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BuyVM.Net - KVM & OpenVZ Review
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BuyVM.Net - KVM & OpenVZ Review

JoelJoel Member
edited December 2011 in Reviews

BuyVM.Net - KVM & OpenVZ Review
Alright, review time. I have a couple of companies I would like to review, that I have migrated some services to over the last few months, and BuyVM is first from the list. Over the years, and currently I have services with companies like Crucial Paradigm, Liquid Web, RackSpace so stepping in to BuyVM I did so with very little expectation.

Signup Process
It's WHMCS so not unique in terms of signup, but they did flag my account as "fraudulent." I'm convinced this was due to me being in Australia, it's a Canadian thing they're just jealous of our women here. But alas they fixed that real quick and waiola I had an account.

VPS Setups
I have both OpenVZ and KVM based systems with them, and all have been setup between 5 minutes and 4 hours of ordering.
1x 250gb KVM Storage (Website Backups)
1x 500gb KVM Storage (Office Backups)
1x 128mb KVM Yearly VPS (Runs Server Monitoring Software)
1x 1024mb OpenVZ (TestBench, quick to reimage/reinstall being OpenVZ)
2x 128mb OpenVZ Yearly (I have given these to friends, colleagues etc who just want an inexpensive server to put their personal blogs on, feel their feet, screw up, break it, fix it etc with little consequence)

VPS Reliability
100% Uptime for the first month across all VPS'

Here's a photo of the uptime of my Status VPS which monitors not only those I have at BuyVM, but those I have with other providers. It is a KVM based Debian6 32bit install, optimised using Max's scripts and running Nick's OpenStatus. As you can see, it sits on about 24mb or Ram and takes updates once a minute from about a dozen Servers and Virtual Private Servers.

!(http://i.imgur.com/Co8OZ.png)

Support & Communication
To me Support is one element, Communication is just as vital and critical. When you signup it is clearly stated on their website that their support is 8:00am - 5:00pm, Monday - Friday. Outside of these hours I do not expect support, however I have received it. It's not rocket science, these guys run a tight ship, and the reason I can have a $7.50 per month 250gb KVM Storage VPS is because they don't answer 24/7. That, as I understand is what I'm essentially paying for with more "Premium Grade" providers. And as such, I don't deploy services on BuyVM if I envision I would need 24/7 support outside of these hours, so for my use their Support Hours suit me fine!

The technical level of their support is excellent, quite simply these guys collectively know their stuff and keep on the ball. In fact, if you look around the forums enough you will even notice they offer friendly help and advice to other hosts who may hit the same small issues they have at some point. When they respond to a ticket you feel as if you actually got a real answer to a question, opposed to just being fobbed off by your provider.

IRC #Frantech
Well admittedly it had been nearly 10 years since I used IRC, however I installed it again and jumped on the Channel. Quite simply, there are some VERY knowledgeable people in that channel. In fact, I would say some of the most technically experienced people I have come across in that channel idle in there. Sure you get your random 12 year olds who appear, but overall it's a positive experience, very informal, social, and HIGHLY entertaining at times. People in the channel seem to just want to help, and in return it makes you want to help back. There's even candy-named women in the channel, I just can't decide if they look like a Jessica Alba or more my grandmother, so i've kept it in my e-pants.

The Team
So far I have spoken with Aldryic, Francisco and Matt. All 3 are characters, enjoy a good laugh, are not uptight in anyway, and casual. However, and this is where they all get my respect, when there is work to be done, or something serious to attend to or look at they are incredibly professional, and perfectly capable. It's great to have contact with staff who are not the drones/borgs you find, or with the fake "Are you pleased with my service" style replies. These guys undoubtedly tick every box in personality, and professionalism, knowing when to apply which. I also admire their willingness to speak out, and speak publicly regarding issues and topics that affect them, and honestly as they feel and see it not put through some sort of mediator that results in a dumbed down monolog press release.

The Network
For the price, I can't complain. It isn't the fastest network all day long, yet it isn't the slowest network all day long. I would rate it in the 75% to 85% mark which for me at the price I am paying is well beyond what I actually expected to achieve. I've had speeds of 22MB/s (180mb/s) to a $7.50 p/month VPS. That's nothing to cry about, in fact at that price it's absolutely excellent! If the network was being measured between budget providers, then you're looking at 100% because that speed at that price is incredible.

Overall
My experience with them has been above and beyond expectation, coming from providers for example where I pay $220p/month for 200gbTransfer/2gbRAM/150HDD I thought this was going to be a bit of russian roulette. However, in my opinion value for money this is well above and beyond reasonable.

So that's my first month, i'll come back in 6 and hopefully have nothing else but positives to add again. And a final note, I pay for all my VPS's with them, so there's no sponsorship, back-scratching or shady endorsement deals you see going on with some companies and their 12 year old clients. I am more than happy to share with people my servers and sites if you send me a PM.

