Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!


KVM providers asking a fee for custom iso? Also, no virtio by default?
New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.

All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.

KVM providers asking a fee for custom iso? Also, no virtio by default?

abravoabravo Member
edited January 2014 in General

Well, it's two topics of course but anyway here goes the small anecdote:
After I spotted that servetheworld.net (Oslo, NO) had now cheaper VPS, I ordered their 96 NOK ie. 120 NOK VAT inc. ~14€ : 2 gb ram, 50 gb disk, 2tb traffic.
They use Virtualizor panel and offer a couple linux distros (Debian, Suse, etc). I run OpenBSD or FreeBSD on servers. So I asked them if they could provide the iso. Was expecting an answer like "yes, we download and connect it to the virtual cdrom" or "yes we add it to the list of available OS". That's my experience with every VPS host I have/had, and the low cost ones. (Servetheworld for their prices are not cheap in general, but for Norway they are, by now).
They answered by proposing a one-time fee (in the 30-some €). ??? As they use Virtualizor, which has a rescue mode ie. a mini ramlinux from where to inspect the actual vps disk in case of trouble, any OS can be installed by oneself. Most VPS customers are savvy unix users, it's kind of ridiculous to offer them to pay for something that they can anyway get by themselves. And to feed to the virtual cdrom an iso, is an easy trivial task, done graciously by all hosts I have used.
Servetheworld do bill three months at once, so I just paid for the VPS with one of the default linux, logged into it, checked the network settings and the drivers. To my surprise I saw that they don't use virtio disk and network, but the ata and realtek drivers and no drivers option in Virtualizor. So OpenBSD was excluded, as its watchdog support of the realtek doesn't work with the qemu realtek, but Free BSD is ok. So I booted the VPS into the rescue mode, a debian, made room for and installed qemu, downloaded a FreeBSD iso, booted it in qemu with the vps disk associated, and installed FreeBSD to it. So done in ten minutes with my custom OS and spared the 33€.

Are there still many other VPS hosts like that:

  • not offering graciously any OS iso
  • not running VIRTIO on their KVM?

By comparison with servetheworld.net, I have a KVM with itsystem.kz (Ust-Kamenogorsk) running ispsystem panel. Similarly they didn't have virtio (so no OpenBSD), and after I simply asked them why, they replied explaining that it was a good idea and they were going to provide virtio and implement a custom iso choice in the panel...

Comments

  • Do you speak russian with itsystem.kz?

  • russian. You can use english also, depends on the guy. All techies do enough english anyway, just because underlying unix/linux background. You can try kazakh also if you know it :) Anyway, their communication (news, updates, offers) are send in russian.

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    We do not put custom iso anymore, I mean, not most of the time. Since we got IWStack there is a choice, people can install literally anything that works on x86 and the prices are not much different.
    Also exposing the cpu flags (something else than the default qemu) seems too much to ask at times, especially for 256 MB VMs, I mean, you really want to run another VM inside ?

  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith Member, Patron Provider

    Seems a bit of a harsh fee tbh, I am happy to add anything to Xen HVM (within reason) but you know some people have the attitude of "we make it clear what we offer in advance and we don't work for free so you are paying for our time" which I can also sort of understand but I think in the current market there is no place for that even if it goes against what you believe.

  • @Maounique said:
    Also exposing the cpu flags (something else than the default qemu) seems too much to ask at times, especially for 256 MB VMs, I mean, you really want to run another VM inside ?

    I was referring to the bus and network drivers offered (or not). The default qemu/kvm can use intel pro, realtek8139 or virtio drivers for ethernet and ata, scsi or virtio drivers for disk. Many hosts let customer chose (it's an option in solusvm, it's an option in edis own's panel, etc).

    As for custom iso, it's not really an issue, because most hosts have VNC, so one can just set grub boot to launch whatever install iso instead of the OS on disk. With virtualizor panel one can use the rescue ramlinux to install from into the vps disk.

    @AnthonySmith said:
    Seems a bit of a harsh fee tbh, I am happy to add anything to Xen HVM (within reason) but you know some people have the attitude of "we make it clear what we offer in advance and we don't work for free so you are paying for our time" which I can also sort of understand but I think in the current market there is no place for that even if it goes against what you believe.

    servetheworld.net is in Norway. Cost of life and incomes are very high, only comparable to Switzerland/Lichtenstein in Europe. People wanting to run a hosting service can't make a (good) living if they do cheap prices. But sometimes, there's a silly level of greediness on top of that.

  • As an update: it seems who is answering the support emails and/or the moment of the day does matter. See:
    My first request with servetheworld was about custom iso, and was no or pay for it. That is somewhat silly because as told any iso can be used from the Virtualizor rescue system :-)
    But then, I asked again the other day, if they are willing to set the KVM drivers to virtio instead of ata/realtek, and optionally at what price (i mentioned in my request that most providers do offer that choice). I got answer that they could recreate the virtual server with virtio, graciously, which was done in a few minutes. Nice!
    So, all-in-all, servetheworld.net/produkter/vps are great offerings.

