FreeMach™ - AlphaVPS - End of Year 1 Report

MasonMason AdministratorOG
in Reviews

This is the end of year one report for FreeMach's EU1 node with AlphaVPS in Sofia, Bulgaria.

FreeMach Overview

FreeMach™ is a free service providing free KVM VPSes to community members that was initially enabled and sponsored by VirMach with a dedicated server in Buffalo, NY. The project has since expanded to an EU node in Sofia, BG, thanks to the wonderful folks over at AlphaVPS.

Here are some example projects that are/have been running on FreeMach --

  • GeoDNS Load Balancing
  • EasyEngine Testing
  • Private File Sharing
  • MariaDB Galera Cluster
  • NodeJS App Development
  • Non-Profit University Organization's Website
  • Rancher Testing
  • IPv6 HE.net Tunnel Testing
  • Hindi Community Website
  • Control Panel Development
  • Video Encoding Tool Testing and Development
  • Web IDE / Dev Environment for School Projects
  • Automated Build of Android Projects
  • VOIP Module Development
  • Mirror for Open Source Virtualization Platform Distributions
  • Personal Media Server
  • and a quite a bit more...

Quick AlphaVPS Review

@AlexBarakov messaged me at the beginning of last year (2019) inquiring if I wanted to take on a sponsored node in the EU to add to the FreeMach project. He offered up a solid dedicated machine with a block of IPs, helped me get everything set up, and left me on my merry way. The server also was the initial deployment and test of the ProxCP Proxmox-based control panel (also sponsored, review here).

The server has had ~10-15 unique tenants running various projects over the course of the last year. Performance has always been top notch. Here is the uptime status report for the node, thanks to HetrixTools. Since getting the server deployed, I've only opened a single support ticket, and that was to update a rDNS record. Network connectivity and speed have been great as well!

Kudos to the AlphaVPS team (Alex & Vesko) who run a tight ship. These guys know what they're doing and are always very willing and able to help you out whenever you need it. I have other VPS services with AlphaVPS going back to 2017 and have zero complaints. Any and all issues are always addressed quickly and professionally, so I'd definitely recommend their services to others.

Server Usage

Some stats and graphs. Usage for the most part is pretty light. I've given the green light for increased usage (i.e. extended CPU load) and have given some additional resources (when asked) to FreeMach users for their projects, but the server takes everything that's been thrown at it so far. One area of concern may be the single SSD which has to take the abuse from all the VMs simultaneously. As such, I don't allow extensive disk usage on this node.

Network

CPU

Load

Memory

Conclusion

Special thanks to @AlexBarakov for sponsoring FreeMach's first and only EU node! The first year has been a great experience and has provided resources for many great learning, community and academic-focused projects that needed a home. I hope to continue this service at this location as long as AlphaVPS is willing to host us, we've certainly appreciated their efforts and services, and the great performance of their server for the past year.

Thanks all,
-Mason

FreeMach is sponsored by VirMach (sponsored US location), AlphaVPS (sponsored EU location), and ProxCP (sponsored VM Control Panel).

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