Site5 VPS vs. Futurehosting VPS? Xen vs. Virtuozzo? Which is best?

[Impulse]

Hey I notice you have Site5 at 7 and Future Hosting at 6....would you recommend Future Hosting over Site5 despite the fact FH uses Virtuozz and Site5 uses Xen?

In terms of support and uptime, I mean?

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[kpmedia]

It's not hit the site yet -- I'm still working on it -- but they've actually swapping places. In fact, the list of hosts has changed quite a bit, as we've evolved our ranking to include more criteria. Some hosts no longer make the cut (JaguarPC, Downtownhost), while others have been added (AtomicVPS, Arvixe, others)

Both Site5 and Futurehosting have excellent support speeds and give excellent support quality. (They have some of the same minor annoyances, too! "Please confirm the thing you just asked us to do." Argh!)

Virtuozzo is really just holding Futurehosting back as a host. Same for Knownhost, WiredTree, Media Temple and some others. OpenVZ and Virtuozzo were the VM method of the 2000s. But it's 2014 now, and Vz needs to go away. It's the age of Xen, KVM, Hyper-V and VMware -- better methods of virtualizing hardware. Most FH problem were Vz problems, and it was always a nuisance dealing with node abusers. At least Virtuozzo had SLM RAM isolation, and not the jimmy-rigged "shared RAM" UBC/vswap method of RAM management found in OpenVZ.

From 2007-2010, Futurehosting was probably one of the top 3 best VPS host around. But fast forward several years, and other hosts are leaving them in their dust.

The Site5 Xen VPS are almost bulletproof by comparison. In the past year, there's not been a single node issue, not even DDoS. At worst, they take it offline on some Sunday mornings for a hour or so, to upgrade hardware or software. That's a good thing, of course! (Note that Futurehosting has maintenance windows, too.)

Any other questions?

[Impulse]

Site5 is not doing well with me support wise(A bit average at best) but the uptime has been great since i signed with them so far.

I posted a review on WHt(and here, if that is okay...feel free to delete if not)
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/web-...html#post30668

Yeah several people have been telling me to try and veer towards Xen instead of Openvz/Virtuozzo.

Out of Future Hosting & Evolucix, which would you recommend then?

[kpmedia]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Impulse

I posted a review on WHt(and here, if that is okay...feel free to delete if not)
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/web-...html#post30668

Okay, and encouraged.

Quote:

Out of Future Hosting & Evolucix, which would you recommend then?

For what? To me, that matters. Futurehosting has been in business for 12+ year now, and is run by seasoned adults professionals (Vik, Jim etc). Evolucix is still a new/young host by comparison, even being around for the past 4+ years. So while Xen vs. Virtuozzo matters, so do other criteria. I like both hosts, but neither one is the best choice for everything. And sometimes neither one is suitable.

[Impulse]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kpmedia

Okay, and encouraged.



For what? To me, that matters. Futurehosting has been in business for 12+ year now, and is run by seasoned adults professionals (Vik, Jim etc). Evolucix is still a new/young host by comparison, even being around for the past 4+ years. So while Xen vs. Virtuozzo matters, so do other criteria. I like both hosts, but neither one is the best choice for everything. And sometimes neither one is suitable.

The Evolucix deal for the dedicated server that I asked about yesterday or a Hybrid Server with Future Hosting.

My Needs are:
What I'll be using it for my forum chaosreads.com which runs IPboard and does use some plugins and custom skins plus a new wordpress sister site/blog that goes with it and a new wordpress blog(Unrelated to the niche of my forum)
(If you can edit the link for me out when you read it, i just wanted to make sure you saw my site)

My Choices are
1. Future Hosting Hybrid VPS(Chicago likely will be the place I choose with them)
3 GB Ram
120 GB Storage(SSD Cache though they will be debuting Pure SSD and said i could migrate over, I imagine the disk space will be lower)
10 TB Bandwidth
Litespeed & Cpanel

$90
I used Future Hosting before in 2012 and we were not happy with them as the VPS was slow but this was 2012 and a standard VPS not a hYbrid.

