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Review - Fiber Volt 256 MB OpenVZ Monthly

Fiber Volt are a newcomer to the community but their representatives have shown themselves to be polite and helpful, leading me to do this review. After seeing the offers they posted on LET I am very hopeful and interested in their results so let’s get to it!

Disclaimer:

I am in no way affiliated with Fiber Volt. This review was performed on a trial VPS so take results with a grain of salt.

Basics:

The VPS plan is based in Chicago, USA and comes with 256 MB of RAM (512 MB burst), 150 GB of bandwidth (monthly) and 30 GB of disk space. OpenVZ plans are managed by a nicely themed yet standard SolusVM install (unfortunately without SSL) and include commonly used templates such as CentOS (4, 5 and 6), Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo and SUSE (all in 32 and 64 bit variants). Fiber Volt have a fairly standard AUP which allows IRC and disallows torrenting. Finally, a stand out feature of Fiber Volt is their website. A lot of thought seems to have been put into creating a clean and well laid out site and this shows commitment from the company, a very important asset to have as a hosting company.

Support:

Setup was fairly fast after requesting the trial and the server was setup within 24 hours. The welcome emails contained all information necessary to get up and running with the VPS but unfortunately contained the account password and VPS passwords (something I consider a security risk). Also, a ticket requesting a new template was submitted in WHMCS to test response time. The ticket was updated and the task completed without a hitch in little over 6 minutes.

Setup:

Once my VPS was setup I proceeded to install Debian 6 as normal (installing nothing but the SSH server). After it was installed I used Minstall to clean out any unneeded packages and to set up SSH login protection. The setup went without a hitch!

Basic Information:

/proc/cpuinfo showed a processor matching the plan description (two cores):

root@fv:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 42
model name      :           Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E31230 @ 3.20GHz
stepping        : 7
cpu MHz         : 3192.944
cache size      : 8192 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 8
core id         : 0
cpu cores       : 4
apicid          : 0
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 13
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 rdtscp lm constant_tsc ida nonstop_tsc arat pni monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt lahf_lm
bogomips        : 6385.88
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: [8]

processor       : 1
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 42
model name      :           Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E31230 @ 3.20GHz
stepping        : 7
cpu MHz         : 3192.944
cache size      : 8192 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 8
core id         : 1
cpu cores       : 4
apicid          : 2
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 13
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 rdtscp lm constant_tsc ida nonstop_tsc arat pni monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt lahf_lm
bogomips        : 6385.43
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: [8]

/proc/meminfo showed some standard results:

root@fv:~# cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:       524288 kB
MemFree:        513648 kB
Buffers:             0 kB
Cached:              0 kB
SwapCached:          0 kB
Active:              0 kB
Inactive:            0 kB
HighTotal:           0 kB
HighFree:            0 kB
LowTotal:       524288 kB
LowFree:        513648 kB
SwapTotal:           0 kB
SwapFree:            0 kB
Dirty:             780 kB
Writeback:           0 kB
AnonPages:           0 kB
Mapped:              0 kB
Slab:                0 kB
PageTables:          0 kB
NFS_Unstable:        0 kB
Bounce:              0 kB
CommitLimit:         0 kB
Committed_AS:        0 kB
VmallocTotal:        0 kB
VmallocUsed:         0 kB
VmallocChunk:        0 kB
HugePages_Total:     0
HugePages_Free:      0
HugePages_Rsvd:      0
Hugepagesize:     2048 kB

Inode allocation was excellent:

root@fv:~# df -i
Filesystem            Inodes   IUsed   IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/simfs           15728640   12749 15715891    1% /
tmpfs                  65536       3   65533    1% /lib/init/rw
tmpfs                  65536       1   65535    1% /dev/shm

vmstat showed that the system was under little load:

root@fv:~# vmstat
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu----
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id wa
 1  0      0 513584      0      0    0    0     5  1680    0 29303  0  0 100  0

Tests:

Each test was run three times and the middle ranked test was picked.

