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Monitoring cronjobs on Linux

June 9, 2019 by Simon

I recently created a number of cron jobs to backup databases, backup files offsite, virus scan and perform a number of tasks (at various times) I put a call out on Twitter as to the best program to monitor these jobs.

@nixcraft What’s a good tool for monitoring cron job events and output? #Thanks
— Simon Fearby (Aussie DevSecOps) (@FearbySoftware) June 8, 2019

George Liu from https://community.centminmod.com/ kindly replied with this advice.

one i have used before https://t.co/SbsMfYFUg9
— George Liu (@centminmod) June 9, 2019

I visited https://healthchecks.io/. A quick Google reveals this software is open source too, nice.

Create a healthchecks.io account

I created an account at https://healthchecks.io/ by visiting https://healthchecks.io/accounts/login/ and clicking the signup link then entering my email address.

I click the link that was sent to my email account to log in.

I then logged in and reviewed my account settings at https://healthchecks.io/accounts/profile and set a password (I then click the link in my email to set a password).

After my password was setup I visited https://healthchecks.io/

Pricing

The service is free to use up to 20 checks, then it’s $20/mo for 100 cron job checks. I am using the free version.

View the pricing page here.

Creating Monitors (Checks)

I logged into https://healthchecks.io and clicked the project icon (the one with my email)

Screenshot of the dashboard at This post will.

I deleted the sample item then clicked ‘Add Check‘

I was prompted to give a name to the job and configure it.

If you click the ‘Name’ (unnamed) item a form will appear.

Add check job to https://healthchecks.io screenshot (naming it)

TIP: Name the jobs something memorable or similar to the job in “crontab”

https://healthchecks.io form asking for a job name, tag and description

I completed the form and clicked ‘Save‘

I click the gear icon for the job to configure it

After clicking the Settings icon I could see the full details of the job

Name
Description
How to ping it (HTTP or email)
Current Status (Pause or Ping Now)
Timezone (Important, make sure this is the same timezone as your server)
Expected Schedule
Notification Method
Log

https://healthchecks.io screenshot of a jobs settings

I could see the custom URL I needed to request in my cronjob to make the job pass the success test (a random GUI will be created for each job)

https://hc-ping.com/######-####-####-####-############

I added the following to the end of my desired cron job entry (I have removed my GUID for security reasons and replaced it with #’s)

&& curl -fsS --retry 3 https://hc-ping.com/########-####-####-####-######## > /dev/null

The complete cron entry looks like this (not sure what “12 12 * * *” means, check here)

12 12 * * *  /bib/bash /scripts/thescript.sh && curl -fsS --retry 3 https://hc-ping.com/########-####-####-####-######## > /dev/null

I can also configure the job to expect when to receive an indication when the job has been run.

You can set a schedule with sliders..

Screenshot of when https://healthchecks.io expects a job to run

Or you can set a schedule by pasting in the cron job format and see when the job will be expected to run in the future.

Visit https://crontab.guru/ to learn how to set crontab schedules.

After you save the job settings you will be returned to the main page.

Screenshot pf the portal once logged into https://healthchecks.io/

At any time you can reopen the job’s to adjust settings.

You can even see details about the requested clients are accessing the URLs, nice.

I created 17 jobs on 2x servers

Screenshot of 17 jobs added to https://healthchecks.io/

I setup 2 jobs that will fail just to see what failed jobs look like.

Badges

You can also use badges to quickly display the status of cron jobs in other apps or webpages (by embedding an image)

I created a quick HTML (PHP) file that linked to the badge images. I have swapped out my badge images for security but paste in yours (from above)

HTML

Cron Jobs

Server 1:
Server 2:
Health Checks:
This is what the simple html file looks like in a browser.

Reports

I logged into the portal and it did not take long for me to start seeing errors.

I had an invalid cron job entry (the wrong user was assigned and the job was failing).

I had an error all this time and did not know it.

My dummy job that was setup to fail did fail.

An email alert was sent to my defined email address, nice.

I could also see the email with the failing event in the log (and an initial test call made with a browser)

I was able to pause the reporting of this job in future.

Conclusion

I really like https://healthchecks.io/ and will continue using it.

Sending Emails

I have added a send email command to the end of my cron job called bach script(s) to be alerted of the jobs running.
```
sendemail -f [email protected] -t [email protected] -u "CRON: xxx Run (server.com)" -m "/scripts/script.sh" -s smtp.gmail.com:587 -o tls=yes -xu [email protected] -xp YourEmailPasswordGoesHere -a /folder/file-to-attach.log
```
Read my post here How to send email via G Suite from Ubuntu in the cloud

If you have a G Suite account with 2FA enabled you will need to create a App Specific Password for this to work in your G Suite admin panel.

Links

Related links can be found here
Version:

1.2 Added send email Info

1.1 Initial Post

How to backup and restore a MySQL database on Windows and Linux

April 21, 2019 by Simon

Why backup and restore

This is a quick guide demonstrating how you can backup and restore a MySQL database on Windows and Linux using Adminer.

You may need to know how to backup a restore a database for a number of reasons..

e.g

Send the database to someone to debug or give feedback while learning.
Move the database from a local machine to the cloud
Move the database from cloud vendor A to cloud vendor B
etc.

Having a backup of the VM is good but having a backup of the database too is better. I use UpCloud for hosting my VM’s and setting backups is easy. But I cannot download those backups.

Murphy’s Law

“If anything can go wrong, it will”

The most important reason for taking a backup and knowing how to restore it is for disaster recovery reasons.

Backup (the easiest way) with Adminer

Adminer is a free PHP based IDE for MySQL and other databases. Simply install Adminer and save the file on your local computer or remote web server directory.

FYI: The Adminer author Jakub Vrana has a patron page, I am a patron of this awesome software.

Snip from Adminers website. “Adminer (formerly phpMinAdmin) is a full-featured database management tool written in PHP. Conversely to phpMyAdmin, it consist of a single file ready to deploy to the target server. Adminer is available for MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQLite, MS SQL, Oracle, Firebird, SimpleDB, Elasticsearch andMongoDB.”

TIP: The file would be publicly accessible to anyone so don’t save it to a common area, obfuscate the file, protect it of delete the file when you are done using it.

Once Adminer is installed load it in a web browser, login with your MySQL credentials. Once you login you will see all databases and an Import and Export menu.

Adminer main screen, all databases and import and export menu.

tbtest is a simple database with one table and 4 fields (ID, Key, Value and Modified)

.Click Export to open the export screen.

Export screen showing a list of databases and export options

Click Export, a SQL file will be generated (this is the export of the database).

Here is a save of the file:
https://fearby.com/wp-content/uploads/export.txt

Exported view of https://dev.mysql.com/doc/workbench/en/wb-admin-export-import-management.html

Its that simple.

If I add a binary blob file to the table and upload a PNG file lets see how the export looks.

Screenshot o the new table with a blog field in Adminer UI

Let export the database again in Adminer and check out the output. I used Sublime Text editor to view the export file.

New Export shows the binary file in the Backup SQL file

Restore (the easiest way) with Adminer

OK lets delete the tbtest database and then restore it with Adminer. I used Adminer to delete (DROP) the database.

Database “dbtest” deleted.

Now lets create a blank database to restore to (same name).

Database created.

Now lets import the database backup using Adminer.

Click Import, select the backup file and un-tick Stop on errors.

Import screenshot, dxtest selectded, Restore file selected, stop on errors disabled

TIP: The 2MB next the the choose file button is defined by your web server and PHP configuration. If you are trying to import a larger database (e.g 80MB) first increase the limits in your web server and PHP (via php.ini).

The Import (restore should take seconds)

The database was imported from a backup, all tables and records imported just fine.

Bonus methods.

On Ubuntu use this guide to backup from the command line. If you use the Oracle MySQL Workbench read this.

I hope this helps someone.

How to install PHP 7.2.latest on Ubuntu 16.04

November 17, 2018 by Simon

How to install PHP 7.2.latest on Ubuntu 16.04/ Ubuntu 18.04/Debian etc/

I have a number of guides on moving away from CPanel, Setting up VM’s on UpCloud, AWS, Vultr or Digital Ocean along with installing and managing WordPress from the command line. PHP is my programming language of choice.

