VPS (virtual server hosting)

There are several VPS hosting with a large kinds of offers. Prices range from few $/mo to lots $/mo.
Some cheapest VPS hosting I found.

However things don't always go the way we think them to : spend lots of money not always means get a good VPS. On internet there are several users reviews and benchmark results. As often happens there are a lot of people  reporting negative experiences just because likely who writes (specially on forum) is generally who is unsatisfied. Fortunately the most VPS hosting let you to try the service (or to buy just one month).

VPS benchmark

Even if we can't easily "evaluate" some aspects of the VPS during the trial period (such as the efficiency of customer support, uptime, policy on the new commercial offers...) we can test some other aspects.

Here the script I wrote in order to measure (W! is an early version):
Network Upload speed from VPS to some Geographical sites :
(Austria, Vienna)(Croatia, Zagreb)(Germany, Frankfurt)(Latvia, Riga)
(Lithuania, Vilnius)(Netherlands, Amsterdam)(Sweden, Gothenburg)
(Sweden, Stockholm)(USA, New York)(USA, Walnut)
CPU Test openSSL speeds (openssl signatures speed)....
Disk seek rate test (ioping)...
Disk direct (not cached) disk reads (hdparm)....

We can run the script directly from VPS shell getting remotely the script using wget:

wget https://busylog.net/FILES2DW/busytest.sh -O - -o /dev/null | bash

Output example

 __
|__) _ | _ _ _ _|_
|__)|_|_)\/|(_)(_). | )(-|_
 / _/
https://busylog.net
-----------------------------
busyupload.sh V0.1
\|/
This is a early version with learning purpose... check the TODO
Some logs here: ftp_busy.log
-----------------------------
Check what we have installed here...
openssl......installed (YES)
wget.........installed (YES)
ftp..........installed (YES)
ioping.......installed (YES)
hdparm.......installed (YES)
-----------------------------
Network upload test....
Generate temporary file ./NkKlGwA4.tmp with size 102400KB ... please wait a wile
104857600 bytes (105 MB) copied, 12.8998 s, 8.1 MB/s
Created
-----------------------------
This server is located in :Beauharnois, Quebec (Canada)
-----------------------------
Upload demo.wftpserver.com -[ http://www.wftpserver.com/it/onlinedemo.htm ]- located in: Walnut, California (United States)
Latency : 69.121
Upload speed : 11274.41 Kbytes/sec (90.2 Mbps/s - 11.3 MB/s )
-----------------------------
Upload speedtest.tele2.net -[ http://speedtest.tele2.net/ ]- located in: unknow, unknow (Sweden)
Latency : 97.942
Upload speed : 11482.33 Kbytes/sec (91.9 Mbps/s - 11.5 MB/s )
-----------------------------
Upload wen1-speedtest-1.tele2.net -[ http://speedtest.tele2.net/ (Austria, Vienna) ]- located in: unknow, unknow (Sweden)
Latency :
ftp: connect to address 90.130.74.157No route to host
ftp: connect: Network is unreachable
Upload speed : Transfer seems to be in error! (answer '226 Transfer complete' not found) (?)
-----------------------------
Upload zgb-speedtest-1.tele2.net -[ http://speedtest.tele2.net/ (Croatia, Zagreb) ]- located in: unknow, unknow (Sweden)
Latency : 125.016
Upload speed : 8306.17 Kbytes/sec (66.4 Mbps/s - 8.3 MB/s )
-----------------------------
Upload fra36-speedtest-1.tele2.net -[ http://speedtest.tele2.net/ (Germany, Frankfurt) ]- located in: unknow, unknow (Sweden)
Latency : 103.462
Upload speed : 11286.24 Kbytes/sec (90.3 Mbps/s - 11.3 MB/s )
-----------------------------
Test openSSL speeds (openssl signatures speed)....
Doing 512 bit private rsa's for 10s: 144422 512 bit private RSA's in 9.95s
Doing 512 bit public rsa's for 10s: 1851209 512 bit public RSA's in 9.97s
Doing 1024 bit private rsa's for 10s: 39154 1024 bit private RSA's in 9.92s
Doing 1024 bit public rsa's for 10s: 697597 1024 bit public RSA's in 9.90s
Doing 2048 bit private rsa's for 10s: 6518 2048 bit private RSA's in 9.94s
Doing 2048 bit public rsa's for 10s: 219202 2048 bit public RSA's in 9.93s
Doing 4096 bit private rsa's for 10s: 862 4096 bit private RSA's in 9.94s
Doing 4096 bit public rsa's for 10s: 56586 4096 bit public RSA's in 9.90s
OpenSSL 1.0.1e-fips 11 Feb 2013
built on: Tue Sep 27 12:27:19 UTC 2016
options:bn(64,64) md2(int) rc4(16x,int) des(idx,cisc,16,int) aes(partial) idea(int) blowfish(idx)
compiler: gcc -fPIC -DOPENSSL_PIC -DZLIB -DOPENSSL_THREADS -D_REENTRANT -DDSO_DLFCN -DHAVE_DLFCN_H -DKRB5_MIT -m64 -DL_ENDIAN -DTERMIO -Wall -O2 -g -pipe -Wall -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fexceptions -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -m64 -mtune=generic -Wa,--noexecstack -DPURIFY -DOPENSSL_IA32_SSE2 -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_MONT -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_MONT5 -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_GF2m -DSHA1_ASM -DSHA256_ASM -DSHA512_ASM -DMD5_ASM -DAES_ASM -DVPAES_ASM -DBSAES_ASM -DWHIRLPOOL_ASM -DGHASH_ASM
 sign verify sign/s verify/s
rsa 512 bits 0.000069s 0.000005s 14514.8 185677.9
rsa 1024 bits 0.000253s 0.000014s 3947.0 70464.3
rsa 2048 bits 0.001525s 0.000045s 655.7 22074.7
rsa 4096 bits 0.011531s 0.000175s 86.7 5715.8
-----------------------------
Disk seek rate test (ioping)...
--- . (ext4 /dev/vda1) ioping statistics ---
3.1 k requests completed in 3.0 s, 1.0 k iops, 4.1 MiB/s
min/avg/max/mdev = 157 us / 961 us / 4.1 ms / 485 us
-----------------------------
Direct (not cached) disk reads (hdparm)....
Test disk /dev/vda1
/dev/vda1:
 Timing O_DIRECT disk reads: 1480 MB in 3.00 seconds = 492.76 MB/sec

