BuyVM VPS review

After this review, would you consider buying a VPS at BuyVM?


  • Total voters
    33

Qraktzyl

Retired Staff
Contributor
Nov 2, 2015
997
723
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Hello R4P3.net,
Today is a great day in the R4P3 history. I am releasing my first review, one of many hopefully. Before I start, I have to tell you that I've spent a lot of time writing this (+ small amount of money) and that I hope you will enjoy reading it. Please drop a like if you enjoyed it as this will show me that my work is appreciated and will give me more motivation to continue.


Preface
In this review, I will be stress testing my VPS. If you are offended by that, then please do not read my review. Before putting something into production, you have to make sure that it will actually be able to deliver as expected. I actually paid for that DDoS protected IP, and as a customer, I want to make sure that what I was promised is what I get. Even if the hardware I stressed wasn't mine, I rented part of it. I will not be revealing what technique I used because the goal of this review is not to learn how to bring an ip offline.

To the BuyVM team: With this review, it will be easy for you guys to retrace me. This review is not intended to hurt your business in any way, it's only for giving an idea to the R4P3.NET members what they can expect if they would like to host a teamspeak server on your hardware. It doesn't reflect how someone could host a website, by example. I will respect the privacy of your employees in this review, so respect mine. If you guys still want to work with me after the review to make your anti-ddos teamspeak rules better, I would be happy to assist you. I would be very disappointed if you guys suspend my account after this.


A brief history of my experience (Not BuyVM related)
Since 2012, I have been hosting a public TeamSpeak server. At the beginning, everything was going smoothly. I could drink my tea while watching my 20 active members talking to each other and having fun. I was paying for that 25 USD/year VPS. It was the easy life.
Around the end of 2013, my teamspeak made his way to the top 150 (gametracker list), and was still enjoying the great life until one day : the first time I was DDoSed. That day was a big day, because it was the way of my competitors to tell me : "Welcome to the real world f*ck*r, you will learn that if you want to compete with me, you have to protect yourself". I didn't expect that the following year would be the one where I become bald. That's right, 2014 was awfull. I kept getting *nullrouted. I couldn't take a piss without receiving a pingdom notification that my VPS was offline. My VPS provider (who I will review in another thread, cannot tell who it is now) told me that I had to buy their DDoS protection, so I went for it. The more things changes, the more they stay the same... I kept getting nullrouted even with DDoS protection.
I learned the hard way, and now, my teamspeak only goes down when I want it too, no one else can bring it down. Since this time, I am always checking for new solutions to protect a teamspeak server and this is why i am writing this review.

*A Nullroute means that my IP was completely offline (it sends the packets nowhere), even after the attack. The purpose of this is to protect the VPS provider's infrastructure. When this happens they normally have to remove the nullroute manually, and it can take some time depending of how fast their support is.
More info : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_route


BuyVM VPS plan purchase
The DDoS protection is so important to them that it is features on the second tab of their website. They say that they can mitigate up to 500 gbit/s (depending on the pool usage, the 500 gbit/s are not dedicated to you). Voxility takes care of the DDoS Protection, which is very good.
I'm sold. Let's go.
So I bought the cheapest plan they offer : 1 core, 128 mb memory, 15 gb storage for 2$/month or 15$/year.
Location : NEW JERSEY
I also bought the DDoS protected IP. I am very excited now. I receive the confirmation by e-mail. My VPS is ready. I am even more excited, everybody says they are good. Let's make some tests.

I login into the stallion control panel to go make my ddos protected ip my main ip... I can't... The button is stuck and it won't let me. So I open my first customer ticket :

1st_ticket.png



The test begins
Good, very good, NOW LET'S MAKE SOME TESTS. I make the mitigation permanent in the stallion control panel. I install Supervisor's teamspeak install script. I only activate the crack. Normally, I would have installed the normal teamspeak without license, but the goal is to actually test the protection so I don't care, it's faster with the script. TeamSpeak installed, now let's connect to the server. I start a 10 gbps attack and wait. I don't even look at the packets, I just look for a dropping connection. After 8 minutes 32 seconds, i'm deceived : "Failed to connect to server".

