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Servint Essential VPS reviewed (updated on 12/06/09)

Servint ssh [~]# top output
Note: Right click the images here and click Open Image to enlarge it This is my starting on Servint first days official review for WHT. On November 19th, 2009, after evaluating 29 VPS providers, I decided to make a review on Servint, a company online since April 1996, based in Elm Street, Suite 4B, McLean, VA 22101, US. Servint is not a reseller, it is a big company, owner of it's data center and are using the most advanced and powerful nodes to offer virtual private servers running Linux (actually CentOS 5.x), without control panel or with cPanel or Plesk, both free. According a lot of VPS users, Servint is the creme-de-la-creme in the virtual private servers market because is uptime is around real 100% and it's famed support is considered fantastic. No negative issues for Servint from it's customers are known on the Web. In our default operations system at the first day of each month we build a tarball (tar.gz) of our entire /home directory (around 8GB of data, cPanel files included) of our main VPS (used for evaluations built in order to make reviews). Usually this task consumes around 40 minutes in various VPS providers we reviewed, like Spry, JaguarPC, VPSLink, Amerihosting (now Jadase) and 30 minutes in others like the deceased and buried Zone.Net, Solar VPS, Known Host, WiredTree and more. Servint allows a lot of CPU for its VPS customers as we discovered when we built there that tarball on Saturday November 28th, 2009: incredible for a product like the Essential, but the giant tarball (4.2GB) has been built in only 15 minutes. Generally the upload of this file to our external backup server, in New York (BQ Backup) consumes in minimum 30 minutes from Seattle, from Houston & Dallas, from Illinois, from Atlanta. Incredible once again, but the Servint Networks really exceeds as you can see below as follows:
ftp> put homecp28nov09servint.tgz
local: homecp28nov09servint.tgz remote: homecp28nov09servint.tgz
227 Entering Passive Mode (208,122,60,40,240,150)
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for 'homecp28nov09servint.tgz'.
226 Transfer complete.
4531437798 bytes sent in 447 secs (9.9e+03 Kbytes/sec)
ftp>

Yes, it is true, the traball has been sent to BQBackup in only 7m45s!!

Also an WordPress update (to a newest release) by automatic process from WP Dashboard consumes around 10 minutes from various VPS providers and from Servint this task has been released in ...20 seconds!

But Servint allows "little" number of inodes in its VPS (only 3,000,000 for 30GB) in comparison with WiredTree (10,007,462 of disk inodes allowed for 60GB) and others, like Known Host, that offers much more disk density.


Using Paypal I ordered the product Essential VPS ($ 49.00 USD) with this spec:
30 GB Disk Space
1 TB Monthly Transfer
768 MB Guaranteed (1.5 GB Burst RAM)
CentOS 5 Operating System
4 IP Addresses
Unlimited Domains and User Accounts
FREE Virtuozzo Power Panel
FREE nightly backups
FREE cPanel, Plesk, or Parallels Small Business Panel Available
No set-up fee
$49 monthly

Minimum server specs for all ServInt VPS products are:
Dual Quad Core Intel Xeon L5300/L5400 Series CPUs
32 GB 667 MHz DDR2 Dual Rank, Fully Buffered RAM
15K RPM SCSI/SAS Hard Drives in RAID 10
Zero Downtime During Drive Failure
Hot-Swap Drives and Fans
Replaceable on the Fly
Dual Gigabit Network Interfaces

I found this info from my ssh shell (8 CPUs found, with the same spec):

[php]Last login: Sat Nov 21 09:53:43 2009 from 189.25.14.3
root@server [~]# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 15
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5320 @ 1.86GHz
stepping : 11
cpu MHz : 458.206
cache size : 4096 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 4
core id : 0
cpu cores : 4
apicid : 0
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm syscall nx lm constant_tsc pni monitor ds_cpl vmx tm2 cx16 xtpr lahf_lm
bogomips : 3726.69
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 38 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:[/php]

Servint VZPP photo
In the order form I specified a request of complete migration (16 domains, one of them with two complicated Word Press blogs) via cPanel migration tool, total around 8GB of data from Chicago. I also requested installation of third party tools, including Midnight Commander, Webmin. I was expecting a welcome in 24 hours but, for my surprise, Servint guys informed me that my VPS is ready for running. When I entered its WHM I saw all 16 domains there with all configurations, without only one error (in anterior migrations, using Plesk, I've noticed some errors like login truncated for email accounts etc.).

