[deanhills]

When changing SSH port I always perform these actions:

1. First allow traffic on the interested port and make sure to reload/restart the firewall service
   
2. Edit sshd.conf replacing port 22 with the interested port and make sure to restart sshd service
   
3. (It is possible that a reboot is required: only once happened to me)
   

Do you do these action too?
Currently we don't know the exact issue because the "lost SSH access" can be due to:

• Closed port
  
• sshd service not running
  
• Unmatching host-keys betweeb device and server.
  

The last one can be fixed deleting your ".known-hosts" file placed inside the ".ssh" folder.

You said that your IP has been changed, did you try to flush your DNS records? Did you try SSH into VPS using the IP address directly?

Thanks for the feedback @LightDestory. I've done the port number change successfully with my VPS before the KVM upgrade. I did all of the above. Firewall and sshd service, everything I needed to do. And all of it worked beautiful until the upgrade had been completed. I again did all of the above for the port number change. And everything worked completely OK during the first access of SSH after the port number change. But then when I tried to access the SSH the second time, it was broken. Something in the new KVM VPS must have overwritten something in SSH.

I've done one last try with my VPS 9 Phoenix and brought my concerns to the attention of Virmach. Let's see what they can do.

Looks like sohamb03 also has issues with his VPS 9, so the upgrades of the nodes aren't consistently the same quality. Like Chicago and Seattle VPS 9 we received no complaints on. Chicago's Hard Disk size stayed 100GB. It's as though the further down the VPSs they upgraded, the more steps they were cutting. The last VPS upgrades didn't receive the same tender loving care as the first ones. I may be completely wrong of course. Could also be because the Phoenix node is the oldest one, and maybe more difficult to upgrade. But I'm not an expert at all about upgrades. I'm just guessing now.

[deanhills]

Though I should complete the review of the upgrade of VPS 9 Phoenix.  I've decided to stay with the VPS.

When I was working with it today, discovered that CentOS 7.0 is not recommended for protected IPs.  Since my IP was a new IP I thought there could be a possibility for it being in that category, so went for CentOS 6.5 instead.  This time round I had no issues getting into the VPS.  But once again was unable to successfully change the port number.  I then abandoned that effort, and went straight into creating a panel, a database and starting WordPress from the command line.  After being down for more than a month, my Blog is up and running again.  I'm going to wait first to see how it behaves, and will then add the other sites one by one.

I think the most disappointing for me for the upgrade of VPS 9 Phoenix was the change of the IP that Virmach maintains is a Phoenix IP, but it’s actually a German IP that has been networked to behave as a Phoenix IP, result of which is my ISP in South Africa has to do a double take to work with the IP from before. Latency Ping has shot up from 36 previously to a whopping 147. Speed is also significantly less.

This is what the speed looked like from South Africa to Phoenix with the old Phoenix IP:



And this is what the new IP looks like now from South Africa:



But for the rest while uploading plugins and importing the Website apart from slower speed, it was behaving seamlessly.  Guess VPS 9 Phoenix is still a keeper for me.  So far any way. But for any one with more sophisticated needs this may not be an ideal VPS to have.

[ikk157]

Though I should complete the review of the upgrade of VPS 9 Phoenix.  I've decided to stay with the VPS.

When I was working with it today, discovered that CentOS 7.0 is not recommended for protected IPs.  Since my IP was a new IP I thought there could be a possibility for it being in that category, so went for CentOS 6.5 instead.  This time round I had no issues getting into the VPS.  But once again was unable to successfully change the port number.  I then abandoned that effort, and went straight into creating a panel, a database and starting WordPress from the command line.  After being down for more than a month, my Blog is up and running again.  I'm going to wait first to see how it behaves, and will then add the other sites one by one.

I think the most disappointing for me for the upgrade of VPS 9 Phoenix was the change of the IP that Virmach maintains is a Phoenix IP, but it’s actually a German IP that has been networked to behave as a Phoenix IP, result of which is my ISP in South Africa has to do a double take to work with the IP from before. Latency Ping has shot up from 36 previously to a whopping 147. Speed is also significantly less.

This is what the speed looked like from South Africa to Phoenix with the old Phoenix IP:



And this is what the new IP looks like now from South Africa:



But for the rest while uploading plugins and importing the Website apart from slower speed, it was behaving seamlessly.  Guess VPS 9 Phoenix is still a keeper for me.  So far any way.  But for any one with more sophisticated needs this may not be an ideal VPS to have.

The thing you mentioned about how they’re using a german IP in a way that makes it behave as a Phoenix IP is quite interesting. Does that mean VirMach’s servers are actually in Germany? Is VirMach german? Also, does the same apply to my VPS 9 (Seattle)? 

As for the port change, I’ve changed my SSH port from the beginning (after the entire ubuntu situation was settled) with absolutely no issues. I’ve also disabled the root user while I was at it. All went quite smoothly. Could the issue you’re experiencing also be caused by VirMach not doing as good of a job migrating your VPS to KVM as they did with the first two (which mine was one of)?

Also for the network speeds, I also noticed how awfully slow they are. I wonder if there’s any way to rectify this issue and get as close to the gigabit speeds as possible.

[deanhills]

The thing you mentioned about how they’re using a german IP in a way that makes it behave as a Phoenix IP is quite interesting. Does that mean VirMach’s servers are actually in Germany? Is VirMach german? Also, does the same apply to my VPS 9 (Seattle)? 

