RamNode 128MB RAM VPS Review

I suddenly developed an urge for a backup VPS where I could store data.

I have a number of websites which are scattered across a number of VPSs.

I prefer to do a manual backup of the website files and database using the simple technique detailed here. I transfer the backup files to one of the other VPS using wget. (This way you can transfer vast amounts of data in a few minutes to a remote location and keep it safe and secure).

As the websites and the backup files grew in number, I began to lose track of them. Also, I began to forget which VPS had the backup of a particular website/ VPS.

So, I went shopping for a VPS that would be used only for storage and backup. Since I don’t intend to host any website on this VPS, I needed minimum RAM.

RamNode has an offer for a 128MB RAM VPS on LEB which looks very attractive. Its pricing is slightly lower than the corresponding offer on WHT.

The VPS has the following features:

128MB OpenVZ SSD-Cached

• 128MB RAM
• 128MB vSwap
• 1 CPU Core
• 50GB RAID10 SSD-Cached Disk
• 500GB Bandwidth @ 1Gbps
• 1 IPv4 Address
• 16 IPv6 Addresses
• OpenVZ & SolusVM
• $13.92/Year ($1.16/Month)

The price is rock bottom at $13.92 for a year. The 50GB SSD Cached Disk and the 500GB Bandwidth is generous and more than sufficient for my needs. Also, a “RAID” disk is supposed to be more reliable or so they say.

Lets see how the VPS performs:

To check the load on the VPS and whether it is oversold:

[root@backup ~]# top
top - 13:08:22 up 1 day, 49 min,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Tasks:  17 total,   1 running,  16 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:    131072k total,    17888k used,   113184k free,        0k buffers
Swap:   131072k total,     3276k used,   127796k free,    11316k cached

Luckily the load on my VPS is zero.

To check the RAM usage:

[root@backup ~]# free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           128         17        110          0          0         11
-/+ buffers/cache:          6        121
Swap:          128          3        124
[root@backup ~]#

There is plently of free RAM left. I have not loaded apache or php on the VPS. It is running Centos 6 32 bit and so is cool as a cucumber.

Lets see the CPU processor:

[root@backup ~]# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 45
model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2630 0 @ 2.30GHz
stepping        : 7
cpu MHz         : 2300.193
cpu cores       : 6
[root@backup ~]#

Its a 2.3GHz processor (with 6 cores?).

Lets see how fast the disk is (I/O):

[root@backup ~]# 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, 1.62236 seconds, 662 MB/s
[root@backup ~]#

Excellent I/O at 662 MB/sec. On the pure SSD disks, the I/O comes close to 1GB/sec.

Checking the download speed of the VPS using wget:

[root@backup ~]# wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
--2013-09-30 13:16:51--  http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
Resolving cachefly.cachefly.net... 205.234.175.175
Connecting to cachefly.cachefly.net|205.234.175.175|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: `100mb.test'

100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 30.4M/s   in 4.0s

2013-09-30 13:16:55 (24.9 MB/s) - `100mb.test' saved [104857600/104857600]
[root@backup ~]#

Again, no complaints here. A stellar performance. Even transfers from the other VPSs were fast.

Conclusion: If you are looking for a backup/ storage VPS and 50GB suits your requirement, it is unlikely you will get a better deal than the $13.92 offer from RamNode.

Note: A review of RamNode’s “regular” 1 GB RAM pure SSD VPS is here.