PowerUp Hosting SSD VPS Review
Firstly, these guys have a very superb reputation within the SEO community and so are constantly being recommended on internet marketing blogs and forums. Additionally have a good working relationship with key players within the SEO software arena, such as GSA.
All of this makes for a good sign when it comes to choosing a reliable SEO
VPS provider.
Once i made my decision to purchase my first VPS last year, I did have
short-listed PowerUp Hosting, but instead went for another provider. That was
purely due to price alone. I was just testing out this kind of software and did
not ready any unessential overheads until I could see that there was any
financial gain to be had from this activity.
Once you add up proxies, software and a VPS, you are looking for quite a bit
money as an outlay. I probably spent of about a $1000.
Since that time, I have ranked two new sites alongside some YouTube videos
utilizing these tools and also have seen a return on my investment. This makes
me the more interested in what else is out there…
What things to Check In A VPS
When choosing a new VPS for your SEO activities, you want to be looking out
for the following things:
Distance from the Server – Typically, the further you are, the longer the
reaction times. Using VPS in a Tier 1 Network will negate this distance, unless
your internet connection is poor.Quality of Connection – The higher quality the
connection, the shorter the reaction times and the snappier feel and the ease it
can run multiple threads.
Quality of Equipment – By using the latest technology, like from any PC will give you better performance and ability to operate programs quickly and with more threads.
Bandwidth speed – Probably the least key issue for link building as any server needs to have decent enough bandwidth. The hardware will bottleneck the operation speeds way before the bandwidth will. ..Only when you are using your Grandpa’s 56K dial up.
Operating System – Make certain that it runs Windows 2008 – No linux. All SEO
software runs on a windows box. “R2? Makes it a bit like Windows 7.
Will they Mind You Spam Link Building? – If the answer is no then you re
ready to go! Some hosting companies are allowed to take offence and shut you
down…You May Need Private Proxies – No hosting firm, SEO friendly or not will
let you use without proxies. So stop being the cheapskate and buy some
proxies.
All of these factors combine together to give you an overall usability level
of your machine.
The truth is it doesn t matter how good your set up is, the poorer the
available connection and further you are away from the server, the less snappy
its operation will begin to feel. This is because the ping, or time
it brings for commands to jump back and forth is increased, resulting in a lag
time.
Recently, a well powered VPS with minimal ping should feel like you are
performing on a local desktop.
PowerUp Hosting SSD Review
OK, all the way down to business…These guys are a US outfit with their
servers located in LA. Unlike many providers they actually own their own
equipment so have total control over many. This is a refreshing change as many
providers are actually just resellers, often just opting for the most cheapest
set ups to sell on at the biggest margins.
Following a a primary talk with one of the friendly System Admin guys, the
VPS was functioning perfectly very quickly. When I asked the average set-up
time, I was told probably a few minutes to some hours based on queues – but for
me it was ready a few moments literally.
This often a good sign. The last hosting I ordered took almost 12 hours to
provision and the service reflected that later on down the line.
For this PowerUp Hosting Review I went for the Hyper-V Plus
standard as its the very same spec as my SolidSeoVPS so I can perform a like for
like comparison.
Dual Core2GB DDR3 RAM70GB Hardrive
1Gbps Connection $54.99 a monthA Quick Overview As always, when I log in, I
run a Novabench test which shows me my actual VPS specs, and several basic,
high-level benchmarks.
You can see this machine is running on server grade CPU’s – Intel Xeon’s. Nice.
In direct comparison to the new SolidSeoVPS range, the RAM speed is now 30% slower plus the CPU is now equal. This could make a big difference overall.
The hard disk drive write speed is now significantly slower- there is a
50MB/s difference.
I then fired up the OOKLA speedtest and choose the server offering the least
ping, i.e. the closest. This was during peak hours for the US and it still gave
some seriously healthy bandwidth overheads. Now before you get too excited, this
is a test between two servers almost sitting down on top of each other!