Midnight Commander in Essential VPS
At that time the only task I have to do was register new name servers using Servint IPs and change DNS in my registrar (Dotster, special IWA account). I did it and in few hours all it is O.K. because Servint's IPs are fine and it's networks connection exceeds, offering pure premium bandwidth. By default Servint does no enable ssh and do not inform the VZPP link but I requested both and in few minutes I visited VZPP and entered my shell to run WHT Unixbench:[/ALIGN]

[php]BYTE UNIX Benchmarks (Version 4.1-wht.2)
System -- Linux server.macarlohost.net 2.6.18-028stab064.7 #1 SMP Wed Aug 26 13:11:07 MSD 2009 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
/dev/vzfs 31457280 7665004 23792276 25% /

Start Benchmark Run: Fri Nov 20 00:10:37 EST 2009
00:10:37 up 7:02, 1 user, load average: 0.07, 0.02, 0.00

End Benchmark Run: Fri Nov 20 00:21:08 EST 2009
00:21:08 up 7:12, 1 user, load average: 14.37, 5.88, 2.58


INDEX VALUES
TEST BASELINE RESULT INDEX

Dhrystone 2 using register variables 376783.7 9137520.6 242.5
Double-Precision Whetstone 83.1 1004.0 120.8
Execl Throughput 188.3 3433.9 182.4
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 2672.0 88264.0 330.3
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1077.0 26840.0 249.2
File Read 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 15382.0 595644.0 387.2
Pipe Throughput 111814.6 941775.7 84.2
Pipe-based Context Switching 15448.6 278625.4 180.4
Process Creation 569.3 9099.3 159.8
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 44.8 647.2 144.5
System Call Overhead 114433.5 739381.8 64.6
=========
FINAL SCORE 171.8
root@server [/unixbench-4.1.0-wht-2]#[/php]

Servint Customer Portal
Servint offers a tech forum with over 6,000 members, an official tech blog and a Customer Portal for support and much more and I've noticed that it's support tickets response are around 1 minute, no more, on 24 hours. Servint technicians are very efficient and very polish, solving all problems in minutes. Example: I informed I want run rkhunter and in few minutes this app was installed and running just fine. I have noticed that Essential VPS is very stable, running like a real server.

Servint Forum

On November 21th, two days after my order, I received another invoice ($18.97 USD) and this is related to Servint pro-rata billing system. Servint do not display this for public access and only you are its customer you will know this billing system as follows:

Servint Billing FAQs

1) I received my first Invoice, but I don't understand it?

When you signed up with ServInt your initial payment covered your 1st full calendar month of service. The first invoice you receive includes the days that elapsed between your turn-up date and the 1st day of that calendar month. How this is represented on your invoice depends on where in our billing cycle your service began. Below are two examples explaining each instance.

Example one: For New orders placed between the 1st and 20th of the month.

jondoe.com ordered an Essential VPS on May 16th. He paid $49.00 when he placed his order and his new server was turned up the same day. On May 21st he received an invoice for $23.71 which represents the prorated amount for 15 days of service between May 16th and May 31st. The initial charge and payment were also reflected, but offset.

On June 21st he will receive an invoice for the month of July. On July 21st he will receive an invoice for the month of August and so on.

Example two: For new orders placed between the 21st and the last day of the month.

Janedoe.com ordered an essential VPS on May 24th. She paid $49 when she placed the order and her new server was turned up the same day. On June 21st she received an invoice for $61.65 which includes her $49.00 monthly charge for the upcoming month of July as well as a prorated charge of $12.65 for the 8 days of service between May 24th and May 31st. The initial charge and payment were also reflected, but offset.

On July 21st she will receive and invoice for the month of August and so on.
2) I just signed up with ServInt a few days ago and I already got an invoice. What gives?

Regardless of what day of the month your new server is activated and your service begins, invoices go out on the 21st. For more information on your first invoice please see the previous FAQ question.
3) When will I receive my monthly invoices?

