Francisco said in this WHT forums post — “We’re back with more fantastic California based VPS’s”. Indeed. At $15/year, you get this from BuyVM:
- 128MB guaranteed/256MB burstable memory
- 15GB storage
- 500GB/month data transfer
- OpenVZ/SolusVM
They are with Hurricane Electric in Fremont (one of most popular US DC amongst Far East Asia users, according to what I read). Wow. They also got TUN and PPTP enabled by default to make it easy setting up VPN.
I guess the question is, is FranTech/BuyVM going to do a BlazeVPS? I guess FranTech has been around for a while (and has been a great commenter/contributor to this blog). I do hope they stick around for a long time though — or at least for a year as I might get one to backup my other VPS at Fremont :)
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I saw this on their website last night and got one (the $15/year vps). Sometimes it’s a bit slow like the cpu is getting bogged down, but for the most part it’s ok. The ping time to the he.net data center in Fremont, CA is great.
BuyVM is cool but they have old-fashion credit card processor which ASKS me to input my cc details on their website (curl/webservice or whatever but who knows if these details are being saved before forwarding to the concerned webservice).
This is the major reason why I signed up few weeks back but did not continue with them. This offer is great too. I wonder if they will ever support other payment methods like 2Checkout, Google Checkout and MoneyBookers
@Francisco Diaz
Do you offer BuyVM 256MB in 3 monthly payment chunk?
Do we need to add $1/month for the IP or is it included in the package?
Do you offer Mahal Kita or Wo Ai ni?
@Asim Zeeshan
Why don’t you check out with PayPal then?
I think it’s buyvm.net not buyvm.com
@Raj – Thanks Raj, no wonder I cannot get much information at buyvm.com. The faq page is missing.
@KLIKLI Paypal is not supported in my country else that would have been the safest method
@Asim – Why isn’t PayPal supported in your country?
@Jackk: He lives in Pakistan where Paypal dont support at this time :)
@David – there has been a few users doing things like SETI@HOME and the likes so we’ve been kicking them off, sorry about that ;)
@vRozen – We can do it for 3 months but there won’t be a discount. You get an IP included, the $1/m is if you want more.
@Asim – We’ve registered with moneybookers, I just need to finish some of the verification process.
@LEA – We’ve been around for years, we’ll be around for many more ;)
Francisco
Picked up a VM from them last night – the slightly more expensive 256MB model – for a new project. Quick setup, friendly support, good-looking network, four CPUs, healthy UBC settings, and – happily – an actually useable CentOS template, yay.
No complaints so far. :)
At this this offer is from a provider that has been around for a bit.
Picked up a VM last night as well. Took them several hours to send me my Welcome Email, but it is up and running.
@Thomas – Sorry for your wait, our VM services aren’t automated, we do all of those setups by hand.
is a tor middle node allowed ?
irc client ?
@Francisco Diaz – Just placed an order for 1 month, suppose by the end of this month I decide to pay for 1 year, will I get the $2.92/month?
@C – that’s fine :)
@vRozen – Yep :)
Francisco
@Francisco Dias
made an order now. don’t disappoint me ;-)
I also placed an order now. Let’s see what happens. :)
I would like to test ping and transfers so could you put out a few meg file on one of your vpses please?
How long this offer is valid for?
misza222
@C – Great, lemme know if there is anything you need a hand with :) TOR should be very straight forward though.
@Can – Great as well, if there is anything you need adjusted just let us know ;)
Fran
@Francisco Thanks. Waiting for MoneyBookers or any other payment gateway to be live :)
thats exactly the VPS I was searching for
but the ping is ~190ms and max 500kb/s download speed from Germany :(
waiting for an EU offer
Damn! Another dirt cheap VPS! This is addictive!
Signed up :)! Lets see how this one goes!
Regarding kicking off users who does SETI@HOME on your vpses. There is noting in your Acceptable Use Policy saying that running it is forbidden. Is that going to happen to all the users who run processor intensive tasks?
Rev
@Francisco Dias
Few problems with your site:
1) The FAQ and Contact Us links on your BuyVM.com site do not, but the links on your BuyVM.net do.
2) When I clicked their Web IRC Chat link on the Contact Us page, I received a 404 Error as well.
3) I give you kudos for responding to my Support Ticket within 2 minutes, but who is “bzImage”?!?. Also when I hit reply to the email and sent a response to support(a)frantech.ca I received a bounce back stating that the email address did not exist on frantech.ca.
