03-24-2021, 07:45 PM
======================================
Short introduction
======================================
Here we go again, reviewing the VPS 14 sponsored by BladeNode (@phoenixwolf). Why a second review? Well, VPS 14 has changed it's node, you can read the official announcement here. There isn't much to talk about, I am doing the same usage as ever. I just switched my OS from a debian-based (Debian 10 Buster) to a rhel-based (Fedora 33).
======================================
Review
======================================
=========================
Let's start again with the Specifications
=========================
Disk Space: 200 GB SSD
RAM: 8 GB + (6GB of Swap)
vCores: [i]4 cores (3.60GHz)[/i]
IP Addresses: 1x IPv4
Virtualization: KVM
Monthly Traffic: 1 TB
Location: Chicago (US)
Control Panel: No CP for the Holder
Connection: 1Gbps
=========================
=========================
Do you like benchmark? I do
=========================
To give the possibility to compare the VPS based on the node I used the same benchmark script that I used for the first review:"Yet-Another-Bench-Script" available on github.===============
System Info
Code: (Select All)
Processor : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1271 v3 @ 3.60GHz
CPU cores : 4 @ 3599.998 MHz
AES-NI : Enabled
VM-x/AMD-V : Disabled
RAM : 7.8 GiB
Swap : 5.9 GiB
Disk : 197.9 GiB
OS : Fedora Server 33===============
Network speed (IPv4 only)
Code: (Select All)
Provider | Location (Link) | Send Speed | Recv Speed
| | |
Clouvider | London, UK (10G) | 895 Mbits/sec | 385 Mbits/sec
Online.net | Paris, FR (10G) | (not available) | [size=small][font=Monaco, Consolas, Courier, monospace](not available)[/font][/size]
WorldStream | The Netherlands (10G) | 876 Mbits/sec | 56.4 Mbits/sec
Biznet | Jakarta, Indonesia (1G) | 687 Mbits/sec | 114 Mbits/sec
Clouvider | NYC, NY, US (10G) | 37.9 Mbits/sec | 933 Mbits/sec
Velocity Online | Tallahassee, FL, US (10G) | 930 Mbits/sec | 825 Mbits/sec
Clouvider | Los Angeles, CA, US (10G) | 924 Mbits/sec | 40.0 Mbits/sec
Iveloz Telecom | Sao Paulo, BR (2G) | 859 Mbits/sec | 318 Mbits/sec===============
Disk Speed (I/O operations)
Code: (Select All)
fio Disk Speed Tests (Mixed R/W 50/50):
---------------------------------
Block Size | 4k (IOPS) | 64k (IOPS)
------ | --- ---- | ---- ----
Read | 266.49 MB/s (66.6k) | 2.33 GB/s (36.5k)
Write | 267.19 MB/s (66.7k) | 2.35 GB/s (36.7k)
Total | 533.69 MB/s (133.4k) | 4.69 GB/s (73.3k)
| |
Block Size | 512k (IOPS) | 1m (IOPS)
------ | --- ---- | ---- ----
Read | 3.62 GB/s (7.0k) | 3.63 GB/s (3.5k)
Write | 3.82 GB/s (7.4k) | 3.87 GB/s (3.7k)
Total | 7.44 GB/s (14.5k) | 7.50 GB/s (7.3k)===============
GeekBenchmark
Code: (Select All)
Test | Value
|
Single Core | 1026
Multi Core | 3229
Full Test | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/7102117=========================
My experience
=========================
The migration added a lot of new stuff speaking of performance:- A slightly powerful CPU, on real world tasks the change is unnoticeable to be fair but the CPU physically changed so I must report it!
- 5GB more of SWAP, the VPS jumped from 1GB to 6GB of swap memory ssd-based... with the already equipped 8GB of ram and you get powerful combination of 14GB!
- Storage technology changed from HDD to SSD, it should do a huge improvements but as you can see from the I/O operations the speed is likely the same, previous location was running a RAID configuration to get the best performance out of standard HDD. I think that running heavy process that works with file the SSD will do the difference.
- The networks speeds according to me are the same, on the benchmark there are some slow connection but I think it is related to that specific moment, maybe it was busy? The VPS is still amazing fast with its 1GBit connection.
I am doing very well with Fedora, some feature pre-installed are a bit a blotware but they are easily removable, such as cockpit... I have never used it because I am a CLI guy and I don't give any trust to "static" control panel that just run blindly commands.
Another change I have made is switching from nginx to caddy2, an amazing web server that auto-manage the SSL certificate with a very easy to understand configuration.
Regarding my usage... it is still unchanged, you can read it on my first review.
=========================
Conclusion
=========================
Before the migrations, VPS 14 was an amazing VPS. After the migration and the my issue ticket I can clearly say that my experience with @phoenixwolf's BladeNode is superior to my previous sponsor Virmach. They are both amazing company that offer a super service but with Bladenode I received a better "care". I remember the old days when I got a DDoS attack and virmarch's ticket response was a bit vague or slow. Nothing like this happen with bladenode 
I still think very high about Virmach... they took from me a very huge DDoS load and they didn't complain, their network just kept up my VPS. I hope that I will never give the same experience to Bladenode, I am working very hard with Cloudflare firewall and protection on it!
Like always, I want to end this review thanking:
- @Dynamo, as always, for creating Post4VPS community that allowed me to use this VPS;
- @deanhills, this time I opened a support ticket and he replied very fast!;
- @Mashiro for his tutorials, I used some of them to set-up my environment;
- Bladenode (@phoenixwolf) for sponsoring this amazing VPS and his amazing support, he "closed" my issue ticket in less that 1 day doing also some "extra" work is not pre-configured;
