Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Specialty Hosting and Markets : [REVIEW] RapidVPS.com Backup Solutions

[Crothers]

This review I'm about to write is focused on RapidVPS.com's new "Rapid Backup" system.

My Background: I work for a technical support division of a game server hosting company. I've been dealing with root level administration of cPanel/WHM for about 3.5 years now.

Linux Aptitude: Below Guru, but more so then a "power user"

And for my review.

On July 15th I requested to activate a Rapid.Backup account on my RapidVPS.com profile. Unfortunately this was before the official launch and was unable to get one. So Rick (The Owner) went ahead and saved my ticket and provisioned one on the 21st for me (With permission of course). So I dove into it.

Normally people don't really get "Excited" about backup solutions, but I've known Rick for a really long time now, I even do a bit of volunteer moderation on his forums for him. I enjoy his community, and I enjoy his products. So the thing I was looking forward to the most was his control panel for his backup solution. At this point your probably a little confused reading this as your probably thinking it is a review of the "backup service", well you can't take half of a system and just review that.

So I got my Rapid.Backup, it was setup of course in roughly 2 minutes. I then adjusted the name in my control panel (Organization freak, his control panel lets you name everything usually its by hostname, but I really just name things what I want and change the hostname later, its really intuitive.) So I renamed it, then I accessed the control panel. I created a user account and was looking over the features and I realized something special about this service.

Its kind of like a VPS sort of. I have a set amount of space, but I can create all the users I want and have them instantly activated. I get my dedicated IP to it. I have full SSH/SFTP/SCP/ and FTP access. I was also able to copy/paste a public key into the system and access it via secure SSH key in under 10 seconds. I rotated the password (for security, so I don't have it cached/stored) then I used standard SFTP and connected. Its kind of like buying a shell account, except its more like a VPS. I can run a cron job for backups on it, its speedy, and I can script on it. I asked Rick to enable the PHP-CLI for me, and I was off writing PHP Shell scripts to automate everything.

So about an hour later, I wrote all my PHP scripts set them up on cron. I had my cpanel server's /home partition backing up in roughly 25-30 minutes (I had it set hourly so it wasn't instant and I didn't know how long it would take ect, so I didn't rush things)

So about an hour later I checked back and checked the PHP log I made for it, 125 megs transferred in about 17 minutes with an average of 7mb/s. That was pretty good I thought, so then I started archiving other things off my local ~ directory at home. I was uploading between 200-320kbps sure that depends on your ISP of course, but there is really a feel of "Higher performance" when your using his backup system.

So I basically ran down my "use" of the system, now lets go for my personal experience overall.

Support-
Rick, what can I really say? Anybody who has been with this company knows Rick in some way or another and thinks of him as some sort of deity. He brings support to another level, he will always take care of me with my services and I know it, thats why I love RapidVPS.com

Performance-
From external servers (or home PC's) its amazing. From another RapidVPS service, its phenomenal. The system is amazing stand alone if you need an "Out of datacenter" backup solution, but paired up with a VPS from Rapid, it really shines.

Price-
100GB Storage, and 100mbit connection, with a dedi IP. Total price 14.95 - if that's not worth its weight in gold what is? Lets not forget he has 300GB and 800GB solutions at 29.99 and 79.99 respectively. So if your looking for anytype of backup solution I highly recommend at least testing RapidVPS.com first, if you find it not up to your "par" of backup solutions he has in my opinion the best refund policy that's really feasible. Full refund within 30 days. Test it out, I promise you will be happy.

My Ratings-
Support = A
Performance = A
Price = A+
(A being above industry standard, and A+ being perfect in my opinion)

Now to wrap this up I'm going to include some links, before I include them I am including my affiliate link. I am also including a regular non affiliate link, I would appreciate it though if you used the affiliate link. I just personally don't like being trapped into an affiliate agreement personally all the time so I prefer to give the option. I would like to mention though, the affiliate payout that I would get would lead to a review of the High Availability hosting he has going on, which I'm eager to review.

