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GreenValueHost VPS Review (New Years Special)
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GreenValueHost VPS Review (New Years Special)

prae5prae5 Member
edited January 2014 in Reviews

I thought I provide you with a quick review of my services so far with GreenValueHost as there isn't many reviews of them here.

I've been tempted several times in the past by some of GreenValueHost's offers, but was somewhat wary for a few reasons - mainly their ToS seemed potentially somewhat excessively restrictive and potentially wouldn't allow running a software download mirror (my primary use). I know that some people can find their responses a little terse at times, but this was never really a concern for me - providing the service works well thats all i care about.

I confirmed with them that I could run a software mirror with them, and decided to take a punt on one of their New Years Specials.

The service was advertised as:

  • LET Exclusive New Years Special #4 - $7.00/month OR $48.00/year (BEST VALUE!)

  • OpenVZ Virtualization

  • 300GB SSD Accelerated RAID-10 Disk Space

  • 35TB Premium Bandwidth @ 1Gbps Port

  • 4048MB Guaranteed RAM

  • 8192MB Burstable RAM

  • 3 IPv4

  • $7.00/month OR $48.00/year- NO CONTRACTS and NO BS-

I run XBMCNightlyBuilds.com which is a site that builds and distributes nightly development builds of XBMC, OpenELEC and a few other similar projects. I already have a number of download mirrors, but was looking to implement a better system using MirrorBrain and this offer looked ideal for running the MirrorBrain master.

Signup process was relatively straight forward. Provisioning wasn't instant, but was setup within an hour or so.

I've had it in use for about a week now and so far I can't complain about the service so far, especially given the resources - I can't think of any other provider that offers 300GB/4GB for anywhere close to $48 a year.

The Good:

  • Good network links

  • Excellent resource allocations

  • Multiple IP's

The Bad:

  • Initially erratic disk io, was benchmarked at 120MB/s but quickly dropped to about 45/MB/s. This seems to be resolved now and I can only assume it was down to lots of users running benchmarks. It seems fairly consistatant at about 120-140MB/s

  • A little downtime (less than an hour i think) on the node yesterday due to abuse on the node. Again quickly resolved.

  • As of last night they have implemented a new policy to tackle abusive clients. Should your VPS be suspended, un-suspension for vps's that have been suspended for CPU abuse will be assessed a one-time administrative fee of up to $10.00 per incident. I assume this is to penalise abusive clients. They also state "To clear up any confusion regarding our CPU resource policy, we allow clients to burst up to 50% of their CPU allocation -- NO EXCEPTIONS." I understand this is to protect them, however I hope that there would be a degree of common sense applied to legitimate users. I hope, that like other providers they attempt to contact you before suspending a vps, rather than suspend first and ask questions later.

I've opened a couple of tickets since I've had the VPS, all have been answered quickly and to my satisfaction - so no complaints there.

Disk IO is lower than what I would expect for a typical VPS advertised as SSD cached. However, given the price point, allocated storage and my usage its more than acceptable in my opinion.

Overall I'm fairly happy with this service and would likely signup for a similar plan with them, however I'm not sure i would use it for a production site or anything I had to rely on - I would constantly be concerned that something might trigger their monitoring system and result in suspension / termination.

----- UPDATE ------

Whilst putting this review together I ran Serverbear to generate some stats. I know this can be fairly intensive on a node, but I can't think of a provider I'm currently with that its caused any significant issues with. Unfortunately it triggered GVH's monitoring system and my VPS was suspended for CPU abuse. They have since reinstated it, and in-fairness without the $10 fee - but this highlights just how easy it could be to have your vps suspended. I could understand if i had been running it 24x7 but this wasn't the case. It seems you only get one chance at being unsuspended for free and after that you must pay the $10 fee.

I'm not entirely happy with my experience of being suspended. I received no communication from them indicating I was using excessive CPU usage, likewise when they shutdown my vps and suspended it there was no email or ticket created by them. I left it an hour before contacting them, as i had wrongly assumed they were doing work on the node. It was only then that I was told that it had been suspended for CPU abuse. I think regardless of the reason for shutting down or suspending a vps, be it for this CPU abuse policy or any other violation of their ToS, then you should contact the customer / email / raise a ticket stating the reason.

I'm still on the fence on what I will do with this VPS, I can't have lots of down time and feel uncomfortable with always wondering if I'm using too much resources. They do claim to have a 45 day no questions asked refund policy, so I'll probably give it another week or so and decide then.

