[LightDestory]

Here we go again, this time I am going to review my experience with the new KVM-based VPS 9 from Buffalo by VirMach. If you have missed my review of the OpenVZ-based, you can read it here.

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Short introduction

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Well, I think that VPS 9 don't need any big/verbose introduction: it has nice SSD capacity, it has nice RAM amount and now it is based on KVM... there isn't anything missing that you could ask for.

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Review

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Like always, let's recall the amazing specs of this VPS:

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Specifications

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Disk Space: 100 GB SSD**

RAM: 8 GB

IP Addresses: 1x IPv4

Virtualization: KVM

Monthly Traffic: 4 TB

Location: Buffalo (US)

Control Panel: No CP for the Holder

Connection: 1Gbps

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** By the second migration wave, VirMach introduced a new "variable disk capacity" feature: the VPS has 100GB guaranteed but without any action it will have just the right amount you use. For example right now I am using VPS 9 with 57GB of storage. I could ask to max-out the disk again but right now there isn't any need.

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Benchmark

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Unfortunately it seems that Post4VPS's benchmark script by @sohamb03 is now unable to finish the Ipv4 test, so I can only show you a old benchmark that I did as soon as I got KVM.

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System Info

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Processor       : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2670 v2 @ 2.50GHz
CPU Cores       : 2
Frequency       : 2499.998 MHz
Memory          : 7978 MB
Swap            : 31 MB
Uptime          : 1 days, 1:50,
OS              : Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
Arch            : x86_64 (64 Bit)
Kernel          : 4.19.0-6-amd64
Hostname        : *JUST A HOSTNAME*

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Speedtest (IPv4 only)

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Location                Provider        Speed
CDN                     Cachefly        105MB/s

Atlanta, GA, US         Coloat          43.1MB/s
Dallas, TX, US          Softlayer       29.2MB/s
Seattle, WA, US         Softlayer       14.4MB/s
San Jose, CA, US        Softlayer       16.1MB/s
Washington, DC, US      Leaseweb        71.9MB/s

Sao Paulo, Brazil       Softlayer       8.29MB/s

Singapore               Softlayer       5.50MB/s
Taiwan                  Hinet           3.21MB/s
Tokyo, Japan            Linode          12.6MB/s

Nuremberg, Germany      Hetzner         19.1MB/s
Rotterdam, Netherlands  id3.net         24.4MB/s                                                                        
Haarlem, Netherlands    Leaseweb        96.4MB/s
Milan, Italy            Softlayer       24.4MB/s

Melbourne, AU           Softlayer       5.22MB/s

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Disk Speed

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I/O (1st run)   : 328 MB/s
I/O (2nd run)   : 364 MB/s
I/O (3rd run)   : 372 MB/s
Average I/O     : 354.667 MB/s

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My experience

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After the migration to KVM, some problem occurred due to VirMach "migration method" but everything has been solved refreshing the OS. I know that some other VPS 9 got sick after the migrations, VPS 9 Phoenix holded by @deanhills at the moment. My VPS has been great and functional since the refresh, no issue with SSH.
I am now running Debian 10 with my full LNMP stack (Linux-nginx-MySQL-PHP) and docker, I am trying out a Minecraft Server dockerized .
I am running my services as always without any issue, almost every configuration I had on OpenVZ has been easily set-up.
The user-experience is still the same as before, almost nothing changed except for the updated kernel, so I don't have much to talk about. Well, comparing to the old benchmark you can see a lower Disk Speed but also a GREATER network speed, so I can't complain at all.
The only thing that I didn't understand was the "lacking" of newer KVM images, the available OSes are likely the same as OpenVZ, new OSes as Ubuntu 19.XX, CentOS 8, Fedore 31 are still unavailable.
You can refer to my old review for more information.

You can still see the on-going on the VPS following my domain: lightdestory's site

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Conclusion

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VPS 9 is a very powerful and valuable VPS, but you need to know how to use Unix-systems due to the lack of a Control Panel. VPS 9 is still a unmanaged VPS but... I can guarantee that no special action are needed to work with it. If you are brave enough you can also beat my record of "unopened support ticket".
You can run almost everything on this VPS, without worry much about vecause VirMach'TOS isn't strict!

I want to end this review thanking:

• @Dynamo for creating Post4VPS community that allowed me to use this VPS;
  
• @deanhills for supporting me when I did crazy things and I had to ask for his support to restart from scratch;
  
• @"Hidden Refuge" for his tutorials, I used some of them to set-up my environment;
  
• @sohamb03 (and again @"Hidden Refuge")for creating Post4VPS' benchmark script;
  
• Virmach for sponsoring these amazing VPSes;
  

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