PHP has a support page that declares the support date ranges and support types: http://php.net/supported-versions.php

A version of PHP is either actively supported, security fix supported or end of life. Read this post to check WordPress for PHP compatibility.

From time to time vulnerabilities come up that require PHP updates to be applied.

Multiple flaw found in #PHP, most severe of which could allow arbitrary code execution

Affected Versions:
PHP 7.2 —prior to 7.2.5
PHP 7.1 —prior to 7.1.17
PHP 7.0 —prior to 7.0.30
PHP 5.0 —prior to 5.6.36https://t.co/TtiqXePoHu

Upgrade to the latest version of PHP immediately

— The Hacker News (@TheHackersNews) May 1, 2018

#PHP 7.2.12 has been released https://t.co/iNXGYTs0PX

— Neustradamus (@neustradamus) November 9, 2018

Source Link here

I have guides on setting up PHP 7 here on Digital Ocean, here on AWS and here on Vultr. I have tried upgrading to PHP 7.1 in the past with no luck (I forgot to change something and rolled back to 7.0).

FYI: I have a guide on setting up PHP child workers so the output from some commands below may be different than yours. Here are the steps I performed to install PHP 7.2 alongside 7.0 then switch. to 7.2.

Backup your system

Do perform a Snapshot or Backup before proceeding. Nothing beats a quick restore if things fail.

Note: Use this information at your own risk.

Updating php 7.2.12 to 7.2.12

Update your Ubuntu systems

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

Updating from an older php (e.g 5.x, 7.1, 7.1 to say 7.2.12)

Backup PHP

cd /etc/php
zip -r php7.0backup.zip 7.0/

Install Helper

This software provides an abstraction of the used apt repositories. It allows you to easily manage your distribution and independent software vendor software sources. More Info

apt-get install python-software-properties

Add the main PHP repo (more information)

add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

Update the package lists

“In a nutshell, apt-get update doesn’t actually install new versions of the software. Instead, it updates the package lists for upgrades for packages that need upgrading, as well as new packages that have just come to the repositories.” from here

apt-get update

List Installed Packages (optional)

dpkg -l

Install PHP 7.2

apt-get install php7.2

Install common PHP modules

apt-get install php-pear php7.2-curl php7.2-dev php7.2-mbstring php7.2-zip php7.2-mysql php7.2-xml

Install PHP FPM

apt-get install php7.2-fpm

Update all packages (may be needed to update from php 7.2.4 to 7.2.5)

sudo apt-get upgrade

Edit your NGINX sites-available config

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
# I set: fastcgi_pass /run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;

Edit your NGINX sites-enabled config

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
# I set: fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;

I edited these lines

location ~ \.php$ {
    ...
    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
    ...
}

Edit your PHP config (and make desired changes)

sudo nano /etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini

Edit your PHP pool config file (as required). See this guide here.

e.g.

> cgi.fix_pathinfo=0
> max_input_vars = 1000
> memory_limit = 1024M
> max_file_uploads = 8M
> post_max_size = 8M

sudo nano /etc/php/7.2/fpm/pool.d/www.conf

Make sure you set: listen = /run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock

Set PHP 7.2 as the default PHP

update-alternatives --set php /usr/bin/php7.2

Check your PHP version

php -v

Reload PHP

sudo service php7.2-fpm reload

Reload NGINX

nginx -t
nginx -s reload
/etc/init.d/nginx restart

Check the status of your PHP (and child workers)

sudo service php7.2-fpm status
● php7.2-fpm.service - The PHP 7.2 FastCGI Process Manager
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/php7.2-fpm.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Fri 2018-05-04 19:02:27 AEST;
     Docs: man:php-fpm7.2(8)
  Process: 123456 ExecReload=/bin/kill -USR2 $MAINPID (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 123456 (php-fpm7.2)
   Status: "Processes active: 0, idle: 10, Requests: 0, slow: 0, Traffic: 0req/sec"
    Tasks: 11
   Memory: 30.5M
      CPU: 10.678s
   CGroup: /system.slice/php7.2-fpm.service
           ├─16494 php-fpm: master process (/etc/php/7.2/fpm/php-fpm.conf)
           ├─16497 php-fpm: pool www
           ├─16498 php-fpm: pool www
           ├─16499 php-fpm: pool www
           ├─16500 php-fpm: pool www
           ├─16501 php-fpm: pool www
           ├─16502 php-fpm: pool www
           ├─16503 php-fpm: pool www
           ├─16504 php-fpm: pool www
           ├─16505 php-fpm: pool www
           └─16506 php-fpm: pool www

Check your website.

Troubleshooting

Guides that helped me.

https://thishosting.rocks/install-php-on-ubuntu/

https://websiteforstudents.com/wordpress-supports-php-7-2-heres-how-to-install-with-nginx-and-mariadb-support/

Check your log files

tail /var/log/nginx/error.log

Debug FPM Service

systemctl status php7.2-fpm.service
● php7.2-fpm.service - The PHP 7.2 FastCGI Process Manager
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/php7.2-fpm.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Sun 2018-05-06 00:18:55 AEST; 7min ago
     Docs: man:php-fpm7.2(8)
  Process: 123456 ExecReload=/bin/kill -USR2 $MAINPID (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 123 (php-fpm7.2)
   Status: "Processes active: 0, idle: 10, Requests: 44, slow: 0, Traffic: 0req/sec"
    Tasks: 11
   Memory: 212.6M
      CPU: 12.052s
   CGroup: /system.slice/php7.2-fpm.service
           ├─438 php-fpm: master process (/etc/php/7.2/fpm/php-fpm.conf)
           ├─441 php-fpm: pool www
           ├─442 php-fpm: pool www
           ├─443 php-fpm: pool www
           ├─444 php-fpm: pool www
           ├─445 php-fpm: pool www
           ├─446 php-fpm: pool www
           ├─447 php-fpm: pool www
           ├─449 php-fpm: pool www
           ├─450 php-fpm: pool www
           └─451 php-fpm: pool www

May 06 00:18:55 server systemd[1]: Stopped The PHP 7.2 FastCGI Process Manager.
May 06 00:18:55 server systemd[1]: Starting The PHP 7.2 FastCGI Process Manager...
May 06 00:18:55 server systemd[1]: Started The PHP 7.2 FastCGI Process Manager.

Remove PHP 7.0

sudo apt-get purge php7.0-common
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libaspell15 libauthen-pam-perl libc-client2007e libio-pty-perl libmcrypt4 librecode0 libtidy-0.99-0 libxmlrpc-epi0 linux-headers-4.4.0-109
  linux-headers-4.4.0-109-generic linux-headers-4.4.0-112 linux-headers-4.4.0-112-generic linux-headers-4.4.0-87
  linux-headers-4.4.0-87-generic linux-headers-4.4.0-96 linux-headers-4.4.0-96-generic linux-image-4.4.0-109-generic
  linux-image-4.4.0-112-generic linux-image-4.4.0-87-generic linux-image-4.4.0-96-generic linux-image-extra-4.4.0-109-generic
  linux-image-extra-4.4.0-112-generic linux-image-extra-4.4.0-87-generic linux-image-extra-4.4.0-96-generic mlock
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  php7.0-cli* php7.0-common* php7.0-curl* php7.0-fpm* php7.0-gd* php7.0-imap* php7.0-intl* php7.0-json* php7.0-mbstring* php7.0-mcrypt*
  php7.0-mysql* php7.0-opcache* php7.0-pspell* php7.0-readline* php7.0-recode* php7.0-sqlite3* php7.0-tidy* php7.0-xml* php7.0-xmlrpc*
  php7.0-xsl*

PHP 7.0 Removed 🙂

Remove other unused packages

sudo apt autoremove

At the time of writing (November the 18th 2018) PHP 7.2.12 is the latest version of PHP and PHP 7.3 will be out at the end of the year.

Good luck and I hope this guide helps someone

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Revision History

v1.4 Updated the post to mention PHP 7.0 EOL

v1.3 Updated to add PHP 7.2.12 information

v1.2 PHP 7.2.9 and PHP 7.2 updates

v1.1 Remove PHP 7.0 steps

v1.0 Initial post

Setup two factor authenticator protection at login on Ubuntu or Debian

October 14, 2018 by Simon

This is a quick post that shows how I set up two-factor authenticator protection at login on Ubuntu or Debian

Aside

If you have not read my previous posts I have now moved my blog to the awesome UpCloud host (signup using this link to get $25 free UpCloud VM credit). I compared Digital Ocean, Vultr and UpCloud Disk IO here and UpCloud came out on top by a long way (read the blog post here). Here is my blog post on moving from Vultr to UpCloud.