The cachefly test showed some awesome speeds, this server delivers what’s advertised!

root@fv:~# wget -O /dev/null http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
--2012-06-26 20:09:11--  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 76.3M/s   in 1.3s    

2012-06-26 20:09:12 (76.3 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]

Ping Tests (No IPv6 Unfortunately):

root@fv:~# ping -c 3 google.com
PING google.com (74.125.225.40) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from ord08s06-in-f8.1e100.net (74.125.225.40): icmp_req=1 ttl=53 time=1.92 ms
64 bytes from ord08s06-in-f8.1e100.net (74.125.225.40): icmp_req=2 ttl=53 time=2.16 ms
64 bytes from ord08s06-in-f8.1e100.net (74.125.225.40): icmp_req=3 ttl=53 time=1.85 ms

--- google.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2000ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 1.856/1.981/2.160/0.139 ms

root@fv:~# ping6 -c 3 ipv6.google.com
socket: Address family not supported by protocol

Disk IO was average:

root@fv:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync; rm test
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 23.4776 s, 45.7 MB/s

Update: Fiber Volt have informed me that there have been upgrades to their IO results and after testing the following great results were shown:

root@fv:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync; rm test
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 4.78863 s, 224 MB/s

IOPing showed average results (they could be better):

root@fv:~/ioping-0.6# ./ioping -c 10 .
4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=1 time=0.1 ms
4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=2 time=0.2 ms
4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=3 time=0.2 ms
4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=4 time=11.6 ms
4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=5 time=15.1 ms
4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=6 time=19.6 ms
4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=7 time=0.2 ms
4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=8 time=5.0 ms
4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=9 time=0.2 ms
4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=10 time=22.2 ms

--- . (simfs /dev/simfs) ioping statistics ---
10 requests completed in 9087.4 ms, 135 iops, 0.5 mb/s
min/avg/max/mdev = 0.1/7.4/22.2/8.4 ms

Geekbench results were good: (Online View)

root@fv:~/dist/Geekbench21-Linux# ./geekbench_x86_32
Geekbench 2.1.13 : http://www.primatelabs.ca/geekbench/

System Information
  Platform:                  Linux x86 (32-bit)
  Compiler:                  GCC 4.1.2 20070925 (Red Hat 4.1.2-33)
  Operating System:          Linux 2.6.32-274.18.1.el5.028stab098.1 i686
  Model:                     Linux PC (Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E31230 @ 3.20GHz)
  Motherboard:               Unknown Motherboard
  Processor:                 Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E31230 @ 3.20GHz
  Processor ID:              GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 42 Stepping 7
  Logical Processors:        2
  Physical Processors:       1
  Processor Frequency:       3.19 GHz
  L1 Instruction Cache:      0.00 B
  L1 Data Cache:             0.00 B
  L2 Cache:                  256 KB
  L3 Cache:                  0.00 B
  Bus Frequency:             0.00 Hz
  Memory:                    15.6 GB
  Memory Type:               N/A
  SIMD:                      1
  BIOS:                      N/A
  Processor Model:                     Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E31230 @ 3.20GHz
  Processor Cores:           2

Integer
  Blowfish
    single-threaded scalar    1956 |||||||
    multi-threaded scalar     4149 ||||||||||||||||
  Text Compress
    single-threaded scalar    2279 |||||||||
    multi-threaded scalar     5620 ||||||||||||||||||||||
  Text Decompress
    single-threaded scalar    3071 ||||||||||||
    multi-threaded scalar     6250 |||||||||||||||||||||||||
  Image Compress
    single-threaded scalar    1830 |||||||
    multi-threaded scalar     3282 |||||||||||||
  Image Decompress
    single-threaded scalar    1651 ||||||
    multi-threaded scalar     3165 ||||||||||||
  Lua
    single-threaded scalar    2808 |||||||||||
    multi-threaded scalar     5577 ||||||||||||||||||||||