So, let's recap. They say 500 gbps, i send 10. Connection down. There is definitely something wrong. I go back on their DDoS page. It says :
"Some protection methods may require a support ticket to be enabled."

Oh, allright. I forgot to tell them to put anti-ddos rules for teamspeak. My mistake, I stop the attack and open another ticket where I explain I want my ddos protection to be tweaked for TeamSpeak. They reply that they will send the request to their senior technician. I wait and then receive this ticket:

ts_goes_down.png



So I wait. I receive another ticket that says that the owner of frantech solutions will monitor my ip. I know it's the owner cause I stalked the BuyVM page, and saw his name on top. My ip being monitered, let's start another 10 gbps attack. Still being connected to the server, I disconnect on purpose and try to connect. I can't because it's flooded. So I go cry to them:

ticket_3.png


LOL. He actually connected to the server, amazing. That's what I call real support. Some other providers would already have told me GFY. The only thing I disliked about that is that they restarted teamspeak themselves. As far as I remember, I did not buy a managed service, or did I? I'm unsure. Also, I'm running a "different version" of teamspeak that requires the accounting server... So my server does it's 2 hours and goes offline. For the entire night. The next morning, I finally decided to install the autostart and anticrash scripts, so it doesnt happen again. I also start the ts correctly and send another 10 gbps attack. I do not get disconnected, but I lag hard. The musicbot I am with isn't able to stream anymore, he's having a hard time... I write another ticket :

ticket_4.png


Allright. Voxility actually was doing something while I was attacking, so maybe they tought it was because of Voxility. Means that this attack means nothing as it is not normal circumstances for the DDoS protection. I stop the attack, and the musicbot is still lagging after the attack. Out of curiosity I check my packet loss. Approx. 8.5%. Wtf, am I still attacking? No. Wtf. I double check to make sure i'm not attacking the server. I'm not, and my packet loss rises to 9.5%. I open another ticket. I say that I'm loosing a lot of packets and to check it. The support technician tells me that the owner will check this. I wait.

packetloss_12_5.png

"Am I still attacking? No? WTF."
 

Qraktzyl

Retired Staff
Contributor
Nov 2, 2015
997
723
161
I'm at the university getting ready for my course and receive a ticket update. Yay, owner is taking care of this and it will be over :

kevin.png


WHO THE F*** IS KEVIN? What is this ticket? Is this managed or unmanaged, he played with some of Kevin's files? I actually found this situation very funny.

I get back home, connect on TeamSpeak. SURPRISE MOT***F*****! Owner is connected, I can hear him typing. So, here is the conversation I have with him :

<17:27:18> "Qraktzyl": Hi do you see the packet loss?
<17:27:40> "Owner": yep, trying to make sense of it
<17:33:17> "Owner": is your TS set to auto start?
<17:33:26> "Owner": i'm wanting to try you on a different hardware configuration
<17:33:32> "Owner": to see if that changes anything
<17:33:40> "Qraktzyl": mhmm it should autostart on vps reboot
<17:33:53> "Qraktzyl": if its doesnt it's because I have different configuration than normal (LOL)
<17:33:58> "Qraktzyl": i can restart it if you want
<17:34:08> "Owner": i'm going to try pushing you to a different node
<17:34:11> "Owner": and see if it still does it
<17:34:12> "Qraktzyl": allright
<17:34:14> "Owner": so i just wanted to make sure
<17:34:20> "Owner": the PL is going down
<17:34:27> "Qraktzyl": allright
<17:34:34> "Owner": but it should be 0%
<17:34:38> "Owner": given you're in sensing mode
<17:34:40> "Owner": with no ddos coming in
<17:34:50> "Qraktzyl": eh im in permanent no?
<17:35:03> "Owner": i put you in sensing to confirm if that was the problem or not
<17:35:09> "Qraktzyl": oh allright
<17:41:18> "Owner" rejoined chat.
<17:41:32> "Owner": well that didn't work
<17:41:32> "Owner": hrm
<17:41:37> "Owner": let me try again
<17:41:40> "Qraktzyl": allright
<17:43:42> "Owner" rejoined chat.
<17:49:23> "Owner" rejoined chat.
<17:49:35> "Owner": nope, that box doesn't have a new enough kernel
<17:49:40> "Owner": hrmmm, where am i going to put you
<17:49:54> "Owner": what i'm testing is if it's a buggy NIC driver
<17:50:05> "Owner": so i'm wanting to get you on a different node that has a different NIC all together
<17:50:26> "Qraktzyl": allright no problem you have my permission to proceed with whatever that implies
<17:50:37> "Owner": thanks
<17:58:25> "Owner": i'm going to get a bit of food while i let some tests run
<17:58:32> "Owner": we'll keep you updated in ticket
<17:58:39> "Qraktzyl": It's all good. Thanks a lot
<17:58:57> "Owner": thanks for being so patient