Buy a domain name here

Now on with the post.

Backup

I ensured I had a backup of my server. This is easy to do on UpCloud. If something goes wrong I will rollback.

Why Setup 2FA on SSH connections

1) Firewalls or whitelists may not protect you from detection.

2) SSH authorisation bypass bugs may appear.

I’ve just relased libssh 0.8.4 and 0.7.6 to address CVE-2018-10933. This is an auth bypass in the server. Please update as soon as possible! https://t.co/Qhra2TXqzm

— Andreas Schneider (@cryptomilk) October 16, 2018

2FA authorisation is another lube of defence.

Yubico Yubi Key

Read my block post here to learn how to use the Yubico YubiKey NEO hardware-based two-factor authentication device to improve authentication and logins to OSX and software

Timezone

It is important that you set the same timezone as the server you are trying to secure two 2FA. I can run this command on Linux to set the timezone.

On Debian, I set the time using this guide.

dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Check the time command

> timedatectl
> Local time: Tue 2019-06-25 16:45:20 UTC
> Universal time: Tue 2019-06-25 16:45:20 UTC
> RTC time: Wed 2019-06-26 02:37:44
> Time zone: Etc/UTC (UTC, +0000)
> Network time on: yes
> NTP synchronized: yes
> RTC in local TZ: no

sudo hwclock --show

I set the timezone

> sudo timedatectl set-timezone Australia/Sydney

I confirmed the timezone

> timedatectl
> Local time: Wed 2019-06-26 02:47:42 AEST
> Universal time: Tue 2019-06-25 16:47:42 UTC
> RTC time: Wed 2019-06-26 02:40:06
> Time zone: Australia/Sydney (AEST, +1000)
> Network time on: yes
> NTP synchronized: yes
> RTC in local TZ: no

I installed a npt time server

I followed this guide to install an NTP time server (failed at: ntpdate linuxconfig.ntp) and this guide to manually sync

I installed the Google Authenticator app

sudo apt install libpam-google-authenticator

sudo apt-get install libpam-google-authenticator

Configure Google Authenticator

Run google-authenticator and answer the following questions

Q1) Do you want authentication tokens to be time-based (y/n): Y

You will be presented with a token you can add to the Yubico Authenticator or other authenticator apps,

TIP: Write down any recovery codes displayed

Scan the code with your 2FA Authenticator app (e.g Google Authenticator, Yubico Authenticator or freeOTP from https://freeotp.github.io)

The 2FA code is now available for use in my YubiCo Authenticator app

Q2) Do you want me to update your “/root/.google_authenticator” file? (y/n): Y

Q3) Do you want to disallow multiple uses of the same authentication
token? This restricts you to one login about every 30s, but it increases
your chances to notice or even prevent man-in-the-middle attacks (y/n): Y

Q4) By default, a new token is generated every 30 seconds by the mobile app.
In order to compensate for possible time-skew between the client and the server,
we allow an extra token before and after the current time. This allows for a
time skew of up to 30 seconds between the authentication server and client. If you
experience problems with poor time synchronization, you can increase the window
from its default size of 3 permitted codes (one previous code, the current
code, the next code) to 17 permitted codes (the 8 previous codes, the current
code, and the 8 next codes). This will permit for a time skew of up to 4 minutes
between client and server.
Do you want to do so? (y/n) y: Y

Q5) If the computer that you are logging into isn’t hardened against brute-force login attempts, you can enable rate-limiting for the authentication module. By default, this limits attackers to no more than 3 login attempts every 30s.
Do you want to enable rate-limiting? (y/n): Y

Review Google Authenticator Config

sudo nano ~/.google_authenticator

You can change this if need be.

sudo nano ~/.google_authenticator

Edit SSH Configuration (Authentication)

sudo nano /etc/pam.d/sshd

Add the line below the line “@include common-auth”

auth required pam_google_authenticator.so

Comment out the following line (this is the most important step, this forces 2FA)

#@include common-auth

Edit SSH Configuration (Challenge Response Authentication)

Edit the ssh config file.

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Search For

ChallengeResponseAuthentication

Set this to

yes

Ensure the following line exists

UsePAM yes

Add the following line

AuthenticationMethods publickey,password publickey,keyboard-interactive

Edit Common Auth

sudo nano /etc/pam.d/common-auth

Add the following line before the line that says “auth [success=1 default=ignore] pam_unix.so nullok_secure”

auth required pam_google_authenticator.so

Restart the SSH service and test the codes in a new terminal before rebooting.

TIP: Do not exit the working connected session and you may need it to fix issues.

Restart the SSH service a tets it

/etc/init.d/ssh restart
[ ok ] Restarting ssh (via systemctl): ssh.service.

If you have failed to set it up authenticator codes will fail to work.

Failed attempts

Further authentication required
Using keyboard-interactive authentication.
Verification code:
Using keyboard-interactive authentication.
Verification code:
Using keyboard-interactive authentication.
Verification code:

When it is configured OK (at login SSH connection) I was prompted for further information

Further Information required
Using keyboard-interactive authentication
Verification Code: ######
sshuser@server#

I am now prompted at login to insert a 2FA token (after inserting my YubiKey)

Turn on 2FA on other sites

Check out https://www.turnon2fa.com and tutorials here.

I hope this guide helps someone.

Please consider using my referral code and get $25 UpCloud VM credit if you need to create a server online.

https://www.upcloud.com/register/?promo=D84793

Ask a question or recommend an article

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Revision History

V1.4 June 2019: Works on Debian 9.9

V1.3 turnon2fa.com

V1.2 ssh auth bypass

v1.1 Authenticator apps

v1.0 Initial Post

Adding two sub domains (one pointing to a new UpCloud VM and the other pointing to an NGINX subsite) on Ubuntu 18.04

June 27, 2018 by Simon

Here is how I added two subdomains (one pointing to a new UpCloud VM and the other pointing to an NGINX subsite) on Ubuntu 18.04

If you have not read my previous posts I have now moved my blog to the awesome UpCloud host (signup using this link to get $25 free credit). I compared Digital Ocean, Vultr and UpCloud Disk IO here and UpCloud came out on top by a long way (read the blog post here). Here is my blog post on moving from Vultr to UpCloud.

UpCloud performance is great.

Buy a domain name from Namecheap here.

Goal(s)

Setup 2x subdomains on https://fearby.com

– Sub Domain #1: https://test.fearby.com (pointing to a dedicated UpCloud VM in Singapore for testing).

– Sub Domain #2: https://audit.fearby.com (pointing to a sub-website on the NGINX/VM that runs https://fearby.com )

Let’s set up the first Sub Domain (dedicated VM) and SSL

Backup

Do back up your server first.

I created a second server ($5 month or $0.07c hour 1,024MB Memory, 25GB Disk, 1024 GB Month Data Transfer) at UpCloud. If you don’t already have an account at UpCloud use this link to signup and get $25 free credit ( https://www.upcloud.com/register/?promo=D84793 ). Read my blog post on why UpCloud is awesome and how I moved my domain to UpCloud.

Once I spun up a second server I obtained the IPv4 and IPv6 IP addresses of the new “test” VM from the UpCloud dashboard.

IPV4 IP: 94.237.65.54
IPV6 IP: 2a04:3543:1000:2310:24b7:7cff:fe92:468c

DNS

These DNS records were already in place with my DNS provider (Cloudflare).

A fearby.com 209.50.48.88
AAAA fearby.com 2605:7380:1000:1310:24b7:7cff:fe92:0d64

I added these DNS records for the subdomains.

I added a new A NAME record for the new shared NGINX subdomain (for https://audit.fearby.com), this subdomain will be a sub-website that is running off the same server as https://fearby.com

A audit 209.50.48.88
AAAA audit 2605:7380:1000:1310:24b7:7cff:fe92:0d64

I added another set of records for the new dedicated VM subdomain (for https://test.fearby.com)

A test 94.237.65.54
AAAA test 2a04:3543:1000:2310:24b7:7cff:fe92:468c

I waited for DNS to replicate around the globe by watching https://www.whatsmydns.net/

Setup a Firewall

On the new dedicated https://test.fearby.com VM, I installed the ufw firewall.

sudo apt-get install ufw

I configured the firewall to allow minimum ports (and added whitelisted IP for port 22 and added UpCloud DNS servers). I will lock this down some more later.

