VPS xtrahost.co.uk

[Matt]

Xtrahost was the first VPS provider I chose when I moved away from dedicated hosting. I originally signed up for a VPS with them in July 2009, and was with them until May 2013.

http://www.xtrahost.co.uk/

Linux Virtual Servers
Linux Virtual Server Features

• Each Virtual Machines (VM) has a dedicated share of memory and disk resources.
• Highly secure isolation of VMs from each other.
• Full SSH root access to your VM.
• Uncontended memory, the amount of memory in the VM plan is exclusively assigned to each VM, no "overselling" of memory is possible.

Virtual Server Plans
PlanMemoryDisk SpaceData Transfer/month Monthly Fees

LinuxVM-512512 MB10 GB250 GB£15 pm +VAT
LinuxVM-1GB1GB20 GB500 GB£20 pm +VAT
LinuxVM-1.5GB1.5GB30 GB750 GB£25 pm +VAT
LinuxVM-2GB2GB40 GB1000 GB£30 pm +VAT
LinuxVM-3GB3GB50 GB1500 GB£40 pm +VAT
LinuxVM-4GB4GB60 GB2000 GB£50 pm +VAT
LinuxVM-8GB8GB120 GB4000 GB£90 pm +VAT
LinuxVM-16GB16GB240 GB8000 GB£175 pm +VAT

Additional disk space is available at £5pm+VAT per 10GB.

Data transfer usage above your monthly allowance is billed at £0.10 per GB.

Included

• Independent console access, including the ability to reboot your VM.
• Daily VDP backup, retained for 7 days.

Operating Systems Available

• Ubuntu
• Debian

• CentOS
• Fedora

Want Windows? See Windows Virtual Servers

Host Server Specifications

• HP DL380p Gen8 Proliant Server.
• 2 x 2.50GHz 6-core E5-2640 Processors - 12 cores in total.
• 96GB DDR3 ECC memory.
• HP SAS 10,000 RPM disks.
• RAID-6 disk array with hot spare.
• Adaptec high end 5805 RAID controller with 1.2GHz Dual Core RAID on Chip, 512MB cache and battery backup.
• Dual hot-swap power supplies.
• VMware technology.
• 1 Gbps network feed.
• Hosted in Interxion's London City ISO 27001 Accredited Datacentre.

Requirements

• The VM is unmanaged, the customer is responsible for all aspects of managing their VM server, including patching, installing and maintaining applications, firewalling and DNS.
• You will have SSH root access and are expected to be a competent Linux administrator.

Why Xtraordinary for your Virtual Machine?

• Professional hoster with full time staff 24/7, 12 years established, approaching £2m pa turnover.
• 7 years track record of hosting hundreds of virtual machines customers with rock solid reliability, "it just works".
• High end HP servers with 12 x 2.5 Ghz cores, no contention.
• Full accountability and direct control of all aspects of the service - hardware, virtualisation and network.
• We run our own network with over 6 Gbps of connectivity - member of LINX with multiple Gigabit uplinks to Tier-1 networks.

Control Panel Options

• cPanel (VPS optimised edition). CentOS only. Includes WHM and Fantastico. £8pm +VAT.
• DirectAdmin. £5 pm +VAT.
• Plesk 10 - 10 domain license. £5 pm +VAT.
• Plesk 10 - 100 domain license. £20 pm +VAT.
• Plesk 10 - unlimited domain license. £34 pm +VAT.
• Plesk 10 Plus - unlimited domain license, power pack, language packs. £53 pm +VAT.

 

[Matt]

This is a screenshot of the first VPS I had with them:

3GB RAM, 50GB Disk Space, CentOS 5, Cpanel.

Their hardware and network was VERY stable. This was the uptime taken in February 2011.

# uptime
10:38:47 up 227 days, 14:17,  1 user,  load average: 0.11, 0.11, 0.09

The only downtime was due to planned maintenance, and was notified of this well in advance.

They provide daily backups of the VPS, which you can mount to access them as and when required.

My only criticisms are:

• there is no control panel available for your VPS. If you want to have an OS reload, you need to create a support request (they actually provisioned me a new VPS and let me run in parallel when I moved from 32bit to 64bit OS 😉).
• There is also no online ticket system, it's all e-mail based. You drop them an e-mail, and they are usually quick to reply, but I'd prefer to see a proper helpdesk set up.

From a provider point of view, I'd rate them 8/10, as they aren't the cheapest, and they do lack a lot of features that you'd come to expect now days for managing your VPS. However, their hardware / network / support was first class.