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GridVirt VPS (KVM) Review
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GridVirt VPS (KVM) Review

edited June 2012 in Reviews

I stumbled across lowendtalk about a month ago when looking for SSD VPS providers and thought I would share my experience with people here even though it is not a lowend VPS. I found out about GridVirt while doing some research on high performance VPS that make use of SSD technology. I saw how they took the number one spot at VPSeer against many other SSD based VPS providers so i thought I would give them a try and see for myself. I needed a high performance VPS as I planned to run a few different gameservers using it such as: Ace Of Spades (AOS), Desert Combat (BF 1942 Mod), and Lineage 2 the mmorpg.

I did some benchmarks over the first week to see if I would get close to the same numbers that VPSeer was able to get and I did. Consistently getting 3k average on Unix Bench and 100k IOPS on FIO. For DD I couldn't quite get the same numvers as VPSeer and averaged around 900 MB/sec which is still crazy fast. You can see what I am talking about on VPSeer if you look here vpseer.com. I really like the fact also of being on KVM.

When I ordered the VPS it was setup quickly and all relevant information sent within 5 minutes. I did have a few questions regarding their Virtualizor control panel and its use. My tickets were replied to within 30 minutes and the staff was friendly and courteous. I have had 0 downtime on the VPS and the network. The network is stable and fast. I have players from all over the world and they are for the most part loving this new VPS and its connection.

Overall I would have to give GridVirt a 9/10 rating and would give it 10 if I had been with them longer. While it clearly is a premium service and the price reflects that I am happy to pay the extra money to be with a host that is #1 in the industry for VPS performance. The speed and smoothness is instantly noticeable if you have experience with using your own VPS.

For those of you interested GridVirts site is here --> gridvirt.com

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Comments

  • gsrdgrdghdgsrdgrdghd Member
    edited June 2012
  • AlexBarakovAlexBarakov Patron Provider, Veteran

    Wait, you are getting consistent 900MB/s on the DD test? I have never had SSD VPS, but isn't that a bit too much?

  • laaevlaaev Member

    @LiquidHost said: Wait, you are getting consistent 900MB/s on the DD test? I have never had SSD VPS, but isn't that a bit too much?

    He's likely running a command with less size

  • I am using the same commands as used on VPSeer which is dd if=/dev/zero of=/home/2gb.dat bs=8k count=256k conv=fdatasync The IOPS scores seem to back backup this score not that they transfer across directly but can be comparable. Also VPseer got more than 900 MB/sec if you look on their chart.

    gsrdgrdghd thanks for the headsup but I don't see anything concrete there and prefer to take my own experience which has so far been great.

    LiquidHost: I am not sure I guess it depends on their setup but I consistently am getting that speed yes.

  • laaevlaaev Member

    Run this,

    dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync

    Thanked by 1Amfy
  • nabonabo Member

    The prices are not even near the lowend mark we have here.

  • Nice spam!

  • gsrdgrdghdgsrdgrdghd Member
    edited June 2012

    @Fate said: but I don't see anything concrete there

    I would call the reviews pretty concrete.

    I'd stay away from this (your?) company, and not only because its extremly overpriced.

    Edit: 900 mb/s io seem really good but who needs such a speed?

    Thanked by 1Amfy
  • nabonabo Member
    edited June 2012

    @gsrdgrdghd said: Same company (Proof)

    Some more proof:

  • edited June 2012

    I used the same command that VPSeer uses because it is used on all SSD hosts that he has tested. If I use something different as a command than to keep it comparible all the other hosts would need to be tested with the same command no?

    I ran a few out of curiosity and lagged my players a bit lol. Was getting 505-515 MB/sec but this is with my server running which is pretty heavy on mysql. Will try again when I take the server down for maintenance in a few days.

    Here's a pic: http://imgur.com/EYq3J

    I guess the owner has had some issues in the past guess I will have to see what happens. My VPS isn't hosting a site or anything critical so no biggie.

  • gsrdgrdghdgsrdgrdghd Member
    edited June 2012

    @nabo said: Some more proof:

    They also seem to be ClusterHQ(.net) on WHT but i found only positive reviews about them.

