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KWD Services - $5.06 256MB KVM VPS in Chicago

KWD Services Alex from KWD Services has sent me a note about their new KVM/Ganeti based virtual servers. Yes that portal page might rival TinyVZ and Prgmr.com in terms of “simplicity”, but Ganeti, “cluster virtual server management software tool built on top of existing virtualization technologies such as Xen or KVM”, is actually quite nice looking (check the tutorial here). You can order with this link here, and I think you do have to order at least one unit of all 3 components to get a working VPS. The component pricings are:

  • $2.56/month/256MB of memory
  • $1.50/month/10GB storage
  • $1.00/month/IPv4 address

Combining with 100Mbps unmetered bandwidth, minimum spending is $5.06/month and you get

  • 256MB memory
  • 10GB storage
  • 100Mbps unmetered bandwidth
  • KVM/Ganeti

You can pay by credit card, PayPal or check/money order. Use coupon code halloweenbeta to get 50% off the first month. Servers in Chicago IL with Steadfast Network. They actually leased the servers from FutureHosting (test IP: 199.48.254.140). Currently in beta looking for a few brave souls :)

KWD Services was founded in 2004 in Virginia, and currently provides a wide range of services — from web hosting to IT solutions to Internet radio to disc jockey (!!) — probably not all at the same time. They are also the one who provided the SheevaPlug services we featured last year.

LEA
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81 Comments

  1. earl:

    The test IP does not seem to be working.. but this offer looks really interesting

    October 26, 2011 @ 7:16 am | Reply
    • Whoops, sorry about that. We decided to move to a new VLAN (before we had anyone on the node) in order to accommodate more growth. You can use 199.48.255.179 to test. :)

      October 29, 2011 @ 1:57 am | Reply
  2. Iskren:

    The promo code didn’t give me any discount after validating.

    October 26, 2011 @ 8:36 am | Reply
    • earl:

      seems to work ok for me.. total due today $2.53 and total recurring is $5.06(since only your first month is 50% off)

      October 26, 2011 @ 8:49 am | Reply
  3. paul:

    Could save by not requiring ipv4… there have been some ipv6-only LEB plans before, though the most recent one looks kind of terrible.

    October 26, 2011 @ 9:03 am | Reply
    • Our current transit provider hasn’t rolled out v6 at their DC yet, but it’s something we’d like to offer in the future.

      October 26, 2011 @ 10:37 am | Reply
      • circus:

        What about 128MB memory plan, is it possible?

        October 26, 2011 @ 4:14 pm | Reply
  4. @ $5.06/month, the disk/bandwidth is too little, at least 25GB/250GB respectively should have been offered.

    Just saying

    October 26, 2011 @ 10:31 am | Reply
  5. earl:

    The bandwidth is unmetered on a 100Mbps port..

    October 26, 2011 @ 10:39 am | Reply
  6. earl:

    I guess LEA should have put the unmetered first then the port speed

    October 26, 2011 @ 10:44 am | Reply
  7. I hope it is on west coast

    October 26, 2011 @ 12:45 pm | Reply
    • Quote: “Servers in Chicago IL with Steadfast Network.” ¬_¬!!

      October 26, 2011 @ 3:04 pm | Reply
  8. Ricky:

    Any ETA of the VPS activation upon payment?

    October 26, 2011 @ 1:40 pm | Reply
  9. Miguel Ângelo Santos Pereira / MrGeneral:

    Did anyone order yet?
    How long it took them to activate the VPS?

    October 26, 2011 @ 2:12 pm | Reply
  10. denos:

    It looks like you provision it yourself based on the “tutorial here” (http://kwdservices.com/ganeti/tutorial.html) link from this post.

    October 26, 2011 @ 2:16 pm | Reply
    • Miguel Ângelo Santos Pereira / MrGeneral:

      Thank you for your fast reply.

      I’m going to test their service :-)

      October 26, 2011 @ 2:17 pm | Reply
  11. Miguel Ângelo Santos Pereira / MrGeneral:

    Done.

    The ordered services show as Pending and no email was received about the product activation.
    I guess they need to manually create my account on their cluster system :-P

    October 26, 2011 @ 2:19 pm | Reply
    • Ricky:

      Yep, same here. Pending for 2 hours which is still far within acceptable range for non-instant’s.