You will receive your invoice via email on the 21st of each month. Therefore, make sure to keep your billing contact email address up to date with us.
4) When is my invoice due?

Invoices are due on the 1st of every month.
5) Why are my 'Service Period' and 'Usage Period' dates different?

ServInt pre-bills monthly service. That means that the invoice you receive on the 21st of the month covers the service period of the upcoming month. So a bill received June 21st would cover July 1st - July 31st.

The only exception to this is if a client utilizes more bandwidth than is included in their base package, resulting in overages or other utilization charges. This obviously cannot be pre-billed, so it is billed in arrears. ServInt post-bills for bandwidth usage, and the usage period runs from the 21st - 20th of the prior month. Therefore the same invoice you receive on June 21st would cover the usage period of May 21st - June 20th.
6) How do I enroll in ServInt's Auto-Bill program and have my credit card automatically charged each month?

You may use the link below enroll in Auto-Bill.

https://www.servint.net/ccupdate

Simply enter your billing account number as it appears on your invoices, your email address used for billing correspondences, your credit card information and don't forget to check the 'recurring billing' box. Your credit card will then automatically be charged on the 21st of each month and you will receive a statement via email explaining the charge.
.
7) Can I prepay for multiple months at a time? Do I get a discount?

Yes, and yes. You may pre-pay for as many months at a time as you like. 6 month pre-pays include a 5% discount and 12 month pre-pays a 10% discount. After you pre-pay you will still receive statements on the 21st of each month showing a portion of the total payment applied towards your monthly charges. When the payment runs out you will begin receiving actual invoices again. It is up to you to pay those monthly invoices or pre-pay again.
8) I want invoices sent to a different email address. What do I do?

To change the email address Servint uses for billing correspondences either open a ticket in the customer portal requesting the change, or send an email to billing@servint.com from the current billing email address we have on file.
9) I accidently deleted my invoice. How can I get a copy?

Simply send an e-mail to billing@servint.com or open a billing ticket to request a copy of your latest invoice.
10) Why can't I see my invoices and payment history in the customer portal?

We understand that it would make things significantly easier if ServInt's support and billing databases were linked, but at this time they are not. A project is underway to link the two, but our goal is - first and foremost - the security of your billing data. For that reason we will be unable to display invoices and payment history here in the customer portal until it can be done completely securely and with our utmost confidence. We appreciate your patience and understanding.
11) How do you determine whether or not I have overages?

The traffic stats we use for billing purposes are the same ones reported in real-time here in the customer portal. These stats are generated by monitoring the switchport, which accurately manages all traffic on all ports, both incoming and outoging. If the amount of traffic reported is higher that the amount allotted in any given package it is billed at a rate of .25 cents a MB.

Please do not use the traffic statistics reported by your Control Panel to estimate your traffic usage. Control Panels also provide their own traffic stats, however they do not include all traffic on all ports, and are therefore not accurate and not used to determine total traffic for billing purposes.
12) How can I tell If I am using more bandwidth than is included in my package, and how do I avoid going over my bandwidth allotment?

Bandwidth statistics are provided in real-time here in the customer portal, and can be accessed 24/7. You should be actively monitoring your traffic stats in the customer portal. If you see that you are approaching your maximum we encourage you to contact a member of our sales team to discuss moving to a larger package before you incur overage charges.
13) Will you automatically shut me off if I have used too much bandwidth so that I do not incur overage charges?

No.

Servint Webmin

Note that in the photo at left Webmin shows 60GB of disk space where in real only 30GB of disk space exist because the at this time latest Webmin release (v 1.490) is buggy for disk space measurement and this issue was not yet fixed by it developers.

Velocity Test

I tested on Sunday December 6th the velocity of this Servint's Essential using a test used by WHT members.

This is the result of this test in my VPS Essential in Servint as follows:
PHP Code:
root@server [/test]# wget http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
--2009-12-06 12:43:43-- 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 10.4M/s in 9.4s

2009-12-06 12:43:52 (10.7 MB/s) - `100mb.test' saved [104857600/104857600]

root@server [/test]#

Visit Servint at http://servint.net/

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