Floating Point
  Mandelbrot
    single-threaded scalar    2717 ||||||||||
    multi-threaded scalar     5372 |||||||||||||||||||||
  Dot Product
    single-threaded scalar    3854 |||||||||||||||
    multi-threaded scalar     7713 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
    single-threaded vector    4156 ||||||||||||||||
    multi-threaded vector     8965 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
  LU Decomposition
    single-threaded scalar    2226 ||||||||
    multi-threaded scalar     2748 ||||||||||
  Primality Test
    single-threaded scalar    3920 |||||||||||||||
    multi-threaded scalar     6096 ||||||||||||||||||||||||
  Sharpen Image
    single-threaded scalar    7082 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
    multi-threaded scalar    13743 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
  Blur Image
    single-threaded scalar    6165 ||||||||||||||||||||||||
    multi-threaded scalar    12305 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Memory
  Read Sequential
    single-threaded scalar    5892 |||||||||||||||||||||||
  Write Sequential
    single-threaded scalar    8641 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
  Stdlib Allocate
    single-threaded scalar    3234 ||||||||||||
  Stdlib Write
    single-threaded scalar    7147 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
  Stdlib Copy
    single-threaded scalar   13575 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Stream
  Stream Copy
    single-threaded scalar    5174 ||||||||||||||||||||
    single-threaded vector    7627 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
  Stream Scale
    single-threaded scalar    5267 |||||||||||||||||||||
    single-threaded vector    7263 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
  Stream Add
    single-threaded scalar    5369 |||||||||||||||||||||
    single-threaded vector    6649 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
  Stream Triad
    single-threaded scalar    5591 ||||||||||||||||||||||
    single-threaded vector    4926 |||||||||||||||||||

Integer Score:                3469 |||||||||||||
Floating Point Score:         6218 ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Memory Score:                 7697 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stream Score:                 5983 |||||||||||||||||||||||

Overall Geekbench Score:      5528 ||||||||||||||||||||||

UNIX Bench results were also good:

========================================================================
   BYTE UNIX Benchmarks (Version 5.1.3)

   System: fv: GNU/Linux
   OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.32-274.18.1.el5.028stab098.1 -- #1 SMP Sat Feb 11 15:30:41 MSK 2012
   Machine: i686 (unknown)
   Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="ANSI_X3.4-1968", collate="ANSI_X3.4-1968")
   CPU 0: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E31230 @ 3.20GHz (6385.9 bogomips)
          Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT, SYSCALL/SYSRET, Intel virtualization
   CPU 1: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E31230 @ 3.20GHz (6385.4 bogomips)
          Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT, SYSCALL/SYSRET, Intel virtualization
   20:20:07 up 16 min,  1 user,  load average: 0.09, 0.15, 0.09; runlevel 2

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Tue Jun 26 2012 20:20:07 - 20:48:21
2 CPUs in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests

Dhrystone 2 using register variables       20346894.6 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone                     3280.6 MWIPS (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput                               6044.8 lps   (29.5 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks        661387.1 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks          181281.4 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks       1773328.4 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput                             1162584.4 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching                 311773.9 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation                              17677.7 lps   (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                   5994.8 lpm   (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                   1455.0 lpm   (60.0 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead                         878768.8 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)

System Benchmarks Index Values               BASELINE       RESULT    INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables         116700.0   20346894.6   1743.5
Double-Precision Whetstone                       55.0       3280.6    596.5
Execl Throughput                                 43.0       6044.8   1405.8
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks          3960.0     661387.1   1670.2
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks            1655.0     181281.4   1095.4
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks          5800.0    1773328.4   3057.5
Pipe Throughput                               12440.0    1162584.4    934.6
Pipe-based Context Switching                   4000.0     311773.9    779.4
Process Creation                                126.0      17677.7   1403.0
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                     42.4       5994.8   1413.9
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                      6.0       1455.0   2425.1
System Call Overhead                          15000.0     878768.8    585.8
                                                                   ========
System Benchmarks Index Score                                        1265.0

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Tue Jun 26 2012 20:48:21 - 21:16:37
2 CPUs in system; running 2 parallel copies of tests

Dhrystone 2 using register variables       39537188.4 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone                     6282.8 MWIPS (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput                              11093.5 lps   (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks        447117.3 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks          129986.7 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks       1315790.9 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput                             2177550.0 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching                 649682.5 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation                              33013.0 lps   (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                  12949.9 lpm   (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                   1592.9 lpm   (60.1 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead                        1553477.6 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)