      October 26, 2011 @ 2:21 pm | Reply
      • Miguel Ângelo Santos Pereira / MrGeneral:

        Well, let’s see how it goes :-D

        October 26, 2011 @ 2:30 pm | Reply
  12. Ricky:

    Just got a ticket about login info, now setting VM for testing :)

    October 26, 2011 @ 2:46 pm | Reply
    • Miguel Ângelo Santos Pereira / MrGeneral:

      I didn’t get any email yet :-P

      October 26, 2011 @ 9:40 pm | Reply
  13. Ricky:

    Did not check out the tutorial and resulted in a number of times of VM deletion..
    Then I ran into this..

    GanetiApiError at /cluster/cluster1/ vm-xxxx.virtual.kwdservices.com/delete
    None
    Request Method:	POST
    Request URL:	http://node1.cluster1.k-srv.info:8000/cluster/cluster1/%20vm-1186.virtual.kwdservices.com/delete
    Django Version:	1.3.1
    Exception Type:	GanetiApiError
    Exception Value:	
    None
    Exception Location:	/root/ganeti_webmgr/util/client.py in _SendRequest, line 438
    Python Executable:	/root/ganeti_webmgr/bin/python
    Python Version:	2.6.7
    Python Path:	
    ['/root/ganeti_webmgr',
     '/root/ganeti_webmgr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.6.egg',
     '/root/ganeti_webmgr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pip-1.0.2-py2.6.egg',
     '/root/ganeti_webmgr/dependencies/twisted_vncauthproxy',
     '/root/ganeti_webmgr/lib/python2.6',
     '/root/ganeti_webmgr/lib/python2.6/plat-linux2',
     '/root/ganeti_webmgr/lib/python2.6/lib-tk',
     '/root/ganeti_webmgr/lib/python2.6/lib-old',
     '/root/ganeti_webmgr/lib/python2.6/lib-dynload',
     '/usr/lib/python2.6',
     '/usr/lib/python2.6/plat-linux2',
     '/usr/lib/python2.6/lib-tk',
     '/root/ganeti_webmgr/lib/python2.6/site-packages',
     '/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/Fabric-1.2.2-py2.6.egg',
     '/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/virtualenv-1.6.4-py2.6.egg',
     '/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/Twisted-11.0.0-py2.6-linux-x86_64.egg',
     '/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/zope.interface-3.8.0-py2.6-linux-x86_64.egg',
     '/usr/local/lib/python2.6/site-packages',
     '/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages',
     '/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages',
     '/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/PIL',
     '/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/gtk-2.0',
     '/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6']
    Server time:	Wed, 26 Oct 2011 07:57:21 -0700
    

    Most probably is that a space is in the hostname (by mistake) which causes big trouble when passing the variable..

    October 26, 2011 @ 3:00 pm | Reply
    • Miguel Ângelo Santos Pereira / MrGeneral:

      Got this error as well.

      October 27, 2011 @ 1:48 am | Reply
  14. FM:

    Has anyone succeded in using the VPS?

    My address vm-****.virtual.kwdservices.com doesn’t resolve and the VPS doesn’t have an IP.

    October 26, 2011 @ 3:35 pm | Reply
    • Ricky:

      Try untick the resolve DNS box.

      October 26, 2011 @ 4:15 pm | Reply
  15. lidouf:

    I just ordered one, the status is ‘pending’, not instant

    October 26, 2011 @ 3:40 pm | Reply
    • FM:

      Currently in beta looking for a few brave souls :)

      October 26, 2011 @ 4:04 pm | Reply
  16. Jason:

    Always had respect for Karl @ KWD (hope I’ve got the right company and there’s not two with a similar name)!

    Big thumbs up!

    October 26, 2011 @ 4:49 pm | Reply
    • Alex @ KWD:

      Yep, this is the same KWD as the one Karl’s president of. :)

      October 27, 2011 @ 12:55 am | Reply
  17. earl:

    anyone else not able to load the login page for Ganeti?

