GOOD NEWS HiFormance Alternatives

mardosas

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What is actually the difference between google cloud computing instance and OpenVZ or KVM?
 

shetu

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OpenVZ is ok for low budget. I use OpenVZ.
Quote from https://clientarea.ramnode.com/knowledgebase.php?action=displayarticle&id=52
KVM is true virtualization where the VPS operates as its own server, independently of the host node. OpenVZ is a container style of virtualization which relies on the host node's kernel. KVM has no restrictions in terms of functionality, but it has more overhead than OpenVZ. OpenVZ is constrained by the host node kernel, but it has less overhead in the containers themselves. KVM is generally more stable than OpenVZ.
 

ajonate

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My experience has been that whether virtualization is KVM or OpenVZ the most important factor with regard to performance is whether the host is oversold. If your node is oversold, you're screwed. If your node isn't oversold, it mattereth not which virtualization you use.

Since I haven't observed stability problems with either OpenVZ or KVM, I can't really remark about that. If hosting problems arise they usually involve performance, not stability.
 

kenn10

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For the gamblers ONLY that don't mind risking your lunch money, here's a new ColoCrossing one that appears reliable in our Incredible PBX 13-13 testing with CentOS 6/64-bit platform AS A SANDBOX ONLY! 24 HOUR REFUND POLICY in TOS. Excellent performance (so far). No info on history or guarantees of future longevity!! Don't sign up for 3 years unless you have money to burn! Is that enough warnings???

Hosting73's 1.5GB SSD OpenVZ VPS in Atlanta (open a ticket to request doubling of bandwidth at no additional cost)

I took the plunge since my VULTR instance was beginning to have poor audio. So far, I'm pleased. Having lost HiFormance (which was absolutely flawless until they killed it) I fell back on VULTR as my quick fix. I found that I was getting breakup and robo voice too much. Hosting73 seems to be working quite well so far. This time, I will keep regular IncredibleBackup files handy.

Oh, and port 25 is not blocked with them so sendmail works without modification.
 

kenn10

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*** UPDATE ***

Last night, around midnight, my phones all unregistered. I tried to log into my Hosting73 instance and could not connect to IncrediblePBX. I logged into the control panel and it showed the instance up. I rebooted and could still not connect. I used the emergency recovery console to access the instance and it had lost connectivity to the internet. I made a number of attempts to restart the instance but could not get it or Asterisk to run.

About 1:30am, I submitted a ticket (which took a good bit of research to figure out since you can't do it from your control panel page.) Support responded in under 10 minutes and said there was a problem with the IP address for my instance. They asked for permission to assign a new IP address. Since this would be an easier fix than rebuilding the VM, I agreed. The new IP address fix worked and I only had to update the address with my various VOIP trunk providers to be back in service.

I'm not thrilled that less than 24 hours into using Hosting73, I had a bizarre failure. I am impressed with the speed at which they analyzed and addressed my issue.

The jury is out on Hosting73 for me. I hope this was just an oddball anomaly but I will continue to keep my VULTR instance on standby just in case.
------------------------------------------------

I took the plunge since my VULTR instance was beginning to have poor audio. So far, I'm pleased. Having lost HiFormance (which was absolutely flawless until they killed it) I fell back on VULTR as my quick fix. I found that I was getting breakup and robo voice too much. Hosting73 seems to be working quite well so far. This time, I will keep regular IncredibleBackup files handy.

Oh, and port 25 is not blocked with them so sendmail works without modification.
 

PBX Novice

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So after all said and done, (and never regaining access to my HiFormance server) I set up a amazon aws instance for my serer on their free teir. It was more inconvenient than HiFormance, but seems to do the job. Is there a reason others don't do this? Is it just the size limitation?
 

tycho

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I've looked at it several times. Never went that direction because I already had cloud VPS resources. And I knew that AWS was only free for that first year...
 

wardmundy

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*** UPDATE ***

Last night, around midnight, my phones all unregistered. I tried to log into my Hosting73 instance and could not connect to IncrediblePBX. I logged into the control panel and it showed the instance up. I rebooted and could still not connect. I used the emergency recovery console to access the instance and it had lost connectivity to the internet. I made a number of attempts to restart the instance but could not get it or Asterisk to run.

About 1:30am, I submitted a ticket (which took a good bit of research to figure out since you can't do it from your control panel page.) Support responded in under 10 minutes and said there was a problem with the IP address for my instance. They asked for permission to assign a new IP address. Since this would be an easier fix than rebuilding the VM, I agreed. The new IP address fix worked and I only had to update the address with my various VOIP trunk providers to be back in service.

I'm not thrilled that less than 24 hours into using Hosting73, I had a bizarre failure. I am impressed with the speed at which they analyzed and addressed my issue.

The jury is out on Hosting73 for me. I hope this was just an oddball anomaly but I will continue to keep my VULTR instance on standby just in case.
------------------------------------------------

Outages happen with everybody unfortunately. 10 minute response time after midnight on New Year's Day is nothing short of incredible.
 

wardmundy

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So after all said and done, (and never regaining access to my HiFormance server) I set up a amazon aws instance for my serer on their free teir. It was more inconvenient than HiFormance, but seems to do the job. Is there a reason others don't do this? Is it just the size limitation?