System Benchmarks Index Values               BASELINE       RESULT    INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables         116700.0   39537188.4   3387.9
Double-Precision Whetstone                       55.0       6282.8   1142.3
Execl Throughput                                 43.0      11093.5   2579.9
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks          3960.0     447117.3   1129.1
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks            1655.0     129986.7    785.4
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks          5800.0    1315790.9   2268.6
Pipe Throughput                               12440.0    2177550.0   1750.4
Pipe-based Context Switching                   4000.0     649682.5   1624.2
Process Creation                                126.0      33013.0   2620.1
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                     42.4      12949.9   3054.2
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                      6.0       1592.9   2654.9
System Call Overhead                          15000.0    1553477.6   1035.7
                                                                   ========
System Benchmarks Index Score                                        1812.4

Conclusion:

In conclusion I believe that Fiber Volt is a good host with decent performance with the potential to improve performance wise. The pricing is above average but judging on my experience with support staff the added cost is worth it due to their excellent response times and well done panel and add-ons such as the iPhone app (which looks like it could be very useful!)


Please give Fiber Volt a try and report on findings! Thanks for reading, tips and suggestions are appreciated!
Review written by maxexcloo (contact), results may not be accurate as providers change over time.

Frank

36 Comments

  1. This is Max’s first published review on LowEndBox, please be constructive in your feedback and go easy on him.

    Let Max know what extra information you would like to see in a review, feedback on structure and over time those can be worked in to the reviews. Network test from multiple global points is coming, we are currently working on this system to automate it ;)

    June 28, 2012 @ 7:37 pm | Reply
    • From a provider point of view I think these post (reviews) are very important because focus on the quality and not only on the economics. Thank you!

      June 28, 2012 @ 7:53 pm | Reply
      • Gary:

        It’s interesting, but might not be representative of everyone’s experience, due to different loads on different nodes.

        Of course, a good provider will manage it and spread containers around so that each node has decent performance, but not all will. It’d be pretty straightforward for a provider to put a test VPS on an underused node so that you get a better impression than regular users might.

        We all like benchmarks though, so keep it up. :)

        June 28, 2012 @ 8:34 pm | Reply
        • But the discussion that the post generate can help share experience with the providers. :)

          June 28, 2012 @ 8:43 pm | Reply
        • Gary:

          Yep. I’m all for that.

          June 28, 2012 @ 8:51 pm | Reply
    • Awesome network speed there.
      Thanks for the review, Max.
      Is it (review) going to be regular content for LEB?

      June 29, 2012 @ 2:28 am | Reply
  2. snape:

    I wouldn’t consider 29K context switches per second “under little load”, personally. But maybe that’s just me.

    June 28, 2012 @ 8:50 pm | Reply
  3. Nice to see a review, and awesome Cachefly speed!

    June 28, 2012 @ 10:05 pm | Reply
  4. Surprised to see reviews on LEB. Should there not be a boundary between LET/LEB? because we already see reviews in LET or 96mb.com etc

    Just my opinion

    June 29, 2012 @ 4:32 am | Reply
    • zar:

      I think they’re trying to dilute the advertisement-like feel on LEB. Its a step in the right direction. Overlaps between LET/LEB already exist (LET has an offers board).

      June 29, 2012 @ 6:15 am | Reply
  5. alen:

    any offer ?

    June 29, 2012 @ 6:18 am | Reply
  6. Victor - FiberVolt:

    Hello all,

    We’re well aware of the IO issue on this node, and are working on fixing it ASAP. We’ve ordered new hard drives and RAID controller which are on their way as we speak. Once that’s installed, there should be a significant improvement in performance. We apologize for the inconvenience and will rectify this issue ASAP.

    Regards,
    Vic

    June 29, 2012 @ 9:40 am | Reply
    • fer:

      What is regular IO on other nodes?

      June 29, 2012 @ 10:06 am | Reply
      • Victor - FiberVolt:

        It varies between nodes, but we always strive to maintain it above 60-70s.

        June 30, 2012 @ 3:43 am | Reply
    • Thanks for working on the issue!