VPS benchmark script

Below early version V 0.1 (2016) for updated version :  Download 

Topics

#!/bin/sh
### __ #
###|__) _ | _ _ _ _|_#
###|__)|_|_)\/|(_)(_). | )(-|_#
### / _/ #
### busytest
### V 0.1 (2016)
### https://busylog.net #
################################

# Debug
#set -x
# Debug
#set -v

#[TODO]>
#[TODO]> Complete the list of ftp servers ...
#[TODO]> ... the most important thing is to to know bandwidth of those servers
#[TODO]>
#Define connection params
# Server Name
FARM_FTP=('demo.wftpserver.com'
 #'test.talia.net'
 #'ftp.uconn.edu'
 'speedtest.tele2.net'
 'wen1-speedtest-1.tele2.net'
 'zgb-speedtest-1.tele2.net'
 'fra36-speedtest-1.tele2.net'
 'bks-speedtest-1.tele2.net'
 'vln038-speedtest-1.tele2.net'
 'ams-speedtest-1.tele2.net'
 'bck-speedtest-1.tele2.net'
 'kst5-speedtest-1.tele2.net'
 'nyc9-speedtest-1.tele2.net'
 )
# Server Comment
FARM_FTP_NOTE=('http://www.wftpserver.com/it/onlinedemo.htm'
 #'http://test.talia.net/'
 #'http://dlptest.com/ftp-test/ (not sure if can be used for purpose tests)'
 'http://speedtest.tele2.net/'
 'http://speedtest.tele2.net/ (Austria, Vienna)'
 'http://speedtest.tele2.net/ (Croatia, Zagreb)'
 'http://speedtest.tele2.net/ (Germany, Frankfurt)'
 'http://speedtest.tele2.net/ (Latvia, Riga)'
 'http://speedtest.tele2.net/ (Lithuania, Vilnius)'
 'http://speedtest.tele2.net/ (Netherlands, Amsterdam)'
 'http://speedtest.tele2.net/ (Sweden, Gothenburg)'
 'http://speedtest.tele2.net/ (Sweden, Stockholm)'
 'http://speedtest.tele2.net/ (USA, New York)'
 )
# Login UserName
FTP_USER=('demo-user'
 #'anonymous'
 #'anonymous'
 'anonymous'
 'anonymous'
 'anonymous'
 'anonymous'
 'anonymous'
 'anonymous'
 'anonymous'
 'anonymous'
 'anonymous'
 )
# Login Password
FTP_PASS=('demo-user'
 #'anonymous@for.test'
 #'anonymous@for.test'
 'anonymous@for.test'
 'anonymous@for.test'
 'anonymous@for.test'
 'anonymous@for.test'
 'anonymous@for.test'
 'anonymous@for.test'
 'anonymous@for.test'
 'anonymous@for.test'
 'anonymous@for.test'
 )
# Folder for Upload
FTP_FOLD=('upload'
 #'incoming'
 #'48_hour'
 'upload'
 'upload'
 'upload'
 'upload'
 'upload'
 'upload'
 'upload'
 'upload'
 'upload'
 'upload'
 )
FILE_LOG="ftp_busy.log"
 