    October 27, 2011 @ 12:15 am | Reply
    • Miguel Ângelo Santos Pereira / MrGeneral:

      Works here.

      Just received my instance info, I’m now going to create the VM.

      October 27, 2011 @ 1:37 am | Reply
      • Miguel Ângelo Santos Pereira / MrGeneral:

        The IP configuration is weird. I had no IP assigned, this is really really weird. can’t access through the console either :-P

        October 27, 2011 @ 1:44 am | Reply
        • Ricky:

          Actually there is a hostname given by Alex,
          that should resolve to your assigned IP.

          vmXXXX.virtual.kwdservices.com <-

          October 27, 2011 @ 2:02 am | Reply
        • Miguel Ângelo Santos Pereira / MrGeneral:

          Yeah, thanks Ricky. I’m just exploring this. I found the same bug you did, deleting a VM.

          October 27, 2011 @ 2:09 am | Reply
        • Miguel Ângelo Santos Pereira / MrGeneral:

          BTW the given hostname didn’t resolv to an IP, I’ll wait a few hours.

          October 27, 2011 @ 2:10 am | Reply
        • Ricky:

          remove the hyphen between vm and your 4-digit in your given hostname.

          October 27, 2011 @ 2:28 am | Reply
        • Miguel Ângelo Santos Pereira / MrGeneral:

          You have been allocated the following hostname/IP address:

          vm1191.virtual.kwdservices.com

          There’s no hyphen, perhaps I’m having some DNS Caching issues, I’ll wait a few more hours, I’m awaiting them to delete my instance.

          October 27, 2011 @ 2:33 am | Reply
    • Ricky:

      I am able to login and just created a VM.

      Owner XXXXXXXX
      Created on 26/10/2011 19:00
      Last modified 26/10/2011 19:02
      Status Running
      Primary node xxxxx.cluster1.k-srv.info
      Secondary node
      Operating System Centos6 (image)
      Autostart
      VNC xxxx.cluster1.k-srv.info::abcde

      October 27, 2011 @ 2:03 am | Reply
      • earl:

        How did you get the IP to be assigned to your VM?

        October 27, 2011 @ 2:38 am | Reply
        • Ricky:

          vmXXXX.virtual.kwdservices.com

          This will resolve to your IP.

          October 27, 2011 @ 2:44 am | Reply
        • Miguel Ângelo Santos Pereira / MrGeneral:

          Doesn’t resolve mine :-P

          October 27, 2011 @ 2:47 am | Reply
        • Ricky:

          try “nslookup -q=a vm11xx.virtual.kwdservices.com”
          in your command prompt/terminal

          vm11xx.virtual.kwdservices.com <= yours
          Address: 199.48.xx.xx

          October 27, 2011 @ 2:57 am | Reply
        • Miguel Ângelo Santos Pereira / MrGeneral:

          I know Ricky, but its not resolving here.
          I already tried from other machines and it worked, I’m sorting out some issues directly with Alex. He has been helping me a lot. :-)

          October 27, 2011 @ 3:00 am | Reply
      • earl:

        Ok it does seem to assign an IP to the VM but it just does not show it under Ganeti, had to ping the hostname to get VM’s IP Address.. Thanks Ricky!!

        October 27, 2011 @ 2:51 am | Reply
  18. Ricky:

    CPUINFO

    [root@null ~]# cat /proc/cpuinfo
    processor       : 0
    vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
    cpu family      : 6
    model           : 2
    model name      : QEMU Virtual CPU version 0.12.5
    stepping        : 3
    cpu MHz         : 1595.862
    cache size      : 4096 KB
    fdiv_bug        : no
    hlt_bug         : no
    f00f_bug        : no
    coma_bug        : no
    fpu             : yes
    fpu_exception   : yes
    cpuid level     : 4
    wp              : yes
    flags           : fpu de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx lm unfair_spinlock pni cx16 hypervisor lahf_lm
    bogomips        : 3191.72
    clflush size    : 64
    cache_alignment : 64
    address sizes   : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
    power management:
    
    processor       : 1
    vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
    cpu family      : 6
    model           : 2
    model name      : QEMU Virtual CPU version 0.12.5
    stepping        : 3
    cpu MHz         : 1595.862
    cache size      : 4096 KB
    fdiv_bug        : no
    hlt_bug         : no
    f00f_bug        : no
    coma_bug        : no
    fpu             : yes
    fpu_exception   : yes
    cpuid level     : 4
    wp              : yes
    flags           : fpu de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx lm unfair_spinlock pni cx16 hypervisor lahf_lm
    bogomips        : 3191.72
    clflush size    : 64
    cache_alignment : 64
    address sizes   : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
    power management:
    
