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Community Review: Prometeus 256 MB KVM Half Yearly
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Community Review: Prometeus 256 MB KVM Half Yearly

maxexcloomaxexcloo Member
edited June 2012 in Reviews

image
http://www.prometeus.net/

Prometeus are an Italian host that have been in business for just over 15 years now. Having recently launched LEB oriented plans I figured it would be well worth reviewing them as they seem like a knowledgeable and stable host from comments made by others. Anyway, let's get to it, here's my review!

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Prometeus. This review was performed on a trial VPS.

Basics:
The VPS plan is based in Milan, Italy and comes with 256 MB of RAM, 1000 GB of bandwidth (monthly) and 15 GB of disk space. The plan costs $19 every six months which is a very reasonable price! KVM plans are managed by a standard SolusVM install (with SSL) and include commonly used templates. Torrenting and IRC seems to be allowed on their budget VPS range making the plans very attractive for people in need of a bouncer/media server.

Support:
Setup was fast after requesting the trial and the server was setup within a few hours (I did request the trial via a PM here on LET, so response times were slower then usual). The welcome email contained all information necessary to get up and running with the VPS. I had to ask for IPv6 details, the information was sent maybe half an hour after I requested it!

Setup:
Once my VPS was setup I proceeded to install Debian 6 as normal (installing nothing but the SSH server). After it was installed I used Minstall to clean out any unneeded packages and to set up SSH login protection. The setup went smoothly and very quickly!

Defaults:
This section is obsolete as my setup process involves cleaning the server, resulting in the same results everywhere.

Basic Information:
/proc/cpuinfo showed a processor matching the plan description:

root@testvps:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 13
model name      : QEMU Virtual CPU version (cpu64-rhel6)
stepping        : 3
cpu MHz         : 1999.998
cache size      : 4096 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 4
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx lm up pni cx16 hypervisor lahf_lm
bogomips        : 3999.99
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

/proc/meminfo showed some standard results:

root@testvps:~# cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:         254828 kB
MemFree:          146036 kB
Buffers:           83156 kB
Cached:            13624 kB
SwapCached:            0 kB
Active:            82740 kB
Inactive:          17504 kB
Active(anon):       3484 kB
Inactive(anon):      100 kB
Active(file):      79256 kB
Inactive(file):    17404 kB
Unevictable:           0 kB
Mlocked:               0 kB
HighTotal:             0 kB
HighFree:              0 kB
LowTotal:         254828 kB
LowFree:          146036 kB
SwapTotal:        495608 kB
SwapFree:         495608 kB
Dirty:               424 kB
Writeback:             0 kB
AnonPages:          3488 kB
Mapped:             3852 kB
Shmem:               116 kB
Slab:               6052 kB
SReclaimable:       3204 kB
SUnreclaim:         2848 kB
KernelStack:         384 kB
PageTables:          188 kB
NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
Bounce:                0 kB
WritebackTmp:          0 kB
CommitLimit:      623020 kB
Committed_AS:      10232 kB
VmallocTotal:     765956 kB
VmallocUsed:        5780 kB
VmallocChunk:     752636 kB
HardwareCorrupted:     0 kB
HugePages_Total:       0
HugePages_Free:        0
HugePages_Rsvd:        0
HugePages_Surp:        0
Hugepagesize:       4096 kB
DirectMap4k:       12276 kB
DirectMap4M:      249856 kB

Inode allocation was excellent (As it always is on KVM):

root@testvps:~# df -i
Filesystem            Inodes   IUsed   IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/vda1             952848   16803  936045    2% /
tmpfs                  31853       3   31850    1% /lib/init/rw
udev                   30742     466   30276    2% /dev
tmpfs                  31853       1   31852    1% /dev/shm

vmstat showed low system activity:

root@testvps:~# vmstat
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu----
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id wa
 0  0      0 146096  83160  13648    0    0   719    55   42   83  0  2 95  3
Thanked by 2Phil Asim

Comments

  • maxexcloomaxexcloo Member
    edited June 2012

    Tests:
    Each test was run three times and the middle ranked test was picked.