#
 #########################
 #DEFINE FNCs
 #########################
#

# Check what we have installed
#-=-
#[NOTE]> A way to do multiple statements per bash test && and || statement is to use { } is below...
# At beginning I thought to use ( ) subshell but I could not find a (easy) way to do it.
# However here I don't actually need it after && and || I can use more commands using { }
check_what_we_can_do(){
 echo "Check what we have installed here...";
 type -p "openssl" >/dev/null && { ISopenssl=1; echo "openssl......installed (YES)"; }||{ echo "openssl......not installed (NO)"; }
 type -p "wget" >/dev/null && { ISwget=1; echo "wget.........installed (YES)"; }||{ echo "wget.........not installed (NO)"; }
 type -p "ftp" >/dev/null && { ISftp=1; echo "ftp..........installed (YES)"; }||{ echo "ftp..........not installed (NO)"; }
 type -p "ioping" >/dev/null && { ISioping=1; echo "ioping.......installed (YES)"; }||{ echo "ioping.......not installed (NO)"; }
 type -p "hdparm" >/dev/null && { IShdparm=1; echo "hdparm.......installed (YES)"; }||{ echo "hdparm.......not installed (NO)"; }
}

# Generate a random temporary file using dd command (filling the file with random contents).
#-=-
#[NOTE]> Use of mktemp, in order to create a temporary file, with a custom template filename XXXXXXXX.tmp
generate_bin() {
 file_name=$(mktemp -p . -t XXXXXXXX.tmp);
 if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
 echo "$0: create file error..."
 exit 1
 fi
 
 echo "Generate temporary file $file_name with size $((1024*$1))KB ... please wait a wile"
 dd if=/dev/urandom of=$file_name bs=1024K count=$1 2>&1 | grep copied
 if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
 echo "$0: error while file was filling..."
 exit 1
 fi
 echo "Created"
}
# Delete random temporary file
#-=-
destroy_bin() {
 echo "Remove temporary file $file_name"
 if [[ -z $file_name ]]; then
 echo "no temp file defined." 
 else
 rm $file_name
 if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
 echo "$0: error in file deletion..."
 fi
 fi
}
# GEOLOCATION using http://ipinfo.io VERSION
#-=-
#[TODO]> is a incomplete implementation (don't use)
ipinfo_geolocation (){
 #[TODO]> improve output
 echo "! NEEDS IMPROVEMENT"
 nslookup $1 | awk '/^Address: / { print $2 ; exit }' | wget -qO - http://ipinfo.io/$(cat -) | grep "city\|region\|country\|org" | sed 's/[\" \t,]//g' tr "," " "
}

# GEOLOCATION using http://freegeoip.net/ VERSION
#-=-
freegeoip_geolocation (){
 wget -qO - http://freegeoip.net/csv/$1 | sed 's/,,/,unknow,/g;s/,,/,unknow,/g;'| awk -F "," '{print $6", "$5" ("$3")"}'
}
# Latency : repeat ping 5 times in order to get the avg. latency
#-=-
ftp_latency(){
 ping -c 5 $1 | grep 'min/avg/max/' | cut -d"/" -f 5
}
# Human readable ftp speed ouput
#-=-
#[TODO]> is a incomplete implementation (works only on Kb and returns only M and not Mi)
ftp_speed_hr (){
 awk '{IGNORECASE=1;if ($0 ~ /Kb/){ printf("%4.1f Mbps/s - %4.1f MB/s \n",$1*8/1000,$1/1000)} else {print "?"} }' <<<$1
}