2. Veerotech(The guy seems nice and he is local to my hometown of Raleigh, NC so that's a plus...I know it doesn't matter where the host is but the fact he lives a city over from my hometown is pretty cool to me)
4 GB Ram
150 Raid 10 Storage
2 Tb bandwidth

They use KVM

My only concern is that i hear they are not the Fastest when it comes to responses but not terribly slow either. They do come well recommended

3. Evolucix(This is where I am leaning towards)
Avish seems really cool and I like the fact that he has his own business and is in college(as I am) but the age does worry me as well as I am concerned of longevity but you speak highly of him/Evolucix so that is reassuring. And the fact you met with the company is really good.

I admire the fact he is transparent because saying "Hey I am in High school and/or college" perhaps may not be the most reassuring aspect for some people.

This is a Dedi and not a VPS or Hybrid

Core i7 2600
8GB RAM
120GB SSD
4TB Bandwidth
4 (or 8) IP Addresses
cPanel

for $149 a month....Price is higher than what I have been paying with past companies(Big Scoots, Wiredtree, Knownhost) but i don't mind the price if the service is worth it and besides this IS a Dedi compared to VPS i had with those companies!

Unlike the Hybrid with FH and VPS with Veerotech, this does not come with support...However, usually i don't require much besides installing litespeed, cpanel and help with the custom nameservers(aka stuff that is usually done when service begins).

So with that said.....I wouldn't need monthly maintenance after that aside from making sure the server is running as it should be(which is the responsibility of the host to make sure there is no downtime and what not) and he said any issues i may have in the future that need support that he wouldn't have any issue doing them for me, unless it required hours of time and effort and then he'd let me know beforehand before billing me for the services.

So it'll be...Semi-managed to an extent? And i am okay with that as again I usually don't have many support questions after the initial set up and migration aside from "Why is my site slow?" or "Why is my site down?"

Benefits of using the Evolucix dedi is that i'd have my own resources for me(though I wonder will it be overkill since i am using a VPS currently with 2 GB-3 Gb ram although Servint claims i am using a lot of CPU and close to 3 GB ram anyway so perhaps getting higher ram is not a big deal) and it gives me room to grow plus i wouldn't be held hostage to other VPS.

So as it stands I am leaning towards Evolucix(45 percent...Avish seems personable and he has been in contact with me these past few days), Veerotech(35 percent...He is well recommended on Warriorforums) and Future Hosting(20 percent....only because they have been around a lot but i did have a sort of bad experience with them before but they do seem to be well-recommended and are far more well known than Evolucix and Veereotch)


So out of these 3 which would you recommend for my needs?

[kpmedia]

What I see is a small (but growing?) personal forum site. Not a serious business site.

Will there be anything else run on the server? If not, you can skip cPanel and run a pure nginx + php-fpm using ISPConfig as the panel. Note that LiteSpeed costs more on a dedicated server than it did on a VPS. Same for cPanel. It may be a waste of funds to use those. Something to keep in mind. Technically, ISPConfig can run multiple domains as well, but it's best for a non-shared hosting environments.

Strange to hear about Veerotech having support response time issues. In fact, I often wonder if the owner sleep with as much as a see him online. I know he responds to support tickets personally, as do his employees.

I often know more than host techs do, so I don't need any support either -- although I often opt for management in case I'm busy, or want to be lazy. "It's managed, let them do it." (And it's why it takes a lot to impress me!)

The benefit of a good dedicated server is higher I/O times. The entire hard drive is yours, and your alone. Just note that the downside of SATA is that it's a single point of failure. So backups become extremely important -- especially with SSD drives. SSD is a terrible format for recovery, and is usually a total data loss with 0% recovered.

What I see if you need server-side caching for a forum. Caching works best on non-OpenVZ/non-Virtuozzo. Futurehosting is eliminated.

That leaves Veerotech and Evolucix.

Veerotech is managed with RAID-10 (redundancy), and probably cheaper. But a VPS is still technically shared hosting.

Evolucix doesn't have management, the drives are likely just SATA (no redundancy), and it probably costs a bit more. But the whole server is yours. No neighbors, not shared at all.

Avish and Brent are both great guys.

It's been a while since I directly recommended anyone to Evolucix, so I wouldn't mind throwing them a bone. Send a little business their way. I'm not sure if that's a good reason, however.

[Impulse]

Alright I trust your judgement I do appreciate you taking the time out for my many questions!