    The Cachefly test showed great results:

    root@testvps:~# wget -O /dev/null http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
    --2012-06-01 18:07:14--  http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
    Resolving cachefly.cachefly.net... 205.234.175.175
    Connecting to cachefly.cachefly.net|205.234.175.175|:80... connected.
    HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
    Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream]
    Saving to: `/dev/null'
    
    100%[====>] 104,857,600 24.7M/s   in 4.5s    
    
    2012-06-01 18:07:19 (22.3 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]
    

    Ping Tests (IPv6 works!):

    root@testvps:~# ping -c 3 google.com
    PING google.com (173.194.35.3) 56(84) bytes of data.
    64 bytes from mil01s16-in-f3.1e100.net (173.194.35.3): icmp_req=1 ttl=59 time=0.437 ms
    64 bytes from mil01s16-in-f3.1e100.net (173.194.35.3): icmp_req=2 ttl=59 time=0.551 ms
    64 bytes from mil01s16-in-f3.1e100.net (173.194.35.3): icmp_req=3 ttl=59 time=0.477 ms
    
    --- google.com ping statistics ---
    3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2003ms
    rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.437/0.488/0.551/0.050 ms
    
    root@testvps:~# ping6 -c 3 ipv6.google.com
    PING ipv6.google.com(muc03s01-in-x10.1e100.net) 56 data bytes
    64 bytes from muc03s01-in-x10.1e100.net: icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=17.1 ms
    64 bytes from muc03s01-in-x10.1e100.net: icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=15.7 ms
    64 bytes from muc03s01-in-x10.1e100.net: icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=16.2 ms
    
    --- ipv6.google.com ping statistics ---
    3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2002ms
    rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 15.747/16.387/17.175/0.592 ms
    

    Disk IO was good on the second and third runs, they must use caching:

    root@testvps:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync; rm test
    16384+0 records in
    16384+0 records out
    1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 8.04799 s, 133 MB/s
    root@testvps:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync; rm test
    16384+0 records in
    16384+0 records out
    1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 3.65088 s, 294 MB/s
    root@testvps:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync; rm test
    16384+0 records in
    16384+0 records out
    1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 4.45883 s, 241 MB/s
    

    ioping showed good results as well:

    root@testvps:~/ioping-0.6# ./ioping -c 10 .
    4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/5f27bcd2-d3a8-47fa-96de-6ae7c4acf2b3): request=1 time=0.1 ms
    4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/5f27bcd2-d3a8-47fa-96de-6ae7c4acf2b3): request=2 time=0.2 ms
    4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/5f27bcd2-d3a8-47fa-96de-6ae7c4acf2b3): request=3 time=0.2 ms
    4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/5f27bcd2-d3a8-47fa-96de-6ae7c4acf2b3): request=4 time=0.1 ms
    4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/5f27bcd2-d3a8-47fa-96de-6ae7c4acf2b3): request=5 time=0.1 ms
    4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/5f27bcd2-d3a8-47fa-96de-6ae7c4acf2b3): request=6 time=0.2 ms
    4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/5f27bcd2-d3a8-47fa-96de-6ae7c4acf2b3): request=7 time=0.2 ms
    4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/5f27bcd2-d3a8-47fa-96de-6ae7c4acf2b3): request=8 time=0.1 ms
    4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/5f27bcd2-d3a8-47fa-96de-6ae7c4acf2b3): request=9 time=0.2 ms
    4096 bytes from . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/5f27bcd2-d3a8-47fa-96de-6ae7c4acf2b3): request=10 time=0.2 ms
    
