Introduction: VPS by IonSwitch
I had signed up for a Virtual Private Server (VPS) in Dallas, USA by Ionswitch. This was back in December 2019. They had recently set up a new location, and this offer was posted on LowEndSpirit. It turns out, I was the first customer for the Dallas location. The machine came with 10 GB of NVMe disk, 1 CPU vcore of 2.6 Ghz, and ~ 1 GB of RAM. Below is the output from bench.monster. I am posting it below to give you an idea about the hardware specifications, detailed benchmarks of course follow as you scroll down.
Due to a misunderstanding, I decided not to put this machine to use. In fact, I created a user account for my uncle, who is a Linux and Open Source enthusiast. It was sort of a Birthday gift for him. This was back in the first few weeks of 2020.
Benchmarks- August 2020
A couple of days ago, I was looking at my account with Ionswitch (a very bright pink and orange color combination on their website really stands out!) A thought came to my mind- how is this VPS performing 8 months later? has the node been filled up? Do I have ‘busy’ neighbours, who are hammering away the machines, resulting in a degraded performance for my VPS?
Screenshot from Ionswitch Website
In order to satisfy my curiosity, I decided to run the usual set of benchmarks: YABS, nench.sh, speedtest, and bench.monster. Below are the results from those tests.
Yabs or Yet Another Benchmarking Script
---------------------------------
Block Size | 4k (IOPS) | 64k (IOPS)
------ | --- ---- | ---- ----
Read | 49.73 MB/s (12.4k) | 433.41 MB/s (6.7k)
Write | 49.82 MB/s (12.4k) | 435.69 MB/s (6.8k)
Total | 99.55 MB/s (24.8k) | 869.10 MB/s (13.5k)
| |
Block Size | 512k (IOPS) | 1m (IOPS)
------ | --- ---- | ---- ----
Read | 792.12 MB/s (1.5k) | 857.44 MB/s (837)
Write | 834.20 MB/s (1.6k) | 914.54 MB/s (893)
Total | 1.62 GB/s (3.1k) | 1.77 GB/s (1.7k)
iperf3 Network Speed Tests (IPv4):
---------------------------------
Provider | Location (Link) | Send Speed | Recv Speed
| | |
Online.net | Paris, FR (10G) | busy | busy
WorldStream | The Netherlands (10G) | 1.22 Gbits/sec | 1.42 Gbits/sec
Hurricane Electric | Fremont, CA, US (10G) | busy | busy
iperf3 Network Speed Tests (IPv6):
---------------------------------
Provider | Location (Link) | Send Speed | Recv Speed
| | |
Online.net | Paris, FR (10G) | busy | busy
WorldStream | The Netherlands (10G) | 1.09 Gbits/sec | 1.45 Gbits/sec
Hurricane Electric | Fremont, CA, US (10G) | 2.83 Gbits/sec | 4.86 Gbits/sec
Geekbench 4 Benchmark Test:
---------------------------------
Test | Value
|
Single Core | 2597
Multi Core | 2536
Full Test | https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/15717507
bench.monster
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
OS : Debian GNU/Linux 10 (64 Bit)
Virt/Kernel : KVM / 4.19.0-10-amd64
CPU Model : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2670 0 @ 2.60GHz
CPU Cores : 1 @ 2599.998 MHz x86_64 20480 KB Cache
CPU Flags : AES-NI Enabled & VM-x/AMD-V Disabled
Load Average : 0.09, 0.20, 0.10
Total Space : 9.9G (2.7G ~29% used)
Total RAM : 987 MB (82 MB + 72 MB Buff in use)
Total SWAP : 0 MB (0 MB in use)
Uptime : 0 days 1:8
----------------------------------------------------------------
Single Core : 553 (GOOD)
Multi Core : 554
## IO Test
CPU Speed:
bzip2 : 92.1 MB/s
sha256 : 137 MB/s
md5sum : 420 MB/s
RAM Speed:
Avg. write : 2491.7 MB/s
Avg. read : 5529.6 MB/s
Disk Speed:
1st run : 1.0 GB/s
2nd run : 1.1 GB/s
3rd run : 1000 MB/s
-----------------------
Average : 1050.1 MB/s
## Asia Speedtest
Location Upload Download Ping
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nearby 1121.76 Mbit/s 2002.34 Mbit/s 9.481 ms
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
## Asia Speedtest
Location Upload Download Ping