If you're using Incredible PBX and the Travelin' Man 3 firewall, make sure you do NOT whitelist the 172.16 subnet in /usr/local/sbin/iptables-custom. Otherwise, everyone on Amazon has access to your server since Amazon routes these "non-routable" IP addresses. Just comment out the following line and then iptables-restart:
Code:
# /usr/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -s 172.16.0.0/12 -j ACCEPT
 

PBX Novice

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If you're using Incredible PBX and the Travelin' Man 3 firewall, make sure you do NOT whitelist the 172.16 subnet in /usr/local/sbin/iptables-custom. Otherwise, everyone on Amazon has access to your server since Amazon routes these "non-routable" IP addresses. Just comment out the following line and then iptables-restart:
Code:
# /usr/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -s 172.16.0.0/12 -j ACCEPT
Any different for Travelin' Man 4?
 

geopeterwc

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Interesting: One of the three HiFormance VPSs that I had set up, is apparently still running strong. I can't get into the admin function via the HiFormance web account, but it appears that everything else related to iPBX13-13 is still functional! The GUI interface is still works, as well as secure FTP and SSH. I'm not putting any faith in it working tomorrow, though!

I filed claims with PayPal for the three services that I had with HiFormance. I received a full refund for the $30 paid for a three-year HiFormance VPS purchased 8/30. But the $10 paid for the one-year service (that's still running) was denied - not surprising, as it was 185 days after setting it up, PayPal's limit is 180 days. The claim for the "special" $8.99 was also denied.

So, filing claims for services not delivered from HiFormance - at least with PayPal - mostly worked for me.

/Pete./
 

wardmundy

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We've added a third provider, Alpharacks, to our Cloud VPS tutorial today. This is a provider that we've used with a $22/year KVM offering for a few months. The KVM option would work great with 3CX. Today they introduced a $7/year OpenVZ platform (won't work with 3CX!) which we were eager to try. Add $1.50/yr for 1Gbit port. It's the best of the three in our opinion. Be aware that you need to open a ticket to ask them to add VSwap to your VPS. Other than that, performance is great, and you can't beat the price... WITH THE USUAL WARNINGS!!

 

DeanGid

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Hi.

I spent $30 last July to buy for 3 years but it died without letting me know anything.

I tried to dispute it using Paypal but it was automatically rejected: "we had to deny your claim(s). Cases must be filed within 180 days from the date of the transaction."

So did I loose my $30 or is there any ways to get some money back?
 

qtlnx

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Complete tutorial available here: http://nerdvittles.com/?p=27498
I like this https://www.alpharacks.com/myrack/cart.php?a=add&pid=306 offer but your latest http://nerdvittles.com/?p=26675 VirtualBox disk image that I am currently using locally happened to be 20.8G so simple transfer into 20G VPS is not possible!
Code:
$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
vda    252:0    0 20.8G  0 disk
├─vda1 252:1    0  100M  0 part /boot
├─vda2 252:2    0 19.9G  0 part /
└─vda3 252:3    0  768M  0 part [SWAP]
Could anyone tell how to resize image to avoid full reinstall and backup/restore?
 

krzykat

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If they allow you to boot from ISO, I use Gparted to resize

@kenn10 What type of issues you say on Vultr? Are you sure its not the location you chose? I have many PBX servers on them without issues. I had a couple of issues once with one location, so I moved all my servers from that location to another nearby one, and haven't had issues since.
 

qtlnx

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If they allow you to boot from ISO, I use Gparted to resize
how does one suppose to shrink 20.7 GiB having only 20GiB storage?
anyway, I mounted the image as secondary on my local KVM, used gparted to shrink a couple of GiB, then truncated image using qemu-img resize name 20G then used gparted again to fill all space and then uploaded to hosting using dd.
 

wardmundy

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Really didn't intend for VirtualBox image to be used on VPS platforms. It only takes 15 minutes to do a fresh install with a current version of CentOS 6.10. You end up with the latest and greatest rather than a VirtualBox image based upon SL 6.9. Just follow the Incredible PBX 13-13 Lean install steps here. Then add Whole Enchilada and Incredible Fax if desired.
 

kenn10

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If they allow you to boot from ISO, I use Gparted to resize

@kenn10 What type of issues you say on Vultr? Are you sure its not the location you chose? I have many PBX servers on them without issues. I had a couple of issues once with one location, so I moved all my servers from that location to another nearby one, and haven't had issues since.

@krzykat No major issues with VULTR except my original account got taken over somehow despite strong passwords and SSH keys. I lost my discounted Buffalo instance at that point. Although they recovered my account access, someone had created a server in France that ate up a lot of my money on the account. The IPV4 cheapest instance was no longer available to recreate the PBX instance. I wound up setting up a new server in Atlanta but have suffered some bandwidth issues which affected voice quality.

I did set up a new Hosting73 server in Atlanta and other than an IP address going dead within the first 24 hours, it has been fine. I will give kudos that Hosting73 support responded within 10 minutes when I submitted a ticket and resolved the issue within 30 minutes. This instance has been rock solid since with no bandwidth concerns. They also allow port 25 to be open.
 

qtlnx

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rather than a VirtualBox image based upon SL 6.9.
6.10 will eventually stop being latest and greatest when 6.11 is out.
I did followed your manual install a couple of times and found it more involved then copying a prepared disk image over.
 

kenn10

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Looks like VULTR acknowledges problems in the Atlanta location and have fixed the issues.

Atlanta Notification

  • [RESOLVED] Atlanta Degraded Network Performance
    01/15/19 11:27 am UTC
    • 01/15/19 11:27 am UTC
      We are currently experiencing degraded network performance in our Atlanta location. Our network engineers are actively working with our upstream providers to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
 

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