      June 29, 2012 @ 10:13 am | Reply
  7. Cody:

    I signed up this afternoon with these guys using their current $7/month for 512MB OpenVZ promotion. So far I’m really happy with the performance of the VPS (except some slow IOping here and there), and on top of that their website + SolusVM + WHMCS integration is fantastic and the support is VERY quick and friendly. I’ve posted some of my performance numbers below just for comparison. Seems great so far!

    [root@vps ioping-0.6]# df -i
    Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on
    /dev/simfs 52428800 22928 52405872 1% /
    none 131072 95 130977 1% /dev

    [root@vps ioping-0.6]# vmstat
    procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- -----cpu-----
    r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa st
    1 0 0 1003940 0 0 0 0 0 25 0 345 4 4 92 0 0

    [root@vps ioping-0.6]# wget -O /dev/null http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test--2012-06-30 08:05:21-- 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 70.3M/s in 1.4s

    2012-06-30 08:05:23 (70.3 MB/s) - “/dev/null” saved [104857600/104857600]

    [root@vps ~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync; rm test
    16384+0 records in
    16384+0 records out
    1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 24.1213 s, 44.5 MB/s

    This was faster earlier, so not sure what’s up with this..

    [root@vps ioping-0.6]# ./ioping -c 10 .
    4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=1 time=0.1 ms
    4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=2 time=0.2 ms
    4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=3 time=8.2 ms
    4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=4 time=0.2 ms
    4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=5 time=0.1 ms
    4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=6 time=13.0 ms
    4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=7 time=23.1 ms
    4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=8 time=0.3 ms
    4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=9 time=0.2 ms
    4096 bytes from . (simfs /dev/simfs): request=10 time=11.5 ms

    --- . (simfs /dev/simfs) ioping statistics ---
    10 requests completed in 9066.2 ms, 176 iops, 0.7 mb/s
    min/avg/max/mdev = 0.1/5.7/23.1/7.6 ms

    June 30, 2012 @ 4:08 am | Reply
    • Victor - FiberVolt:

      Hopefully the new raid controllers and hard drives arrive soon. We can’t wait to boost the performance of that node. :)

      June 30, 2012 @ 4:12 am | Reply
      • Cody:

        Any idea when that might be? (Next few days, next week, in the next month)?

        July 1, 2012 @ 3:50 pm | Reply
    • Thanks for the stats, hopefully Fiber Volt treat you well!

      June 30, 2012 @ 7:02 am | Reply
  8. One of my colleague is running his blog with these guy and performance is Good. i won’t say it great but its just good, value for money.

    June 30, 2012 @ 12:14 pm | Reply
  9. Thanks for the feedback guys. If you issues please let us know, we’re always looking to improve.

    June 30, 2012 @ 7:36 pm | Reply
  10. What is even better now – is real users actually commenting on real experience with these Hosts.
    EVERYBODY and his dog has basically the same specs these days – more important is:
    1. who is their upline? (Most are 3rd level resellers)
    2. what shows up on owner names on google. (Hint ad “beware” in search terms.
    3. Finally, how long in business?

    Just as in the real world, 3 years is the breakpoint. Almost 90% of “sub-hosts” are gone in under ONE year. 60% in 2, 50% end of 3.

    Cheers!

    July 6, 2012 @ 11:05 pm | Reply
    • WOOPS! Left out “of the remainder” – then it makes sense numbers-wise :-)

      July 6, 2012 @ 11:07 pm | Reply
  11. Hello all,

    Just an update to the original post. We’ve finally upgraded all our Chicago based nodes’ hard drives setup, and are now on 4x1TB HW Raid 10. This has improved our I/O significantly, and it rose from the previous ~40s to ~210+.

    Here’s a new test on the node.

    [root@webserver ~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync; rm test
    16384+0 records in
    16384+0 records out
    1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 5.11194 s, 210 MB/s
    
    July 27, 2012 @ 6:03 am | Reply
    • Cody:

      I signed up for the $7/month 512MB plan in Chicago, and can confirm that this has drastically improved performance, I’m seeing between 216-247 MB/s on DD tests now. Awesome!

      July 27, 2012 @ 11:53 am | Reply
  12. David:

    I signed up for the annual 128 Volt account last year with the discount code and had no issues until they dropped my VPS. It was a small hobby VPS and no TOS violations. It appears my server information was changed (physical move?) without me being notified.

