Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : VPS Hosting : Expected Performance with a VPS Plan

[TurboJones]

I recently migrated my shared/reseller plan to a VPS. I selected the VPS1 plan from Liquid Web. First of all kudos to the support provided by Liquid Web. It is first rate so far.

My concern is that the performance I'm receiving doesn't even come close to what I had with the shared/reseller plan I had with HostForWeb that cost $24.95.

When I called support at Liquid Web to discuss this I was told that the $60 VPS1 plan is just a really basic plan and that I won't get good performance from it. The VPS2 or dedicated was what they said I would need.

Now I have 11 sites configured with this plan. I have several Mambo sites and 2 static sites. The Mambo sites do not get any real traffic yet as they have not even been launched/published yet. 1 of the static sites get a minimum amount of traffic, about 30 visitors a day. I would think with this light of a load that I would not be seeing performance problems. By performance problems I mean it takes 30 seconds to login to FTP (and yes I'm using Pure FTP).

What I'm asking here is... Should I be expecting better performance from this basic VPS plan? Or do I really have to spend $100 mo. to get decent performance for so few sites?

I really like this company and it was rated very highly on WHT. But I'm beginning to think perhaps they are overloading their VPS servers that host the VPS1 plan. Can anyone provide me some insight here? I am in no way bashing Liquid Web here, I just need to understand what is reasonable to expect regarding performance.

Best regards.
TurboJones

[TurboJones]

Correction, the previous post should have said 130 visitors per day for the static site.

TurboJones

[layer0]

You may want to try to optimize your VPS here are some things you can do.

1. Enable PURE-FTPD for faster FTP logins and security.
2. Disable mailman if you do not need it.
3. Disable spamassasin if you do not need it.
4. You can disable some webmail services if you wish.
Basically you can disable anything you are not using on the VPS for the most part.

If you need help with this just holler.

[davebytes]

I'll be interested to hear other experiences, as that's the 'maximum' plan I'm shooting for at the moment. And I run a blog that typically gets >1K readers per day, and has been slashdotted even. I'm looking at VPS over dedicated basically for redundancy, but if the performance of the average 256MB-guaranteed plans are struggling... well...

More opinions and optimization commentary would be much appreciated (btw, I plan on something like clamav & spamassassin, imap email, etc., so there is other stuff going on... and a dynamic PHP site, but I can tweak the SQL queries if I have a good managed provider with some linux gurus onboard...).

-d

[gilbert]

im suprised but good to hear that you had a good experience with hostforweb cause i was on the overbooked sirius server almost over a year ago from now

ive noticed vservers are kinda popular with some people who want a dedicated server but i kind fruggle (no offense)

[TurboJones]

Zeon - thanks for the feedback. Tuning I'm sure will be absolutely necessary with such sparce resources.

I'm still really interested in understanding if I'm just expecting too much performance from such a plan or if indeed it may just be a result of too few resources split between too many VPS accounts. I can't seem to find any guaranteed CPU in Liquid Web's plan description but one of their techs told me it was 256mhz. So with 256mhz and 256mb RAM minimums, should it still take 30 seconds to log in to FTP? Should I be expecting to get more Burst resources for the money I'm paying?

When I decided to go with Liquid Web it was a toss up between ServInt and them. I ultimately went with Liquid Web as the dedicated pricing is much better and as my business grows I plan to migrate to dedicated. I just didn't plan to have to migrate with only 2 paying customers. I thought I'd be able to have more active sites with the basic VPS plan and still get decent performance. I'm beginning to think I should have gone with ServInt but I really don't have any facts to back that up.

Please help me by sharing your experiences with VPS performance.

Regards,
TurboJones

[8inet-Johnathan]

Turbo,

I've heard nothing but great so far about ServInt, and for less money you are assured 1gb RAM. With this extra ram you only get half the space you have now.

But if you want stability over space i recommend you switch to servint

[Yaroslav]

Turbo,

I'm not extremely experienced in VPS resource allocation, but IMHO you're being screwed. I've got a tiny VPS for $30 with 200MHz/128M guaranteed, and logging in through SFTP (note the 'S' which applies Diffie-Hellman encryption) inside an HTTP tunnel (yes, this eats even more) takes me only a second or two...