 To be honest I don't know how the networking of a foreign IP works.  Virmach has IPs in Europe including Germany.  I previously had an IP that was from Phoenix and my ISP in South Africa was OK with it with great speed and 36 ping, which wasn't perfect, but I latency felt better than good.  When the VPS was upgraded the IP had to be changed for some or other reason - and the IP given looked like a Germany IP.  Now when I check my speed, it says IP is in Frankfurt.  So I assume the IP is German, and it has to be networked in a way that it works with Phoenix because the VPS location is still given as Phoenix.  Maybe another member has more insight into this.  But if I am right, then it means it would make it very difficult for an ISP from South Africa to get to Phoenix.  Hence the more than tripling of the Ping and speed decreasing to less than a third of what it used to be before.

As for the port change, I’ve changed my SSH port from the beginning (after the entire ubuntu situation was settled) with absolutely no issues. I’ve also disabled the root user while I was at it. All went quite smoothly. Could the issue you’re experiencing also be caused by VirMach not doing as good of a job migrating your VPS to KVM as they did with the first two (which mine was one of)?

You're lucky, you got a VPS 9 that was upgraded with no issues.  Mine is the very last and it would seem the further down the line they were upgraded, the less time they had to do it with, and probably started to mass produce the upgrades with not the same positive response Seattle and Chicago VPS 9 had.

Also for the network speeds, I also noticed how awfully slow they are. I wonder if there’s any way to rectify this issue and get as close to the gigabit speeds as possible.

Are you sure it's Virmach though - and not your ISP? Seattle is quite far from your location perhaps?

[ikk157]

 To be honest I don't know how the networking of a foreign IP works.  Virmach has IPs in Europe including Germany.  I previously had an IP that was from Phoenix and my ISP in South Africa was OK with it with real big speads and only 36 ping.  When the VPS was upgraded the IP had to be changed for some or other reason.  Now when I check my speed, it says IP is in Frankfurt.  So I assume the IP is German, and it has to be networked in a way that it works with Phoenix because the VPS location is still given as Phoenix.  Maybe another member has more insight into this.  But if I am right, then it means it would make it very difficult for an ISP from South Africa to get to Phoenix.  Hence the more than tripling of the Ping and speed decreasing to less than a third of what it used to be before.

You're lucky, you got a VPS 9 that was upgraded with no issues.  Mine is the very last and it would seem the further down the line they were upgraded, the less time they had to do it with, and probably started to mass produce the upgrades with not the same positive response Seattle and Chicago VPS 9 had.

Are you sure it's Virmach though - and not your ISP?

It can’t possibly be my ISP. I ran the speed test directly from the VPS itself, and as you can see in my review (I’ve added the speedtest cli results according to hidden refuge’s suggestion, so you might’ve not seen them) the speeds are nowhere close to the gigabit speed that the VPS should theoretically have.

[tryp4vps]

..... Mine is the very last and it would seem the further down the line they were upgraded, the less time they had to do it with, and probably started to mass produce the upgrades with not the same positive response Seattle and Chicago VPS 9 had.

From what I have read, it seems ikk157 (Seattle) is running Ubuntu. And mine (Chicago) is also running Ubuntu. So it is possible that your port issue is specific to CentOS only.

But I know if you prefer CentOS, you may not be willing to switch to Ubuntu just for testing it out.

[LightDestory]

On my VPS 9 I have been using Debian and no problem have occurred so far.

CentOS 7 is getting old and maybe it can't keep uo with modern KVM configurations, but well I know people who own a VPS with KVM technology and CentOS is running fine there, maybe a corrupted KVM image from VirMach?

[deanhills]

On my VPS 9 I have been using Debian and no problem have occurred so far.

CentOS 7 is getting old and maybe it can't keep uo with modern KVM configurations, but well I know people who own a VPS with KVM technology and CentOS is running fine there, maybe a corrupted KVM image from VirMach?

OK so perhaps I should try Debian on VPS 9. I know @"Hidden Refuge" is using it successfully with VPS 16. Problem is I am used to CentOS. But maybe it's time for a change. We have two options for VPS 9: CentOS early version 6.5 or Debian. And maybe Debian is the better option of the two.

[ikk157]

OK so perhaps I should try Debian on VPS 9. I know @"Hidden Refuge" is using it successfully with VPS 16. Problem is I am used to CentOS. But maybe it's time for a change.  We have two options for VPS 9: CentOS early version 6.5 or Debian. And maybe Debian is the better option of the two.

Why don’t you try CentOS 7 first? That’s what i use on my VPS 9 which seems to work just fine. Not sure if you’re going to have the same experience due to the whole virmach not properly upgrading your VPS issue. But it doesn’t harm giving it a try. Who knows, maybe the issues you were experiencing are because of CentOS 6.5 being so old rather than an issue of upgrading the VPS properly on virmach’s end.

[deanhills]

Why don’t you try CentOS 7 first? That’s what i use on my VPS 9 which seems to work just fine. Not sure if you’re going to have the same experience due to the whole virmach not properly upgrading your VPS issue. But it doesn’t harm giving it a try. Who knows, maybe the issues you were experiencing are because of CentOS 6.5 being so old rather than an issue of upgrading the VPS properly on virmach’s end.

CentOS 7 didn't work. And during my last successful try with my VPS I learned it was because the new IP they gave me with the upgrade had to have been a protected IP. The Admin Panel discourages download of CentOS 7 for protected IPs. The moment I started with CentOS 6.5 earlier in the week, I was able to work with my VPS again. But yes, I totally agree with you. Some of the issues I was having could be as a result of CentOS 6.5 being dated. I'm just too happy however that I'm up and running with my VPS again. I'm hoping that once the upgrades have been consolidated that the Virmach Tech staff will be able to get their OS sorted out and that we'll have an option for CentOS 8 as well. I'm sure they must be well aware of the shortcomings - particularly with Ubuntu.

I'm also very tempted to change OS to Debian. But for now I've got limited time, particularly Internet availability so am doing the best I can with what I have available to me, instead of trying to work with what I don't have. If that makes sense to you at all.