GOOD NEWS HiFormance Alternatives

wardmundy

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No need to apologize. Our home server named TomKing is even older...

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wardmundy

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Here are a few more offerings that caught our eye this week but we have not yet tested.

UPDATE: We have now tested the OpenVZ offering, and it's pretty terrible. First, they offered Dallas or New York. But choosing Dallas gets you New York anyway. Then the platform is painfully slow. Speedtest shows downloaded of less than a 100Mbit connection even though they advertise a Gigabit connection. We requested a new node which was promptly granted. Performance doubled but still not comparable to the other providers. So I'd pass on these.

SparkVPS KVM $25/year in Dallas or New York (good fit for SIP-exposed Incredible PBX or 3CX and dSIPRouter that need Debian 9)

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SparkVPS OpenVZ $14/year (perfect for Incredible PBX 13-13 with CentOS 6)

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SparkVPS OpenVZ Jumbo $21/year (for large Incredible PBX 13-13 deployments with CentOS 6)

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KNERD

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Will report back on this current AlphaRacks KVM offering: https://www.alpharacks.com/myrack/link.php?id=331

This is still less than $2 a month with 1GB RAM, 20GB RAID10 SSD, 2TB bandwidth, 1000Mbps uplink port, and KVM platform (NOT OpenVZ)...

Reviews here. Company has been around 5+ years.
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I am not happy with Alpharacks after being them over a year. You have to keep a close watch on your VPS as it will randomly be shutdown in the middle of the night. They will also suddenly suspend your VPS without warning, then ask you check your system somehow without being able to access it.

Their support is also very slow to respond with an average of 2-3 get back back with you.
 

mainenotarynet

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KNERD -- you preachin to the choir brutha -- Mine shuts down weekly for no reason at all -- I need to move off alpha racks to something more stable but DO I want to stay with CentOS 6 -- Will CentOS7 work righ now ( the place I want to move to doesn't offer CentOS6) or do I want to move to Debian so I can do the KVM Exposed SIP in the cloud thing you can't do on CentOS or what --

Yes I find alpha rack is right up there whith my bad experiences with Woothosting and the unexpected shutdown of HiF.
 

KNERD

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You may want to try looking on the Low End Box site.
I have seen some very very good deals on there. I found Joe's Data Center (in Kansas City) ad on there, and was with them for a year. I had rented an actual machine for $20 a month, 8GB of RAM. Dual Core Xenon., and 250GB of storage. I left because I just could not justify the cost any longer as I was really not using the machine. Real professional outfit with fast response times, and friendly people. They do offer VPS, but I found they are not very competitive in pricing in that area. Cheaper to rent an actual machine. They will install any OS image on it you want.

I found one provider I am with now. on Low End Box, called Hosted Simply. They respond in about an hour, or less when your submit a support ticket.They have OpenVZ and KVM.
I just saw one deal for them just the other day on Low End Box a KVM for $25 a year.
 

KNERD

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We're trying to keep the Nerd Vittles article on VPS alternatives current. Keep the reviews coming. Thanks.

From that page:

They have a symbiotic relationship with ColoCrossing although we’re not quite sure how it works

More like they own the site, and some other hosting services. You should include who ColoCrossing owns on that page so people can be very careful.
I once gave a scathing review of one of the other companies ColoCrossing owns, that being Hudson Valley Host, after they deleted a VPS of mine due to incompetence.
Since it is a sister company, the negative review never got posted.
 

wardmundy

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@KNERD: Our articles are based upon factual evidence. If you have proof of any of the assertions you have made, we would welcome you to share the data here. But, on paper at least, these are separate companies that rent servers from ColoCrossing at dirt cheap prices and pass some of the savings along to end users. Some obviously do it better than others, and some go under. As to the ownership of LowEndBox site, we have no independent evidence of the actual site owner although many have made similar assertions to yours.

