Black Friday Dedicated Server discount deals 2021

Wow, this really does seem like an amazing deal. I haven’t heard of Clouvider, but you have had a good experience with them before, @eva2000?

 

Hmm, very interesting. Looks like I do see some people reporting some abuse from their network on Twitter, but it appears they do have a pretty active team and they are active on WebHostingTalk as well. I also like how transparent they are about which data centers they use on their website.

I'm extremely tempted by the E-2276G in Ashburn. I have always wanted a server in Ashburn, the "Capital of the Internet", because it is so well connected and perfectly positioned to serve both US and Europe which are both important to my traffic. The E-2276G also has a much faster clock speed than the AMD EPYC 7251 I have now (2.1Ghz vs 3.8Ghz), which as I have documented here I have been somewhat disappointed with.

The crazy thing is I could get that server with a similar config to what I have now (64GB RAM, 1TB NVMe, 4TB HDD) for just $90/month using this Black Friday coupon. That would save me $115/month over what I'm paying with Hivelocity now ($205/month). That's $1,380 a year!

To be honest, my experience with Hivelocity has been so incredibly good that I would hate to leave them. I love how they send you a picture of the server and their support has always been outstanding. This deal from a Clouvider, a company I had not heard of until today feels a bit too-good-to-be-true... but I'm so tempted.

 

Yeah, you are fortunate to get to play around with so many providers.

What config and datacenter did you go with on Clouvider?

 

Nice. I just signed up!!

(And of course, I used your affiliate link!)

I got the E-2276G, 64GB RAM, 1x960GB NVMe, 1x4TB HDD in Ashburn.

 

Is there a separate code or something?

if I configure a server in Atlanta with the same specs as the one I ordered in Ashburn, it actually works out to be more expense ($116/month).

 

Ah, OK, that's what I thought. I was sleepy on my phone, still in bed this morning when I saw your post so I thought it might just be me.

Have you taken delivery of your system yet? My order still says "pending" in my account area.

 

Just took delivery of my server this morning! There's a nice little surprise as it seems the 4TB drive I ordered has turned into 8TB...

Code (Text):

# lsblk
NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda           8:0    0   7.3T  0 disk
nvme0n1     259:0    0 894.3G  0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1    0   200M  0 part /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p2 259:2    0     1G  0 part /boot
├─nvme0n1p3 259:3    0     8G  0 part [SWAP]
└─nvme0n1p4 259:4    0 885.1G  0 part /

Memory info:

Code (Text):

# cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:       65665344 kB
MemFree:        63510704 kB
MemAvailable:   63238288 kB
Buffers:           17036 kB
Cached:           154432 kB
SwapCached:            0 kB
Active:            83648 kB
Inactive:         122664 kB
Active(anon):      35168 kB
Inactive(anon):     9188 kB
Active(file):      48480 kB
Inactive(file):   113476 kB
Unevictable:           0 kB
Mlocked:               0 kB
SwapTotal:       8388604 kB
SwapFree:        8388604 kB
Dirty:                 4 kB
Writeback:             0 kB
AnonPages:         34876 kB
Mapped:            25088 kB
Shmem:              9504 kB
Slab:              58376 kB
SReclaimable:      27128 kB
SUnreclaim:        31248 kB
KernelStack:        3120 kB
PageTables:         3232 kB
NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
Bounce:                0 kB
WritebackTmp:          0 kB
CommitLimit:    41221276 kB
Committed_AS:     214144 kB
VmallocTotal:   34359738367 kB
VmallocUsed:      657900 kB
VmallocChunk:   34358421500 kB
Percpu:             2816 kB
HardwareCorrupted:     0 kB
AnonHugePages:      6144 kB
CmaTotal:              0 kB
CmaFree:               0 kB
HugePages_Total:       0
HugePages_Free:        0
HugePages_Rsvd:        0
HugePages_Surp:        0
Hugepagesize:       2048 kB
DirectMap4k:      253328 kB
DirectMap2M:     6944768 kB
DirectMap1G:    59768832 kB

CPU info:

Code (Text):