TIP: If your ISP does not offer a dedicated IP try a VPN. I use https://cyberghostvpn.com on OSX and Android.

Firewall rules.

sudo ufw status numbered

     To                         Action      From
     --                         ------      ----
[ 1] 22                         ALLOW IN    x.x.x.x
[ 2] 80                         ALLOW IN    Anywhere
[ 3] 443                        ALLOW IN    Anywhere
[ 4] 53                         ALLOW IN    93.237.127.9
[ 5] 53                         ALLOW IN    93.237.40.9
[ 6] 25                         DENY IN     Anywhere
[ 7] 80 (v6)                    ALLOW IN    Anywhere (v6)
[ 8] 443 (v6)                   ALLOW IN    Anywhere (v6)
[ 9] 53                         ALLOW IN    2a04:3540:53::1
[10] 53                         ALLOW IN    2a04:3544:53::1
[11] 22                         ALLOW IN    x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x
[12] 25 (v6)                    DENY IN     Anywhere (v6)

I enabled the firewall.

sudo ufw enable

Install NGINX (on https://test.fearby.com)

On the new dedicated https://test.fearby.com VM I…

Created a new www root

mkdir /www-root

Set permissions

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /www-root

Installed NGINX

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nginx

I created a placeholder webpage

sudo nano /www-root/index.html

Configured the root value in /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

Created a symbolic link of the nginx config

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/default /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Lets Encrypt SSL

I have previously setup Lets encrypt on Ubuntu 16.04 but not 18.04. Certbot had info on setting up Lets Encrypt for 14.x 16.x and 17.x but not 18.x

Full credit for the SSL steps goes to @Linuxize ( tips on setting up Lets Encrypt on Ubuntu 18.04 ). Check out https://linuxize.com/

I installed Lets Encrypt certbot

sudo apt update
sudo apt install certbot

I created a new Diffie–Hellman key

mkdir -p /etc/ssl/certs/
sudo openssl dhparam -out /etc/ssl/certs/dhparam.pem 2048

Map requests to http://test.fearby.com/.well-known/acme-challenge to /var/lib/letsencrypt/.well-known ( Read the linuxize post for detailed steps ).

mkdir -p /var/lib/letsencrypt/.well-known
chgrp www-data /var/lib/letsencrypt
chmod g+s /var/lib/letsencrypt

Create a /etc/nginx/snippets/letsencrypt.conf on http://test.fearby.com and enforce the redirect.

location ^~ /.well-known/acme-challenge/ {
  allow all;
  root /var/lib/letsencrypt/;
  default_type "text/plain";
  try_files $uri =404;
}

Create a /etc/nginx/snippets/ssl.conf file on http://test.fearby.com

ssl_dhparam /etc/ssl/certs/dhparam.pem;

ssl_session_timeout 1d;
ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:50m;
ssl_session_tickets off;

ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
ssl_ciphers 'ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES256-GCM-SHA384:AES128-SHA256:AES256-SHA256:AES128-SHA:AES256-SHA:DES-CBC3-SHA:!DSS';
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;

ssl_stapling on;
ssl_stapling_verify on;
resolver 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4 valid=300s;
resolver_timeout 30s;

add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15768000; includeSubdomains; preload";
add_header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN;
add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;

Let’s get a certificate

sudo certbot certonly --agree-tos --email your@email.com --webroot -w /var/lib/letsencrypt/ -d test.fearby.com

Certificates have been created 🙂

ls -al /etc/letsencrypt/live/test.fearby.com/
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 2 user user 4096 Jun 26 11:30 .
drwx------ 3 user user 4096 Jun 26 11:30 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user  543 Jun 26 11:30 README
lrwxrwxrwx 1 user user   39 Jun 26 11:30 cert.pem -> ../../archive/test.fearby.com/cert1.pem
lrwxrwxrwx 1 user user   40 Jun 26 11:30 chain.pem -> ../../archive/test.fearby.com/chain1.pem
lrwxrwxrwx 1 user user   44 Jun 26 11:30 fullchain.pem -> ../../archive/test.fearby.com/fullchain1.pem
lrwxrwxrwx 1 user user   42 Jun 26 11:30 privkey.pem -> ../../archive/test.fearby.com/privkey1.pem

Now lets edit “/etc/nginx/sites-available/default” on https://test.fearby.com VM and add the cert paths.

server {
        listen 80 default_server;
        listen [::]:80 default_server;

        listen 443 ssl http2;
        listen [::]:443 ssl http2;

        if ($scheme != "https") {
                return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
        }

        ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/test.fearby.com/fullchain.pem;
        ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/test.fearby.com/privkey.pem;
        ssl_trusted_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/test.fearby.com/chain.pem;

        include snippets/ssl.conf;

        #ssl_stapling on; # Requires nginx >= 1.3.7
        # add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=63072000; includeSubdomains; preload";

        add_header X-Frame-Options DENY;
        add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;
        add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";

        root /www-root/;

        include snippets/letsencrypt.conf;

        index index.html;

        server_name test.fearby.com;

        location / {
                try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }
}

Reload NGINX

sudo systemctl reload nginx

sudo nginx -t
sudo nginx -s reload
sudo systemctl reload nginx

Now let’s setup the second subdomain (subsite off https://fearby.com) and SSL

I already have NGINX on https://fearby.com set up a second site.

DNS

We have already set up a DNS record for https://audit.fearby.com (above)

Firewall

Already configured at https://fearby.com

SSL

Because I had an existing Comodo certificate on https://fearby.com I am going to repeat the steps above to generate a new certificate but save the NGINX config to /etc/nginx/sites-available/audit.fearby.com (this activates the second site)

TIP: Follow the Linuxize guide here (for creating ssl.conf, letsencrypt.conf etc config files), Do a backup and restore if need be.

I created a new Diffie–Hellman key

mkdir -p /etc/ssl/certs/
sudo openssl dhparam -out /etc/ssl/certs/dhparam.pem 2048

Let’s get a certificate

sudo certbot certonly --agree-tos --email [email protected] --webroot -w /var/lib/letsencrypt/ -d audit.fearby.com

Configure NGINX

Map requests to http://audit.fearby.com/.well-known/acme-challenge to /var/lib/letsencrypt/.well-known ( Read the linuxize post for detailed steps ).

mkdir -p /var/lib/letsencrypt/.well-known
chgrp www-data /var/lib/letsencrypt
chmod g+s /var/lib/letsencrypt

I created a new NGINX site ( /etc/nginx/sites-available/audit.fearby.com )

#proxy_cache_path /tmp/nginx-cache keys_zone=one:10m;#
server {
        root /www-audit-root;

        # Listen Ports
        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;
        listen 443 ssl http2;
        listen [::]:443 ssl http2;

        # Default File
        index index.html index.php index.htm;

        # Server Name
        server_name audit.fearby.com;

        include snippets/letsencrypt.conf;

        location / {
                try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }

        ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/audit.fearby.com/fullchain.pem;
        ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/audit.fearby.com/privkey.pem;
        ssl_trusted_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/audit.fearby.com/chain.pem;

        ssl_dhparam /etc/ssl/certs/auditdhparam.pem;

        ssl_session_timeout 1d;
        #ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:50m;
        ssl_session_tickets off;

        ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
        ssl_ciphers 'ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA38$

        ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;

        ssl_stapling on;
        ssl_stapling_verify on;

        #resolver 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4 valid=300s;
        #resolver_timeout 30s;

        add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15768000; includeSubdomains; preload";
        add_header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN;
        add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;

        if ($scheme != "https") {
                return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
        }
}

I created a symbolic link of the config file

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/audit.fearby.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/audit.fearby.com

Reload NGINX

sudo systemctl reload nginx

sudo nginx -t
sudo nginx -s reload
sudo systemctl reload nginx

How to test the certificate renewal

sudo certbot renew --dry-run

Automate the renewal in crontab (every 12 hours)

I set this crontab entry up on https://fearby.com and https://test.fearby.com

crontab -e
0 */12 * * * root test -x /usr/bin/certbot -a \! -d /run/systemd/system && perl -e 'sleep int(rand(3600))' && certbot -q renew --renew-hook "systemctl reload nginx"

Conclusion

Yes, I haVe 2 subdomains (1x dedicated VM and the other is a sub-website off an existing server) with SSL certificates.

