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Contabo Singapore VDS and VPS benchmark & review
As I've already indicated, @contabo_m kindly provided me with pre-launch access to both a Singapore VPS and a VDS. In my view Contabo's starting a major Asia operation is a major thing because this is very good news (and IMO even a potential game changer) both for Asians and Europeans, also because Contabo has the muscles to bring some reason to that weird market.
Don't get me wrong, I like Asians; the problem is not the people but politics and large corporation games plus I guess, pardon me, some measure of sheer idiocy and/or arrogance.
Keep in mind that (meanwhile probably over) half of this planets population lives within a 2000 or so km radius circle around Singapore, yet for instance in China a dedi(!) with 10 Mb/s seems to be not dirt but gold; I've seen dedis even with 3 Mb/s offered at about $180/mo from reputable(?) providers! Similarly when renowned major universities provide an OS mirror with 1 Gb/s that's something to write home about in that region. But it's not just the "evil" Chinese but others too, e.g. Korea Telecom just basically not giving a damn about (not) peering with some of the global top 5 carriers. Has there been a lobotomization wave running through Korea Telecom's management? I mean, Korea is not a poor country like quite a few in Asia where poor connectivity might be forgivable
But although to me as a, well pampered it seems, European the image I got while having a closer look at that region and doing some research (e.g. to find and test reasonable test targets) is a rather sad one, I think many in that region will feel joy, and even quite a few Europeans will celebrate that finally they can get almost incredible 50+ Mb/s to and from Ozzyland or Kiwiland.
A very smart and good - and well performed - move, kudos Contabo!
Here is the results, first of the VDS, then the VPS.
Version 2.1.0a, (c) 2018+ jsg (->lowendtalk.com)
Machine: amd64, Arch.: amd64, Model: AMD EPYC 7282 16-Core Processor
OS, version: FreeBSD 12.2, Mem.: 23.982 GB
CPU - Cores: 6, Family/Model/Stepping: 23/49/0
Cache: 64K/64K L1d/L1i, 512K L2, 16M L3
Std. Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat
pse36 cflsh mmx fxsr sse sse2 htt sse3 pclmulqdq ssse3 fma cx16
sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt aes xsave osxsave avx f16c rdrnd hypervisor
Ext. Flags: syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm
cr8_legacy lzcnt sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw topoext
perfctr_core
ProcMem SC [MB/s]: avg 344.0 - min 341.7 (99.3 %), max 345.8 (100.5 %)
ProcMem MA [MB/s]: avg 908.0 - min 801.9 (88.3 %), max 1011.9 (111.4 %)
ProcMem MB [MB/s]: avg 999.0 - min 912.2 (91.3 %), max 1160.0 (116.1 %)
As usual, Contabo isn't fooling around; you get a very nice server processor with decent memory. And, also as usual, you get all the commonly asked for flags like AES, etc.
But what's that new values 'MA' and 'MB' instead of the former 'MC'? It's feature of a new version of my benchmark program. 'MA' tells you, how fast a given job is done when using all cores, the job being exactly that done by 'SC' (single core) but spread over all available cores. MB on the other hand tells you how much performance you can get out of the system when pushing it with a much higher load. In the case of Epyc processors (and with plenty RAM) both values are pretty close to each other, which is what you want but older processors or ones with much less memory will show a more pronounced difference.
Btw, the above mentioned chinese provider (in the top 10 list, no less) offers most of his dedis based on 55xx and 56xx Xeons. Even the small Contabo VDS blows those dedis right out of the water.
Re. the VPS I'll not show the numbers. Simple reason: they are almost identical to those of the VDS, just with a bit more spread
Now on to the disk
--- Disk - Buffered ---
Write seq. [MB/s]: avg 5180.00 - min 3305.74 (63.8%), max 5388.47 (104.0%)
Write rnd. [MB/s]: avg 7082.30 - min 6609.18 (93.3%), max 7660.51 (108.2%)
Read seq. [MB/s]: avg 5153.73 - min 4944.69 (95.9%), max 5642.01 (109.5%)
Read rnd. [MB/s]: avg 9574.30 - min 9134.78 (95.4%), max 9988.64 (104.3%)
--- Disk - Sync/Direct ---
Write seq. [MB/s]: avg 1246.29 - min 1106.11 (88.8%), max 1289.94 (103.5%)
Write rnd. [MB/s]: avg 1391.59 - min 1303.51 (93.7%), max 1429.07 (102.7%)
Read seq. [MB/s]: avg 5219.11 - min 5054.83 (96.9%), max 5568.88 (106.7%)
Read rnd. [MB/s]: avg 9619.28 - min 9067.64 (94.3%), max 10177.16 (105.8%)
Yes, Contabo repeats the trick again in Singapore. Those NVMes are insanely fast. Also note the rather low spread which I expect to grow, albeit not by more than 15% once the nodes are populated. Keep in mind that I tested when the nodes were still hardly used.