    Edit: and ircdOffshore.com

    Edit 2: and seedking.org

  • joepie91joepie91 Member, Patron Provider

    I feel like I just read a testimonial box.

  • Nice to see that you're happy with your provider. Heard of them, but not heard much about them.

  • GridVirtGridVirt Member
    edited June 2012

    Thank you for the review Fate!

    I was working on SEO for our site and came across this on google. I'm happy to see that our clients are happy with our service.

    We've worked really hard to get to this point and I wanted to let you know to keep an eye out on your inbox as we will be launching a very large upgrade to our service in about a month allowing you to split up your node resources into multiple smaller VMs (Virtual Datacenter Service).

    To answer some of the questions and comments that have been posted. . .

    Note: I'm going to try to be as thorough as possible. I know we don't offer a service that fits within the norm of what's offered on this site, but as this seems to be quite an active site some of our clients may inevitable post here. I want to make sure that everyone is fully informed of us and our service.

    1. We use "multiple" Intel SSDs in a Raid array (proprietary config, "it is the secret sauce in our recipe"). We also add additional reserved space to each drive (called over-provisioned reserved space) to increase endurance/life expectancy and as a side affect we get even higher I/O throughput per disk. You can find screenshots of our benchmarks in our blog and you can download the .zip attached to the review on vpseer's site for full proof from an independent benchmarker/reviewer. With this kind of speed you will usually see your CPU and RAM usage cut in half or more compared to a standard SATA/SAS Platter-Disk VM/VPS setup for web hosting, database, game server, etc. type I/O intensive tasks. You will notice sites load much faster without the need for caching (though it would still help). Even on one of our smaller VMs you could handle huge traffic spikes (tens of thousands of hits per minute) and your visitors wouldn't even notice the difference.

    2. This is a premium service. If you compare pricing to other similar services (most don't even come close to our performance levels) it's not at a premium price because we limit support unless you upgrade to our managed service or submit an emergency request.

    3. I did own and operate MadLark (DBA) for almost 2 years, 2005-07, and it ended about 5 years ago. Please do a google search. It was primarily web design and development but for the last year I offered shared/reseller web hosting. The reviews are 70/30, mostly good if you look hard enough. We were not hacked as one of the WHT reviews seems to state. The dedicated server provider disappeared. I was contacted by the Datacenter (rarely happens this day and age) and told that the hardware wasn't theirs and I had 5 days to transfer my data before they decommissioned my server. All of my clients were notified immediately. All clients that had paid within the previous 14 days (money back guarantee) were given a refund no questions asked. Backups were made and provided. I even helped migrate some of them to new services. I didn't purchase another server because I wasn't sure I would be able to get another online and get all accounts transferred in time. I took what I thought at the time was the best action for my clients.

    4. ircdOffshore.com and seedking.org were Lorne's. I'm not going to answer for him but I'm sure he will be happy to answer your questions about them if you post any.

    5. I'm not sure that you will find any reviews for ClusterHQ. It was a dev/test precursor to GridVirt Inc.. GridVirt Inc. has been many years in the making. Both Lorne and I have put a lot into this and we even have outside investment. We are a start-up Michigan registered Corporation with 4 staff members. We are going to be here for a long time. We are rolling out our services in phases in order to best utilize our time and personal investment. We even have plans set in place to expand to other geographically diverse datacenter locations in the coming months and as our client base demands it.

    6. There is a reason that you haven't heard a lot about us. We are in our start-up phase until the first of next year. Until then we are relying mostly on word of mouth from our clients and reviewers in order to bring in new customers.

    Again thank you very much for the review Fate. It is greatly appreciated. Thank you everyone else for the comments and questions. If you have any more questions please post them here or contact us on our site. I hope to get as many of them answered as possible in order to give everyone a bit more insight into our company and services.

    Seann Gearhart | GridVirt Inc.
    Owner | President & CEO

  • subigosubigo Member

    Spam-o-rama.

