Matt with SSDNodes sent in an offer to celebrate 6 years in business and the launch of their new product line which we haven’t seen around here much: Virtuozzo 7 containers based on the 3.10.0 kernel. These are based out of their Montreal, CA location.
They had this to say:
SSD Nodes is a nimble cloud for your big ideas, with industry-best prices and truly personal support. We’re designed for developers, startups, and small businesses seeking a secure, scalable, and high-performance hosting platform for turning their ideas into creations.
To celebrate our 6-year anniversary, we’re launching a sale through the rest of June on new servers running the public preview of our new enterprise-grade Virtuozzo 7 platform, which comes with full Docker support and a 3.10.0 kernel, plus built-in firewall support and more features coming soon, like backups, snapshots, and block storage.
We’re regarded as industry leaders in hybrid computing strategies and solutions, and provide a massive dynamic platform that allows our customers to quickly innovate and deploy applications on a global scale. Our world-class datacenters have multiple layers of physical and operational security to ensure the safety and integrity of every customer’s data. Our goal is to be your home for high-value, flexible, and scalable cloud computing to enable growth.
SSDNodes operates under Strasmore, Inc which is a registered corporation in Delaware with file / registration number 5098270.
The hostnodes are running Intel Xeon E5v3/v4, 128GB – 256GB of ECC RAM, along with 4 to 8 enterprise SSDs configured in hardware RAID10. They are connected to a 1 or 10Gbps ports. They claim to have achieved 1GB/s writes and 200K+ IOPS on their platform.
They offer PayPal, Credit Card, and Bitcoin as payment methods. Before ordering, please ensure you read their terms and legal documents, which are available here.
Offers:
LowEndBox Medium
– 8GB RAM
– 40GB SSD
– 4x Intel E5 Cores
– 4TB Transfer
– 1x IPv4
– Virtuozzo 7
– $65.99/year
– [Order Now]
————-
LowEndBox Small
– 4GB RAM
– 20GB SSD
– 2x Intel E5 Cores
– 2TB Transfer
– 1x IPv4
– Virtuozzo 7
– $48.00/year
– [Order Now]
————-
LowEndBox Mini
– 2GB RAM
– 10GB SSD
– 1x Intel E5 Core
– 1TB Transfer
– 1x IPv4
– Virtuozzo 7
– $40.00/year
– [Order Now]
————-
Locations & Test Information
Montreal, Canada (OVH)
Test IPv4: 167.114.120.200
Test file: http://167.114.120.200/test500.zip
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I started using SSDNodes in 2015 and since than I had zero issues. The reason I was looking for a new VPS provider was the last had some bad software updates to their servers that made me stay awake for almost 3 days. I bought the 8GB RAM offer on LowEndBox and to be on the safe side I bought another plan and still ended up paying less than previous provider.
Glad to have you with us! Sorry to hear about the software updates issue with your other provider, that’s no fun.
Thanks for the excellent support Matt!
I started using SSDNodes about a month ago. I bought the “LowEndBox Medium” as the above. Preliminary review.
The Pros:
Installation is fast. SSDNodes apparently has that automated using LXC/Virtuozzo 7 so that once you sign up and pay and select the OS image for the container, the installation is a snap. Reinstall is also fast: it becomes a cron job that is scheduled. I have done serveral reinstalls for reasons I will get into in a minute.
The sysbench of the VPS is good – good processing speed for the 4-core container. I don’t have a copy of the results handy. I also tested disk and I/O and they are also impressive. As with virtualized containers in general, the physical server and I/O capacity can be over-subscribed and can be impacted by the types of uses it is being put to by other VPS subscribers. The limited experience has shown good results. The SSD with cache performs like a rocket for repeated tasks. This can be observed for tasks that are repeated within the refresh window of the server: if the script or server operation is loaded into memory, it zooms. That is a very good indicator for use as a web server, game platform, and other things that load images or other static or often used dynamic content, parts of which can be cached or retained in RAM, or virtual cache. The SSD speed as tested by sysbench, ie. testing that would exhaust RAM and virtual cache memory, is not spectacular but is naturally better than conventional hard disk. The throughput was lower than I expected, however, at the price point there is no room for complaint. In fact, this is a selling point.
The SSDNodes containers are a good value and have proven reliable once up and running. Overall, one of the best deals out there in my experiences and searches.
The Cons:
My two complaints have to do with 1. access to technical tickets and 2. the SMTP port 25 is closed. Many standard CMS, routine server email operations and self-hosted email services are not supported.