So, on to the VPS disk
--- Disk - Buffered ---
Write seq. [MB/s]: avg 318.17 - min 302.88 (95.2%), max 334.09 (105.0%)
Write rnd. [MB/s]: avg 1040.14 - min 928.32 (89.2%), max 1115.11 (107.2%)
Read seq. [MB/s]: avg 2968.72 - min 972.99 (32.8%), max 4751.07 (160.0%)
Read rnd. [MB/s]: avg 7016.10 - min 5035.19 (71.8%), max 10058.74 (143.4%)
--- Disk - Sync/Direct ---
Write seq. [MB/s]: avg 106.91 - min 103.67 (97.0%), max 119.31 (111.6%)
Write rnd. [MB/s]: avg 109.02 - min 108.28 (99.3%), max 109.65 (100.6%)
Read seq. [MB/s]: avg 2338.28 - min 912.74 (39.0%), max 4802.44 (205.4%)
Read rnd. [MB/s]: avg 7757.60 - min 5209.71 (67.2%), max 10053.36 (129.6%)
Of course seeing those results right after the not from this planet NVMe values above one might be mislead to consider these numbers meager. They are not! In fact, those are really good results for an SSD. Unless you really, really need an ultra-fast disk e.g. for a serious DB server, I personally would choose (and love) the VPS with this SSD. Simple reason: price and the fact that the SSD comes damn close to and even surpasses quite a few NVMe VPSs from other providers.
Being at that: Are you insane, Contabo management, to offer a 4 vCPU, 8 GB mem. 200 GB seriously fast SSD VPS for €5 (+VAT if applicable) in Singapore? Obviously the answer is "yes, they have gone gaga at Contabo" ... and I LOVE it!
Finally, connectivity - and be prepared for a really long results list! Why? Because, hell, of course I looked for and tested plenty of new test targets, mainly asian ones. After all, from top class providers like Contabo I expect far more and better than a "me too" attempt; I expect something that really "unlocks" Asia. And then I push and test it ...
_(results based on close to 200 benchmark runs)
Sorry, Vanilla complained. Post too long. Network results in the next post ...
_
Comments
YABS and Bench Monster please
You are in the wrong chat bud. @jsg does his own things, which are awesome in their own ways.
So, here's the network results
First a note: A couple of results have 2 results, the second one with a leading ':'. Those are targets with particularly notable routing improvements done by Contabo.
General note: Contabo mainly uses Telia who is one of the best carriers globally but who seems to have somewhat thin lines to Asia. I guess talking to Tata might be a smart thing to do. 50+ MB to Europe should be achievable I guess.
Almost brutally simple TL;DR: Where feasible the new Contabo location offers outstanding speed to asian targets as well as very decent speed to Oceania. Unfortunately 'feasible' seems to be a rather loose term in that region with China walling itself off and Korea being (so it seems) largely controlled by Korea Telecom whose management obviously had their heads put into a hydraulic press as children. Add to that a lack of global link capacity and lamentable infrastructure deficits in some countries.
A few test targets have very high failure rates which is not Contabo's fault but that of e.g. what I call the chinese lottery where some targets where OK when I tested and selected them but suddenly turned deaf and blind while one (e.g. tsinghua) which utterly failed during the selection process now works fine.
Verdict: Why are you wasting time reading this? Hurry and get one of those Contabo Singapore systems while they are available! Incredible value. Frankly, 2 weeks ago I wouldn't have dared to dream of something like that.
Serve me a coffe with a bit of cream and half a sugar cube! Oh, and a crêpe!
(I'm not your servant and I will certainly not add meaningsless mediocre (at best) "benchmark" results).
at least he said "please"
However, the internet speed to China is not ideal.
I'm sorry dude
i didn't read the full
@jsg
ypu mentioned in your post
“ ... Being at that: Are you insane, Contabo management, to offer a 4 vCPU, 8 GB mem. 200 GB seriously fast SSD VPS for €5 (+VAT if applicable) in Singapore? Obviously the answer is "yes, they have gone gaga at Contabo" ... “
I could not find €5 vps on their site. Could you please share the link?
