LeaseWeb Experiences
The discussion revolves around LeaseWeb, a dedicated server provider with a VPS product line. ljpp noticed that their smallest and cheapest plan, S, has a 40GB disk, 1GB RAM, and 1 CPU vCore, which is a good offering in the sub-five euro category.
ljpp tested the S plan and shared benchmarks, including a Bzip result that is almost twice as fast as Digital Ocean, and loses only ~1 second to UpCloud. However, the disk I/O speed is on the slow side, around 78.7 MB/s.
codinghorror and codinghorror pointed out that this I/O speed is not typical of SSD storage, but rather HDD. ljpp agreed, but mentioned that rebuilds are quick, considering the price range.
Falco noted that once the database no longer fits in RAM, the poor I/O will be noticeable.
ljpp plans to give LeaseWeb a long test run and report back. They mentioned that LeaseWeb seems like a solid company with a good reputation, 24/7 global tech support, and a full range of products.
Jay91 is considering the L plan and asked about performance with 5000 daily visits and 500 concurrent users. ljpp replied that performance will depend on concurrent users and their behavior, but mentioned that their 6-core UpCloud server chokes above 400 concurrent users.
I was just skimming around for dedicated server providers, and noticed that LeaseWeb also has a VPS product line.
Very typical budget offering starting from 4.90€. What catches the eye here is that the smallest and cheapest S product has a 40GB disk, along with 1GB RAM and 1 CPU vCore. 40 gigs is very nice in the sub fiver category. For example Hetzner has 25 gigs.
Anyone used them? Any benchmarks to share - what is the CPU?
After intensive googling, I found reports suggesting that the CPU is reported as QEMU 2.6GHz. Did not find any comparable benchmarks.
Note that the price is VAT-exclusive, so the real cost is a bit more.
Edit: Just noticed that LeaseWeb has an affiliate program. This means that one can implement ads like in our Battle Axe theme and potentially get financial relief for hosting. Digital Ocean has this opportunity too.
Not sure what your budget is, there’s lot of cheap offerings out there. If you are looking for something with lots of power, space, ram, CPU’s and a truly excellent network have a look at the OVH offerings. Have a look specifically at their Proxmox offerings which allow you run all your servers as VM’s on Proxmox and they give a massive amount of FTP backup space too for backing up all your VM’s nice and safely.
Actually I skimming through the lowest price category options. That is the most frequently asked question here and I have a couple of tiny development projects going on. I also have one bigger community and that is currently hosted by UpCloud.
I was a customer of OVH and was generally very pleased with their performance. However, a major incident occurred during that time and IMO their crisis management was not so great. But there is a separate thread for that.
LeaseWeb has raised my interest due to large-ish storage space and possibly a higher GHz vCore. They are also a well established operator. I may need to give them I try, just for kicks.
Not much to lose at that price 
Well, it accumulates if you have many sites and you run them for a long period of time.
I decided to test this - their offering is most interesting. Unfortunately they seem to do manual validation of new customers, even though I paid with a credit card and was already validated by my bank. Damn, I hate these wait perioids - I am used to instant service.
I guess that is a good thing even though an inconvenience, considering how many customers fake details to get servers. Would mean you are at least entering a relatively clean and monitored network. Apple did this to me recently with my Apple Developer ID, had to manually email them ID documents / Drivers License etc before they approved my developer account.
Okay, I finally got my small S box. Their setup process is super bureaucratic.
CPU model: QEMU Virtual CPU version 1.2.1
Number of cores: 1
CPU frequency: 2199.996 MHz
Total amount of RAM: 992 MB
Total amount of swap: MB
System uptime: 8:23,
I/O speed: 78.7 MB/s
Bzip 25MB: 4.83s
Download 100MB file: 116MB/sThe Bzip result is interesting. It is almost twice as fast when compared to Digital Ocean, and loses only ~1 second to UpCloud. Disk I/O speed is on the slow side. Interesting. Gotta keep on testing.
Ouch those I/O numbers are brutally bad. Definitely HDD not SSD.
Well, not sure about that. These are sold as “SSD”, but the site also says:
Access enterprise-class storage and cutting-edge technology. We store your data twice – across separate racks to ensure redundancy. We also use the fastest enterprise SAS drives available – and mirror them to double their performance. An SSD caching layer provides a further boost when performance peaks are required.
78.7 mb/sec is not that, though. Your basic generic no-name SATA SSD will do 300mb/sec no problem. And a nice one will do 500mb/sec.
Super fancy M.2 PCI SSDs will do over 1gb/sec.
Yup, good VPSs get 400+ too. This in the same ballpark with Scaleway and Amazon Lightsail. But rebuilds are rather quick, considering the price range.
Rebuild are indeed going to be quick, because they are mostly about CPU and RAM.
As soon as your DB no longer fits in RAM, you will be able to notice this I/O hurting your requests timings, loading a topic is one of the most sensible ones.
Yeah. We’ll see how it goes. The reason for poor I/O benchmark is that they are using SAS drives for storage. They advertise an SSD caching layer that should help when most needed - but this can be just sales talk.
We’ll see how it goes. LeaseWeb seems like a solid company. They have been around for 20 years, their network has a good rep and they offer a full range of products. I’ll give it a good and long test run and report back.
Edit: One thing worth noting - LeaseWeb has 24/7 global tech support. Many service providers in this price category only provide support during office hours, or maybe extended office hours.
I’m thinking to go with leaseweb, as i see you have experience with them i’m thinking to go with L plan which comes with:
80GB (SSD Storage)
4GB
4 Core
1 x 1000Mbps Full-Duplex (Virtual)
8 TB
with these specifications how my website will preform with 5000 daily visits and like 500 currents replying, creating topics and reading ? any ideas ?
Your mileage will depend on number of concurrent users and their behavior. Can’t really say too much based on those numbers.
My 6-core UpCloud server chokes somewhere above 400 concurrent users. We deliver way over 120k page views on the best days.
Sounds Well, Thanks A lot.