MicroNetVPS.com had an attractive offer in WHT in which they promised a 50% recurring discount in 6 locations: UK, US, Russia, Turkey, India and Swiss.
I have a penchant for discount offers though MicroNetVPS did not inspire much confidence from the look and feel.
Anyway, I signed up for the lowest tier in the India datacenter for which I got this:
MicroNet Micro (India)
10GB Raid Protected Space
128 MB Guaranteed Ram (256MB Burstable)
100GB Premium BW
1 IP
Original Price $9.25 / month
Only $4.63 / month (recurring with Coupon 50OFFRECURRING)
The first disappointment was that the VPS information did not land up in my inbox as soon as I paid via paypal. I waited for several hours and finally shot off a mail. I received a reply after several hours stating that as I had not put the proper hostname, the VPS had not been automatically created. Anyway, support said it had created one and sent the welcome mail. Several hours passed but there was no sight of the welcome mail and so I shot off another mail. Still more several hours later, the elusive welcome email was delivered.
However, one can’t pin the blame for the non-automatic VPS creation on MicronetVPS because there is a bug in SolusVM which causes this if the hostname is not proper.
The first thing I did was to check whether the datacenter was indeed in the famed Ctrls datacenter (as I had assumed since the ad said the DC was in Hyderabad) or they had pulled a fast one on me.
Well, I was disappointed because a traceroute showed that the datacenter was in Noida.
C:Usersadmin>tracert 49.50.60.700
Tracing route to 49.50.60.700.Noida.Datacenter.Terapeer.com [49.50.60.700]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 * * * Request timed out.
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 25 ms 32 ms 24 ms static-mum-59.60.70.80.mtnl.net.in [59.60.70.80]
4 26 ms 26 ms 57 ms 115.83.55.76.static-Mumbai.vsnl.net.in [115.83.55.76]
5 26 ms 27 ms * 172.29.250.34
6 27 ms 26 ms 27 ms 115.112.163.106.static-idc-andheri-mumbai.vsnl.n
et.in [115.112.163.106]
7 54 ms 54 ms 85 ms 182.19.106.205
8 61 ms 53 ms 69 ms 182.19.115.15
9 60 ms 52 ms 53 ms 182.19.109.27
10 58 ms 58 ms 58 ms 123.63.77.217
11 55 ms 57 ms 55 ms 49-50-127-142.Noida.Datacenter.Terapeer.com [49.
50.127.142]
12 58 ms 60 ms 66 ms 49-50-127-246.Noida.Datacenter.Terapeer.com [49.
50.127.246]
13 60 ms 58 ms 58 ms 49-50-64-183.Noida.Datacenter.Terapeer.com [49.5
0.64.183]
14 58 ms 55 ms 57 ms 49.50.60.700.Noida.Datacenter.Terapeer.com [49.50.60.700]
Trace complete.
C:Usersadmin>
So, I shot off a support ticket why this was so. I received a reply several hours later stating that they were “out of stock” in Ctrls and that they had allotted me space in the Go4hosting datacenter.
Anyway, here are the specs relating to the performance of the VPS:
Checking the processor used for the VPS
root@vps:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 42
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E31220 @ 3.10GHz
stepping : 7
cpu MHz : 3092.926
cache size : 8192 KB
cpu cores : 4
root@tax:~#
Checking the I/O (Input Output ratio) of the VPS:
root@vps:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 29.3024 s, 36.6 MB/s
root@vps:~#
Checking the download speed of the VPS using wget:
root@vps:~# wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
--2013-10-10 13:49:09-- http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
Resolving cachefly.cachefly.net (cachefly.cachefly.net)... 180.149.246.128
Connecting to cachefly.cachefly.net (cachefly.cachefly.net)|180.149.246.128|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: `100mb.test.2'
100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 8.15M/s in 12s
2013-10-10 13:49:22 (8.58 MB/s) - `100mb.test.2' saved [104857600/104857600]
root@vps:~#
Checking the Upload & Download Speeds using the python tool:
root@vps:~# python speedtest-cli
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Testing from Cyber Futuristics India Pvt Ltd (49.50.64.200)...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Bharti Airtel Ltd (New Delhi) [3.13 km]: 7.073 ms
Testing download speed........................................
Download: 9.62 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed..................................................
Upload: 14.67 Mbit/s
root@vps:~#
Support:
The support is not at all convincing. I couldn’t access the VPS for quite some time and shot off a support ticket marked ‘Urgent’. It took several hours for them to respond to say that they were aware of the problem and were looking into it. Finally, the VPS did get restored but the tone and quality of the response makes you feel that the persons manning the counter and not really technically qualified.
Also, the pricing of the VPS is quite steep when you compare it with other providers like HostVirtual and Leapswitch.