Thank you
It's just the normal VPS page of Contabo (https://contabo.com/en/vps/) and there the small one at the left. The location is only chosen afterwards on the next page when ordering.
The price is €7.49 (+VAT if applicable) for 4 vCPUs, 8 GB memory, and a (very nice) 200 GB SSD, which is a good price for Europe and IMO an insane price for Asia.
Edit: Sorry, didn't see the extra for Singapore.Corrected SGP price.
(Thanks @kuroneko23 )
Small correction, it's €7.49/m (excluding VAT and setup fees) for Singapore
It's a good thing that it doesn't have good connections to China. Please keep it that way. (Unless you price it much higher)
Oops, you are right. Sorry, I didn't notice that for the Singapore location it's € 2.50 extra per month.
But IMO still a good price for that region.
Small correction, but big meaning for some LET members.
That's not Contabo's fault. Complain to the chinese government and their frankly imbecile carriers.
Just one example: One (major) university is connected via 1 provider who is connected to another provider who is connected to yet another provider who ... at that point I stopped following the trail. At the end of the chain was a China mobile provider. Until that point about 200 ms were wasted,
The great firewall is one thing, but what I saw beyond that was incredible and plain incompetent. Frankly, from what I see the chinese networks seem to be run by a bunch of incompetent idiots and bureaucrats.
True, with 32TB (equal to unlimited at 100Mbps) bandwidth and decent spec (4c/8g/200g), no one can beat that pricing.
Pretty unique offer that Contabo dropped in this region. And thanks for the your unique evaluation as usual @jsg.
However, some unnecessary blabbering like "I like Asians but...", which imo unnecessarily degrades your good analysis.
Also, I wouldn't call the peering situation in Asia the cause of idiocy, it's simply their business strategy which happens to work fine thanks to the lacking competition and relative position of power.
The governments have no interest at all to change this either as this policy serves a protectionist and control purpose as well.
I fully support your stance and I do believe it's detrimental to my ideal of the internet as a whole, but nevertheless, I wouldn't go ahead and seek idiocy or management lobotomization in those policies, it unfortunately remains a fully plausible business strategy in their respective markets.
Oakley wants "golden triangle" - Europe, USA, and SG. Triangle which take 85% of best paid customers with minimum effort, investment and maximum safety.
Which are the global top 5 carriers that do not appear in the following list?:
HE, Cogent, Level3, Sparkle, Telia, Zayo, GTT, NTT, TATA
KT peers with them.
Are you a band ambassador? Or how do you get to do things like this?
The singapore VPS offered b> @skorupion said:
If you promise to say only positive things, they might offer pretty much anything. The bandwidth aspect surely deserves an applause though. But the peering leaves a lot to be desired.
@jsg can you please release the sources for the benchmark program? People would be able to run comparisons between various systems and have a better understanding of things that way.
I reached out to @jsg with an offer to benchmark Contabo VPS and VDS in Singapore as I have seen his solid no BS approach in other reviews. @jsg requested to have a total freedom to write whatever he thinks about the product and we have agreed. We also read his reviews closely to where is the room improvement.
@jsg Thanks a lot for your review, we really appreciate the work you put in there!
Well, we will make sure to double check the sanity of our management team, but please note that there is a €2.5 Location Fee on top of these €5 as bandwidth and other operating costs in Singapore are way higher.
it shows USD 9.99 for me (nowhere close to “insane” price of €5).
@contabo_m
Can I run machine learning algorithms 24x7 on these VPS? Average cpu load would be in 50-60% range.
Thank you.
Please note that our pricing in USD is a bit different to EUR, we do factor in a slightly higher exchange rate in order to be able to keep our prices stable and not having to adjust them all the time. Contabo is a German company operating in EUR as our base currenty.
Machine learning does not sound like something we would recommend to do on a VPS, as this is a shared environment overall. Probably a VDS or even Dedicated Server with a GPU would be more advisable, but this of course depends on your project.
Have you guys made any decisions on what additional US cities you plan on adding after India is finished?
East Coast/West Coast is what we can share so far, shouldn't be too long though until we have news!
Not directly connected network....cry...
I remember that Webhorizon to had a direct backhaul network（The outbound network is a detour）, but recently it has also detoured to Japan.