This is from Brandan from FST Servers — “We are a small, Chicago-based hosting company established in May 2009… We are currently offering the following plan that we think you might be interested in advertising to your readers”. Their plans can be found here, and sign up here. $5/month and you get
- 256MB memory
- 15GB storage
- 500GB/month data transfer
- Citrix XenServer
You can find the same offer on WHT here. It would be similar to Xen HVM or VMWare where you get the full hardware emulation. From the sign up page you actually get your chosen distro as a CD image mounted to your VM. Servers are in Chicago (Ubiquity Server, test IP 173.234.41.2), and the “company” itself is also Chicago based. Started in May 2009 according to Brandan (MIS student and a sysadmin I believe, from his resume).
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the plan is attractive .
but how about their uptime .
and it wound be better if they can provide win2003.
I’d be if you asked they would put it up for you. 2K8 requires your own key so it would be as simple as pushing up an ISO. Send it an email or ticket and ask!
great .
I will try later.
Cool – good luck, be sure to let everyone know how it goes.
Is it as simple as in KVM?
Hello Andy,
With regard to uptime – the server that we are currently offering VMs on has not had any unscheduled downtime, and the datacenter that it is hosted in offers a 100% power and network SLA.
We could provide a Windows 2003 ISO image for you to use, but you would have to provide your own license and product key.
You can email us anytime at support [AT] fstservers [DOT] com with questions.
Brendan Fusco
FST Servers LLP
Thanks for your info .
I have placed my order and mailed Joe about win2003 .
and waiting for the VPS setting up.
I will put my review here later.
Food luck with running win2k3 with 256 Mb
We are not running web services.
256M is enough right now.
Your get around 3mb of RAM to play with.
Also, with regard to the original post, I’d just like to point out that the “company” is a legally registered LLP in the state of Illinois :)
Brendan Fusco
FST Servers LLP
Yeah sorry I put the word company in quotation mark without explanation. LLP is a partnership rather than a “company” structure, where you get director and share holders. So a little bit different from legal point of view but from consumers’ point of view it’s proper registered so it would be equally valid I guess.
“We are a small, Chicago-based hosting company established in May 2009… We are currently offering the following plan that we think you might be interested in advertising to your readers”.
So polite and humble, and yet setting up a Citrix XenServer is not as easy as frying bacon & ham.
I like it.
What is the difference between citrix xenserver & usual xen?
XenServer is the commercial version produced by Citrix and is completely stand-alone, while Xen is the open-source version that is installed on top of a regular Linux distribution. They are both based on the same technology. XenServer is also slightly more HVM-oriented – all of our VMs are full HVM.
I have bought one wait active.
Thanks for your business! We have activated your account as of 8:45 CST this morning. Please contact us at support [AT] fstservers [DOT] com if you encounter any problems.
I just ordered a 256 mb plan.
Installation of OS was through a VNC type interface. The VM has a single E5335 @ 2.00GHz.
The CPU seems extremely throttled or overused, with gnu “screen” taking 10-50% cpu! I am using byobu. I sent them a message hoping to get this resolved if there is anything that can be done.
On further observation through top, it looks like their VMware setup causes byobu to take high system usage.
Cpu(s): 6.0%us, 90.0%sy
Anyone have any suggestions?
Oops typo, I meant xenserver instead of vmware.
Bob – I haven’t seen any support e-mails from you regarding this issue. Not sure how the XenServer configuration would be causing problems; we configure all VMs with full hardware virtualization. I would suggest that you install the XenServer tools – we can help you out with that if you contact us. The e-mail address is support [AT] fstservers [DOT] com.
Brendan Fusco
FST Servers LLP
I used the contact form at https://access.fstservers.com/xvpweb/index.php
but I’ll try installing xenserver tools and then emailing you. Thanks.
It appears as though HVM needs xenserver tools for speed. I couldn’t get it to install on Ubuntu 10.10 so I switched back to 10.04 paravirt and it is working now.
I’m glad we were able to work with you to get this resolved. Let us know any time you need help at support [AT] fstservers [DOT] com.
Brendan Fusco
FST Servers LLP
Just receive my vps info email.
installing win2003.
Am I the only one seeing no more than 1 MB/s when downloading http://fstservers.com/100mb.zip ?
Could somebody who already got one of those nice VPS be kind and say something about the real network performance?