It is unfortunate that they are so stringent in terms of usage, else this would be a great plan and I probably would have ordered one in each of their locations.


Some stats for those interested in hard numbers:

ServerBear

freevps.us bench


root@mirror:~#  wget freevps.us/downloads/bench.sh -O - -o /dev/null|bash
CPU model :  Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1240 v3 @ 3.40GHz
Number of cores : 8
CPU frequency :  3392.093 MHz
Total amount of ram : 8144 MB
Total amount of swap : 0 MB
System uptime :   30 min,       
Download speed from CacheFly: 74.1MB/s 
Download speed from Coloat, Atlanta GA: 27.5MB/s 
Download speed from Softlayer, Dallas, TX: 10.7MB/s 
Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, JP: 7.22MB/s 
Download speed from i3d.net, Rotterdam, NL: 10.6MB/s
Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, NL: 14.0MB/s 
Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 1.75MB/s 
Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 17.1MB/s 
Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 5.37MB/s 
Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 77.8MB/s 
I/O speed :  85.6 MB/s

Disk IO:


root@mirror:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync && rm -f test
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 9.3857 s, 114 MB/s

Network


root@mirror:~# python speedtest_cli.py 
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Testing from ColoCrossing (192.3.142.235)...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by LayeredServer (Buffalo, NY) [16.56 km]: 9.378 ms
Testing download speed........................................
Download: 66.27 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed..................................................
Upload: 54.73 Mbit/s

«134

Comments

  • this place throws up red flags, left and right for me. i wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole.

    Thanked by 1Mark_R
  • This warning that they have sent shouldn't scare legit WEB hosting customers, but should repel abusers. I think this "mining" stuff has made a lot of damage to hosting companies and VPS users. Web hosting VPS should be used to host web sites and not make heavy calculations or etc.
    To be honest I was more concerned then NY4 node went down due to CPU abuse, but now I can hope for better uptime.

  • ZeroCoolZeroCool Member
    edited January 2014

    don't be suprise, becouse that big oversell package that is normal, if you need got stable and reliabel buy Xen, kvm or dedicated

  • @FXtalk said:
    I think this "mining" stuff has made a lot of damage to hosting companies and VPS users.

    Mining?

  • @HostNun said:
    Mining?

    Coin Mining, Bitcoin, Litecoin, Primecoin, Dogecoin (Haha), etc..

  • @prae5

    Thank You for the honest review! If you can submit a ticket and explain the circumstances of what you are using your VPS for, we'll be more than happy to make a consideration of whitelisting you from being issued unsuspension fees. However though unfortunately we can't whitelist you from being suspended for CPU abuse as it is the client's responsibility to be aware of and adhere to CPU usage policies. This goes the same for all other clients.

    We've just had too many people trying to use their virtual servers for CPU mining, malicious attack scripts, and a lot of other crap that no provider here really has any tolerance for. The unsuspension fees policy implementation is our way of putting our foot down against resource hogs and abusers.

  • @prae5 said:

    >

    & just few hours ago I had the sameeee concern at http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/19256/greenvaluehost-let-exclusive-new-years-sale-unbelievable-ssd-based-ovz-xen-offers-starting-1-m/p3

    A sword hanging over the head

    I am thinking of a refund.

  • jnguyenjnguyen Member
    edited January 2014

    @raza19 - Ticket in please, I'll make sure you're whitelisted. I don't know how I can stress the point enough that the policy isn't in place to unfairly punish legitimate users.

  • @GreenValueHost, I'll open a ticket. To be clear I wasn't being critical of your policies - I do fully appreciate why you need them from your side - no one likes abusers, be it providers or other users on the node.

    I completely understand your harsh stance on this and the frustration that abusers can cause for you - its just frustrating that as a legitimate customer the actions of a few spoil it for the majority.

    As I mentioned, overall I am satisfied with the service and think it offers great value for the price.

  • hotsnowhotsnow Veteran
    edited January 2014

    @GreenValueHost said:
    raza19 - Ticket in please, I'll make sure you're whitelisted. I don't know how I can stress the >point enough that the policy isn't in place to unfairly punish legitimate users.

    how can get whitelisted?

    just as @raza19 said, "A sword hanging over the head", may accidentally go over the limit someday, although the probability is very very small, because only use the vps do some backups & websites

  • @hotsnow

    Please read my initial response to this thread which stated

    "If you can submit a ticket and explain the circumstances of what you are using your VPS for, we'll be more than happy to make a consideration of whitelisting you from being issued unsuspension fees. However though unfortunately we can't whitelist you from being suspended for CPU abuse as it is the client's responsibility to be aware of and adhere to CPU usage policies. This goes the same for all other clients."