# lscpu
Architecture:          x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                12
On-line CPU(s) list:   0-11
Thread(s) per core:    2
Core(s) per socket:    6
Socket(s):             1
NUMA node(s):          1
Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel
CPU family:            6
Model:                 158
Model name:            Intel(R) Xeon(R) E-2276G CPU @ 3.80GHz
Stepping:              10
CPU MHz:               799.938
CPU max MHz:           4900.0000
CPU min MHz:           800.0000
BogoMIPS:              7584.00
Virtualization:        VT-x
L1d cache:             32K
L1i cache:             32K
L2 cache:              256K
L3 cache:              12288K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0-11
Flags:                 fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc art arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf eagerfpu pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 sdbg fma cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch epb invpcid_single intel_pt ssbd ibrs ibpb stibp tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 hle avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid rtm mpx rdseed adx smap clflushopt xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 dtherm ida arat pln pts hwp hwp_notify hwp_act_window hwp_epp md_clear spec_ctrl intel_stibp flush_l1d

Early network tests look like an improvement over my older server's Tampa location. I am about 650 miles from Tampa and 350 miles from Ashburn, and all of my ISP traffic (Spectrum cable) is routed through Columbus, OH, which is also closer to Ashburn.

It looks like this brings a solid ~27ms improvement for me, from roughly 68ms to 41ms.

My colleague in northern UK also reported an even larger improvement. He is 4,300 miles away from Tampa and 3,500 miles away from Ashburn. His Tampa pings are ~133ms and his Ashburn pings are ~90ms. I have a lot of traffic from the US, UK, and Western Europe so I'm happy about that.

The Clouvider control panel also looks pretty good so far. I might ask them if I can get a photo of the server as I always did with Hivelocity...

ALSO... you can sign up for system status alerts at https://www.clouviderstatus.net/. They can call/text/email you when they post alerts there automatically, I like that.

------------

Now I'm getting into tuning...

I just changed the performance profiles. This is my first time doing this with Intel hardware so I'm a little surprised by what I saw.

With the default settings it looks like the cores are running around 800Mhz:

Code (Text):

[root~]# tuned-adm active
Current active profile: balanced
[root~]# cpupower frequency-info
analyzing CPU 0:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
  maximum transition latency:  Cannot determine or is not supported.
  hardware limits: 800 MHz - 4.90 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 4.90 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency: 800 MHz (asserted by call to hardware)
  boost state support:
    Supported: yes
    Active: yes

[root~]# cpupower monitor
    |Nehalem                    || Mperf              || Idle_Stats
CPU | C3   | C6   | PC3  | PC6  || C0   | Cx   | Freq || POLL | C1-S | C1E- | C3-S | C6-S | C7s- | C8-S | C9-S | C10-
   0|  0.00|  0.00| 89.10|  0.00||  0.13| 99.87|   935||  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  1.20|  0.00| 98.62
   6|  0.00|  0.00| 89.10|  0.00||  0.02| 99.98|   813||  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00| 99.96
   1|  0.00|  0.00| 89.10|  0.00||  0.02| 99.98|   820||  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00| 99.94
   7|  0.00|  0.00| 89.10|  0.00||  0.02| 99.98|  1714||  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00| 99.96
   2|  0.02|  0.17| 89.10|  0.00||  0.03| 99.97|  1215||  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.10|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00| 99.80
   8|  0.02|  0.15| 89.10|  0.00||  0.03| 99.97|   855||  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00| 99.95
   3|  0.00|  0.18| 89.10|  0.00||  0.01| 99.99|   825||  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00| 99.95
   9|  0.00|  0.17| 89.10|  0.00||  0.02| 99.98|   966||  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.10|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00| 99.86
   4|  0.00|  0.16| 89.10|  0.00||  0.03| 99.97|   817||  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00| 99.94
  10|  0.00|  0.16| 89.10|  0.00||  0.38| 99.62|  1284||  0.00|  0.00|  0.07|  0.00|  0.19|  0.00|  0.33|  0.00| 99.03
   5|  0.18|  1.78| 89.10|  0.00||  0.02| 99.98|   815||  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00| 99.95
  11|  0.18|  1.77| 89.10|  0.00||  0.56| 99.44|  1107||  0.00|  0.00|  0.01|  0.19|  1.96|  0.00| 19.42|  0.00| 78.00