@Thomas
BuyVM.com is not owned by Frantech/Francisco. It is owned by someone else who is iFraming the .net with an affiliate URL.
@Thomas – We’re redoing our email system since we don’t actively monitor sales@ or support@, they’ll soon respond back with a ‘please use a ticket!’ auto reply. As I said, I picked up .net from Andrew here when he had it for sale and didn’t even think to check if .com was in use.
.net, our actual domain, has it all working smoothly :) ‘bzImage’ is also known as Anthony and is one of our staff members. We have 3 – 4 staff members that work at the company besides myself.
Francisco
@misza222 – No, but some users are way overboard. Normally in these cases it’s the program is in an odd loop and shouldn’t be acting that way so we bring it up with them to check on it.
TEST IP: 199.19.224.1
TEST FILE: http://buyvm.net/100mb.test
Francisco
Nice network speed!!!
user@hostname:~# wget cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
–2010-08-13 00:19:59– 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 59.5M/s in 1.7s
2010-08-13 00:20:01 (59.5 MB/s) – `100mb.test’ saved [104857600/104857600]
I’ve ordered a 128MB plan with them right after I saw the offer in WHT. It’s really worth of your money!
Out of Stock?
lol, this is ridiculous..
@D – We’re just installing another node, we’ll have more stock in the next little bit ;) If you’re wanting to be informed the minute we got stock you’re more than welcome to log a ticket :)
We’ll have more nodes online later tonight
Fran
Guess single node is just not enough..:( still out of stock..lol
@D – We provisioned 3 nodes just for this last night but people seem to be enjoying it :)
We’re spinning up more as I said, should be quick. There are many people with the plans so far, though.
Francisco
Be sure to add some JS so that your web cannot be viewed. Otherwise, add some SSL so that users cannot be confused. Otherwise if someday BuyVM.com removed the frame page, you may loss some customers.
2010-08-13 06:34:35 (32.6 MB/s) – `100mb.test’ saved [104857600/104857600]
Looks fair
About 200 ms ping from Europe.
Seems kind of slow when using apt. dunno why, will have to do some more tests tomorrow.
@C – We’re fixing a driver issue with node04’s raid card. I’ll be shuffling most of the new sign ups to another node in the next little bit. There shouldn’t be any downtime, or, worst case, a reboot of your VM.
We won’t add more stock until this is fixed sometime in the next little bit.
Thanks,
Francisco
Another RAID card issue lol
BlazeVPS suddenly appeared in my mind :p
Though I already got a VPS with them on node04 last week, today the HDD I/O perfomance is poor and I have filed a ticket but no response.
@Francisco Dias
Good to know, thanks.
@KLIKLI – I’m just about done on that ;) I’ll have someone hit your ticket but it will be back to normal very soon w/o a reboot needed.
Thanks,
Francisco
@Francisco Diaz – node04 was very slow for a couple of hours but things seems to be back to normal. So what’s the status now?
I got a temp fix in place, just finalizing ;)
It will be back to full speed in the next little bit. We’ve provisioned a 5th node just incase this error returns. I’m going to most likely live migrate most people just to be safe.
Thanks for your patience!
Francisco
Speed is now mutch better on my vps! :)
Or not… was good for a few min
@C – I’ll let you know when I’m done ;)
It’s possible you’re in the batch that’s getting shuffled. I’ve put our techs on rotation to make sure that this is finished before morning.
Thanks,
Francisco
Slowwwwwwwwwww speed again :(
from lg.he.net
core1.fmt1.he.net> traceroute 199.19.226.157 numeric
Tracing the route to IP node from 1 to 30 hops
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 64.71.129.70
2 17 ms <1 ms 1 ms 64.71.165.146
3 * !H * 64.71.165.146# Entry cached for another 46 seconds.
VPS @node04 down for >1hr
Yes, node04 still down
@LEA
Sorry, just forget that this blog is not for support issue
@bekanosky :) so you are on this BuyVM Amazing offer train too
@bekanosky
This is not just a support issue, but just to let others whom are going to buy to know the issue for them to issue.
@ASIM
No, it is my 256MB VPS from their first offer, that suspended, and then reactivated again :)
When will more VPS be available?
yey my vps on node 4 is up and working well =).
now let’s see if it works for a year :D
Hi,
Is anyone please tell me those who you are buying 128/256 MB ram based vps normally what is the purpose you using that for. I believe control panel cant be working on low ram, is there anyother purpose the VPS can be used. I will be glad if any1 please response my query. Thanks.
@Jacob – You don’t have to use a control panel.