Ping Results

ping -c 4 fearby.com
PING fearby.com (209.50.48.88): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 209.50.48.88: icmp_seq=0 ttl=44 time=220.000 ms
64 bytes from 209.50.48.88: icmp_seq=1 ttl=44 time=290.602 ms
64 bytes from 209.50.48.88: icmp_seq=2 ttl=44 time=311.938 ms
64 bytes from 209.50.48.88: icmp_seq=3 ttl=44 time=330.841 ms

--- fearby.com ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 220.000/288.345/330.841/41.948 ms

ping -c 4 test.fearby.com
PING test.fearby.com (94.237.65.54): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 94.237.65.54: icmp_seq=0 ttl=44 time=333.590 ms
64 bytes from 94.237.65.54: icmp_seq=1 ttl=44 time=252.433 ms
64 bytes from 94.237.65.54: icmp_seq=2 ttl=44 time=271.153 ms
64 bytes from 94.237.65.54: icmp_seq=3 ttl=44 time=292.685 ms

--- test.fearby.com ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 252.433/287.465/333.590/30.200 ms

ping -c 4 audit.fearby.com
PING audit.fearby.com (209.50.48.88): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 209.50.48.88: icmp_seq=0 ttl=44 time=281.662 ms
64 bytes from 209.50.48.88: icmp_seq=1 ttl=44 time=307.676 ms
64 bytes from 209.50.48.88: icmp_seq=2 ttl=44 time=227.985 ms
64 bytes from 209.50.48.88: icmp_seq=3 ttl=44 time=215.566 ms

--- audit.fearby.com ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 215.566/258.222/307.676/37.845 ms

Webpage Results

Troubleshooting

If you are having troubles generating the initial certificate check that you have not blocked port 80 and don’t have “Strict-Transport-Security” heavers enabled.

sudo certbot certonly --agree-tos --email [email protected] --webroot -w /var/lib/letsencrypt/ -d g
Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
Obtaining a new certificate
Performing the following challenges:
http-01 challenge for yoursubdomain.domain.com
Using the webroot path /var/lib/letsencrypt for all unmatched domains.
Waiting for verification...
Cleaning up challenges
Failed authorization procedure. yoursubdomain.domain.com (http-01): urn:acme:error:unauthorized :: The client lacks sufficzLlmg_w6Tc: q%!(EXTRA string=<html>
<head><title>404 Not Found</title></head>
<body bgcolor="white">
<center><h1>404 Not Found</h1></center>
<hr><center>)

IMPORTANT NOTES:
 - The following errors were reported by the server:

   Domain: yoursubdomain.domain.com
   Type:   unauthorized
   Detail: Invalid response from
   http://yoursubdomain.domain.com/.well-known/acme-challenge/_QA3jblEydx5mE8I8OdRsd2EdHIj4R-przLlmg_w6Tc:
   q%!(EXTRA string=<html>
   <head><title>404 Not Found</title></head>
   <body bgcolor="white">
   <center><h1>404 Not Found</h1></center>
   <hr><center>)

   To fix these errors, please make sure that your domain name was
   entered correctly and the DNS A record(s) for that domain
   contain(s) the right IP address.

I re-ran the certbot command but pointed to the real /www-root (not/var/lib/letsencrypt/)

Create a new

mkdir /www-root/.well-known/
mkdir /www-root/.well-known/acme-challenge/
sudo certbot certonly --agree-tos --email y[email protected] --webroot -w /www-root -d yoursubdomain.domain.com

I hope this guide helps someone.

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https://www.upcloud.com/register/?promo=D84793

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Revision History

v1.1 Troubleshooting

v1.0 Initial Post

Upgrading an Ubuntu server on UpCloud to add more CPU, Memory and Disk Space

June 25, 2018 by Simon

Upgrading an Ubuntu server on UpCloud to add more CPU, Memory and Disk Space

If you have not read my previous posts I have now moved my blog from Vultr to the awesome UpCloud host (signup using this link to get $25 free credit).

Recently I compared Digital Ocean, Vultr and UpCloud Disk IO here and UpCloud came out on top by a long way (read the blog post here). Here is my blog post on moving from Vultr to UpCloud.

Spoiler: UpCloud performance is great.

Why Upgrade

I have 1 CPU, 1 GB memory and 50GB storage and it is running well? I have PHP child workers set up and have set up the preferred use of memory over swap file usage.

Before UpCloud, when I had 512MB ram on Vultr I had multiple NGINX crashed a day so I used a bash script and scheduled a cron job to clear memory cache when memory fell below 100MB (view the script here). To further increase the speed of the WordPress I have configured the OS to use memory over the disk. About once a day free memory falls below 100MB (this is not a problem as my script clears cached items automatically).

I’d like to add more memory as I am working on some things (watch this space) and I will use the extra memory. I’d prefer the server is set up now for the expected workload.

How to Upgrade

This is how I upgraded from 1xCPU/2GB Memory/50GB Storage/2TB Transferred Data to a 2 CPU/4GB Mmeory/80GB Storage/4TB Transferred Data server.

UpCloud Pricing: https://www.upcloud.com/pricing/

Upgrade an UpCloud VM

I shut down my existing VM. Read this guide to setup a VM.

shutdown -P

Login to the UpCloud dashboard, select your server (confirm the server has shut down) and click General Settings, choose the upgrade and click Update.

I confirmed the upgrade options (2x CPU, 4096 MB Memory).

Click Update

After 10 seconds you can start your server from the UpCloud server.

I confirmed the CPU upgrade was visible in the VM

cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 63
model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2687W v3 @ 3.10GHz
stepping        : 2
microcode       : 0x1
cpu MHz         : 3099.978
cache size      : 16384 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 2
core id         : 0
cpu cores       : 2
apicid          : 0
initial apicid  : 0
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 13
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon rep_good nopl xtopology cpuid pni pclmulqdq ssse3 fma cx16 pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm abm invpcid_single pti fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid xsaveopt arat
bugs            : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass
bogomips        : 6199.95
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

processor       : 1
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 63
model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2687W v3 @ 3.10GHz
stepping        : 2
microcode       : 0x1
cpu MHz         : 3099.978
cache size      : 16384 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 2
core id         : 1
cpu cores       : 2
apicid          : 1
initial apicid  : 1
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 13
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon rep_good nopl xtopology cpuid pni pclmulqdq ssse3 fma cx16 pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm abm invpcid_single pti fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid xsaveopt arat
bugs            : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass
bogomips        : 6199.95
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

Software Tweaks Post Upgrade.

I added these settings to the top of /etc/nginx/nginx.conf to ensure the extra CPU was used.

worker_processes auto;
worker_cpu_affinity auto;

I increased PHP FPM ( /etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini ) to increase memory usage and child workers. I doubled child workers and max memory limit.

memory_limit = 3072M
pm.max_children = 80
pm.start_servers = 30
pm.min_spare_servers = 10
pm.max_spare_servers = 30

I restarted NGINX and PHP

nginx -t
nginx -s reload
/etc/init.d/nginx restart
service php7.2-fpm restart

I tweaked WordPress max memory limits

define( 'WP_MEMORY_LIMIT','3072M');
define( 'WP_MAX_MEMORY_LIMIT','3072M');