[TurboJones]

I'm still hoping for some experienced feedback with VPS. Thanks to those that have contributed thus far but my question is really still unanswered.

I know ServInt is a great provider, and I thought Liquid Web was as well. But I'm still not sure if I am indeed getting the short end of the stick with my VPS performance. Experienced input please... and thank you.

TurboJones

[Haddy]

Originally posted by TurboJones
When I called support at Liquid Web to discuss this I was told that the $60 VPS1 plan is just a really basic plan and that I won't get good performance from it. The VPS2 or dedicated was what they said I would need.

What did they base that on...Surely they said more than "this plan wont work, you must upgrade", atleast I hope they did...

[TurboJones]

Haddy- When I called to ask about performance and the long delay in loging into FTP the tech started to tell me that the plan I was on was really a very basic plan and that I should expect low performance. He then said that their $100 plan was on higher end machines and would be a decent plan for performance but that a dedicated server was really what I needed. The thing that got me most was that he said something like "what do you expect from a $60 plan?" like that was really cheap or something. The thing was that I had just migrated from a shared/reseller plan for $24 that way outperformed it. I know shared plans are a mixed bag and that's why I went with VPS but I would think that even a "basic" $60 plan should at least host 10 sites with minor traffic. I only have 1 site that has any real traffic and my performance is horrible IMHO.

I'd move over to ServInt to try that out but I expect to migrate to a dedicated plan as soon as my business picks up and justifies the expense and Liquid Web has much better pricing on dedicated plans.

Ideas... Feedback...

Thanks.

[Haddy]

Originally posted by TurboJones
Haddy- When I called to ask about performance and the long delay in loging into FTP the tech started to tell me that the plan I was on was really a very basic plan and that I should expect low performance. He then said that their $100 plan was on higher end machines and would be a decent plan for performance but that a dedicated server was really what I needed. The thing that got me most was that he said something like "what do you expect from a $60 plan?" like that was really cheap or something. The thing was that I had just migrated from a shared/reseller plan for $24 that way outperformed it. I know shared plans are a mixed bag and that's why I went with VPS but I would think that even a "basic" $60 plan should at least host 10 sites with minor traffic. I only have 1 site that has any real traffic and my performance is horrible IMHO.

I'd move over to ServInt to try that out but I expect to migrate to a dedicated plan as soon as my business picks up and justifies the expense and Liquid Web has much better pricing on dedicated plans.

Ideas... Feedback...

Thanks.

Is it just FTP that is slow or are other operations slow and is it slow all the time??

I just dont see how that plan would not fit your requirments unless theres something running on these sites that is just eating up resources...

[TurboJones]

It is all performance. The Virtuozzo control panel often reports 100% cpu utilization.

Like I said above, I have quite a few Mambo sites that use mysql configured but they have no traffic on them. The only traffic being generated is from a static site. My concern is that if I launch a new customer on one of the Mambo sites that I will be wringing the neck of my VPS. I just fitured I'd have more cpu resources to spare with such minimal usage.

When I run the services report on the virtuozzo cpanel it does not show any processes hogging the CPU. It's really kind of frustrating and again I'm just getting an upgrade suggestion from support.

If indeed my site is really using that much resource and moving to another VPS would not solve that, then I understand and will pay more to upgrade. The problem is that I can't justify in my mind that I am taxing this VPS plan that much already. I am very new to non-dedicated hosting and linux based hosts so I'm swimming a little here. I'm sure I'm just a bit nieve.

Can anyone share with me how many sites & types (static vs dynamic) they are running on their VPS with decent performance?

Cheers.

[Yaroslav]

Can you log in to SSH and run top? It shows processes and CPU usage in realtime and also accumulates values while it runs, maybe it'd give you some picture.

P.S. Just my 2 cents: if I would get such responses from the support team, I would seriously doubt before hosting ANYthing more with them, let alone go Dedicated...

[TurboJones]

I have run top but it seemed to be reporting total machine resources (at least on the ram) and still did not point out any processes that are hogging resources.

Thanks for the suggestion though.