Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : VPS Hosting : RootBSD Review

[fbroce]

I have been with RootBSD (rootbsd.net) since June and I wanted to pass along a review of their service.

Network 9/10

Very good. 100 % uptime. The only reason I could not give them 10/10 is speed in comparison to other networks. They are very good.
Here is a test I ran tonight downloading a 10m test with wget.

10,485,760 (10m) 2.29M/s in 6.8s

Value 10/10

Pricing very good (WHT discounts from time to time). I have the Omicron plan (started with the Lambda). The Omicron plan is 768mb,
2 cpu instances, Xen vm, 40 gb drive space, 400gb transfer and 10 gb backup space (to an internal server on an internal LAN).

Hardware 9/10

RootBSD uses quad core servers with raid 10. Two 100 mb ports (one for internet, one for backup server access).
Reboot time (no ping to ping) about 55 seconds. I have experienced no swapping at any time. WHT unixbench score: 76.9 (probably about equal to a p4 2-2.4 gHz).
My setup includes mysql, php-fpm, nginx, bind9, postfix, sasl, dovecot, spamassassin (and a few more things). Total memory usage hovers around 200 mb of 768 total
after several days up-time. Server is always snappy and I have noticed no lag or jerky response.

Support/TOS 10/10

No setup fee, no complicated cancellation policy, accurate automated billing. Quick, friendly response to tickets. Staffers will help with config questions also.
They twitter too!

OS Choices. 10/10

FreeBSD 7.2! Great to have this OS on a VPS. They will install other OS (OpenBSD, NetBSD probably even linux) at your request all on xen vm.

Features 9/10

Custom in house control panel that rivals the big guys in features. It has bandwidth graphs, cpu processes, usage, remote console terminal,
password recovery, status, hard reboot, reverse DNS. (I probably left out some).The only thing missing is the ability to reinstall or resize your vm.

Additional comments:

There is access to portsnap updates. Good FAQ and knowledge base. The install included a full distro with man pages, etc.

You can access my site at this IP: 208.86.227.17 (I don't have a domain pointed at it at the moment).

I highly recommend RootBSD.

Fred Broce

[gplhost]

No word about the technology being used? Are they using BSD jail?

Thomas

[CoderJosh]

Originally Posted by gplhost

No word about the technology being used?

Xen, according to http://www.rootbsd.net/faq/

[fbroce]

RootBSD uses xen. I thought I mentioned that. Sorry.

[gplhost]

Are you running on a i386 arch, or is it 64 bits? Is it using HVM or paravirt?

We would have love to support FreeBSD, but it has no paravirt support in 64 bits, and it's a bit a blocker for us.

Thomas

[fbroce]

It's running i386. I think it's HVM. RootBSD would have to answer that.
I think FreeBSD 8 is supposed to add better support for xen.

[gplhost]

I read that having support for Xen PV in 64 bits mode is hard to make, because of the way the memory management in FreeBSD is made. I have no problem trusting that, considering that OSes are playing a lot with pages. I just hope it will come soon.

Thomas

[vkde]

I also use a RootBSD VPS account - Lambda plan, very good and stable! I have set it up the way I like it, now host 15 domains (PHP/JSP) with more to come! Very satisfied, recommend to anyone familiar with managing FreeBSD through SSH!

[Nnyan]

Nice review. Good to see a BSD host doing well.