The only thing I have to say here is that this guy is really devoted. I like him. He's there for me, where other providers wouldn't be. I wait. I receive a ticket :

last_ticket.png


They push me to Las Vegas. I don't have packet loss anymore, everything is going well. The only difference is my ping, It's higher, I'm way closer to New Jersey than Las Vegas. This morning, I sent a 20 gbps attack on my VPS again. It jumped to 14% packet loss before getting disconnected from the TS (After 15 minutes of stress test). It's better, it mitigates correctly but it's still leaking somewhere and that would require owner to do more tests. I have enough material to write my review, let's end the stress tests here and give them a break. Here is the graph of my attacks :

ddos_graph_over_time.png

"Boom goes the Dynamite"

Conclusion
Even if my BuyBM VPS isn't perfectly tailored for teamspeak ddos protection, it show some resistance rather than none. I'm sure that some more sessions of DDoS attacks with owner would have brought the VPS to not drop when attacking it with bigger attacks. If owner is still interested in testing this after this review, then I'll be more than happy to contribute. Even if the BuyVM team made mistakes at some points, I think they recovered from those mistakes really fast and in a brilliant way. The owner is carrying all the team on his shoulders. In all my VPS years, I might have bought from more than 10 providers and I actually never saw someone actually connect to my teamspeak server to diagnose the issues. What I dislike is that I'm unsure if this is managed or not? I dislike the idea of someone playing around with my box without my consent. I also disliked that they didn't tell me that the transfer to Las Vegas would change my DDoS protected ip. During 5 minutes, I tought my server was offline while trying to connect with the old ip. I still don't know what the connection speed is, it is not written on their webpage and wasn't able to do a speedtest.

Would I suggest this host for a TeamSpeak server?
Yes, I would suggest this host for a TeamSpeak server, however you will need to tweaks things with the owner. Your VPS will surely go down at the beginning, but will show improvements as long as owner is capturing your packets and analyzing them. Their protection is good when it's working fine. I think that the owner can do amazing things and that he knows what he's doing. If you are new, they don't seem to be strictly unmanaged so they could help you with your box.

This review is not solely based on how much they fucked up, but also on how they recovered from their mistakes.

Performances: 8/10 340 mb/s on copy test.
Support: 7/10 (Except owner)


My Overall satisfaction: 8.5/10 (Most of it goes to owner)

EDIT : Note updated to 3/10 on September 19th 2016. They are the kind of people that insults their customers. STAY AWAY!



Sorry for raping your eyes with different sizes images. I'm having trouble resizing those.
 
Last edited:

Asphyxia

Owner
Administrator
Apr 25, 2015
1,845
2
2,199
327
I have a new provider I think you should try and give us a review on. They're a Russian cloud virtual server provider.