Regards,

Joel

Thanked by 3Infinity drmike marrco
«1

Comments

  • InfinityInfinity Member, Host Rep
    edited December 2011

    Great, BuyVM is indeed the best or one of the best LEB providers. :)

  • A gentleman and a scholar ^_^ Hearing that folks are happy always makes this job so much more enjoyable. Looking forward to that six month review, please feel free to let us know about any problem spots we can improve on :P

  • netomxnetomx Moderator, Veteran

    @Aldryic you need more LEBs to sell :(

  • That's what Casualties Friday is for :P

    On a related note, we do have a planned sale coming up. I'll get Fran to pop in with more info later.

  • @Joel said: It's WHMCS so not unique in terms of signup, but they did flag my account as "fraudulent." I'm convinced this was due to me being in Australia, it's a Canadian thing they're just jealous of our women here. But alas they fixed that real quick and waiola I had an account.

    LOL

  • BuyVM in the EU would be best.

    Thanked by 2tux Indic
  • Awesome review Joel! Want me to add some performance benchmarks and such?

  • @birdie25 said: BuyVM in the EU would be best.

    Isn't there any good provider in EU?

  • @bobinfo said: Isn't there any good provider in EU?

    Yes, their name is go-start-a-new-topic-dot-eu

  • I wouldn't really recommend buyvm, I had one and the disk i/o was horrible and the support seemed quite rude towards me and unhelpful. Cheap, but not that cheerful in my experience.

  • jhjh Member

    A but jealous that you were able to get one if their storage plans as i was trying to get one for some time!

    Nice review.

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    @alittlebrown said: I wouldn't really recommend buyvm, I had one and the disk i/o was horrible and the support seemed quite rude towards me and unhelpful. Cheap, but not that cheerful in my experience.

    Should have logged a ticket over the IO :)

    For what it's worth, here's a pull off some of our production nodes running our new kernel + other sauce:

    (05:08:43) node02:~ root: dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=8k conv=fdatasync
    8192+0 records in
    8192+0 records out
    536870912 bytes (537 MB) copied, 1.31869 s, 407 MB/s
    

    So far node02 & node14 are running our new kernel and have been nothing short of frantastic. We do know there's a half dozen nodes that aren't giving > 100MB/sec like we hope, but they're likely the first on the fixing block.

    We got a 500G storage kickin' around as far as I know.

    Francisco

  • @Francisco said: Should have logged a ticket over the IO :)

    The poster does mention support. He or she may have....

  • Frantastic, that made me laugh my ass off!

  • Did indeed submit tickets and most of them came back blaming me etc, though one or two times they were helpful and friendly. The MySQL hosting also caught my eye but again it seemed very slow, good idea though. In comparison to another yearly deal around that price point I got with a different host, it didn't really hold any competition in terms of i/o or network.

  • @alittlebrown Could you toss me a ticket number, please? If someone's getting unsatisfactory responses to tickets then that's something I need to look into and correct.

  • @Aldryic You - or anyone else responsible for that - should polish a little bit your wiki, and let users know it exists :-)

  • @TigersWay I have a lot of content I've been meaning to add, including guides for setting up common services. But you're right, the Wiki does need a bit of work XD

    If you have any suggestions for material you'd like to see added, please feel free to let us know :P

  • @Aldryc To be honest, my first feeling with BuyVM was not so great because I had to read some slow and rude answers.... which finally directed me to that wiki, I never heard about. I have to add I am not (any more) an irc addict!
    It's now much better :-) but I had to bookmark that wiki, in case, because I still did not see the link anywhere.

    Thanked by 2seraphkz Indic
  • They have a wiki? :)

  • I got a kvm from buyvm and I was lost trying to figure it out until I found the wiki, which I found via google. There are no links to it from the buyvm page that I've found.

  • @efball said: There are no links to it from the buyvm page that I've found.

    Correct, so far it's mainly been a community thing that we've not given much announcement to. My apologies for that, I'll work on getting some updated information on our sites this weekend.

  • @drmike said: They have a wiki? :)

    doesbuyvmhavewiki.com ? :P

    Thanked by 1japon
  • @Mon5t3r said: doesbuyvmhavewiki.com ? :P

    LOL!

    That's the question

  • TigersWayTigersWay Member
    edited December 2011

    @NickM said: BuyVM is mirroring Debian and CentOS (and others, I believe) for its users.

    Just read this one.... And yes I did not even known!

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    http://mirrors.buyvm.net - yes :)

    We'll work on our signup emails and site links this weekend to help with all of that.

    I'm not sure how anyone could find the shared SQL slow, it saves so many people from having to move to a full on dedi :P Then again, maybe it was when it was still running on a XEN instance!

    Francisco

    Thanked by 1TigersWay
  • BuyVM is realy good vps provider :) I have one 512 openvz with them for 7-8 months

  • Good job BuyVM :)

  • AverageGuyAverageGuy Member
    edited February 2012

    Too good. BuyVM says they are out of stock on all lower end options. E. g. 128 256 and 512 openvz and 128 256 and 512 kvm. In fact, I just went back to see what if anything was available. Nothing in the kvm or openvz offerings is available. They all say out of stock.

    Guess I gotta go somewhere else. :(

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