unless there's something that could convince me to spend the extra money. Currently I'm looking at Tempest and OVH as the SMTP relay port will be public facing (websites proxied and filtered by cloudflare) and I'm expecting to receive some DDoS traffic.
**
The three configs I'm looking at are: **
Tempest:
E3-1240-V2
4C / 8T @ 3.4 GHz / 3.8 GHz
16 GB DDR3
1TB SATA
10Gbit Unmetered
59.99USD/month
OVH bv-1:
Intel® Xeon™ E5-2660
8c/16t - 2.2GHz/3GHz
2x 240GB SSD SATA Soft RAID
256GB DDR3 ECC 1600MHz
500Mbps unmetered
59.00USD/month
OVH adv-2:
Intel® Xeon™ E-2388G
8c/16t - 3.2GHz/4.6GHz
2× 512GB SSD NVMe Soft RAID
32GB DDR4 ECC 3200MHz
1Gbps unmetered
69.30USD/month
Tempest is well, tempting. The 10gb port as I'm understanding is shared and I should expect anywhere from 750mbp's to 1.5gbps depending on what other hosts are using. OVH's adv1 looks great but the 500mbps port puts me off slighty, the ADV-2 looks great too but at $70/month it's getting higher in my pricepoint.
My questions boil down to how does OVH ddos protection stack up against PATH, would the better hardware and dedicated port of the OVH adv-2 be able to handle a substantial amount more of organic traffic/traffic that makes it through filtering, and Is that difference worth the extra $10/month compared to the bv-1 or tempest dedi.
Comments
Tempest is a dedicated 10g uplink not shared between other clients.
Not sure how much traffic you're expecting (web + smtp) but I'd probably go with the ovh BV-1 for the the RAID-1 SSDs and enough RAM to cache all static files, see how things go on a month-to-month basis. If the smtp gets slammed, add a third-party service that handles everything including clean IPs and DKIM, or get a cheap ddos-protected virtual server since smtp requires little horsepower assuming you're not a super spammer. Buyvm can be under $10/mo total with a protected IP, but you'll need to ask for smtp permission. Otherwise, if dedi DDOS protection is your highest priority, I'd go with Tempest at least because their support responds quickly and they specialize in attacks. Ovh support is poor.
Tempest does dedicate ports, and they have more than enough bandwidth for each server since they (Path, their owner) also runs the mitigation.
I can fully recommend Tempest, always been able to use my full port.
Full access to the 10gbps? really? that's insane for $60/month unbelievable almost.
I'd probably have to go with them then.
Good to hear that tempests support is good, I'm planning to go with them.
Clean IP's and spf/dmarc/dkim have never been the problem. My emails always land in the inbox on icloud and outlook. Google likes to give me issues though likely due to the fact that I have a brand new domain and IP as well as a low email volume at the moment they almost always end up in the spam box, no bounces or blocks though so that's good.
Tempest is kind of overrated in my opinion. I did not like their support, it was very slow and I didn't push them because I was under the illusion I had a good deal. The 10Gbit unmetered is dedicated, but the network is really poor quality, so you'll generally get around 3Gbit bandwidth unless you use a lot of threads (I mean a lot).
Also there are big differences in the hardware of all 3 servers. Comparing the BV-1 with 256GB RAM to the E3-1240v2, 16GB RAM, 1TB SATA (HDD ?), like the comparison doesn't even make sense.
I would personally go for OVH ADV-2. That ADV-2 is dirt cheap right now, unless you need 256GB RAM for some reason. OVH US support is also a miles better than the EU/CA subsidiries, and Tempest as well.
Agree with sunnyg on all points, except the ADV-2 requires a 2-year commit at that price (most people won't be comfy with that). Interesting that ovh US is better (I haven't tried them). Hardware comparison sounds less important than ddos protection to the OP. Another option would be the recent Hivelocity deals, check out their Server Defense System option.
I wasn't a big fan of Tempest's support. When I had a server go unreachable and I contacted support I was told a senior engineer would investigate. Roughly a week later and no response I ended up canceling my service. Also, as sunnyg said, I generally saw 3Gbps on average.
if you can afford weeks of downtime, then go with Tempest. They're rare enough to have worse support than OVH
If all clients use there 10g there will be problems. Tempest gives you 10g cheap because they do not think everyone will use it.
Path DDOS Filters are great, they just rolled out with there website WAF stuff. No clue if its available for tempest customers, but it works okay enough for medium sized attacks.
If uptime is a HUGE factor, I would goto OVH. Path/Tempest has known downtime issues usually lasting 1-3hrs every other month or so.
OVH adv-2:
Intel® Xeon™ E-2388G
8c/16t - 3.2GHz/4.6GHz
2× 512GB SSD NVMe Soft RAID
32GB DDR4 ECC 3200MHz
1Gbps unmetered
69.30USD/month
I didn't see the pricing for this part. I didn't find it on OVH's official website
Rise-3
not
adv-2
Rise-3 == 500Mbps
It's there. https://us.ovhcloud.com/deals/
Pick a US location and 24-month contract.
Given they are owned by Path and have the overhead they just add another uplink to the switches every time capacity for a cabinet is reached so no clients can't access the whole 10g. The reason most people can't get it in speed tests is because the infrastructure adjacent usually doesn't have the overhead and sending 10g to a single session a long distance is simply tough to do.