I installed Centos 7 x64 container image. The image is a limited server install that takes additional installs to set up as a web server platform. I then install Virtualmin/Webmin with plans to use Cloudmin to use VPS as a cloud server platform. Multiple VPS, from multiple service providers, can be used as a cloud service platform. That can also be augmented by CDN, AWS and other cloud services. Anyway, the install of Virtualmin/Webmin runs as well as it should.
The #1. issue was that about a week after activation of the VPS, the technical support ticket was no longer made available. All requests for technical issues go to the sales department. That may be understandable because some ‘unmanaged’ low-end box subscribers can demand lots of technical help.
I submitted a ticket on only the #2 issue – SMTP port 25 is not working. My server can’t even send me alerts! as is the practice of every other VPS I have had experience including Amazon cloud services. I guess I could work around that for the server, but why should I have to? If you wish to host your own other others web hosting and they want to take advantage of CMS that includes newsletters to subscribers, out of luck unless you use a email service outside of the VPS. Again, there are many VPS’s available that leave port 25 and another SMTP email (for encrypted/secure email services) open by default. If they find abuse, such as spammers that do not comply with CAN-SPAM DKIM then they can shut down SMTP on a client basis. I have had a site reported as SPAM once because old company emails addresses were sent to that were tagged as spam by the servers. Once you are aware of that you register with the spam lists, report your credentials including DNS DKIM compliance, and you become white listed as a legitimate domain. I once set up a new VPS for a client, that had the assigned IPv4 address already black listed. That took more effort to have removed which the unmanaged server provider left up to me. SSDNodes IP address was clean, however, the service cannot, until they finally fix it as promised to allow SMTP traffic, is useless.
So that raises the question of whether my experience is acceptable for use or whether SSDNodes LEB unmanaged servers will, in the future, keep SMTP open as do many other suppliers. If you do not need to establish your own hosted email services to administer the site, set up personal and client email boxes, or for industry accepted CAN-SPAM DKIM email use such as properly subscribed/unsubscribed newsletters, then SSDNodes may be your cup of tea.
I may follow this up with a ‘hey they fixed it’ or ‘these guys refuse to fix the SMTP issue’. Otherwise, I will use SSDNodes as a server that uses legitimate low end boxes as an email relay server.
Hi Robert,
Thank you for the very detailed review, really appreciate it! I wanted to take the time to address your points:
1- When you’re logged out, you won’t be able to open a technical support ticket. But, once you’re logged in to the dashboard, you can. This is mainly because customers would open tickets without being logged in, and then we have to ask them to log in to create another tickets (since we can’t share personal account information to logged out users, for security reasons). I can see how this is confusing if you’re logged out, so I’ll make sure we put a notice on the support page that customers need to log in to access technical support.
2- I see that your port 25 has been unblocked. We’ve had some spam issues in the past, and in order to keep the service quality high (and our costs low so we can pass on the savings to you), we may block port 25 on new accounts. We detailed everything here in our knowledgebase: https://www.ssdnodes.com/manage/knowledgebase.php?action=displayarticle&id=7
I hope this helps clear things up. Please let me know if you have any questions, you can always reach out to me here as well: matt@ssdnodes.com
OVH Anti-DDoS Pro?
Yes! We include DDoS protection by default (through OVH). If you need it set permanently on your server, just open a ticket.
also possible 500gb hdd instead of the ssd
Hey Robin. Unfortunately, we only have SSDs available.
what is the biggest ssd possible ? and am i allowed to run plex host adult content legal ofc
Plex won’t work on our platform, unfortunately (we don’t support FUSE + very heavy usage). Hosting legal adult content is fine, check the TOS on our legal page if you need any clarification.
Hi Matt, do you by any chance have an LEB special with 16GB of RAM?
Hey Reb, yes absolutely. Have a look here: https://www.ssdnodes.com/containers-specials/
Thank you. Picked one up.
Hi there,
I am a sort of noob, and I’dl like to practice on Docker. I was wondering if I can upgrade from small to medium at same price even if the offer isn’t available anymore
Thanks
Hi Walter. Yes, you can upgrade at any time (with zero downtime). I can’t guarantee the same pricing in the future as this is a limited-time sale. The “Medium” plan right now is more than 50% off compared to the “Small” plan, you’d get double the specs for only $17.99 more.
Hey Walter. I picked up a medium about a month ago to start playing around with Docker as well. It’s working great so far. I’ll be honest though, the extra cost between small and medium literally doubles your resources (RAM, storage, transfer, and cores). I’d definitely just start with the medium.
Thanks Erik, Matt. I am a bit busy at the moment, I’ll do shopping in the very next days
Hey there, Does the terms and conditions allow me to run bots for my game?
Cheers, Wilson.
