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ChicagoVPS dedicated, good and bad
This is my 2nd review of CHVPS dedicated service. Took the 25% off deal(It is 30% off after I have ordered) https://www.chicagovps.net/services/dedicated-servers
The first review was originally posted on October 24 2016. There had been a lot of discussion about what should "dedicated server" mean in the first review, I am not going to change anybody's mind here but rather stick to facts.
Overall, I'd say I am satisfied with the outcome. Be it CHVPS or any other provider, I have realistic expectations. If it were not for the network problem, I would not post on LET at all.
TL;DR Background:
Why I ordered a dirt cheap server from CHVPS? Many members frown on me when CHVPS was mentioned.
My project requirement:
- This is a computation heavy node(max-out CPU all the time), openvz VPS will not work.
- Don't need to consider downtime & data loss. No data is stored on the server, only code. It is very easy to deploy a replacement in case of downtime.
- Very low bandwidth requirement. Only KBs of data is transferred once a while.
- I have AWS & DigitalOcean instances for other mission critical jobs.
- Am I running any shady program(botnet, seedbox etc)? No, definitely not. This project is about distributed algorithm to predict Canadian housing market in real-time. (very CPU-heavy)
From a cost-effective view point, I find this CHVPS deal perfectly suitable.
Depends on the result, I might add 2~3 this type of instance to speedup the calculation.
Here is the whole timeline of my purchase
- 20 Oct. placed an order, server activated. I realized it is a slice of bare-metal but that's okay for $18/mo.
- 20 Oct. the 1st instance deployed never worked. Asked support team to fix.[#WWU-004911]
- 21 Oct. The 2nd instance deployed. Has very unstable network on the server, DNS resolve takes seconds, yum install very very slow, wget download fails here and there.
- 22 ~ 23 Oct. Tried to fix network, then realized it is not a software problem.
24 Oct my first CHVPS review on LET, ranting on two things:
- can't identify [QEMU] CPU is really dedicated 2 cores, or it is really E3-1240v3.
- Bad network.
The thread itself became a mini-storm. In all LET's glory this is the first hot-thread I have ever created in my life.
24 ~ 25 Oct. Kicking the ball with support [#UIO-175581]
Network still very bad. Can't download software packages. This is the tipping point for me.@VSNX_Nick and others from admin team noticed the 1st review, then start to talk about a solution.
- 26 Oct. A new bare-metal E3-1240v3 is activated for me at no extra cost. It runs very fast, very stable so far.
- 27 I have no outstanding issues, closed the 1st review.
Plus:
You can grab CHVPS's management's attention on LET.
This is a plus compare to a larger company. Calling my home Internet ISP is useless. Microsoft's support forum is dead useless.Good resolution speed once the managers kicked in.
- cheap
- Acceptable performance
Minus
- Marketing practice
- Support staff not attentive. E.g:
- Message me for IP & password when it is already in the ticket.
- When the network is too bad to even SSH into instance, support think I changed SSH port, instead of troubleshooting the actual problem.
- Repeatedly ask for permission to re-deploy the machine even the machine is brand new and nobody had been able to sign-in.
Below are my personal opinions, you may or may not agree with me, that's okay. Discussion welcomed.
Marketing problem
If "inexperienced" is a customer's fault, I have this problem. First I thought "wow, $18 for E3-1240v3". When I received the welcome email, its title says "Cloud Based Dedicated Servers". Okay, I can accept that, assuming I am getting 2 cores out of E3-1240v3.
Now I understand that mis-using "dedicated" has become an industrial norm. But holding yourself to a higher standard is not a bad idea.
Suggetion: It would be so much better if CHVPS can disclose how the resources are shared up front. E.g. "1/4 of E3-1240v3, dedicated core, dedicated RAM".
I would still buy the service if you have disclosed above info. It will only make the transaction smoother.
What [dedicated] really mean
If I am getting a server with 100mb network, I know that 100mb is shared with other boxes in the same data center. If there is a usage surge, I will not get get 100mb.
So that 100mb is not [dedicated].
If I am getting a [dedicated] 2-core E3-1240v3, I expect only myself can use that 2 cores.
- For a 2-core server, it should be bare-metal or only 1 instance virtualized.
- For a 4-core server, there should only be two instances on it.
Bottom line is, I need to be able to verify the above facts from the instance. With this QEMU masked CPU info, there is no way to verify I am being deployed on a E3/i5/Atom or whatever.
Comments
What a nice shill, how much did @jbiloh pay you to write this?
Little off topic but is DigitalOcean considered appropriate for "mission critical". They still advertise their service as developer oriented do they not? That basically means that it's for testing and not mission critical.
Yes I know some of you have production stuff there that has been running fine for a long time. That is anecdotal and doesn't consider what the service is designed for.