The best insurance with these providers is an alternate site coupled with frequent backups.
 

mainenotarynet

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Knerd -- I have my main Dedicated Box and a smaller (now mostly unused server (would like to try to put kamailio as a controller here but...) with HVH (Hudson Valley Hosts) -- I have had mine for about 5 years on the smaller VPS-shared and 3 or so on my dedicated server. I pay a boit but I have yet to have a major issue, save adding SSL broke my Postfix -- I get my mail but can't send anymore and the mailque doesn't send messages on anymore, but that is not their fault. only down side is I don't know how to make a KVM server -- mine are all openVZ -- through SolusVM (Plesk)

Ward, now you know why I want to pay a bit more than $15/year, I've been spoiled for so long. :smile5: -- for my 146 extensions that the sysem will eventually be -- I want rock solid stable, and you know the old saying...you get what you pay for. And with HiF and woothosting souring me on extra cheap services, well....
 

wardmundy

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Today's new release of Incredible PBX 13-13.10 was specifically engineered to support redundant platforms. So long as you use SIP providers that don't require registration, e.g. Skyetel, you can keep both servers running all the time. You then build your Skyetel Endpoint Group with BOTH server IP addresses to handle failover. Then you configure each of your SIP phones with a secondary IP address for the failover server. Then, when Server 1 fails, your users will never miss a beat without your having to do anything. The only wrinkle will be missing voicemails since you restored your last backup. But they'll be there when your first server comes back on line. And a simple rsync script run regularly for /var/spool/asterisk/voicemail can take care of the missing voicemails as well. We'll write it up in coming weeks, but it's a game changer design for a dollar or two per month per server. By the way, KVM buys you nothing extra with Incredible PBX because it already has a whitelist-based firewall to block ALL the bad guys.
 
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KNERD

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@KNERD: Our articles are based upon factual evidence. If you have proof of any of the assertions you have made, we would welcome you to share the data here. But, on paper at least, these are separate companies that rent servers from ColoCrossing at dirt cheap prices and pass some of the savings along to end users. Some obviously do it better than others, and some go under. As to the ownership of LowEndBox site, we have no independent evidence of the actual site owner although many have made similar assertions to yours.
.

You have not bothered to look on the Low End Box for that information? It is posted right on there at the bottom. "2008-2019 © LowEndBox. Part of the VSNX Family of Companies."

VSNX is a link which redirects to Colocrossing.

Then visit Hudson Valley Host site. also at he bottom of the page it states, "2014-2019 Velocity Servers Inc, DBA Hudson Valley Host - All rights reserved."

Click on the Velocity Servers Inc link and again, guess where it takes you.....yeah, again to Colocrossing. That is direct evidence.

@mainenotarynet I use iRedMail. It is an open source script which will setup an email server (and SoGO caldenar) for you in a few minutes. The site also has a lot of how-tos on setting up a SSL Certificates (and other things) which only take a few minutes, though you have to combine the certificate and bundle in one file which it not stated on the site. I finally got my email server off of Alpharacks yesterday afternoon. The worst part of doing that was the DNS change over which can take a day, or longer to go into full effect. In the meantime you see all kinds of errors due to DNS not propagating fully.
 
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dhoppy

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Today's new release of Incredible PBX 13-13.10 was specifically engineered to support redundant platforms. ... And a simple rsync script run regularly for /var/spool/asterisk/voicemail can take care of the missing voicemails as well. ....

I have all of my extensions configured to email and delete voicemails, but what I don't want to make people setup twice is the voice greeting. Can you rsync the greetings (unavail, busy, etc.) folders?
 

wardmundy

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I have all of my extensions configured to email and delete voicemails, but what I don't want to make people setup twice is the voice greeting. Can you rsync the greetings (unavail, busy, etc.) folders?

Sure, but won't they get picked up in the nightly backup??
 

wardmundy

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You have not bothered to look on the Low End Box for that information? It is posted right on there at the bottom. "2008-2019 © LowEndBox. Part of the VSNX Family of Companies."

VSNX is a link which redirects to Colocrossing.

Then visit Hudson Valley Host site. also at he bottom of the page it states, "2014-2019 Velocity Servers Inc, DBA Hudson Valley Host - All rights reserved."

Click on the Velocity Servers Inc link and again, guess where it takes you.....yeah, again to Colocrossing. That is direct evidence.