Data center in Moscow (Russia)

Virtualization KVM

Servers Intel Xeon, CPU frequency not less than 2000 Mhz

1 IPv4 for free

Unlimited traffic

ISPmanager 5 Lite for free

Root permissions

SSH access

Provider name servers: ns1.ispvds.com, ns2.ispvds.com


Additional IPv4 – 2 eur per month

Additional IPv6 – 0,05 eur per month

ISPmanager 5 Business – 8 eur per month

http://ispserver.com/en/products/cloud_vps

Make sure to enable DDoS protection. Their DDoS plan pricing seems kind of crazy, so let me know and definitely don't pay the bill if the price is crazy. :p

For DDoS protection we use a network of filters at multiple locations around the globe, connected to a broadband channel. Incoming traffic is analyzed to find anomalies and non-standard network activity. You will get a 95% protection against DDoS attacks, including botnet protection.

Protection mechanisms detect and block various types of suspicious traffic on the Network and Transport levels (Level 3 and 4 OSI)*, including but not limited to IP malformed, ICMP flood, TCP SYN flood, TCP-malformed, UDP-malformed, ICMP smurf and NTP amplification, DNS amplification and other types of channel attacks, by verifying that traffic conforms to RFC and performing verification by known attack signatures.

For the best possible protection additional configuration of your virtual private server software may be required. Please contact technical support for further information.
 

Qraktzyl

Retired Staff
Contributor
Nov 2, 2015
997
723
161
Ill look into it. My next review that I planned to make was ovh vps, ovh game dedicated and ramnode. I already have the ovh vps plan and need to do the review before it expires
 

Asphyxia

Owner
Administrator
Apr 25, 2015
1,845
2
2,199
327
Ill look into it. My next review that I planned to make was ovh vps, ovh game dedicated and ramnode. I already have the ovh vps plan and need to do the review before it expires
Alright, take your time and do anything you want to. I think think are great providers for you to write a review on (OVH vps&game_dedi, RamNode). I am excited to see those reviews. :)
 

0x0539

Retired Staff
Contributor
Jan 30, 2016
1,334
1,146
254
I have a new provider I think you should try and give us a review on. They're a Russian cloud virtual server provider.
Looking back in the days...

I think you can review them yourself now after their rm */ on your server

Laughing-Meme-Face-Female-14.png
@Asphyxia
 
Last edited:

Asphyxia

Owner
Administrator
Apr 25, 2015
1,845
2
2,199
327
Looking back in the days...

I think you can review them yourself now after their rm */ on your server

@Asphyxia
That provider is a different provider located in Russia. I would still give them a try, they could be a decent Russian provider --- maybe? :D
 

Laszl0w

Well-Known Member
Oct 10, 2015
217
149
143
I didnt know anything about Russian host's but i know russians are the -PLACE MEAN WORD HERE- in the world.

EDITED BY MOD QRAKTZYL:
Turning racisms and insults into innofensive words since 1990.
Just for your info, i'm not russian, but that could be offensive to russians.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

kingston

Contributor
Feb 10, 2016
243
151
128
Russians are pretty good at many fields of IT and it's bad to see flames thrown at them. I'm sure everyone here knows what NGINX is for instance. There are countless examples of another products coming from Russia, great projects, used by millions worldwide. Did you know that world famous World of Warcraft emulator (Mangos) was written from scratch and maintained for years by Russians? So is Trinity (Mangos fork) - most of the core team is russian and ukrainian. They are also amazing in other areas like hobby electronics, hacking, cracking, mobile apps, torrent, mobile apps, etc.

It's a crazy myth to see Russians as bad people. In fact they are friendly and well educated.
 

Derp

Retired Staff
Contributor
Apr 30, 2015
933
1,014
217
Russians are pretty good at many fields of IT and it's bad to see flames thrown at them. I'm sure everyone here knows what NGINX is for instance. There are countless examples of another products coming from Russia, great projects, used by millions worldwide. Did you know that world famous World of Warcraft emulator (Mangos) was written from scratch and maintained for years by Russians? So is Trinity (Mangos fork) - most of the core team is russian and ukrainian. They are also amazing in other areas like hobby electronics, hacking, cracking, mobile apps, torrent, mobile apps, etc.