    I contacted support and they sent me out an email with new server information, slow response, and the new info didn’t work. Now my IP is attached to someone else’s VPS and the control panel shows no active servers. Frustrated, will not be renewing my subscription and have since moved on to another host. Just a heads up.

    May 13, 2013 @ 4:13 pm | Reply
  13. Scott Williams:

    I’ve been using them for about a year. When it’s up the performance has been positive, but they’ve had a lot of downtime recently. As I speak, their Chicago Node has been down for 3 days and despite submitting a ticket, I haven’t heard a word from them. Serverbear now puts them at 81.68% uptime. Ouch! Far from the 99.9% they advertise on their homepage. When they are up the performance is great, but the downtime and lack of communication are very disappointing. At this point, I wouldn’t recommend them for a server where you care about uptime or prompt support, sadly.

    June 11, 2013 @ 4:11 am | Reply
  14. Scott Williams:

    Here’s an example of the support you get from these guys. Four days of downtime and zero communication about it. The downtime is bad, but the complete lack of communication with customers means they just don’t care about their service anymore:

    http://i.imgur.com/v9U1roh.png

    June 12, 2013 @ 4:09 pm | Reply
  15. Ryan Getz:

    I definitely agree with Scott regarding the support. I signed up for a VPS back in 2011. Recently I noticed my VPS was down and removed from my account. I’ve now been waiting 6 days for an answer as to why my VPS appears to have been deleted when still under prepaid contract with NO communication at the time of deletion and zero response to my ticket after 6 days. My ticket is still open so I’m still waiting for a reply.

    It is pretty clear that they don’t care about their customers or service. Luckily the VPS that appears to have been deleted was of low importance and I had backups. After this experience I cannot imagine using them for anything. I’ve had great experience with many other LEB providers. I was lucky that my server was rarely used and the impact was minimal… but not responding to such an issue in a reasonable time frame is a major red flag. Needless to say I’m moving on and won’t be returning. My VPS was also in Chicago.

    my ticket: http://i.imgur.com/RDl71q8.png

    June 14, 2013 @ 10:54 pm | Reply
    • digitallife:

      I hope you pulled your stuff from your servers because it seems the company just went bellyup. Do you have a new company you are using? I am downloading all of my files as we speak because their domain expired but the server is still active somehow.

      June 20, 2013 @ 7:00 pm | Reply
  16. digitallife:

    The company just went bellyup it seems. I’ve found pretty much everyone associated with this company and not one of them has deemed its customers worthy of a response via twitter, email, support panel, google plus…or otherwise. Domain expired two days ago as well. This will haunt these guys in the future, you cannot do your customers this badly and think you will somehow relaunch under a new business name and have us not expose them. Sorry but this has been a nightmare company to use and I will personally keep an eye out for new hosting start ups associated with any of these guys…I will make sure their new potential customers are well aware of their track history.

    June 20, 2013 @ 6:59 pm | Reply
    • Scott Williams:

      It looks like “Adam Gammell” the former director is now running “8Bytes” – http://8bytes.ie/ and apparently does iOS development for HubSpot. It looks like he’s gotten out of the hosting game. Even has a linked to the fibervolt webpage (which has been defunct for a while). They went after one of my friends recently with an invoice for services while their servers were down the whole time. It’s pretty amazing. I filed a complaint against them through PayPal, I hope my friend does the same.

      The other owner, “Alex Bateman” – I haven’t been able to find anything he’s done since, but he also is associated with “Depeche Hosting”, whose website is also (unsurprisingly) down.

      I’m not gonna bother looking up Victor or the others. They probably had less to do with it than the “directors”. I’ve moved all my business to RackSpace since and it’s been a dream in comparison.

      May 8, 2014 @ 10:06 pm | Reply
  17. Scott Williams:

    If the company hasn’t gone bellyup yet, we should consider a class action against these guys. They have not delivered the promised 99.9% by far and we paid for support we never received. I’m not a litiguous person at all but the complete lack of communication on their end says that that’s probably the only way to get their attention. If I don’t hear from them soon, they may be hearing from my lawyer.

    July 5, 2013 @ 5:25 pm | Reply

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