Windows RDP vs Windows VPS

[sniffdog]

For the last few months I've been using a RDP from AwesomeRDP and have been generally satisfied (US$25 for 250Gb).

However, because I want to be able to seed more torrents at the same time and of Unrar issues now and then, I decided to buy a Windows VPS.

I decided on hostplate's Platinum

http://hostplate.com/windows-vps/

Windows VPS for US$50

I expected about the same performance (they are both in Evoswitch, The Netherlands) in terms of download/upload and unrar/rar. Although the price is double of that of the RDP, the mentioned speeds of the VPS are far lower than that of the RDP.

Is it unreasonably to expect the same performance for double the price?

sniffdog Reviewed by sniffdog on 23rd Apr 2012. Windows RDP vs Windows VPS For the last few months I've been using a RDP from AwesomeRDP and have been generally satisfied (US$25 for 250Gb). However, because I want to be able to seed more torrents at the same time and of Unrar issues now and then, I decided to buy a Windows VPS. I decided on hostplate's Platinum Windows VPS for US$50 I expected about the same performance (they are both in Evoswitch, The Netherlands) in terms of download/upload and unrar/rar. Although the price is double of that of the RDP, Rating: 5

[JamesVaporH]

You will not get the same performance as a RDP is run on a shared PC usually with alot more resources included which can either be shared or given more to another user if not many people are logged in so it could go from 2-3gb ram to 8-16gb ram when users are offline.

As for a windows vps which is usually run under vmware or xen/hv you are given a limited resource and a full administrator account since it is a virtual pc.

And you will usually be charged way more to get more resources included in a vps so if its torrents and such that you are looking for then try to find a better RDP provider or find a cheap dedicated server like OVH servers and install windows on to it.

[Lifetalk]

Yes, and no. The basic mistake you've made here is in assuming that the VPS and the RDA are going to run the same if the specs are about around the same.

That is usually not, in fact never, the case. In an RDA environment, you're simply getting access to a 'slot' on the master server. You share the resources with a group of other people, except you get a dedicated drive partition. The important point to note here, is that the only thing dedicated to you is the drive/partition. The OS installation, the services running on it, the resources utilized by the master server are just one instance of those; not multiple. All the user share the same installation, the same programs (perhaps different settings), the same services, the same processes.

In the case of a VPS, every VPS is in itself an isolated environment. Thus, on a master server that hosts, say, 12 VPS's, you're looking at 12 installations of Windows. 12 installations each running the same set of services, the same generic/core processes, the same programs (most likely) but isolated installations. That, and the keep in mind the master server needs a bit of resources too, to run, to host all of these virtualized servers.

Now, assuming that the specifications of the master server are the same in both cases, you're obviously looking at a degraded performance on a VPS as compared to the RDA, because the master server that hosts the VPS needs to run/manage, at the same time, multiple instances of the OS. The RDA master server, on the other hand, simply needs to take care of ONE instance of the OS. In a linux environment, this may not mean a lot, but in a Windows environment, the OS itself takes quite a bit of toll on the hardware. Now multiply that by X number of VPS's sold on the master server, and you're looking at quite a bit of processing power and drive I/O in just maintaining the OS.

So, even if the specs are the same, and the number of VPS's sold on the master are lower than the number of RDAs sold on a similar master, chances are you'll see either a degraded performance or about around the same as the one you see on RDA.

I haven't yet taken into account possible overselling on HostPlate's part.

RDA's are much more cost-effective for uploader based usage because they don't expend as much resources, on a whole, for just the OS maintenance.

[sniffdog]

Thank you for your replies.

The server of Hostplate has higher specs than the RDP server. When 5-6 people are active on the RDP, the download/upload speeds are still 5 to 10 times higher than the Hostplate VPS. Only the UNRAR/RAR speeds drop on the RDP which I assume, are dependent on the # of people on the RDP server instead of the CPU load/ Memory Usage on the individual VPS server.

I guess the $25 extra is just not worth it.

[Lifetalk]

You'll always see the rar/unrar speed drop if there's more number of users on the server. Not because the server doesn't have enough cpu/ram then, but because of disk I/O. In my experience, anything more than 3 users per physical disk is going to lead to serious performance degradation over a short span of time; and more so when all users on said disk are online at the same time.

SATAIII disks, which I assume is what the RDA uses (if not, SATAII) are only capable of writing/reading so much I/O. Imagine 2 users, on the same disk; now imagine one user downloading a 10gb file, uploading a 5GB file. The second user is running a rar process on store mode. You're looking at disk writes for the download, disk reads for the upload, disk write and read for the rar process (granted it's on store mode, but that still results in disk read/write). It's a SATAII/SATAIII disk; it's only capable of so much (100MB/sec combined read/write, if it's good quality, tops). On a 1gbit network, a download, an upload, and a rar process won't take too long to saturate the disk.

This, is a scenario with just 2 users. Imagine this with 4 users; and I know a lot of the RDA providers here do 4 users per disk. They bank on the fact that those 4 users might not be online at the same time. BUT, if they are, well hello to fucked performance.

3 is a safe bet, but it's still risky, and I've seen it happen. 2 is what I would suggest, but then, it's just not cost efficient.

[sniffdog]

Good insight.

But I wonder why, if 4-5 users are on RDP, the torrent download speeds are still fast (avg 20-30MBs) while on the VPS I never get higher speeds than 8MBs.

BTW The RDP has SATA-II hdd while the VPS server has SAS 15K.

[vgnheart]

@sniffdog, is there 1gbps NIC on your VPS ?

[Lifetalk]

Multiple factors, really.

Disk I/O limiting speed is one factor; maybe the disks hosting the VPS are strained and cannot read/write fast enough.

Maybe the OS install has an inherent limit of 100mbit throughput, even though the connection may state 1gbit. A test download might confirm/reject this though.

Maybe it's just the routing; both the servers may be on the same network but that does not mean they're both being routed through the same hops. Chances are a greater number of seeders are connecting to the RDA server because of how the network is setup/routed.

If you knock the network out of the equation, then it would boil down to hardware.

[WDF]

This thread should be condensed and made a sticky.

[Lifetalk]

Condensing it could result in vital information being omitted. Sticky, I don't think this is sticky-worthy. The search function should turn it up just fine in case someone's looking for the info contained in here