MySQL Tweaks: I logged into MySQL

mysql -u root -p

I ran “SHOW GLOBAL STATUS” to view stats

mysql> SHOW GLOBAL STATUS;
+-----------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------+
| Variable_name                                 | Value                                            |
+-----------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------+
| Aborted_clients                               | 0                                                |
| Aborted_connects                              | 0                                                |
| Binlog_cache_disk_use                         | 0                                                |
| Binlog_cache_use                              | 0                                                |
| Binlog_stmt_cache_disk_use                    | 0                                                |
| Binlog_stmt_cache_use                         | 0                                                |
| Bytes_received                                | 3179986                                          |
| Bytes_sent                                    | 223872114                                        |
| Com_admin_commands                            | 0                                                |
| Com_assign_to_keycache                        | 0                                                |
| Com_alter_db                                  | 0                                                |
| Com_alter_db_upgrade                          | 0                                                |
| Com_alter_event                               | 0                                                |
| Com_alter_function                            | 0                                                |
| Com_alter_instance                            | 0                                                |
| Com_alter_procedure                           | 0                                                |
| Com_alter_server                              | 0                                                |
| Com_alter_table                               | 0                                                |
| Com_alter_tablespace                          | 0                                                |
| Com_alter_user                                | 0                                                |
| Com_analyze                                   | 0                                                |
| Com_begin                                     | 0                                                |
| Com_binlog                                    | 0                                                |
| Com_call_procedure                            | 0                                                |
| Com_change_db                                 | 284                                              |
| Com_change_master                             | 0                                                |
| Com_change_repl_filter                        | 0                                                |
| Com_check                                     | 0                                                |
| Com_checksum                                  | 0                                                |
| Com_commit                                    | 0                                                |
| Com_create_db                                 | 0                                                |
| Com_create_event                              | 0                                                |
| Com_create_function                           | 0                                                |
| Com_create_index                              | 0                                                |
| Com_create_procedure                          | 0                                                |
| Com_create_server                             | 0                                                |
| Com_create_table                              | 0                                                |
| Com_create_trigger                            | 0                                                |
| Com_create_udf                                | 0                                                |
| Com_create_user                               | 0                                                |
| Com_create_view                               | 0                                                |
| Com_dealloc_sql                               | 0                                                |
| Com_delete                                    | 18                                               |
| Com_delete_multi                              | 0                                                |
| Com_do                                        | 0                                                |
| Com_drop_db                                   | 0                                                |
| Com_drop_event                                | 0                                                |
| Com_drop_function                             | 0                                                |
| Com_drop_index                                | 0                                                |
| Com_drop_procedure                            | 0                                                |
| Com_drop_server                               | 0                                                |
| Com_drop_table                                | 0                                                |
| Com_drop_trigger                              | 0                                                |
| Com_drop_user                                 | 0                                                |
| Com_drop_view                                 | 0                                                |
| Com_empty_query                               | 0                                                |
| Com_execute_sql                               | 0                                                |
| Com_explain_other                             | 0                                                |
| Com_flush                                     | 0                                                |
| Com_get_diagnostics                           | 0                                                |
| Com_grant                                     | 0                                                |
| Com_ha_close                                  | 0                                                |
| Com_ha_open                                   | 0                                                |
| Com_ha_read                                   | 0                                                |
| Com_help                                      | 0                                                |
| Com_insert                                    | 342                                              |
| Com_insert_select                             | 0                                                |
| Com_install_plugin                            | 0                                                |
| Com_kill                                      | 0                                                |
| Com_load                                      | 0                                                |
| Com_lock_tables                               | 0                                                |
| Com_optimize                                  | 0                                                |
| Com_preload_keys                              | 0                                                |
| Com_prepare_sql                               | 0                                                |
| Com_purge                                     | 0                                                |
| Com_purge_before_date                         | 0                                                |
| Com_release_savepoint                         | 0                                                |
| Com_rename_table                              | 0                                                |
| Com_rename_user                               | 0                                                |
| Com_repair                                    | 0                                                |
| Com_replace                                   | 0                                                |
| Com_replace_select                            | 0                                                |
| Com_reset                                     | 0                                                |
| Com_resignal                                  | 0                                                |
| Com_revoke                                    | 0                                                |
| Com_revoke_all                                | 0                                                |
| Com_rollback                                  | 0                                                |
| Com_rollback_to_savepoint                     | 0                                                |
| Com_savepoint                                 | 0                                                |
| Com_select                                    | 16358                                            |
| Com_set_option                                | 849                                              |
| Com_signal                                    | 0                                                |
| Com_show_binlog_events                        | 0                                                |
| Com_show_binlogs                              | 0                                                |
| Com_show_charsets                             | 0                                                |
| Com_show_collations                           | 0                                                |
| Com_show_create_db                            | 0                                                |
| Com_show_create_event                         | 0                                                |
| Com_show_create_func                          | 0                                                |
| Com_show_create_proc                          | 0                                                |
| Com_show_create_table                         | 0                                                |
| Com_show_create_trigger                       | 0                                                |
| Com_show_databases                            | 3                                                |
| Com_show_engine_logs                          | 0                                                |
| Com_show_engine_mutex                         | 0                                                |
| Com_show_engine_status                        | 0                                                |
| Com_show_events                               | 0                                                |
| Com_show_errors                               | 0                                                |
| Com_show_fields                               | 921                                              |
| Com_show_function_code                        | 0                                                |
| Com_show_function_status                      | 0                                                |
| Com_show_grants                               | 0                                                |
| Com_show_keys                                 | 1                                                |
| Com_show_master_status                        | 0                                                |
| Com_show_open_tables                          | 0                                                |
| Com_show_plugins                              | 0                                                |
| Com_show_privileges                           | 0                                                |
| Com_show_procedure_code                       | 0                                                |
| Com_show_procedure_status                     | 0                                                |
| Com_show_processlist                          | 0                                                |
| Com_show_profile                              | 0                                                |
| Com_show_profiles                             | 0                                                |
| Com_show_relaylog_events                      | 0                                                |
| Com_show_slave_hosts                          | 0                                                |
| Com_show_slave_status                         | 0                                                |
| Com_show_status                               | 6                                                |
| Com_show_storage_engines                      | 0                                                |
| Com_show_table_status                         | 0                                                |
| Com_show_tables                               | 2                                                |
| Com_show_triggers                             | 0                                                |
| Com_show_variables                            | 6                                                |
| Com_show_warnings                             | 1                                                |
| Com_show_create_user                          | 0                                                |
| Com_shutdown                                  | 0                                                |
| Com_slave_start                               | 0                                                |
| Com_slave_stop                                | 0                                                |
| Com_group_replication_start                   | 0                                                |
| Com_group_replication_stop                    | 0                                                |
| Com_stmt_execute                              | 4                                                |
| Com_stmt_close                                | 4                                                |
| Com_stmt_fetch                                | 0                                                |
| Com_stmt_prepare                              | 4                                                |
| Com_stmt_reset                                | 0                                                |
| Com_stmt_send_long_data                       | 4                                                |
| Com_truncate                                  | 2                                                |
| Com_uninstall_plugin                          | 0                                                |
| Com_unlock_tables                             | 0                                                |
| Com_update                                    | 70                                               |
| Com_update_multi                              | 0                                                |
| Com_xa_commit                                 | 0                                                |
| Com_xa_end                                    | 0                                                |
| Com_xa_prepare                                | 0                                                |
| Com_xa_recover                                | 0                                                |
| Com_xa_rollback                               | 0                                                |
| Com_xa_start                                  | 0                                                |
| Com_stmt_reprepare                            | 0                                                |
| Connection_errors_accept                      | 0                                                |
| Connection_errors_internal                    | 0                                                |
| Connection_errors_max_connections             | 0                                                |
| Connection_errors_peer_address                | 0                                                |
| Connection_errors_select                      | 0                                                |
| Connection_errors_tcpwrap                     | 0                                                |
| Connections                                   | 292                                              |
| Created_tmp_disk_tables                       | 1124                                             |
| Created_tmp_files                             | 30                                               |
| Created_tmp_tables                            | 1369                                             |
| Delayed_errors                                | 0                                                |
| Delayed_insert_threads                        | 0                                                |
| Delayed_writes                                | 0                                                |
| Flush_commands                                | 1                                                |
| Handler_commit                                | 6094                                             |
| Handler_delete                                | 33                                               |
| Handler_discover                              | 0                                                |