    October 27, 2011 @ 2:08 am | Reply
    • Ricky:

      Memory/Disk

      [root@null ~]# free -m
                   total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
      Mem:           243         83        159          0          4         30
      -/+ buffers/cache:         48        195
      Swap:          258          0        258
      [root@null ~]# df -h
      Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
      /dev/vda3             9.5G  646M  8.4G   7% /
      tmpfs                 122M     0  122M   0% /dev/shm
      /dev/vda1              99M   22M   73M  23% /boot
      
      October 27, 2011 @ 2:10 am | Reply
    • Miguel Ângelo Santos Pereira / MrGeneral:

      Run some more tests, dd and such :-P

      October 27, 2011 @ 2:10 am | Reply
    • Ricky:

      dd (fdatasync)

      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, 45.7717 s, 23.5 MB/s
      
      October 27, 2011 @ 2:11 am | Reply
    • Miguel Ângelo Santos Pereira / MrGeneral:

      That’s a very low result, let’s hope it will get better :-)

      October 27, 2011 @ 2:12 am | Reply
      • Ricky:

        I have seen lower. This one is not very low, but below average.
        Sometimes the seek time hinders the performance more because not all application require sequential read/write continuously.

        However I am feeling that yum installation of package is a little bit choppy comparing to other vps of mine.

        October 27, 2011 @ 2:27 am | Reply
  19. Ricky:

    dd (dsync)

    dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=512 oflag=dsync
    512+0 records in
    512+0 records out
    33554432 bytes (34 MB) copied, 54.0165 s, 621 kB/s
    
    October 27, 2011 @ 2:13 am | Reply
    • Ricky:

      ioping / cachefly coming, not going for a benchmark for the moment.

      October 27, 2011 @ 2:15 am | Reply
      • Ricky:

        ioping

        --- / (ext4 /dev/vda3) ioping statistics ---
        50 requests completed in 49019.4 ms, 5430 iops, 21.2 mb/s
        min/avg/max/mdev = 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.0 ms
        

        That will do for now. No CPU Benchmark at the moment.

        October 27, 2011 @ 2:21 am | Reply
    • Ricky:

      Cachefly

      [root@null ~]# wget -O /dev/null http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
      --2011-10-26 22:17:22--  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: ?dev/null?
      
      100%[======================================>] 104,857,600 6.63M/s   in 14s     
      
      2011-10-26 22:17:37 (7.04 MB/s) - ?dev/null滻aved [104857600/104857600]
      
      October 27, 2011 @ 2:18 am | Reply
    • Miguel Ângelo Santos Pereira / MrGeneral:

      Thanks for the tests Ricky :-)

      October 27, 2011 @ 2:32 am | Reply
  20. I wonder how much bandwidth CacheFly spends on its test files as a result of VPS offers on here, haha.

    October 27, 2011 @ 2:59 am | Reply
    • ab:

      One cachefly customer I know of pushes more bandwidth in a single month than the testfiles do in a year…

      October 27, 2011 @ 3:09 am | Reply
  21. Daniel:

    Signed up, Not setup as yet been waiting for some time, and no reply to support ticket

    October 28, 2011 @ 3:56 pm | Reply
    • earl:

      Took about 4 hours to get mine set-up..maybe it went to your spam box?

      October 28, 2011 @ 11:20 pm | Reply
    • We ran out of IP space, and had to wait for our upstream to provision more. Orders should be back to the 4-6 hour max setup time.

      Daniel: You’ve been provisioned. Please let me know if you haven’t gotten the ticket email.

      October 29, 2011 @ 1:43 am | Reply
  22. Thomas:

    Showing 0 ips on the order form are there going to be any more to try this out?

