Community Review: Prometeus 256 MB KVM Half Yearly
Prometeus are an Italian host that have been in business for just over 15 years now. Having recently launched LEB oriented plans I figured it would be well worth reviewing them as they seem like a knowledgeable and stable host from comments made by others. Anyway, let's get to it, here's my review!
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Prometeus. This review was performed on a trial VPS.
Basics:
The VPS plan is based in Milan, Italy and comes with 256 MB of RAM, 1000 GB of bandwidth (monthly) and 15 GB of disk space. The plan costs $19 every six months which is a very reasonable price! KVM plans are managed by a standard SolusVM install (with SSL) and include commonly used templates. Torrenting and IRC seems to be allowed on their budget VPS range making the plans very attractive for people in need of a bouncer/media server.
Support:
Setup was fast after requesting the trial and the server was setup within a few hours (I did request the trial via a PM here on LET, so response times were slower then usual). The welcome email contained all information necessary to get up and running with the VPS. I had to ask for IPv6 details, the information was sent maybe half an hour after I requested it!
Setup:
Once my VPS was setup I proceeded to install Debian 6 as normal (installing nothing but the SSH server). After it was installed I used Minstall to clean out any unneeded packages and to set up SSH login protection. The setup went smoothly and very quickly!
Defaults:
This section is obsolete as my setup process involves cleaning the server, resulting in the same results everywhere.
Basic Information:
/proc/cpuinfo showed a processor matching the plan description:
[email protected]:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 13 model name : QEMU Virtual CPU version (cpu64-rhel6) stepping : 3 cpu MHz : 1999.998 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 up pni cx16 hypervisor lahf_lm bogomips : 3999.99 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management:
/proc/meminfo showed some standard results:
[email protected]:~# cat /proc/meminfo MemTotal: 254828 kB MemFree: 146036 kB Buffers: 83156 kB Cached: 13624 kB SwapCached: 0 kB Active: 82740 kB Inactive: 17504 kB Active(anon): 3484 kB Inactive(anon): 100 kB Active(file): 79256 kB Inactive(file): 17404 kB Unevictable: 0 kB Mlocked: 0 kB HighTotal: 0 kB HighFree: 0 kB LowTotal: 254828 kB LowFree: 146036 kB SwapTotal: 495608 kB SwapFree: 495608 kB Dirty: 424 kB Writeback: 0 kB AnonPages: 3488 kB Mapped: 3852 kB Shmem: 116 kB Slab: 6052 kB SReclaimable: 3204 kB SUnreclaim: 2848 kB KernelStack: 384 kB PageTables: 188 kB NFS_Unstable: 0 kB Bounce: 0 kB WritebackTmp: 0 kB CommitLimit: 623020 kB Committed_AS: 10232 kB VmallocTotal: 765956 kB VmallocUsed: 5780 kB VmallocChunk: 752636 kB HardwareCorrupted: 0 kB HugePages_Total: 0 HugePages_Free: 0 HugePages_Rsvd: 0 HugePages_Surp: 0 Hugepagesize: 4096 kB DirectMap4k: 12276 kB DirectMap4M: 249856 kB
Inode allocation was excellent (As it always is on KVM):
[email protected]:~# df -i Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on /dev/vda1 952848 16803 936045 2% / tmpfs 31853 3 31850 1% /lib/init/rw udev 30742 466 30276 2% /dev tmpfs 31853 1 31852 1% /dev/shm
vmstat showed low system activity:
[email protected]:~# vmstat procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu---- r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa 0 0 0 146096 83160 13648 0 0 719 55 42 83 0 2 95 3
Comments
Tests:
Each test was run three times and the middle ranked test was picked.
The Cachefly test showed great results:
Ping Tests (IPv6 works!):
Disk IO was good on the second and third runs, they must use caching:
ioping showed good results as well:
Geekbench results were fairly good:
Online View: http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/711263
UNIX Bench results also showed good performance:
======================================================================== BYTE UNIX Benchmarks (Version 5.1.3) System: testvps: GNU/Linux OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.32-5-686 -- #1 SMP Sun May 6 04:01:19 UTC 2012 Machine: i686 (unknown) Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="ANSI_X3.4-1968", collate="ANSI_X3.4-1968") CPU 0: QEMU Virtual CPU version (cpu64-rhel6) (4000.0 bogomips) x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSCALL/SYSRET 18:20:12 up 17 min, 1 user, load average: 0.01, 0.07, 0.03; runlevel 2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Benchmark Run: Fri Jun 01 2012 18:20:12 - 18:48:05 1 CPU in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests Dhrystone 2 using register variables 12161345.8 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples) Double-Precision Whetstone 1957.4 MWIPS (10.1 s, 7 samples) Execl Throughput 4549.8 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples) File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 552099.8 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples) File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 147367.8 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples) File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 1219095.4 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples) Pipe Throughput 877552.9 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples) Pipe-based Context Switching 237804.5 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples) Process Creation 15824.3 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples) Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 5961.6 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples) Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 760.8 lpm (60.1 s, 2 samples) System Call Overhead 750208.1 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples) System Benchmarks Index Values BASELINE RESULT INDEX Dhrystone 2 using register variables 116700.0 12161345.8 1042.1 Double-Precision Whetstone 55.0 1957.4 355.9 Execl Throughput 43.0 4549.8 1058.1 File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 3960.0 552099.8 1394.2 File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1655.0 147367.8 890.4 File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 5800.0 1219095.4 2101.9 Pipe Throughput 12440.0 877552.9 705.4 Pipe-based Context Switching 4000.0 237804.5 594.5 Process Creation 126.0 15824.3 1255.9 Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 42.4 5961.6 1406.0 Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 6.0 760.8 1268.0 System Call Overhead 15000.0 750208.1 500.1 ======== System Benchmarks Index Score 940.8Conclusion:
Prometeus offer a very solid budget VPS range backed by a stable and long running business. I would not hesitate to recommend them to anyone seeking servers based in Europe and am very satisfied with their performance (especially considering the very low price!)
Please give Prometeus a try and report on findings! Thanks for reading, tips and suggestions are appreciated!
@maxexcloo thx for your comprehensive report. I already gave a test to Prometeus (I now own 3 different vps with them, including 1 business with ssd disk) and i definitely agree with you. Great provider with terrific performance for a budget price. And they are located in the best Italian datacenter with fantastic peerings and connectivity to all Europe.
Thanks!
Thanks for the review
I am also in the process of benchmarking the KVM1 and will report my results here
Here are my previous results for the 512 KVM:
http://pastebin.com/xjk3MwzD