I have 68 mb used on a VPS running a medium traffic MyBB forum, I have no control panel running/wasting ram and use nginx instead of apache so it does not use too much. I just wish it was 32 bit instead of 64 bit.
@Jacob – You don’t have to use a control panel. By the way there are a few control panels that WILL work with 128MB ram :) Kloxo HIB, Webmin, etc.
On my other 128MB VPS I am running lighttpd, php5, mysql, postfix, and dovecot. I need to figure out how to add dspam and mailman and I’m set.
Node04 had to take a reboot this morning, sorry everyone. It looks like the perm fix is working perfectly and things should be working great :)
We’ll have more stock in the next little bit.
Thanks,
Francisco
128MB RAM makes a great DNS server… or a backup server. Or a mail server. Or web server, if you know how to optimize things.
If you have another server nearby, in network terms, you could probably run a pretty happy Squid or Varnish cache on one, as well. (A 48MB proxy cache is perfectly adequate for a single site, or even a handful of sites.)
The old Sun/Cobalt RAQs used to come with 128MB RAM (upgradeable to 256MB and 512MB, I think, in the last models), and it was not uncommon to run 100+ websites on a 128MB one, complete with a control panel and so on. (I suspect that VPSes are one of the things that killed off the “hosting appliance” market, as there really hasn’t been one marketed since the Toshiba Magnia.)
Totally a DNS Server :-)
@Jacob
If centos 32 bit is available then you can install Kloxo..if you disable innodb from mysql it should idle at 60MB.
Have at it everyone :)
We’ve added some more stock!
Francisco
So your VPS CP on Node4 is having some sort of problems. It claims my VPS is down and I can’t reinstall any OS.
@Bryan – You were one of the people I moved then :) I’m just finishing the last touches on the solusvm people and you’ll be good to go.
Just keep checking back over the next half hour or so and it should be good.
Thanks,
Francisco
@Jackob
See this link : http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/yes-you-can-run-18-static-sites-on-a-64mb-link-1-vps
ordered vps $15/yr for testing in 5 min they provided VPS its up and running with 256 bust ram
let see what all can i do with it. waiting for IP V6 allocation
Hey there Santosh,
You’ll have your IPv6 in the next little bit :)
You’ll be assigned 16 IP’s from the get go. If you need more just let us know!
Thanks,
Francisco
I also ordered a $15/yr vps for testing several hours ago,but it’s still pending now.
Hmm… still out of stock for me
@LP – We’ll add a few more of the 128’s :) We balanced our stock based on our IP allocations from ARIN.
We had some earlier, we added around 30 to stock a few hours ago.
If you email me at admin@frantech.ca I can let you know once we add some. Or, you could just open a ticket with sales and request one and you’ll get setup manually.
Thanks,
Francisco
root@shell3:~# free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 256 68 187 0 0 0
-/+ buffers/cache: 68 187
2010-08-14 13:48:36 (53.8 MB/s) – `100mb.test’ saved [104857600/104857600]
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/simfs 15G 459M 15G 3% /
13:49:08 up 17:34, 2 users, load average: 0.11, 0.05, 0.01
Works well now =)
@Francisco Dias
Still says my VPS is down and I can’t seem to reinstall the OS, but I’m SSHed into the box right now. I have a ticket open…for the past 12 some hours. Last time you guys responded within minutes.
Remember that this isn’t a support channel.
i am interested to know how long this offer is available.
looking for a gr88 deals for 512MB ram and 1 GB ram yearly.
how about http://www.elastichosts.com its good but its expensive
i tried it i can created my own specific servers set MHZ,RAM,IP,OS etc
santosh
Just wondering if anyone know if the VPS is auto provisioned or manual because my order does not seems to get pass pending and anyone have this problem of certain credit card from certain bank not being approved? Wondering why too.
I remember Raj, but my post also to show that support is a bit slow.
I did get a response for those of you on Node4: Your VPS Control Panel may not have been working because when they moved us, they forgot to update the VPS CP.
Ticket opened for 2 days, no answer :@
Ticket #593056
@LEA: I know here is not a support channel, I cannot find other ways for communicating with him.
@Bryan – We didn’t forget, just we needed to finish all the migrations/IPV6 adjustments :)
@Klikli – could you send me an email at admin@frantech.ca about what you’re needing handled? We’ve been chewing tickets as quickly as we can.