  • Why are you using them? I'm from Norway, all my customers is from Norway, but I never use any Norwegian web hosts. Why pay so much more for less?

    Thanked by 1rm_
  • When i saw their offer I found it reasonable for all Scandinavia and cheap for Norway (compared to webhuset and such). 2 gb ram, 50 gb disk, 2 tb traffic for 96 kr./m ~14€ MVA included.
    As you remind well it's expensive compared to the rest of Europe, and I have unmetered dedis for same prices in France, but I have few *.no domains which I wanted to serve from the matching territory. Not running any business by now (my Brønnøysund reg is until now just for the *.no requirements), but it could come later this year, i mean trying to reach to local customers, so local web presence can be good.
    Was also curious about testing different latencies. I'm in eastern Sørum, by Aurskog-Høland, 5 hops away on Telenor to servetheworld network which is on Portlane backbone. Working remotely with the box, it feels very snappy, I'm ~20 ms away.
    And well, 120 kr. it buys max two halv liters beer in a bar in Norway, or just one in downtown crazy/silly Oslo (hear me Siv Jensen? ha!). That said, of course, for non-locals, running servers in Norway is financial suicide :)

    Thanked by 1myhken
  • WintereiseWintereise Member
    edited January 2014

    Not harsh at all, that's what they value their time as. Everything that requires man hours, even a few minutes can and should be charged -- and at least is on most real businesses.

    It's definitely not worthy of a thread, to be completely honest -- people are allowed to set their pricing as they desire, and all.

    Thanked by 1skagerrak
  • rm_rm_ IPv6 Advocate, Veteran

    Maounique said: Also exposing the cpu flags (something else than the default qemu) seems too much to ask at times, especially for 256 MB VMs, I mean, you really want to run another VM inside ?

    One may want to run Tor, where the "aes-ni" flag makes a whole world of difference.

  • @Wintereise said:
    Not harsh at all, that's what they value their time as. Everything that requires man hours, even a few minutes can and should be charged -- and at least is on most real businesses.

    It's definitely not worthy of a thread, to be completely honest -- people are allowed to set their pricing as they desire, and all.

    of course, but the thread was not about that, but instead, if there are still many hosts not offering the choice of virtual drivers and specifically not setting virtio as default, and offering custom iso. The second request I send to them I just asked if they could enable virtio, because in BSD and linux it brings better performance and if they take a fee or not for that.
    Common practice is virtio on, or panel for customer to switch drivers.

  • @abravo said:

    I do not know why they did not allow you a custom ISO...

    However, there are some distros that DO NOT SUPPORT virtio. Most notable is Ubuntu, which does not support the VirtIO SCSI disk controller driver used by the "virtio" setting in Nebula Cloud.

    For Ubuntu, we had to fallback to the VirtIO paravirtualized PCI/IDE controller.

  • OstCollectorOstCollector Member
    edited January 2014

    @rm_ said:
    One may want to run Tor, where the "aes-ni" flag makes a whole world of difference.

    OpenVPN & L2TP/IPSec as well.

  • @HardCloud said:
    For Ubuntu, we had to fallback to the VirtIO paravirtualized PCI/IDE controller.

    All my Ubuntu servers that are on KVM run with VirtIO just fine so it must be something with Nebula.

  • Unfortunately this is somewhat of an ongoing "sickness" in Scandinavia, they can and will charge you a fortune for just about everything just because they can. Most VPS's around that geo-area are very expensive and offer sub-par resources/performance I'm afraid.

  • @blergh_ said:
    Most VPS's around that geo-area are very expensive and offer sub-par resources/performance I'm afraid.

    Do you have any evidence for that? I never experienced that. I rather think that most nordic providers simply know what business administration and proper accounting means. So they know what costs they have, bill accordingly and pay normal wages. Maybe that's the reason why you don't see nordic providers suddenly disappear because of "unforseen legal or financial reasons".

  • @skagerrak said:
    Do you have any evidence for that? I never experienced that. I rather think that most nordic providers simply know what business administration and proper accounting means. So they know what costs they have, bill accordingly and pay normal wages. Maybe that's the reason why you don't see nordic providers suddenly disappear because of "unforseen legal or financial reasons".

    Have a look at any Swedish host that offers VPS's, some have decent pricing while others can be up to 200-250€/m for something as simple as an OVZ-vm with 200GB of transfer. If you look at something like GridLane it's very competitively priced compared to say, GleSYS. I doubt this has to do with tax-reasons or any of that sort.

Sign In or Register to comment.