# Connect to & upload the tmp file (100MB)
#-=-
#[TODO]>: improve error handling and reporting
#-=-
#[NOTE]> ftp interaction in a shell-script using Here-Documents (block delimited by <<END_SCRIPT)
#[NOTE]> In "grep" the option -q suppresses the output result to standard output (stdout).
# grep exits immediately with zero status if any match is found, even if an error was detected.
# This is useful just to check the presence of substring in the output... and with || and && tests.
test_speed (){ 
# ftp interaction in a shell-script
OUT=$(ftp -v -n <<END_SCRIPT
open $1
quote USER $2
quote PASS $3
cd $4
binary
put $5
quit
END_SCRIPT
)

#grep -q avoid to printout the content of "$OUT" and grep exits zero status if any match is found, even if an error was detected.
grep -q "^226" <<<"$OUT" || echo "Transfer seems to be in error! (answer '226 Transfer complete' not found)"
#extract speed
echo "$OUT" | grep 'bytes sent in'| sed -e 's/.*(\(.*\))/\1/g'
}

# Trap control+c
#-=-
#trap ctrl-c and is handled by fnc control_c()
#[NOTE]> Enable job control
control_c() {
 echo "....STOP"
 echo "----------EXIT----------"
 destroy_bin
 exit
}

trap control_c SIGINT SIGTERM
# Determine the system's root disk
#-=-
get_root_device(){
 df | grep "/$" | cut -d " " -f 1
}

#
 #####################
 # START CODE
 #####################
#
echo " __ "
echo "|__) _ | _ _ _ _|_ "
echo "|__)|_|_)\/|(_)(_). | )(-|_ "
echo " / _/ "
echo "https://busylog.net "
echo "-----------------------------"
echo "busyupload.sh V0.1"
echo "\|/"
echo "This is a early version with learning purpose... check the TODO"
echo "Some logs here: $FILE_LOG"
echo "-----------------------------"

#DEBUG
#test_speed "zgb-speedtest-1.tele2.net" "anonymous" "test@test.tst" "upload" "test"
#ftp_speed_hr "11257.46 Kbytes/sec"
#freegeoip_geolocation
#echo $OPENSSL;
#exit 1;

echo "-----------$(date)-----------" >>$FILE_LOG
check_what_we_can_do
echo "-----------------------------"
echo "Network upload test...."
if [[ -z $ISftp || -z $ISwget ]]; then
 echo "not performed tests.... test needs ftp and wget installed"
else
 #Generate 100MB tmp file do uplpad
 generate_bin 100
 echo "-----------------------------"
 echo "This server is located in :"$(freegeoip_geolocation)
 #Upload tmp file for each FTP server
 count=0;
 for ftp_host in ${FARM_FTP[@]}; do
 echo "-----------------------------"
 ftp_user=${FTP_USER[count]}
 ftp_pass=${FTP_PASS[count]} 
 ftp_fold=${FTP_FOLD[count]}
 ftp_note=${FARM_FTP_NOTE[count]}
 #DEBUG
 #echo "Target : HOST=$ftp_host / USER=$ftp_user / PASS=$ftp_pass / FOLDER=$ftp_fold / FILE=$file_name /MOTE=$ftp_note ..."
 echo "Upload $ftp_host -[ $ftp_note ]- located in: $(freegeoip_geolocation $ftp_host)"
 echo "Latency : "$(ftp_latency "$ftp_host")
 speed=$(test_speed $ftp_host $ftp_user $ftp_pass $ftp_fold $file_name)
 speedhr=$(ftp_speed_hr "$speed")
 echo "Upload speed : $speed ($speedhr)"
 count=$(( $count + 1 ))
 done
 
 destroy_bin
fi

echo "-----------------------------"
echo "Test openSSL speeds (openssl signatures speed)...."
if [[ -z $ISopenssl ]]; then
 echo "not performed tests.... test needs openssl installed"
else
 openssl speed rsa
fi

echo "-----------------------------"
echo "Disk seek rate test (ioping)...."
if [[ -z $ISioping ]]; then
 echo "not performed tests.... test needs ioping and wget installed"
else
 ioping -R .
fi

echo "-----------------------------"
echo "Direct (not cached) disk reads (hdparm)...."
if [[ -z $IShdparm ]]; then
 echo "not performed tests.... test needs hdparm installed"
else
 disk2test=$(get_root_device)
 echo "Test disk $disk2test"
 hdparm -t --direct $disk2test
fi
exit 0