Francisco
@Santosh – Sorry, your comments just got accepted. We’ll be running this deal until we run out of IP space/hardware :) We’re getting close on the IP space so we’re just finalizing paper work for ARIN to get more. As for gear, we placed an order for our 3rd rack so it’s an exciting time around our parts :)
@Eloi – maxmind is moody and seems to be very sensitive to things. Some people get provisioned at start, some get heald back and some get simply marked as fraud (even though they aren’t). Our staff are checking for orders pretty often to make sure that there is no one waiting long if they get heald up.
Thanks everyone,
Francisco
+1 for 512MB yearly plans
+1 for MoneyBookers, GoogleCheckout or the easiest one 2Checkout payment gateway
@Asim – MB seems to be what most people are wanting. We’ve got our account verified but am hoping to find someone help us test that it’s working properly. I’ve had a few reports that MB’s accounts act odd so I don’t want to push a bunch of funds into the account and it doesn’t work properly ;) If you have a few pennies in your account you can send us and we can refund back, log a ticket titled ‘ATTN: Francisco – Moneybookers’ and we’ll get testing.
Francisco
“They also got TUN and PPTP enabled by default to make it easy setting up VPN.” Hey anyone know if this is really true? Because I get permission denied on TUN device.
Hey there Eloi,
Give your VPS a restart.
One of our automation scripts didn’t kick in properly on one of the newer nodes so I mass propagated it sometime yesterday.
Francisco
Does anybody else have problems connecting to their VPS Serial Console?
Yap their serial console does not work the last time I tried.
Hey there guys,
What issue are you having?
For what it’s worth, we got moneybookers supported now :)
Francisco
Out of stock!
@Francisco, whenever I try to login to the Serial Console, I get “password authentication failed, try again?” I’ve tried from ssh, and from the java applet inside SolusVM. I tried the console password that was emailed to me, and I tried changing it from SolusVM and using the new password, but nothing works. I put in a ticket last week for it, and I’ve received replies but no resolution, yet. I was just wondering if I was the only one.
Francisco, when will new nodes be provisioned?
I’m able to login to the Serial Console now. That’s been resolved.
Waiting for new nodes so that I can order. How much is the port speed and download / upload speed on the VPS?
@David – Thanks :)
Asim – We have a full Gbit from our colo providers and we lock the VPS’s to 1Gbit/100mbit for the time being. We’re in the middle of finalizing a fairly large hardware purchase so we’ll likely upgrade to Gbit ports on outbound as well.
Francisco
Great! I am anxiously waiting
Quick report on IO speed:
dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k; sync
BuyVM/Frantech 128MB OpenVZ
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 11.9464 s, 89.9 MB/s
Overall still a great speed, personally anything around 100MB/s is ok with me!
@Hughesey – We have a performance upgrade coming along actually to boost IO some more :)
The upgrades will be getting installed in a week or so.
Francisco
@Francisco – Awesome, and here I was content already, now it’s going to be even faster :)!
Any news on new stock? I did open a sales/support ticket a few days ago, but no response.
@A – Working at it :) I called up ARIN on Thursday to find out what was going on, but was told they were understaffed this past week, causing hold ups in setups :(
Thanks,
Francisco
still no servers available, sad
Thanks for the IPv6
I would like to know are you planning to provide any Xen-HVM, i am interested to buy with these ipv6 would be a gr88 offer for ME/Lowendbox.
Wish u to provide the best price deals
if u can replay the tickets soon its the best part.
santosh
@Mark – we got our new gear nearly done, just need some last raid cards from newegg :)
@Santosh – We’re looking into XEN, but still deciding.
Francisco
Another overselling company! and they don’t even know how to cover it up. Bad after-sales technical support.
I ordered a vps with 30GB harddrive from them about 2 months ago, last Thursday i saw there’s only 17GB, and they said they’ll fix it for me. Today when i used this command to check my harddrive,
df -lh
I saw the total hard drive capacity is only 5GB !!!
they still can’t fix this, it’s been 3 days.
they just fixed it and finally i feel a bit happy. thanks.
Iky – It hasn’t been an oversold issue, its been a problem with one of our RAID cards. We’ve been trying to limit the need for a reboot so I was working to resolve the space issue over the period of a few days. Anthony has kept you updated as he could, but the problem was one I was having to resolve so I’ll apologize for that.
I’m glad it’s OK now. We’re moving to a different raid card on our next batch of hardware to get round this problem.
But out of stock since weeks now :-(
Out Of Stock ;/
waiting for more servers from weeks
We have our new nodes on site so it should be very soon :)
Since you have new nodes, any news about offering Xen with a similar offer.