I am getting 2MB/sec from my VPS at BuyVM (Fremont) and 4.2MB/sec from my VPS at QuickWeb (Dallas).
From a good connection in Chicago itself, I get between 4.5 and 5 MB/sec when downloading that file.
Brendan Fusco
FST Servers LLP
I will order one if they can provide debian.
Hello Charles – yes, we can provide Debian. When you fill out the signup application, simply leave the default choice for OS and then send us an e-mail at support [AT] fstservers [DOT] com to request that Debian be installed on your new VM.
Brendan Fusco
FST Servers LLP
Signed up with them, they will install any iso you want, I have had them install Debian 6 and Debian 5 for me so far, they are very friendly. My Server with them is chi.jmainguy.com
I just ordered one.
Cheers!
Charles – we’ve provisioned your VM; you should be receiving an e-mail shortly with details on how to connect to it.
Brendan Fusco
FST Servers LLP
When will this offer will end?
Langit – this is not a special; these are our normal prices. You can find a full listing of our plans at http://fstservers.com/?page_id=6.
Brendan Fusco
FST Servers LLP
As you stated earlier, you use citrix xenserver which is *commercial* version of Xen.
Even compared to another ordinary Xen VPS, your VPS is cheaper. How can you provide citrix xenserver VPS with this low price?
In this case, “commercial” does not mean “paid” – Citrix XenServer is still free, at least for the basic version. We have priced our services competitively to attract customers; we may adjust pricing in the future depending on demand and capacity.
Brendan Fusco
FST Servers LLP
I found the services offered by this company poor. Console viewer (java applet) is buggy (mouse does not function properly) – CentOS default and ubuntu live cd did not manage to receive an IP address via DHCP. (Static settings required?)
Oh, and CPU highly overthrottled, ubuntu livecd barely starts.
Hi,
We’re sorry to see you go. However, I’d like to address one concern: the CPU performance. This VM was provisioned with a CentOS template (as requested) because most Linux OSes require paravirtualization to perform efficiently. If you require a different OS, please let us know so we can provision the correct VM template for you. Otherwise, performance will suffer as you noted. The Live CD probably does not contain a Xen-enabled PV kernel.
Please note that we encountered the same issue with Bob above (comment 6) and we solved it by using a paravirtualized kernel.
Brendan Fusco
FST Servers LLP
Fair response. Thank you for the dedication.
Looks like prices have gone up now :(
We’ve adjusted the permanent prices for some of our plans, but keep an eye out for some upcoming sales and promotions as we add capacity.
Brendan Fusco
FST Servers LLP
Hi Brendan,
How about providing KVM?
For now, we’re running only XenServer; in the future, we may look into additional virtualization solutions to diversify our offerings. Thanks for your interest.
Brendan Fusco
FST Servers LLP
I have order one. But to my surprise, there is no personal profile page for clients nor control panel.
It is the first time I didn’t receive a welcome email after signup a VPS, though I know it can take some time to set up the VM.
We received your order at 6:50 CST and it was processed by 8:30 CST; a welcome e-mail is dispatched after the signup is complete and the VM has been created with the details necessary to log in to the client control panel.
Thanks for the feedback; we’ll take it into consideration as we are in the process of updating our signup application and client control panel. Please let us know at support [AT] fstservers [DOT] com if you encounter any problems.
Brendan Fusco
FST Servers LLP
Thanks for your quick reply.
I was not complaining or to be offensive.
I just felt a little strange as a user get used to automatic support systems :)
Not a problem; I understand completely. In the future, you can look forward to even faster response times as we upgrade our customer support systems :)
Brendan Fusco
FST Servers LLP
Price has been increased on their site. It now processing showed VM-1 as $6.50.
As I mentioned earlier, we’ve adjusted our pricing; however, we do plan to run new promotions soon as we will be adding capacity.
Brendan Fusco
FST Servers LLP
How much for additional IPs?
Never mind. Found it on your “About” page.
How do you order a VPS with the yearly price?
Please contact us at support [AT] fstservers [DOT] com and we will arrange the yearly pricing plan for you.
Brendan Fusco
FST Servers LLP
I rate them a 9/10.
I was hosting with them until now. I decided to move on after they changed IP addresses due to a datacenter upgrade. There was 0 downtime other than the IP move.
I just bought 8 of them. Going to give them a go.