Best VPS For DDOSing
VPS Comparison (regarding DDoS and price-performance)
Before renting a VPS (Virtual Private Server), one must be clear about the clear areas of application of the server. There are many suppliers who specialize in pure machines for development or production environments, for example.
This article is completely independent and unpaid and covers the following Virtual Private Server vendors:
DigitalOcean, OVH, 1blu, Strato, BalzingFast, Living-Bots.
#1 – OVH
Positive +
- Fast server creation (1-2 min)
- Very effective DDoS Protection
- Low latency
- Ability to add hard drives up to 1TB to each server
- Free, German telephone support
- Billing as required (monthly/hourly)
Negative –
- Optically unattractive interface
- Available regions
- France (Strasbourg, Gravelines)
- Canada
OVH has made a huge leap from 2015 to 2016 and has greatly expanded and improved its own VPS offerings. When I was an OVH customer in 2014, when I was a good VPS for a medium-sized Teamspeak server, I was extremely disappointed because the VPS servers had very high latency and scored very poorly in benchmark tests.
When I switched my infrastructure to an OVH Cloud VPS at the insistence of a friend, the surprise and enthusiasm was all the greater. The servers had a very low ping and outperformed any provider I know in benchmark testing.
Firewall
A very useful feature is the own 4 TBit/s strong firewall. This indicated capacity is not just an empty promise. Every customer, no matter which product he owns, has the possibility to move his servers to the OVH Anit-DDoS firewall free of charge.
This has the advantage that attacks can be detected and fended off even faster. Should a DDoS attack nevertheless pass through the firewall, the customer will be notified by email (optional). An email at the end of the attack will also be sent. A little smile sometimes comes through when the email client receives the email at the start of the attack and the end at the same time.
If you attach great importance to performance and strong DDoS protection, you will not be disappointed with OVH.
Interface
As you can see above, however, there is one small shortcoming. The customer interface is unfortunately very slow and confusing. Some menu items and explanations are only available in English or even French. This is no problem for the normal customer, as these translation gaps only occur with advanced settings, which do not have to be changed in everyday life.
#2 – DigitalOcean
Positive +
- Very fast server creation (< 1 min)
- Fair prices
- Very nice interface
- Free DNS Provider
- Good and fast support
- Custom API to quickly create servers
- Internal network
Negative –
- Servers are taken offline for 3 hours in case of very strong DDoS attack
- Account must be initially funded with at least $15
- Available regions
- USA (3x New York, San Francisco)
- Canada (Torronto)
- Europe (Amsterdam, London, Frankfurt)
DigitalOcean should be known to every developer. Based in the SF, the American company offers many data centers, among others in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Singapour and of course in several locations in the USA.
It couldn’t be simpler
The company stands out with the incredibly simple creation of servers. Advertisements are advertised with a creation time of 55 seconds, which in most cases can also be achieved in reality. This fact already indicates that the largest area of application will be the development environment.
API
Nevertheless, the low creation time in conjunction with the in-house API offers enormous potential for large applications that need to be scaled quickly and flexibly.
Statement of Account
The settlement of accounts is also accommodating to this. Each VPS (called Droplet at DigitalOcean) is invoiced hourly up to the indicated monthly price. For example, if you rent (see price table) a 1GB Ram, 1 CPU core server for $10 per month, it is billed hourly until the machine costs $10. The usage until the end of the month will therefore not exceed the indicated monthly price.
DDoS Protection
A very large deficiency with the DigitalOcean Doplets is however the DDoS Protection. Contrary to expectations, however, it is not pure protection, but the process of penetrating a strong attack. If all attempts to route or fend off the attack do not help, the server is completely disconnected for 3 hours. What!? You read right.
Internal network
If you have several Droplets in a data center, it makes sense to activate the priavate network. The servers can communicate with each other without large latencies. Among other things, the firewall is also bypassed.
#3 – BalzingFast VPS
Positive +
Very stable, even under attack
Negative –
A somewhat cumbersome and confusing order
When researching about reliable hosters with strong DDoS protection you cannot avoid BalzingFast. At first I was sceptical about the Portuguese provider. It turned out that the often praised firewall rightly has its raison d’être. Even with very strong attacks, live applications such as Teamspeak did not go down completely. Accessibility was guaranteed at all times, even if high latencies occurred during the attacks.
Living-Bots VPS
Positive +
- –
Negative –
- Very poor DDoS protection
- Dubious support
- Different and ugly interfaces
1blu VPS
Positive +
- Favorable
Negative –
- Hardly any protection against DDoS attacks
- No-/poor support
- No SLA
- Availability less than 90%.
Strato VPS
Positive +
- –
Negative –
Comparatively high costs
Overloading the V-Server
Hidden costs in footnotes
Weak DDoS protection
Sometimes very long creation times
Poor support
At the beginning of 2015, Strato advertised its huge, seamless move to its own Berlin data center. Did the customer benefit from this? I don’t think so. Already at that time, Strato was lagging far behind with its VPS offers. Even though Strato AG is mainly preferred by root server customers, customers who are interested in cloud solutions stay on track.
If there is a problem with a server, support, although by telephone, is not helpful. Personally, I can report that a rented V-Server was partly unavailable on an hourly basis and showed extreme latencies. Therefore, it cannot be used with real-time applications. After 2 months without solution from Strato, I cancelled the contract.
While the current cloud hype is taking its course, Strato will be stuck in 2013, with the supply of VPS solutions increasing exponentially.
Results of the PHP Benchmark Tests
The benchmark test was performed with the same PHP version and processing power
- DigitalOcean: 5.461 seconds
- OVH : 8.564 seconds
- BalzingFast: 3.345 seconds
- Strato: 4.340 seconds
- Living Bots: 5.320 seconds