No ETA on Xen. As of right now we’ve been expanding the feature set of our OpenVZ plans to the point that 90% of our market won’t need XEN, etc.
Francisco
I don’t see a point for Francisco to offer Xen either as Frantech.ca would be catering for users looking for more dedicated-like virtualization solutions.
I am too waiting for more nodes in Fremont though :)
I just placed a new order, but no setup info yet.
before it was like 5 minutes automatic, but now slow.
We just got some stock in :)
Check your spam folder or go inside of your my.frantech and check in the emails part :)
Francisco
nothing, checked both of them, see my ticket #157461.
It’s weird, you guys were so fast to setup, but now it’s weird.
solus gives time out.
Since I have i.p from client area, it’s not a big deal now, because I’m installing whatever I want,
but eventually I will need solus info, so let me know later.
It’s getting COMPLETELY slammed with orders right now so it may be a big laggy.
We’re going to be upgrading the solus management node in the morning.
Francisco
no problem. All I need is i.p anyway.
Little things that remind you how broke you are… LOL. I wanted to order the $5.95 one, but it prorates to just under ~$9 for first payment – not enough in paypal :'(
Open a ticket, Eric, we’ll see what we can arrange for you :)
Francisco
@ Francisco – Wow it took less than 10 minutes to setup, thanks a lot.
Not available already?
Adding another node :) Should have more stock in place soon
we just added a little more stock, we’re setting up more nodes.
Get ’em before we post them all to WHT! :)
Francisco
Thanks! MAnaged to get one. Done and all and waiting for it. :)
Good to see you back in business :)
@Francisco
I can’t order, the invoice is also cancelled, i also submit ticket #490717
Nizar,
I’ll take a peak :)
Thanks,
Francisco
@Francisco
Ok, clear, i have paid too about 1 minute ago.
I can’t wait the server to be ready.
@Francisco Dias – Busy huh? He he.. LowEndBox is really really contagious.
Maybe some of you should not post your tickets here so Francisco and team can focus more on resolving your problems (than posting reply comments here) :)
When you guys are gonna re-stock?
Here is my testimony of what happened today. Im backlisted on Frantech for getting pissed and complaining. This is the email I got:
Frederico;
Just as a heads up, ALL of our VPSes are powered by, at their base, VMWare. OpenVZ runs on the VMWare platform, so yes, VMWare is at the core of our architecture.
Furthermore, you are now prohibited from all further services with us. I will be closing your account. Be advised that any attempts to open duplicate accounts to circumvent this ban will result in us adding your Credit Card and PayPal accounts to national blacklists for fraud.
Aldryic C’boas, Frantech Staff
I asked for linux vmware VPS as they clearly advertise on their site to be powered by vmware. but then they told me they dont have linux on vmware, but only openvz linux.
so, wtf?
they put images of vmware and “powered by vmware” but their vms are openvz? then when I get pissed for being mislead to signing up and complain I get this kind of email from them.
gimme a break.
so you all know how those dudes are. who knows how many customers got mislead on their site thinking they are purchasing vmware but got openvz.
Um?
We have tons of people still on vmware doing linux. Linux was a very small market on our VMWARE hunks.
Anyone that has recently moved to OVZ asked for it to be done so they had an actual control panel to work from.
VMWARE just doesn’t make us as much as BuyVM does, hense why Frantech hasn’t had stock since May.
I’ll gladly take a short of our vcenter showing the 20 – 30 linux people on there still, along with the hundred some odd windows.
Francisco
To add to this, we also have at least 2 – 3 users running FreeBSD in their VM’s.
Francisco
Quote from ticket:
Staff 01/12/2011 16:50
“We do not allow linux on vmware unless there is sufficient need for it. If you can provide sufficient need you can install whatever kernel modules you wish including TUN. below is a chart of cpu/core caps.”
Right, and it’s documented to the client when they sign up that the VM’s are OVZ based in those cases.
We have moved people to vmware if they need it (custom kernels, huge amounts of traffic, etc).
I’m not sure where the issue is here?
Francisco
It might be misunderstanding. Buyvm.net offer is only on Openvz vps what I see in here and on their site.
It might be the on frantech.ca which has VMware on it.
Correct me if I am wrong.
Right, vmware is an option.
But, we’ve not had stock on the Frantech brand for Linux plans since before BuyVM was created.
We still do vmware for windows, we sold 40G worth of stock in a few days.
We do have users that do upgrade on buyvm to VMWARE, just we don’t advertise it much since BuyVM makes more with the same equipment.
Francisco
VmWare is Goo