@Foul zero, null.
@moonmartin DO's uptime has been very good. In my limited usage(10+ instances), it can host my main server with no noticeable downtime.
Of course proper backup is always needed.
@alaningus you are right in this regard.
Our hope in targeting developers is that you'll build on our platform and scale on it. We want you to build with us, and we'd love for you to stay and run it production afterward
@alaningus @Foul I consider getting an upgrade to save a customer is a business routine for them.
Joined October 24
Funny how all this ChicagoVPS 'PR' is sprouting up again and genuine bad press is having attempts to bury it made.... not paying its way anymore perhaps?
sounds about right.
I do think @billy_z handled his own discussions/reviews in a good way.
there is nothing overglorifying in this second review nor too much rant in the first one.
he tried to stay somewhat objective in either case and why not write a follow up on the first bad impression when things changed for him?
yes cvps might have changed his opinion by giving an extraordinary upgrade - but if that's what made it finally work for the OP, why not? at last OP has been perfectly clear about it.
and also:
this is fully to be agreed with. without another discussion about marketing terms or dedicated issues...
29.Octomber your server goes down.
29. Octomber you open a ticket that server is down.
31.12 you get an response that they will let you know once they fix it.
13.09.2017 you bump the ticket.
14.12.2017 @Chvps_Chris replays: do not bump the ticket.
2018 to be continued.
I followed the other thread (cloud versus bare metal) very closely and read it in its entirety. Read this thread through in its entirely. Clicked on the CVPS link and was still nearly fooled about the "deceptive" server listings on that dedicated page. There really has to be a better way to organize your offerings.
Well, it's quite simple, they should be on separate pages. I get that customers looking for small dedi's should also consider those virtual environments, but a banner with a suggestion and link would be better than quoting specs.
I recommend against using 'chvps' as a short handle for ChicagoVPS, i'm fairly sure 'chvps' is an actual brand :P
Francisco
Not to mention they've always referred to themselves as 'CVPS'.
I'm curious as to why they decided to continue with the ChicagoVPS brand (which has years of bad reviews tied to it) instead of creating a fresh brand focusing on decent quality/support for the price.
Glad to see they got it sorted out for this customer though!
https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/94997/avoid-chicagovps-dedicated-fake-dedicated-huge-packet-loss#latest
Totally agree.. I still consider their [dedicated] ordering page to be deceptive.
Glad you're happy @billy_z
@jbiloh I bet it would have taken you less energy to login to the webserver and update that page to be less deceptive than you expelled sitting there thinking about side stepping all the comments before you replied with, "Glad you're happy".
just sayin....
"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink..."
Cheers!
You would be so surprised what i can write you into that QEMU CPU output - literally ANYTHING, i can emulate any single CPU up to the feature level of my host which on a recent E5 is EVERYTHING below (including AMD and VIA x86) and in the same generation up to E7, with performance decrease also ARM, SPARC and similar or newer feature sets on old CPUs (not in QEMU code, limiting to older level works though, emulating never works as does the existing emulation of VTx in SW; it is just REALLY slow).
You have ZERO way to verify your capacity is dedicated CPU wise in a VM unless you use it 100% permanently and can "exactly" (this depends on application) predict how long your task is taking on a certain specific CPU (actually we would calc this in cpu time or older cpu ticks which is a single instruction but time in a GUI works well for basic - some encode is going to be scaling mostly linear with your CPU power) and compare the benchmarks to current one (which, depending on code, might be moot as some thing gain massively in thread speed increase/turbo and others do in core amount while a general high end benchmark is really just a benchmark of all ressources and not likely to be realistic usage).
tl;dr DEDICATED is not proven DEDICATED unless you have full HW access. A VM cannot prove dedicated ressources beyond any doubt. Trust is key here essentially, as always with VMs.
Indeed, it would take very little effort to split up a dual 12 core E5, e.g. E5-2687W v4 in turbo (48 threads @ 3.5 Ghz) with 256GB Ram on a 2:1 ratio, sell it as 16 x E3's and fudge the QEMU outputs, ssd cache a large storage volume and make it LVM thin provisioned.
Then your selling 16 x E3's @ $115 ($1840) p/m which is a lot more than you would get for the E5 alone.
I know some people will say 'you would be able to tell' maybe you would, but I promise 80% would not know.
IPMI/DRAC/iLO or no thanks.
Not saying that is what is being done, just backing up @William, I think I have now seen at least 3 of these dedicated server scams in the past 12 months.
Well, do a Benchmark?
You can lookup E3 Unixbenchmarks in google, and try to come close to that.
If its crappy, you got an E5 instead of an E3 simple.
I am still waiting for the $19/m e3 nuggets said they had
If its crappy, you got an E5 instead of an E3 simple.
Welcome to the 20%