| Handler_external_lock                         | 38571                                            |
| Handler_mrr_init                              | 0                                                |
| Handler_prepare                               | 0                                                |
| Handler_read_first                            | 2299                                             |
| Handler_read_key                              | 134761                                           |
| Handler_read_last                             | 237                                              |
| Handler_read_next                             | 310119                                           |
| Handler_read_prev                             | 2733                                             |
| Handler_read_rnd                              | 222350                                           |
| Handler_read_rnd_next                         | 472820                                           |
| Handler_rollback                              | 0                                                |
| Handler_savepoint                             | 0                                                |
| Handler_savepoint_rollback                    | 0                                                |
| Handler_update                                | 15605                                            |
| Handler_write                                 | 17310                                            |
| Innodb_buffer_pool_dump_status                | Dumping of buffer pool not started               |
| Innodb_buffer_pool_load_status                | Buffer pool(s) load completed at 180624 23:38:01 |
| Innodb_buffer_pool_resize_status              |                                                  |
| Innodb_buffer_pool_pages_data                 | 1035                                             |
| Innodb_buffer_pool_bytes_data                 | 16957440                                         |
| Innodb_buffer_pool_pages_dirty                | 0                                                |
| Innodb_buffer_pool_bytes_dirty                | 0                                                |
| Innodb_buffer_pool_pages_flushed              | 1936                                             |
| Innodb_buffer_pool_pages_free                 | 7144                                             |
| Innodb_buffer_pool_pages_misc                 | 13                                               |
| Innodb_buffer_pool_pages_total                | 8192                                             |
| Innodb_buffer_pool_read_ahead_rnd             | 0                                                |
| Innodb_buffer_pool_read_ahead                 | 0                                                |
| Innodb_buffer_pool_read_ahead_evicted         | 0                                                |
| Innodb_buffer_pool_read_requests              | 306665                                           |
| Innodb_buffer_pool_reads                      | 950                                              |
| Innodb_buffer_pool_wait_free                  | 0                                                |
| Innodb_buffer_pool_write_requests             | 26509                                            |
| Innodb_data_fsyncs                            | 1229                                             |
| Innodb_data_pending_fsyncs                    | 0                                                |
| Innodb_data_pending_reads                     | 0                                                |
| Innodb_data_pending_writes                    | 0                                                |
| Innodb_data_read                              | 16273920                                         |
| Innodb_data_reads                             | 1078                                             |
| Innodb_data_writes                            | 2857                                             |
| Innodb_data_written                           | 53379584                                         |
| Innodb_dblwr_pages_written                    | 1275                                             |
| Innodb_dblwr_writes                           | 109                                              |
| Innodb_log_waits                              | 0                                                |
| Innodb_log_write_requests                     | 450                                              |
| Innodb_log_writes                             | 585                                              |
| Innodb_os_log_fsyncs                          | 793                                              |
| Innodb_os_log_pending_fsyncs                  | 0                                                |
| Innodb_os_log_pending_writes                  | 0                                                |
| Innodb_os_log_written                         | 664064                                           |
| Innodb_page_size                              | 16384                                            |
| Innodb_pages_created                          | 56                                               |
| Innodb_pages_read                             | 988                                              |
| Innodb_pages_written                          | 1936                                             |
| Innodb_row_lock_current_waits                 | 0                                                |
| Innodb_row_lock_time                          | 0                                                |
| Innodb_row_lock_time_avg                      | 0                                                |
| Innodb_row_lock_time_max                      | 0                                                |
| Innodb_row_lock_waits                         | 0                                                |
| Innodb_rows_deleted                           | 2                                                |
| Innodb_rows_inserted                          | 19219                                            |
| Innodb_rows_read                              | 249102                                           |
| Innodb_rows_updated                           | 77                                               |
| Innodb_num_open_files                         | 81                                               |
| Innodb_truncated_status_writes                | 0                                                |
| Innodb_available_undo_logs                    | 128                                              |
| Key_blocks_not_flushed                        | 0                                                |
| Key_blocks_unused                             | 12751                                            |
| Key_blocks_used                               | 645                                              |
| Key_read_requests                             | 321877                                           |
| Key_reads                                     | 648                                              |
| Key_write_requests                            | 196                                              |
| Key_writes                                    | 150                                              |
| Locked_connects                               | 0                                                |
| Max_execution_time_exceeded                   | 0                                                |
| Max_execution_time_set                        | 0                                                |
| Max_execution_time_set_failed                 | 0                                                |
| Max_used_connections                          | 3                                                |
| Max_used_connections_time                     | 2018-06-24 23:43:48                              |
| Not_flushed_delayed_rows                      | 0                                                |
| Ongoing_anonymous_transaction_count           | 0                                                |
| Open_files                                    | 229                                              |
| Open_streams                                  | 0                                                |
| Open_table_definitions                        | 206                                              |
| Open_tables                                   | 786                                              |
| Opened_files                                  | 502                                              |
| Opened_table_definitions                      | 208                                              |
| Opened_tables                                 | 817                                              |
| Performance_schema_accounts_lost              | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_cond_classes_lost          | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_cond_instances_lost        | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_digest_lost                | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_file_classes_lost          | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_file_handles_lost          | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_file_instances_lost        | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_hosts_lost                 | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_index_stat_lost            | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_locker_lost                | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_memory_classes_lost        | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_metadata_lock_lost         | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_mutex_classes_lost         | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_mutex_instances_lost       | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_nested_statement_lost      | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_prepared_statements_lost   | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_program_lost               | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_rwlock_classes_lost        | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_rwlock_instances_lost      | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_session_connect_attrs_lost | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_socket_classes_lost        | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_socket_instances_lost      | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_stage_classes_lost         | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_statement_classes_lost     | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_table_handles_lost         | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_table_instances_lost       | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_table_lock_stat_lost       | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_thread_classes_lost        | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_thread_instances_lost      | 0                                                |
| Performance_schema_users_lost                 | 0                                                |
| Prepared_stmt_count                           | 0                                                |
| Qcache_free_blocks                            | 1                                                |
| Qcache_free_memory                            | 16760152                                         |
| Qcache_hits                                   | 0                                                |
| Qcache_inserts                                | 0                                                |
| Qcache_lowmem_prunes                          | 0                                                |
| Qcache_not_cached                             | 16355                                            |
| Qcache_queries_in_cache                       | 0                                                |
| Qcache_total_blocks                           | 1                                                |
| Queries                                       | 19164                                            |
| Questions                                     | 19155                                            |
| Select_full_join                              | 0                                                |
| Select_full_range_join                        | 0                                                |
| Select_range                                  | 2677                                             |
| Select_range_check                            | 0                                                |
| Select_scan                                   | 2098                                             |
| Slave_open_temp_tables                        | 0                                                |
| Slow_launch_threads                           | 0                                                |
| Slow_queries                                  | 0                                                |
| Sort_merge_passes                             | 12                                               |
| Sort_range                                    | 4859                                             |
| Sort_rows                                     | 244452                                           |
| Sort_scan                                     | 854                                              |
| Ssl_accept_renegotiates                       | 0                                                |
| Ssl_accepts                                   | 0                                                |
| Ssl_callback_cache_hits                       | 0                                                |
| Ssl_cipher                                    |                                                  |
| Ssl_cipher_list                               |                                                  |
| Ssl_client_connects                           | 0                                                |
| Ssl_connect_renegotiates                      | 0                                                |
| Ssl_ctx_verify_depth                          | 0                                                |
| Ssl_ctx_verify_mode                           | 0                                                |
| Ssl_default_timeout                           | 0                                                |
| Ssl_finished_accepts                          | 0                                                |
| Ssl_finished_connects                         | 0                                                |
| Ssl_server_not_after                          |                                                  |
| Ssl_server_not_before                         |                                                  |
| Ssl_session_cache_hits                        | 0                                                |
| Ssl_session_cache_misses                      | 0                                                |
| Ssl_session_cache_mode                        | NONE                                             |
| Ssl_session_cache_overflows                   | 0                                                |
| Ssl_session_cache_size                        | 0                                                |
| Ssl_session_cache_timeouts                    | 0                                                |
| Ssl_sessions_reused                           | 0                                                |
| Ssl_used_session_cache_entries                | 0                                                |
| Ssl_verify_depth                              | 0                                                |
| Ssl_verify_mode                               | 0                                                |
| Ssl_version                                   |                                                  |
| Table_locks_immediate                         | 11962                                            |
| Table_locks_waited                            | 0                                                |
| Table_open_cache_hits                         | 19395                                            |
| Table_open_cache_misses                       | 817                                              |
| Table_open_cache_overflows                    | 12                                               |
| Tc_log_max_pages_used                         | 0                                                |
| Tc_log_page_size                              | 0                                                |
| Tc_log_page_waits                             | 0                                                |
| Threads_cached                                | 2                                                |
| Threads_connected                             | 1                                                |
| Threads_created                               | 3                                                |
| Threads_running                               | 1                                                |
| Uptime                                        | 2944                                             |
| Uptime_since_flush_status                     | 2944                                             |
+-----------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------+
353 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Read more on SHOW GLOBAL STATUS here. Read more on the values here.