I would certainly need Cpanel as that is how i am used to uploading files and the likes...as far as litespeed goes, Avish did say I could use the 1 CPU licence but could the Ultra Licence work as well since it does say 8 GB ram?
https://store.litespeedtech.com/store/cart.php

Site5 wasn't a good fit for me, I can see that now....though the reviews i've read for VPS did seem to be positive but as it said it is like a powerful reseller account and at the price they charge, I can find a VPS(or even in this case a Dedi) that gives me full control over it vs limited to what site5 has.

I am deciding between Evolucix and Veerotech and likely will have a choice made today as I continue talking to both guys. Avish has made quite an impression with me as it stands so i likely will go that way(if my questions are answered the way that i need them to be) though should anything go wrong, I know I can always just pop on over to Veerotech as well should I need to leave Evolucix behind

(I do worry about his age, college life and the longevity of the company but what is life without a little risk and this will encourage me to make sure I am active in doing backups should something go wrong and the host just closes shop...But Avish seems to genuinely be really dedicated to his company so it's a risk, but not the worst risk if i properly take care of my own backups).

[kpmedia]

Have you ever used ISPConfig? It's actually quite easy to use, and not too hard install.

cPanel is better, yes. And if you can handle the costs, then go for it. I have it on 6 servers, but not on most others. The upside is cPanel has more options. The downside is cPanel has more options! Currently, it doesn't support php-fpm, but you can compensate for it by throwing more RAM at PHP. And you'd have either 4GB or 8GB with both plans (Evolucix or Veerotech).

Probably more details than you needed, but just know that there's always options -- both with e hosts, and the server itself.

[Brent]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Impulse

2. Veerotech(The guy seems nice and he is local to my hometown of Raleigh, NC so that's a plus...I know it doesn't matter where the host is but the fact he lives a city over from my hometown is pretty cool to me)
4 GB Ram
150 Raid 10 Storage
2 Tb bandwidth

They use KVM

My only concern is that i hear they are not the Fastest when it comes to responses but not terribly slow either. They do come well recommended

Hi there,

I'm curious to know where you've heard this at. We have techs on our support desk 24-7, and if they aren't answering tickets within an acceptable amount of time, I'd certainly like to know about it so adjustments can be made.

That said, we're a smaller business, and a lot of times I get direct emails - those emails sometimes cannot be replied back to right away - I try to reply within a few hours depending on if it's a customer emailing in with a problem - that would be handled immediately. Generally with email responses, my goal is to reply with details & options vs a quick canned nonsense reply back.

--

I see that you're in Raleigh - and putting 2 & 2 together, I think we may have spoken via email. In NC (if that's where you're interested in) we currently have services out in Lenoir (western part of NC) and have some projects in the works for services in Raleigh this year.

It seems like you know what you want, but I'm definitely curious to know more about the response time issues you've heard about.

-Brent

[Impulse]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kpmedia

Have you ever used ISPConfig? It's actually quite easy to use, and not too hard install.

cPanel is better, yes. And if you can handle the costs, then go for it. I have it on 6 servers, but not on most others. The upside is cPanel has more options. The downside is cPanel has more options! Currently, it doesn't support php-fpm, but you can compensate for it by throwing more RAM at PHP. And you'd have either 4GB or 8GB with both plans (Evolucix or Veerotech).

Probably more details than you needed, but just know that there's always options -- both with e hosts, and the server itself.

What is ispconfig exactly
(I'll have to google this when i get home) in comparison to Cpanel? Really i just need something that can properly upload my files and allow me to edit things or delete things and backup my database and the like easily...i dont even really use all the features of Cpanel admittedly, though I am used to it after 2 years so it is easy for me to use.

@Brent yep same person that emailed you

Though the problem is, I don't know what i want actually haha which is actually a first for me since i generally am usually not this indecisive and like the name says, I act on IMPULSE

Really it wasn't anything bad exactly. I believe it said the replies weren't instant or anything like that but coming from a host like Big Scoots with the 2 employees they had there, I am used to smaller hosts anyway. So an hour or two reply from you guys wouldn't bug me much but say Site5 a company that is way larger...it's annoying to me(hence my review of them). But all the reviews i did read are spoken highly of you so that does mean something to me

[admin]

If you like the integrated backup feature, then stick to cPanel. ISPConfig doesn't have this.