    --- . (ext3 /dev/disk/by-uuid/5f27bcd2-d3a8-47fa-96de-6ae7c4acf2b3) ioping statistics ---
    10 requests completed in 9003.3 ms, 6083 iops, 23.8 mb/s
    min/avg/max/mdev = 0.1/0.2/0.2/0.0 ms
    
  • maxexcloomaxexcloo Member
    edited June 2012

    Geekbench results were fairly good:

    root@testvps:~/dist/Geekbench21-Linux# ./geekbench_x86_32 
    Geekbench 2.1.13 : http://www.primatelabs.ca/geekbench/
    
    System Information
      Platform:                  Linux x86 (32-bit)
      Compiler:                  GCC 4.1.2 20070925 (Red Hat 4.1.2-33)
      Operating System:          Linux 2.6.32-5-686 i686
      Model:                     Linux PC (QEMU Virtual CPU version (cpu64-rhel6))
      Motherboard:               Unknown Motherboard
      Processor:                 QEMU Virtual CPU version (cpu64-rhel6)
      Processor ID:              GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 13 Stepping 3
      Logical Processors:        1
      Physical Processors:       1
      Processor Frequency:       2.00 GHz
      L1 Instruction Cache:      64.0 KB
      L1 Data Cache:             64.0 KB
      L2 Cache:                  512 KB
      L3 Cache:                  0.00 B
      Bus Frequency:             0.00 Hz
      Memory:                    249 MB
      Memory Type:               N/A
      SIMD:                      1
      BIOS:                      N/A
      Processor Model:           QEMU Virtual CPU version (cpu64-rhel6)
      Processor Cores:           1
    
    Integer
      Blowfish
        single-threaded scalar    1293 |||||
        multi-threaded scalar     1385 |||||
      Text Compress
        single-threaded scalar    1734 ||||||
        multi-threaded scalar     1690 ||||||
      Text Decompress
        single-threaded scalar    1854 |||||||
        multi-threaded scalar     1891 |||||||
      Image Compress
        single-threaded scalar    1459 |||||
        multi-threaded scalar     1428 |||||
      Image Decompress
        single-threaded scalar    1440 |||||
        multi-threaded scalar     1482 |||||
      Lua
        single-threaded scalar    2419 |||||||||
        multi-threaded scalar     2430 |||||||||
    
    Floating Point
      Mandelbrot
        single-threaded scalar    1662 ||||||
        multi-threaded scalar     1689 ||||||
      Dot Product
        single-threaded scalar    2736 ||||||||||
        multi-threaded scalar     2901 |||||||||||
        single-threaded vector    3252 |||||||||||||
        multi-threaded vector     3745 ||||||||||||||
      LU Decomposition
        single-threaded scalar    2095 ||||||||
        multi-threaded scalar     2146 ||||||||
      Primality Test
        single-threaded scalar    2918 |||||||||||
        multi-threaded scalar     2350 |||||||||
      Sharpen Image
        single-threaded scalar    6663 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
        multi-threaded scalar     6723 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
      Blur Image
        single-threaded scalar    5233 ||||||||||||||||||||
        multi-threaded scalar     5248 ||||||||||||||||||||
    
    Memory
      Read Sequential
        single-threaded scalar    3305 |||||||||||||
      Write Sequential
        single-threaded scalar    6465 |||||||||||||||||||||||||
      Stdlib Allocate
        single-threaded scalar    3155 ||||||||||||
      Stdlib Write
        single-threaded scalar    2505 ||||||||||
      Stdlib Copy
        single-threaded scalar    4978 |||||||||||||||||||
    
    Stream
      Stream Copy
        single-threaded scalar    4585 ||||||||||||||||||
        single-threaded vector    7744 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
      Stream Scale
        single-threaded scalar    4792 |||||||||||||||||||
        single-threaded vector    7625 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
      Stream Add
        single-threaded scalar    5479 |||||||||||||||||||||
        single-threaded vector    7383 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
      Stream Triad
        single-threaded scalar    5910 |||||||||||||||||||||||
        single-threaded vector    5555 ||||||||||||||||||||||
    