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nearby 901.27 Mbit/s 1976.71 Mbit/s 11.429 ms
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
India, New Delhi (GIGATEL) 21.21 Mbit/s 64.81 Mbit/s 279.698 ms
India, Mumbai (SevenStar) 29.68 Mbit/s 93.49 Mbit/s 252.938 ms
India, Bengaluru (I-ON) 18.47 Mbit/s 28.81 Mbit/s 243.815 ms
Sri Lanka, Colombo (Telecom PLC) 62.89 Mbit/s 118.70 Mbit/s 233.701 ms
Pakistan, Islamabad (Telenor) 20.25 Mbit/s 58.46 Mbit/s 287.587 ms
Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar (Mobicom) 23.35 Mbit/s 29.21 Mbit/s 206.256 ms
Bangladesh, Dhaka (Skytel) 41.54 Mbit/s 125.80 Mbit/s 256.535 ms
Bhutan, Thimphu (Bhutan Telecom) 22.03 Mbit/s 58.92 Mbit/s 286.436 ms
Myanmar, Mandalay (Ooredoo) 44.56 Mbit/s 97.55 Mbit/s 250.483 ms
Laos, Vientaine (Mangkone) 24.29 Mbit/s 93.05 Mbit/s 244.617 ms
Thailand, Bangkok (CAT Telecom) 32.39 Mbit/s 117.24 Mbit/s 222.793 ms
Cambodia, Phnom Penh (Smart) 57.14 Mbit/s 94.81 Mbit/s 228.658 ms
Vietnam, Hanoi (Viettel) 62.81 Mbit/s 121.21 Mbit/s 232.551 ms
Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur (Extreme) 20.69 Mbit/s 138.73 Mbit/s 211.055 ms
Singapore (PT FirstMedia) 33.34 Mbit/s 21.30 Mbit/s 192.110 ms
Indonesia, Jakarta (Desnet) 12.49 Mbit/s 133.75 Mbit/s 206.722 ms
Philippines, Manila (Globe Tel) 7.14 Mbit/s 135.84 Mbit/s 189.367 ms
Hong Kong (fdcservers) 93.93 Mbit/s 211.53 Mbit/s 184.461 ms
[email protected]:/tmp#
Japan, Tsukuba (SoftEther) 101.24 Mbit/s 318.19 Mbit/s 143.588 ms
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finished in : 12 min 29 sec
Timestamp : 2020-08-27 10:01:33 GMT
Saved in : /root/speedtest.log
Share results:
- https://www.speedtest.net/result/9981301210.png
- https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/3446198
- https://clbin.com/piEwl
Speedtest
nench.sh
-------------------------------------------------
nench.sh v2019.07.20 -- https://git.io/nench.sh
benchmark timestamp: 2020-08-27 10:11:01 UTC
-------------------------------------------------
Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2670 0 @ 2.60GHz
CPU cores: 1
Frequency: 2599.998 MHz
RAM: 987Mi
bash: line 156: swapon: command not found
Swap: -
Kernel: Linux 4.19.0-10-amd64 x86_64
Disks:
vda 10G HDD
CPU: SHA256-hashing 500 MB
4.206 seconds
CPU: bzip2-compressing 500 MB
dd: sequential write speed
1st run: 953.67 MiB/s
2nd run: 952.72 MiB/s
3rd run: 953.67 MiB/s
average: 953.36 MiB/s
IPv4 speedtests
your IPv4: 204.9.36.xxxx
Cachefly CDN: 546.45 MiB/s
Leaseweb (NL): 18.85 MiB/s
Softlayer DAL (US): 108.59 MiB/s
Online.net (FR): 20.12 MiB/s
OVH BHS (CA): 53.42 MiB/s
IPv6 speedtests
your IPv6: 2602:fe54:1001:xxxx
Leaseweb (NL): 17.86 MiB/s
Softlayer DAL (US): 108.01 MiB/s
Online.net (FR): 19.96 MiB/s
OVH BHS (CA): 50.74 MiB/s
Resource Usage
When I ran the “top” command, the screen initially shows the CPU steal to be 5.9, quickly it-re set to 0.3, and has stayed in that range since. I made a screen capture, which I am posting as a gif image below. It does not show much variation in the cpu steal, which makes me wonder if that 5.9 value was an anamoly or an error.
Final thoughts on VPS by IonSwitch
The 1 GB RAM VPS seems to be a good, steady performer- without any surprises. Now that I am in a consolidation mode for the VPS’es I have subscribed to, I might have to think twice before letting this one go. Maybe transfer it over to someone else. Simply because I do not have any specific use for it. But this looks like a good, steady, cheap (cost wise) machine, at US $ 15 a year, the temptation to hold on still persists.
Update November 20, 2020
I decided to renew this VPS for one more year. This has been a good performer, with relatively littie hiccups and good uptime. Might set it up with Webinoly or WordOps for an upcoming project.