I hope this review helps someone out there!

[YYamagishi]

Thanks I'm going to check them out as I need offsite backup server in Europe.

[Thomas]

Great review Seems you found your ideal host.

[pixeldawn]

I've just signed up as well, and I'm really pleased that we're getting speeds in excess of 70-75mbit when transferring files from our nodes to their backup server.

[jayglate]

I would also chime in and say, RapidVPS is a fine company to do business with. I know the owners and they are stand up folk.

[datums]

"RapidVPS is a fine company to do business with" ditto

[-OY-]

Where is RapidVPS located in? (Datacenter) Equinix?

[pixeldawn]

I believe it is in Orlando. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

[-OY-]

I've contacted Rick. Hopefully, we'll get a bulk discount for reselling accounts on their backup systems.

[pixeldawn]

Let me know if you need a test account to play around with before ordering.

[RapidRick]

Hi, thanks for the review and feedback.

Our backup product is new and has very basic features; it is managed via our website control panel which is custom written for our business (we do not use/rely on hypervm, clientexec, etc). We are implementing new backup system features this month based on customer feedback, such as NFS and Samba support. Many people have found the backup system very useful and the price per GB is very cheap. We are able to leverage this price per GB by using mass storage devices, as described below.

The backends of the storage service are comprised of 24X 1TB SATAs in SAN arrays running Linux, Areca 1280 raid6 + 2 hotspare, and 4x gigE lan connections talking iscsi to the processing nodes. We have disaster recovery procedures in place to ensure hardware failure on the processing and/or storage nodes do not cause a significant service interruption.

We are not in the Equinix datacenter- we colocate our equipment in two private datacenters in central Florida, within 30 miles of each other. This makes a disaster and business continuance plan possible. Unlike most other companies, we do not simply lease servers from large datacenters and resell service using them. We own our own servers, network equipment, and directly manage them on the spot; we have an ASN and operate our own BGP routing using company owned routers. Should there be a problem, we are not reliant on a datacenter vendor with 50,000 other servers to solve it for us. ie, we are not creating a vendor ticket and updating our customers based on upstream support. Rather, our hands are working on it directly. You can read more about our network here: https://www.rapidvps.com/index.php?p...etwork&lang=en . Our network is not the largest and never will be. However, we have full control over our network, and our upstream bandwidth is not overcommited/oversold. Our IP addresses are issued directly from ARIN; we are independent of vendor influence in this aspect (we do not use another company's IP addresses which would put us under their thumb during contract renegociation). During a network problem, such as a service impacting dos attack, we have the ability to independently isolate and null-route addresses on the networks of Tier 1 providers. This means the null-routed-destination packets never reach our network. Overall, we are able to deliver service quality which we have control over. A 99.9999% SLA means very little when the company offering it has little or no direct control over the network and servers providing that SLA.

If you have any private questions, I am available via PM.


Cheers,
Rick

[-OY-]

Wait.... forgot to ask, are these even SSH equipped?

[RapidRick]

Yes

https://www.rapidvps.com/?page=Hosting.Backup

[-OY-]

Special thanks to pixeldawn for letting me test an end-user account! Although, it feels sluggish. Nothing resolves for wget nor lynx. But everything else looks fine! Hopefully, I'll getting a test account from Rick; I'll see how it goes.

[Otto@backup home]$ wget http://speedtest.voxcdn.com/download_test.tar
--00:35:53-- http://speedtest.voxcdn.com/download_test.tar
Resolving speedtest.voxcdn.com...
[Otto@backup home]$ wget http://speedtest.managemyservices.com/10MB.bin
--00:37:29-- http://speedtest.managemyservices.com/10MB.bin
Resolving speedtest.managemyservices.com...

[eztiger]

Is there a test file at RapidVPS to check the speed from europe?