    Integer Score:                1708 ||||||
    Floating Point Score:         3525 ||||||||||||||
    Memory Score:                 4081 ||||||||||||||||
    Stream Score:                 6134 ||||||||||||||||||||||||
    
    Overall Geekbench Score:      3261 |||||||||||||
    

    Online View: http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/711263

  • maxexcloomaxexcloo Member
    edited June 2012

    UNIX Bench results also showed good performance:

    ========================================================================
       BYTE UNIX Benchmarks (Version 5.1.3)
    
       System: testvps: GNU/Linux
       OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.32-5-686 -- #1 SMP Sun May 6 04:01:19 UTC 2012
       Machine: i686 (unknown)
       Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="ANSI_X3.4-1968", collate="ANSI_X3.4-1968")
       CPU 0: QEMU Virtual CPU version (cpu64-rhel6) (4000.0 bogomips)
              x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSCALL/SYSRET
       18:20:12 up 17 min,  1 user,  load average: 0.01, 0.07, 0.03; runlevel 2
    
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Benchmark Run: Fri Jun 01 2012 18:20:12 - 18:48:05
    1 CPU in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests
    
    Dhrystone 2 using register variables       12161345.8 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
    Double-Precision Whetstone                     1957.4 MWIPS (10.1 s, 7 samples)
    Execl Throughput                               4549.8 lps   (30.0 s, 2 samples)
    File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks        552099.8 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
    File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks          147367.8 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
    File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks       1219095.4 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
    Pipe Throughput                              877552.9 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
    Pipe-based Context Switching                 237804.5 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
    Process Creation                              15824.3 lps   (30.0 s, 2 samples)
    Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                   5961.6 lpm   (60.0 s, 2 samples)
    Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                    760.8 lpm   (60.1 s, 2 samples)
    System Call Overhead                         750208.1 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
    
    System Benchmarks Index Values               BASELINE       RESULT    INDEX
    Dhrystone 2 using register variables         116700.0   12161345.8   1042.1
    Double-Precision Whetstone                       55.0       1957.4    355.9
    Execl Throughput                                 43.0       4549.8   1058.1
    File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks          3960.0     552099.8   1394.2
    File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks            1655.0     147367.8    890.4
    File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks          5800.0    1219095.4   2101.9
    Pipe Throughput                               12440.0     877552.9    705.4
    Pipe-based Context Switching                   4000.0     237804.5    594.5
    Process Creation                                126.0      15824.3   1255.9
    Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                     42.4       5961.6   1406.0
    Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                      6.0        760.8   1268.0
    System Call Overhead                          15000.0     750208.1    500.1
                                                                       ========
    System Benchmarks Index Score                                         940.8
    

    Conclusion:
    Prometeus offer a very solid budget VPS range backed by a stable and long running business. I would not hesitate to recommend them to anyone seeking servers based in Europe and am very satisfied with their performance (especially considering the very low price!)

    Please give Prometeus a try and report on findings! Thanks for reading, tips and suggestions are appreciated!

    Thanked by 2marrco HalfEatenPie
  • marrcomarrco Member

    @maxexcloo said: Please give Prometeus a try and report on findings!

    @maxexcloo thx for your comprehensive report. I already gave a test to Prometeus (I now own 3 different vps with them, including 1 business with ssd disk) and i definitely agree with you. Great provider with terrific performance for a budget price. And they are located in the best Italian datacenter with fantastic peerings and connectivity to all Europe.

    Thanked by 1maxexcloo
  • prometeusprometeus Member, Host Rep

    Thanks!

  • AsimAsim Member

    Thanks for the review

  • AsimAsim Member

    I am also in the process of benchmarking the KVM1 and will report my results here

    Thanked by 1maxexcloo
  • Here are my previous results for the 512 KVM:
    http://pastebin.com/xjk3MwzD

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