  • Hey Seann and thanks for your in-depth explanation. It is obvious that you've put a lot work in your site with writing all the articles for your blog etc.
    But tell me: Whats a VPS with 900 mbit/s io good for? From the top of my head i can't really think of any application that requires such a fast disk.

  • jcalebjcaleb Member

    900mbit???? wow....

  • It's actually MB/s so 7200mbit/s it has even been tested up to 1.4GB/s or 11200mbit/s if you look at the independent review though we have not optimized a VM to that point ourselves. 100,000+ random IOPS and 900MB/s sequential should be easily obtainable for most.

    Again we are not a low end provider we are geared toward enterprise/professional deployments. Database intensive operations, extremely high traffic websites, even game server applications that require a lot of disk I/O, etc.

    If you dig deep you will notice the largest bottleneck in most VPS deployments is disk I/O. Eliminating this bottleneck with give you the full performance capabilities of your CPU and Memory/RAM resources. It takes very large SATA/SAS Raid deployments to get the performance needed for the above mentioned tasks and they still will never be close to the cost/performance of a well tuned SSD array.

    Seann

  • I see a couple of fellow users have posted saying this is spam. I have kept our name to a minimum and will continue to do so and will not post any links unless asked to do so.

    This was started by a customer not us and I'm sure spam was not the intention of this discussion.

    Seann

  • jcalebjcaleb Member

    anyone know where the old thread for the offer?

  • nabonabo Member
    edited June 2012

    @jcaleb said: anyone know where the old thread for the offer?

    There's no offer as the offer would never meet LEB criteria (eg. their VPS starts at $40 monthly)

    Thanked by 1jcaleb
  • subigosubigo Member

    @GridVirt said: I see a couple of fellow users have posted saying this is spam. I have kept our name to a minimum and will continue to do so and will not post any links unless asked to do so.

    Username: Fate
    Joined: June 18
    Visits: 0
    Last Active: June 19
    Unconfirm Email
    
    Username: GridVirt
    Joined: June 19
    Visits: 0
    
    Thanked by 1jcaleb
  • upfreakupfreak Member
    edited June 2012

    (His own!!!) Fate brought him here..

  • jcalebjcaleb Member

    Maybe delete the thread?

  • That is fine I did read the LEB rules (I read rules at all forums/sites before signing up and posting) and I acknowledged that we didn't fit in the "LEB criteria" in the first response to this thread.

    I'm positive an admin/moderator can verify that we are not the same person. They didn't even notify me of the review. I found it doing a google search of "gridvirt" this page took the 2nd position.

    Seann

  • There is no fate but what we make for ourselves!

  • Lets all assume bad faith here.

  • @antiven said: Lets all assume bad faith here.

    Before an admin or mod even confirms? Without proof to the contrary, why would you?

    I've searched and read warnings about the rudeness/lack of common curtsy on this site. I'd hope the naysayers don't fully represent this community. I should have just left well enough alone, followed common net etiquette, and not responded to the trolls.

    Opps! just did it again! (#kick-self)

    After reading through the forms I put together a plan this morning to offer this community services that fit within the LEB criteria. Hopefully not to the demise of my better judgement. I have a message typed up and will post it soon to get a feel for the demand to see if it would be worth the time and effort spent.

    I just need to run a few things by Lorne first to make sure I'm not going crazy by offering services to this community with it being as harsh as you guys seem to be. I don't mind, and usually enjoy the standoffish, blunt, and negative comments, but forming an opinion not based on any facts is bad practice.

    Please, please get this thread back on topic. I even flagged the first post hopefully the reviewer (our customer) will respond to any admin/mod inquiries.

    Thanks,

    Seann

    Thanked by 1Victor
  • SatelliteSatellite Member
    edited June 2012

    I wouldn't get too worked up @GridVirt, as some users of this forum pride themselves on being hostile internet detectives and drama queens even if the situation is unwarranted. They are a minority, however, and I'm sure many of us would be curious to see the LEB offers you post.

    I'm sure a mod will be around eventually to compare IPs and put the issue to rest one way or the other.

  • jcalebjcaleb Member

    Sorry, but I don't believe the story, without needing detective work. But just get over the requirements for posting. Very curious on the offer =)

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