    October 31, 2011 @ 7:16 am | Reply
  23. Steve0:

    Got it, works pretty good. Don’t see link to aup, any info?

    November 3, 2011 @ 6:45 pm | Reply
    • Hey Steve,

      It’s here: http://kwdservices.com/ganeti/tos.txt

      But for brevity, I’ll include it below as well :)

      Don't do anything blatantly illegal.
      No portscans
      No warez
      No child porn
      No DCC bots
      2 DMCA strikes per customer
      
      Thanks.
      
      November 5, 2011 @ 12:37 am | Reply
      • May want to consider updating that to 2 valid DMCA strikes or something along those lines. I know some providers get dozens if not hundreds of DMCA complaints that are either invalid or just sent out of spite.

        We went around this with a forum that we host a few months back that centered on php coding and tutorials and how the suggested and submitted code was submitted. Even Google blew off the guy making the complaint since the DMCAs were not formatted correctly. (And a bunch of BS too if you ask me.)

        November 5, 2011 @ 1:03 am | Reply
      • Thomas:

        You should maybe have legal take a look into that tos to cover your ass better, my suggestion would be to add somthing like:

        Without limiting other remedies, we may limit, suspend, or terminate our service and user accounts, prohibit access to our website, delay or remove hosted content, and take technical and legal steps to keep users off the sites if we think that they are creating problems, possible legal liabilities, or acting inconsistently with the letter or spirit of our policies. We also reserve the right to cancel unconfirmed accounts or accounts that have been inactive for a long time.

        November 5, 2011 @ 10:39 pm | Reply
      • Thanks for the suggestions, guys. :)

        November 6, 2011 @ 6:31 pm | Reply
  24. hmmmm…

    It is with great sadness that I, Chief Executive Officer of KWD Services, Inc., inform you that we have decided to stop offering Ganeti VPS services. Unfortunately, Ganeti had too many bugs to be used in a live environment, and despite the mass amount of advertising we published saying that this was a beta service, we were receiving too many complaints from users who were getting upset about bugs that were out of our control. We tried to work with their development team to resolve the bugs, but many of them were long-term issues that will take several months to resolve.

    We would much rather provide an excellent product to our clients without any glitches, than one that is sub-par, so we feel that it is in everyone’s best interest to proceed with terminating the Ganeti VPS services. Please note that we are still offering regular VPS services running on Parallels’s Virtuozzo (NOT to be confused with OpenVZ). Please contact sales if you are interested.

    All services will terminate on the 19th of December. Please be sure to back up your data prior to that date.

    Thank you, and our sincere apologies for the inconvenience. It has been a pleasure working with you, and we hope that we can see you again in the future!


    Karl Stallknecht –
    Chief Executive Officer

    December 6, 2011 @ 10:46 pm | Reply
    • Thanks for posting the email. I wonder why they did not go with tried & tested SolusVM but went with a beta quality product that no one else is using. Surely that would be cheaper than Virtuozzo as well.

      December 8, 2011 @ 3:35 am | Reply
      • This entire launch was intended as a beta project. We were not trying to go with the norm; we were trying to stand out with a different product than everyone else. We are sorry it did not turn out as intended.

        Also, just to be clear, our company is not shutting down; we simply ended the Ganeti services. We are a successful company and have been running debt free since our launch in 2004. Our shared web hosting, Virtuozzo VPS, and dedicated server lines have proved flawless…hence why I stated in that email that Daniel quoted that we are still offering our Virtuozzo line.

        Like I said in the beginning, this project was to try out a new technology, but we proved that that technology is not ready for prime-time yet. However, it does have quite a bit of potential.

        Thank you to all who contributed and we wish you the best.

        December 24, 2011 @ 12:25 am | Reply
        • “Login Details Incorrect. Please try again.”

          Why delete my account then? very suspicious

          December 24, 2011 @ 10:14 am | Reply
  25. First of all, the account was set to inactive, it wasn’t deleted. Secondly, how is that suspicious? The people who subscribed to the Ganeti service are no longer clients; we need to mark these people as inactive clients.

    December 24, 2011 @ 4:51 pm | Reply

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