Photon VPS positive review #8567 by Col on Jan 2010
Photon VPS got a positive review on
611 Wilshire Blvd #300
Los Angeles , CA 90017 US
☎ Phone 800-933-1517
☎ Phone 626-549-2801
📧 support@p...Col ( -no email- )
In summary, fast activation, working OS images, quality support from qualified engineers, excellent reliability and data transfer rates, access to 8 cores and pretty much unrivalled prices ($12USD / mo for cPanel, $6.95 USD / mo ClientExec). Accounts come with 2 IPs.
Please continue to read if you want to know why I have chosen PhotonVPS over other VPS providers.
I have been with 5 VPS providers this month, and have continually cancelled and changed due to problematic panels, support, servers, OS images, download rates. I've finally settled with PhotonVPS due to their support and robust network. It is probably relevant to mention that I use the WARP-3 package which is Xen virtualization.
I was initially experiencing problems with some occasional packet loss to my location in the UK. There was a problem due to the fact that I am connecting from a University research network as part of my job, and one of the companies providing peering had a router causing some sort of issue with SSH keepalive. I posted a traceroute on a support ticket and explained the issue, and one of the engineers promptly rerouted the connection via. a different provider which solved the problem completely.
The support team are professional, and will respond to absolutely any issue. Many companies charge a fortune for the type of support PhotonVPS provide. All of the engineers appear to have Linux certifications and post the level of their certification as part of the signature, and will often pass the issue to other engineers if it is beyond the scope of their role.
I have referred 3 friends to the service so far and all say activation has been approximately between 30 - 90 minutes. Regardless of the time I open a ticket, someone responds so it seems they have somebody watching out for orders 24/7.
I achieve a data transfer rate of approximately 6MB/s to my location at West Yorkshire the UK through the ISP www.ja.net. The limiting factor is most likely to be the JANET network so if you have a faster connection, you will probably achieve faster speeds than this.
The OS images used by PhotonVPS are all properly configured, and I can confirm that the 64 bit CentOS image will install WHM/cPanel no problem out of the box. I suggest you ask for a 64 bit image as all the Xen kernels are 64 bit and you may have some problems using "yum" if you try to use a 32 bit version, unless you do a bit of configuring to exclude all x64 packages. Also, at the time of writing the packages include access to 8 CPU cores so compiling is really quick if you use "make -j 9" or "make -j 8" (depending if you believe the N+1 myth!).
I monitor my server using Pingdom and the only downtime I have experienced has coincided with recompiling Apache, so in short PhotonVPS haven't been the cause of any downtime.
At the time of writing they are selling cPanel VPS licenses at $12 USD / Month and ClientExec at $6.95 USD / month which is a good deal. You won't get a license cheaper from a 3rd party seller, they can only offer them at this price due to some sort of internal deal or bulk purchase.
Please note that at the moment PhotonVPS do not seem to have any sort of customer VPS panel for Xen at the moment as they may well be testing some products for stability and security, but due to the speed of their support this hasn't been a huge issue. I have actually found most of the VPS panels to be insecure and buggy so i'd rather that there wasn't any kind of public access to manage the VPS in case it gets exploited until a decent panel becomes available. I'm quite happy to leave this control with the support team until I'm convinced.
In summary, PhotonVPS are highly recommended by myself and several colleagues. Their support is highly responsive and they offer a money-back guarantee.
Please continue to read if you want to know why I have chosen PhotonVPS over other VPS providers.
I have been with 5 VPS providers this month, and have continually cancelled and changed due to problematic panels, support, servers, OS images, download rates. I've finally settled with PhotonVPS due to their support and robust network. It is probably relevant to mention that I use the WARP-3 package which is Xen virtualization.
I was initially experiencing problems with some occasional packet loss to my location in the UK. There was a problem due to the fact that I am connecting from a University research network as part of my job, and one of the companies providing peering had a router causing some sort of issue with SSH keepalive. I posted a traceroute on a support ticket and explained the issue, and one of the engineers promptly rerouted the connection via. a different provider which solved the problem completely.
The support team are professional, and will respond to absolutely any issue. Many companies charge a fortune for the type of support PhotonVPS provide. All of the engineers appear to have Linux certifications and post the level of their certification as part of the signature, and will often pass the issue to other engineers if it is beyond the scope of their role.
I have referred 3 friends to the service so far and all say activation has been approximately between 30 - 90 minutes. Regardless of the time I open a ticket, someone responds so it seems they have somebody watching out for orders 24/7.
I achieve a data transfer rate of approximately 6MB/s to my location at West Yorkshire the UK through the ISP www.ja.net. The limiting factor is most likely to be the JANET network so if you have a faster connection, you will probably achieve faster speeds than this.
The OS images used by PhotonVPS are all properly configured, and I can confirm that the 64 bit CentOS image will install WHM/cPanel no problem out of the box. I suggest you ask for a 64 bit image as all the Xen kernels are 64 bit and you may have some problems using "yum" if you try to use a 32 bit version, unless you do a bit of configuring to exclude all x64 packages. Also, at the time of writing the packages include access to 8 CPU cores so compiling is really quick if you use "make -j 9" or "make -j 8" (depending if you believe the N+1 myth!).
I monitor my server using Pingdom and the only downtime I have experienced has coincided with recompiling Apache, so in short PhotonVPS haven't been the cause of any downtime.
At the time of writing they are selling cPanel VPS licenses at $12 USD / Month and ClientExec at $6.95 USD / month which is a good deal. You won't get a license cheaper from a 3rd party seller, they can only offer them at this price due to some sort of internal deal or bulk purchase.
Please note that at the moment PhotonVPS do not seem to have any sort of customer VPS panel for Xen at the moment as they may well be testing some products for stability and security, but due to the speed of their support this hasn't been a huge issue. I have actually found most of the VPS panels to be insecure and buggy so i'd rather that there wasn't any kind of public access to manage the VPS in case it gets exploited until a decent panel becomes available. I'm quite happy to leave this control with the support team until I'm convinced.
In summary, PhotonVPS are highly recommended by myself and several colleagues. Their support is highly responsive and they offer a money-back guarantee.
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