Hey Wilson, can you send me an email and tell me a bit more about it? matt@ssdnodes.com
Hello everyone, just a quick note that we have launched our new Containers service in Dallas! Just select “US Standard (Dallas)” on the order form.
Are we able to move from Montreal to Dallas?
Hey Peter, definitely in the future. Right now we don’t have enough capacity for both migrations and new orders.
Sadly no monthly packages. Monthly is less risky, you can always switch.
We do have the same monthly packages here, it’s just a higher amount than they allow in an LEB offer: https://www.ssdnodes.com/containers-preview/
The annual pricing is definitely more cost effective in the long run.
can I use serverpilot to deploy server on SSDNodes?
I think it’s not possible, since they are limiting you to the kernel 3.10.0
Remember it’s based on the commercial offering of OpenVZ.
when does the 8gb ram deal ends?
It already ended.
It was $66 per year previously. Now its around $84
Hence there is nothing called a ‘deal’.
Here’s new the offers:
Link: https://goo.gl/9HwRQH
[KVM / LARGE]
$7.49/month
8GB RAM
40GB SSD
4TB transfer
2-core processor
[KVM / X-LARGE]
$9.99/month
16GB RAM
160GB SSD
8TB transfer
4-core processor
What are the core specs?
Doesn’t really matter given the oversubscription rate. I’m on the X-Large plan, and have yet to see CPU Steal % drop below 60%.
Well, I liked SSDNodes but I am little irritated at them due to following. I don’t mind paying extra for anything but this company ONLY offers one static IP they do not try to is willing to sell more IP Address or additional hard drive space. What do you do when you cap out? Need more IP forget it! Not happening, Had I known this I would have never bought this package. I asked for a refund “I am past the 60 day window” FROM the first server! Again server works fine but they offer no plan for you to expand!
Be VERY careful before signing up with ssdnodes.com. I would rather take a beach vacation in North Korea than buy one of their plans. Their prices are excellent for 3-year term, okay for 1-year term, and not competitive month-to-month. This is a very unusual business model and is different from AWS, Azure, Google, Digital Ocean, Linode, etc. which all go month to month. The problem with a long sign up period is that the vendor has a perverse incentive to push prepaid customers out so they can re-sell the same bandwidth to new customers. (It is similar to a horrible slum landlord in a rent controlled neighborhood who wants to resell apartments so he turns off the heat, water, doesn’t fix, etc.) If you search the Internet, you will find many cases where people have had their accounts canceled for what perceived to be invalid causes. Also, these testimonials reveal that ssdnodes.com will regularly snoop your processes and files looking for ‘dirt’ to use against you to cancel your account, maybe a process with a name they don’t like. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! Find a reputable provider, and above all PAY MONTH TO MONTH.
I had previously tried their service in 2018 but VPS out of North America data center was very slow in Asia. I sent ping responses and all the details they asked but they were unable to make it better so I canceled the service within allowed 14 days.
Now they started VPS from Frankfurt datacenter so I wanted to give them another try due to excellent prices for 3 years so ordered a VPS. Everything looked good until when I tried to purchase additional IP as it was required to run our web based system, I was told no additional IP is sold. Why would you not disclose before placing the order? Second issue, support turn-around time was very bad and no phone number to call. 3rd problem I faced when VPS was unaccesible, I found Console was disabled in their custom version of WHMCS. Lastly, I was not able to remove my credit card info (I know WHMCS provides this but they had iyt disabled). Due to these issues, I raised ticket for cancellation leveraging the 14 days refund guarantee provided. I was shocked when I was told that 14-days refund was ONLY offered to new customers. Wow… what a trap! I paid for 3 years of service ONLY with assurance that I have 14 days refund guarantee offered. I started dispute which merchant won due to hidden terms & conditions somewhere on the site stated that 14-days refund only applies to first customer. My bad, I should have read that. But now after losing the dispute, they suspended the VPS also. So I have most almost $300 and no server. STAY AWAY!
I can confirm that SSDNodes is too good to be true.
I have used them for nearly 3 years and recently switched to a more “modest” looking Vultr plan (1/2 the cores, 1/8 the RAM). My experience is that operations that were unbearably sluggish on SSDNodes take a split second on Vultr, not even exaggerating.
For example, opening NERDTree in vim took ~300ms on SSDNodes whereas it is instant on Vultr. Backing up a database was 5s on SSDNodes whereas it takes a split second (200ms?) on Vultr.
Stay away. Or go in with the expectation that if you spend $7/mo on a server, you’re going to get at most $7/mo worth of server, and may well regret not just spending $5-10/mo for smaller, but honest, numbers on a reputable provider.