After changing the profile to "throughput-performance", it shows all cores are now running at 4.9Ghz:

Code (Text):

[root~]# tuned-adm profile throughput-performance
[root~]# cpupower monitor
    |Nehalem                    || Mperf              || Idle_Stats
CPU | C3   | C6   | PC3  | PC6  || C0   | Cx   | Freq || POLL | C1-S | C1E- | C3-S | C6-S | C7s- | C8-S | C9-S | C10-
   0|  0.00|  0.25| 88.38|  0.00||  0.04| 99.96|  4880||  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00| 99.97
   6|  0.00|  0.25| 88.38|  0.00||  0.20| 99.80|  4809||  0.00|  0.00|  0.02|  0.00|  0.30|  0.00|  0.12|  0.00| 99.35
   1|  0.00|  0.00| 88.38|  0.00||  0.00|100.00|  4777||  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|100.00
   7|  0.00|  0.00| 88.38|  0.00||  0.00|100.00|  4755||  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|100.00
   2|  0.00|  0.00| 88.38|  0.00||  0.01| 99.99|  4874||  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00| 99.99
   8|  0.00|  0.00| 88.38|  0.00||  0.00|100.00|  4801||  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|100.00
   3|  0.01|  0.33| 88.38|  0.00||  0.01| 99.99|  4736||  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.30|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00| 99.69
   9|  0.01|  0.31| 88.38|  0.00||  0.00|100.00|  4735||  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|100.00
   4|  0.00|  0.25| 88.38|  0.00||  0.01| 99.99|  4869||  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00| 99.99
  10|  0.00|  0.23| 88.38|  0.00||  0.01| 99.99|  4790||  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.18|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00| 99.81
   5|  0.00|  2.29| 88.38|  0.00||  0.01| 99.99|  4846||  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|  0.00|100.00
  11|  0.00|  2.29| 88.38|  0.00||  0.30| 99.70|  4880||  0.00|  0.00|  0.01|  0.02|  2.78|  0.00| 16.39|  0.00| 80.52
[root~]# cpupower frequency-info
analyzing CPU 0:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
  maximum transition latency:  Cannot determine or is not supported.
  hardware limits: 800 MHz - 4.90 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 4.90 GHz.
                  The governor "performance" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency: 4.90 GHz (asserted by call to hardware)
  boost state support:
    Supported: yes
    Active: yes

I know the Turbo Boost speed for this processor is 4.9Ghz, but I didn't think it ran at that speed all the time? I also thought that only a few cores would run at that speed at a time, not all of them at once? This looks great but I didn't think it worked that way.

 

Nice! I haven't even looked at the network yet, but I'm getting crazy numbers, too:

Ashburn, VA datacenter test:

Code (Text):

$ wget -4 -O /dev/null https://ash.speedtest.clouvider.net/10g.bin
--2021-12-03 00:36:31--  https://ash.speedtest.clouvider.net/10g.bin
Resolving ash.speedtest.clouvider.net... 45.250.25.133
Connecting to ash.speedtest.clouvider.net|45.250.25.133|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 10485760000 (9.8G) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: ‘/dev/null’

/dev/null                           100%[===================================================================>]   9.77G  1.02GB/s    in 9.8s

2021-12-03 00:36:40 (1.00 GB/s) - ‘/dev/null’ saved [10485760000/10485760000]

I also tested with their NYC datacenter, as it's not too far away geographically from Ashburn:

Code (Text):

$ wget -4 -O /dev/null https://nyc.speedtest.clouvider.net/10g.bin
--2021-12-03 00:36:47--  https://nyc.speedtest.clouvider.net/10g.bin
Resolving nyc.speedtest.clouvider.net... 94.154.159.137
Connecting to nyc.speedtest.clouvider.net|94.154.159.137|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 10485760000 (9.8G) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: ‘/dev/null’

/dev/null                           100%[===================================================================>]   9.77G   507MB/s    in 22s

2021-12-03 00:37:09 (453 MB/s) - ‘/dev/null’ saved [10485760000/10485760000]

That works out to 3.6Gb/s.

Looking forward to the new Clouvider thread.