    Thanked by 1lukesUbuntu
  • hotsnowhotsnow Veteran
    edited January 2014

    @GreenValueHost said:
    hotsnow

    Please read my initial response to this thread which stated

    need pre submit ticket now?

    or submit ticket only when (if) this suspension occurred?

    thanks.

  • For sure, i was getting a bit shock when i read about the unsuspenssion fee customer must take. I got suspended once a few days after i bought it. I didn't login yet after the service was delivered to me. So just open ticket and they said maybe was false alarm. And it got unsuspended, thanks to the services @GreenValueHost but still that policy seems very strictly to the customer. Just my oppinion maybe you can send email first before suspended it. You have automatically system that monitoring our usage, so it will trigger many false alarm about the cpu usage

    Thanked by 1Mark_R
  • @hotsnow - I would submit a ticket now.
    @iSky - We use NodeWatch which shut down your container temporarily and it was a false alarm by NodeWatch, and we deeply apologize. This doesn't count as a "suspension".

  • @GreenValueHost

    why is it cron entries cannot be run in intervals less then 5 minutes apart ?

  • I was suspended, they're saying I abused cpu, which I never touched due to "vps was down". Opened the ticket, and they said I'm abusing ticket system now. If anybody explains to me how I can abuse cpu when vps was not running?

  • darkshiredarkshire Member
    edited January 2014

    @MorningIris said:
    I was suspended, they're saying I abused cpu, which I never touched due to "vps was down". Opened the ticket, and they said I'm abusing ticket system now. If anybody explains to me how I can abuse cpu when vps was not running?

    hmm its interesting to me that they say, you are "abusing tickets"...
    i remember not long ago there was a user here, @Edo if i remember correctly where they claimed the same thing. at the time i was on @GreenValueHost side, but now... i realize that i have jumped to conclusions too quickly ! sorry @Edo !!

    edit: heres that post.
    http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/19282/a-customer-from-greenvaluehost/p1

    leave these GreenValue 'folks', thats my best advice ! ;)

    Thanked by 1Mark_R
  • Haha what a joke TOS..

    Thanked by 1darkshire
  • joepie91joepie91 Member, Patron Provider

    @GreenValueHost Could you perhaps explain why you are saying that a user cannot use over 50% of their CPU allocation, rather than just halving their actual CPU allocation? This seems like a cheap deceptive marketing trick.

    Thanked by 1Dylan
  • @joepie91 said:
    GreenValueHost Could you perhaps explain why you are saying that a user cannot use over 50% of their CPU allocation, rather than just halving their actual CPU allocation? This seems like a cheap deceptive marketing trick.

    I was thinking about this and thought that I should offer something like this. 100GB of RAM and hide inside the TOS that you can only use 1-2% of it.

  • @GreenValueHost said:
    hotsnow - I would submit a ticket now.

    ticket sent, thanks...

  • JupiterJupiter Member
    edited January 2014

    GreenValueHost said: We've just had too many people trying to use their virtual servers for CPU mining, malicious attack scripts, and a lot of other crap that no provider here really has any tolerance for. The unsuspension fees policy implementation is our way of putting our foot down against resource hogs and abusers.

    But CPU can throttle without client even know the problem. Where is that 50% CPU usage theory coming from ...

    I am cancelling ...

  • joepie91 said: @GreenValueHost Could you perhaps explain why you are saying that a user cannot use over 50% of their CPU allocation, rather than just halving their actual CPU allocation? This seems like a cheap deceptive marketing trick.

    This -- are you literally saying that people can't ever use more than 50% of their CPU allocation? If so, what in the world is the point of having that allocation, then? Why not just half it for everyone?

  • I read another page from @Edo and this page, greenvaluehost please man up

  • have 2 vps from them, twice got suspended.

    I'm not interest anymore :D

  • @xphones why were your VPSes suspended?

  • @mcmyhost said:
    Coin Mining, Bitcoin, Litecoin, Primecoin, Dogecoin (Haha), etc..

  • Is that drMike? :P

    Thanked by 1k0nsl
  • If we did not have CPU usage policies, we would have deadpooled a very long time ago.

    Thanked by 1vRozenSch00n
  • GreenValueHost said: If we did not have CPU usage policies, we would have deadpooled a very long time ago.

    It's survival thing. :)

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