It's a crazy myth to see Russians as bad people. In fact they are friendly and well educated.
I agree. I personally have had the chance to work with russian people. They are professional, take things very seriously and rarely fuck up.
 

aidzo

Member
Jan 31, 2016
7
3
35
Quick question where you able to get the gre tunnel working with teamspeak correctly?
 

Qraktzyl

Retired Staff
Contributor
Nov 2, 2015
997
723
161
Honest review and indepth research like I've never seen elsewhere :)
Would you be kind enough to review ExtraVM : https://extravm.com/ ?
I currently am testing ExtraVM. I have to say that it's currently the best vps service i've tried for teamspeak server hosting due to their openvz plans being hosted with anti-ddos game.
 

JohanB

Member
Apr 15, 2016
2
0
33
I currently am testing ExtraVM. I have to say that it's currently the best vps service i've tried for teamspeak server hosting due to their openvz plans being hosted with anti-ddos game.
ExtraVM is very good. It has excellent service and use good firewall for teamspeak. For best protection, recommend buying the 1GB plan RAM and 2 Core.
That is awesome. I will definitely go with them once you finish your review. Also, which location of extravm are you using for OpenVZ(Dallas or Montreal) and which is the best according to your experiance?
 

Qraktzyl

Retired Staff
Contributor
Nov 2, 2015
997
723
161
That is awesome. I will definitely go with them once you finish your review. Also, which location of extravm are you using for OpenVZ(Dallas or Montreal) and which is the best according to your experiance?
I will not be doing a review... There's no Anti-DDoS review to be done when the server is hosted by OVH anti-ddos game.
Montreal, because it has the ovh anti-ddos game protection.
 

Hydra

Member
Sep 13, 2015
77
72
56
I will not be doing a review... There's no Anti-DDoS review to be done when the server is hosted by OVH anti-ddos game.
Montreal, because it has the ovh anti-ddos game protection.
Soon starting my forum with extra detailed informations about different anti-ddos solutions including OVH game ;) Im using ovh game since 6 months and I know how it works and how someone "could" bypass it.
 

jsebean

Member
Apr 24, 2016
15
0
36
Quick question where you able to get the gre tunnel working with teamspeak correctly?
The GRE tunnel is trivial to setup... heck... it's as simple as copy and paste from their wiki. I operated a Teamspeak server there for a while and I setup a GRE tunnel for some time after I moved the server to OVH since it's more reliable, until users updated their bookmarks.
One of the issues that I had with it was if you were under mitigation (either because you were attacked and sensing put you in or you used permanent mitigation) the public server list with Teamspeak (as they call it, "web list") was blocked. It seems voxility was blocking it, but after a ticket, they seemed to have fixed it now for all TS3 servers they're hosting.
That said, while I really appreciate the support these guys give, the network seems to not perform well at all. Speeds are slow through the protected IPs... I usually would only get ~30Mbps, which is fine for a few TS3 users but not if your users transfer files :p. This slow speed seems to be a constant regardless of location or even virtualization (I tried their KVM slices, openvz on west and east coast... all the same). I know if you're going to do a lot of transfering the main IP is ideal, but that's not the IP I want facing the word publicly for my users to interact with.
What makes matters worse, Randomly everyone will disconnect without having an attack directed at you at all, regardless if you're under permanent mitigation or sensing, and packet loss all the time. That's all after multiple tickets at which point I didn't want to keep making new ones when OVH just works for network performance (so long as you have a functional server... I'm not saying their support is better in any way lol). The packet loss is usually subtle, but it's there 24/7. As such, until that's addressed, especially the random dropped connections, I wouldn't really suggest it for teamspeak hosting. Pains me to say it, as I love the atmosphere of the company.
 
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