In reality, only when you live near LA, the speed will start to decrease and
the ping increases the further you are. However, the fact is that the juice is
there if you are able to take it.
This result is now 20% slower than that along the EU SolidSeoVPS which came
in at 1267 and 10% slower than the US one at 1124.
I was shocked to know such a difference the newer RAM that the Solid machines use.
When talking to PowerUp, they informed me that they always keep an overhead
of 40% free on each server. This is to guarantee that each VPS are going to
perform at optimum speeds.
In reality, with any PC system real or virtual, the bottleneck is the system
hard drive – unless you have some SSD’s in Quad RAID that is, which we don’t. So
lets check out the Crystal Mark scores. These measure the rates in which the
system can read and write to the system hard drive.
These speeds are good for an 7200rpm hard drive but you can see how it is
that the system will be gimped from the older technology. The argument for
equipping SSD drives for your VPS is now stronger now the cost is more
accessible to the typical user.
Link-building software, such as GSA SER is incredibly heavy on the Hard drive
with constant reading/writing taking place. Meaning that the drives become
fragmented relatively quickly which in turn begins putting the brakes on
performance. Fortunately PowerUp are fully aware of this which is the reason
they swap out and swap out the disk drives every season.
For now, the price value and increased storage capacity overrides the speed of SSD for a lot of users, but I think we will see this change over the next few months.
PowerUp Hosting Worldwide Connectivity
Next I truly wanted to check the connection speeds between different parts
around the globe. The PowerUp Hosting data centre rest on a Tier 1 Network which
means they may be proficient at some serious data transfer rates.
As you would anticipate to see, ping increases the further we get seen from
the data centre in LA and the bandwidth becomes more restricted.
The impressive part of all these results is the shear upload capacity the
PowerUp Tier 1 Network has available to it. Even when pushing data all the way
to Amsterdam, it hits over 100Mpbs during peak hours without raising a
heartbeat.
What is important to remember is that these figures are only a for a general
indication. The time of day and data centre will effect these numbers so no test
will be the same. The factor that overrides this all is the quality of the
internet connection you use to access the server.
Also you will need to remember that if you are link-building or scraping,
your VPS will be operating behind proxies and pushing and receiving data from
servers situated worldwide. The above figures will reflect how fast it can do
this as well how snappy and responsive the machine will feel when you connect to
it remotely.
What Does All This Mean?
You might be thinking what the hell are all these results and why should I
care…I are just looking to build some links you crazy Englishman! Well, simply
put, the better performing your VPS, the faster it will be to respond to your
commands and the more threads or potential links per minute it will allow you to
build. Basically making the whole thing easier to handle.
I spend at the very least an hour a day on my main VPS and start to get very
annoyed when I have to wait too long for things to load up or when I get the
“not responding” freezes.
Usability
I was using this VPS from London, so there was a good distance for the data
packets to travel. Despite of this the VPS was extremely responsive and snappy,
impressively so. I am connecting using a 30Mb Fibre line.
Compared to one of my German based VPS’, there really was a slightly slower reaction time to my mouse clicks when browsing the internet using Chrome.
While this does effect usability a little, the entire load times and
performance of software remained first-rate.
It’s worth noting that Internet browsing on any VPS is a terrible experience
as there is no GPU (Graphics processor) so the CPU has to do all the work.
Conclusion
From chatting with PowerUp and using their VPS for a good length of time, it
is clear to check out these guys are really interested in what they do and are
also in it for the long run. This makes an enormous difference.
To put it short, PowerUp Hosting VPS is basically a solid performer. It’s
benchmarks are high quality, they are now being released in a close second with
this range of older machines.
It’s worth noting that with PowerUp, you’re getting a purpose built, server grade VPS that sits on a 1Gbps, Tier 1 Network and keeps 40% of its overheads spare.
Update: When you are seriously considering a VPS from PowerUp, then I suggest
you pick up one of their new SSD range which are now on special early bird offer
via the link below.
They are cheaper and a lot faster then their standard range and outperform the older range on every test. I’ll publish the stats shortly.