@mainenotarynet I use iRedMail. It is an open source script which will setup an email server (and SoGO caldenar) for you in a few minutes. The site also has a lot of how-tos on setting up a SSL Certificates (and other things) which only take a few minutes, though you have to combine the certificate and bundle in one file which it not stated on the site. I finally got my email server off of Alpharacks yesterday afternoon. The worst part of doing that was the DNS change over which can take a day, or longer to go into full effect. In the meantime you see all kinds of errors due to DNS not propagating fully.

Thanks for the update. Bottom line for us is we really don't much care who owns these platforms. We don't trust any of them to be around for the long term with the exception of sites like Hudson Valley Host that are owned by ColoCrossing. Problem is that HVH's annual pricing is about six times the cost of the ones we've identified. For that money, we can buy six VPS servers from six different providers. Chances of all of them going under at the same time are pretty slim. And, with good backups scattered across the platforms, a VPS disappearance isn't a big deal. Plus, PayPal gives refunds for up to six months. :)
 

KNERD

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Thanks for the update. Bottom line for us is we really don't much care who owns these platforms. We don't trust any of them to be around for the long term with the exception of sites like Hudson Valley Host that are owned by ColoCrossing. Problem is that HVH's annual pricing is about six times the cost of the ones we've identified. For that money, we can buy six VPS servers from six different providers. Chances of all of them going under at the same time are pretty slim. And, with good backups scattered across the platforms, a VPS disappearance isn't a big deal. Plus, PayPal gives refunds for up to six months. :)


I agree also I don't care who owns what The problem is people need to be aware of the ownership as to be aware of any reviews on Low End Box related to anything ColoCrossing owns are going be sanitized of any negative reviews
 

AndyInNYC

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KNERD & Ward,

I also run iRedMail in the cloud on a VPS, but I run my PBX locally. If Verizon would give residential customers a fixed IP address, I'd run my mail server from my location as well.

The difficulty for us VPS mail users is that, unlike our cloud hosted PBX brethren, our IP address is meaningful. It builds up 'trust' and 'non-spamminess' over time so that our emails don't get bounced by msn.com/outlook.com/etc. A PBX's IP address is only known to point a phone towards, so as long as it runs, it's perfect for the user. A phone call doesn't get rejected based on the IP of the originating server (although I'd pay a lot to be able to reject calls coming from spoofed DIDs).

Basically, if a cheap VPS host goes poof after some time, a backed up PBX can be running in [X] minutes on the new cheap VPS provider with no damage but for the downtime. A mail server has to start from, at best, a neutral spam outlook on a new IP.

I'm about to spin up a PBX on one of my other VPS's to see why my Yealink phones are acting funny.

Ward, I realize that your business *IS* VOIP and you do a great job of introducing new features, new hosts, etc. - please don't change. I'm just pointing out the difference in the impact these collapsed providers can have on mail versus VOIP.


Andrew
 

KNERD

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@AndyInNYC reply gave me an idea.

With all these people in here wanting/needing stable VPS service. how about starting a non profit cooperative? I know Hurricane Electric in San Mateo, CA has inexpensive co-location service. You can get a whole rack (42U) with a GB connection for only $400 a month. There are lots of rack mounted 1U servers available for dirt cheap. People could install Proxmox on them and have as many VPS as they needed. Maybe even resell some of their server availability to help pay for their share of the cooperative fees? How does that sound @wardmundy ?
 

wardmundy

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@AndyInNYC reply gave me an idea.

With all these people in here wanting/needing stable VPS service. how about starting a non profit cooperative? I know Hurricane Electric in San Mateo, CA has inexpensive co-location service. You can get a whole rack (42U) with a GB connection for only $400 a month. There are lots of rack mounted 1U servers available for dirt cheap. People could install Proxmox on them and have as many VPS as they needed. Maybe even resell some of their server availability to help pay for their share of the cooperative fees? How does that sound @wardmundy ?

I wish someone would... just not me. I spent many years babysitting hardware, and I'm not going back. Another provider to consider, of course, would be ColoCrossing. It you keep your eyes peeled, you can find server deals in the $50 a month range with a 1Gbit connection. That's hard to beat, and you don't have to look after the hardware. There's gold in them hills. :wub:
 

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