I can see NO major errors here (possibly due to UpClouds awesome disk IO) so I won’t be making memory tweaks in MySQL. Sign Up using this link and get $25 credit free on UpCloud and see for yourself how fast they are.

Configure Ubuntu System Memory Usage

Edit /etc/sysctl.conf

Add the following to allow things to sit in ram longer

vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50

Snip from: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt

This percentage value controls the tendency of the kernel to reclaim the memory which is used for caching of directory and inode objects.

At the default value of vfs_cache_pressure=100 the kernel will attempt to reclaim dentries and inodes at a "fair" rate with respect to pagecache and swapcache reclaim.  Decreasing vfs_cache_pressure causes the kernel to prefer to retain dentry and inode caches. When vfs_cache_pressure=0, the kernel will never reclaim dentries and inodes due to memory pressure and this can easily lead to out-of-memory conditions. Increasing vfs_cache_pressure beyond 100 causes the kernel to prefer to reclaim dentries and inodes.

Increasing vfs_cache_pressure significantly beyond 100 may have negative performance impact. Reclaim code needs to take various locks to find freeable directory and inode objects. With vfs_cache_pressure=1000, it will look for ten times more freeable objects than there are."

Read these pages here and here regarding setting MySQL memory.

Reboot

shutdown -r now

Resize the disk

The 2x CPU, 4GB memory plan comes with 80GB storage allowance. My disk at present is 50GB and I will update the size soon following this guide soon.

Quick Benchmark

I used loader.io to load 500 users to access my site in 1 minute.

The benchmark worked with no errors.

This benchmark was performed with no Cloudflare caching. I should get Cloudflare caching working again to lower the average response time. I loaded my website manually in Google Chrome while loader.io threw 500 users at my site and it loaded very fast.

Conclusion

After a few days, I checked my memory logs and there were no low memory triggers (just normal internal memory management triggers). Ubuntu was happier.

This graph was taken before I set “vm.vfs_cache_pressure” so I will update this graph in a few days.

I hope this guide helps someone.

Please consider using my referral code and get $25 credit for free.

https://www.upcloud.com/register/?promo=D84793

Ask a question or recommend an article

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Revision History

1.0 Initial Post

Measuring VM performance (CPU, Disk, Latency, Concurrent Users etc) on Ubuntu and comparing Vultr, Digital Ocean and UpCloud – Part 4 of 4

June 5, 2018 by Simon

How can you measure VM performance (CPU, Disk, Latency, Concurrent Users etc) on Ubuntu and comparing Vultr, Digital Ocean and UpCloud – Part 4 of 4

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 or Part 4

I ran the MySQL benchmark preparation command again (no problem this time).

sysbench --test=oltp --oltp-table-size=1000000 --db-driver=mysql --mysql-db=test --mysql-user=root --mysql-password=###################### prepare
sysbench 0.4.12:  multi-threaded system evaluation benchmark

Creating table 'sbtest'...
Creating 1000000 records in table 'sbtest'...

Test table and records created

Now I can benchmark MySQL on my main server.

sysbench --test=oltp --oltp-table-size=1000000 --db-driver=mysql --mysql-db=test --mysql-user=root --mysql-password=################################# --max-time=60 --oltp-read-only=on --max-requests=0 --num-threads=8 run

RAW Output

sysbench 0.4.12:  multi-threaded system evaluation benchmark

Running the test with following options:
Number of threads: 8

Doing OLTP test.
Running mixed OLTP test
Doing read-only test
Using Special distribution (12 iterations,  1 pct of values are returned in 75 pct cases)
Using "BEGIN" for starting transactions
Using auto_inc on the id column
Threads started!
Time limit exceeded, exiting...
(last message repeated 7 times)
Done.

OLTP test statistics:
    queries performed:
        read:                            336210
        write:                           0
        other:                           48030
        total:                           384240
    transactions:                        24015  (400.09 per sec.)
    deadlocks:                           0      (0.00 per sec.)
    read/write requests:                 336210 (5601.24 per sec.)
    other operations:                    48030  (800.18 per sec.)

Test execution summary:
    total time:                          60.0242s
    total number of events:              24015
    total time taken by event execution: 480.0242
    per-request statistics:
         min:                                  1.79ms
         avg:                                 19.99ms
         max:                                141.00ms
         approx.  95 percentile:              37.49ms

Threads fairness:
    events (avg/stddev):           3001.8750/27.36
    execution time (avg/stddev):   60.0030/0.01

Results

queries performed (in 60 seconds):

read: 336210
other: 48030
total: 384240

I decided to add an index to see if I can speed this query up (read the MySQL index page here). I added an index (in Adminer) on the columns “Id” and “pad” for the sbtest table in the test database

I restarted the MySQL process

mysql restart
[ ok ] Restarting mysql (via systemctl): mysql.service.

I ran the same benchmark again.

Raw Output

sysbench --test=oltp --oltp-table-size=1000000 --db-driver=mysql --mysql-db=test --mysql-user=root --mysql-password=########################## --max-time=60 --oltp-read-only=on --max-requests=0 --num-threads=8 run
sysbench 0.4.12:  multi-threaded system evaluation benchmark

Running the test with following options:
Number of threads: 8

Doing OLTP test.
Running mixed OLTP test
Doing read-only test
Using Special distribution (12 iterations,  1 pct of values are returned in 75 pct cases)
Using "BEGIN" for starting transactions
Using auto_inc on the id column
Threads started!
Time limit exceeded, exiting...
(last message repeated 7 times)
Done.

OLTP test statistics:
    queries performed:
        read:                            426538
        write:                           0
        other:                           60934
        total:                           487472
    transactions:                        30467  (507.69 per sec.)
    deadlocks:                           0      (0.00 per sec.)
    read/write requests:                 426538 (7107.67 per sec.)
    other operations:                    60934  (1015.38 per sec.)

Test execution summary:
    total time:                          60.0110s
    total number of events:              30467
    total time taken by event execution: 479.9124
    per-request statistics:
         min:                                  5.75ms
         avg:                                 15.75ms
         max:                                138.57ms
         approx.  95 percentile:              25.10ms

Threads fairness:
    events (avg/stddev):           3808.3750/8.70
    execution time (avg/stddev):   59.9891/0.00

Results

The quick index added 20% extra throughput on queries 🙂

Don’t forget to delete your test database

DROP DATABASE `test`;

Viewing MySQL Index Usage (on the “test” database)

Query to show Index stats for a table ‘test’

SELECT
 OBJECT_SCHEMA as 'Database', OBJECT_NAME as 'Table', 
 INDEX_NAME as 'Index', 
 COUNT_STAR, 
 SUM_TIMER_WAIT,  MIN_TIMER_WAIT, AVG_TIMER_WAIT, MAX_TIMER_WAIT, 
 COUNT_READ, 
 SUM_TIMER_READ, MIN_TIMER_READ, AVG_TIMER_READ, MAX_TIMER_READ,  
 COUNT_FETCH, SUM_TIMER_FETCH, MIN_TIMER_FETCH, AVG_TIMER_FETCH, MAX_TIMER_FETCH
FROM 
 performance_schema.table_io_waits_summary_by_index_usage
WHERE 
 object_schema = 'test'

I can see the MySQL PRIMARY index is getting used 🙂

Read more in viewable query stats (columns) here.

Other System Information Tools

Show processor information

cat /proc/cpuinfo

Output

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 61
model name      : Virtual CPU a7769a6388d5
stepping        : 2
microcode       : 0x1
cpu MHz         : 2394.454
cache size      : 16384 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 1
core id         : 0
cpu cores       : 1
apicid          : 0
initial apicid  : 0
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 13
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc rep_good nopl xtopology eagerfpu pni pclmulqdq ssse3 fma cx16 pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm abm invpcid_single kaiser fsgsbase bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid xsaveopt arat
bugs            : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass
bogomips        : 4788.90
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

Memory Information

You can assign 512MB, 1GB, 2GB or more memory to a server on Vultr, Read my guide here on upgrading resources for Vultr VM’s here.

Only upgrade your server’s memory when server processes demand it, there is no need to pay for extra idle memory. Read my older guides on upgrading Digital Ocean and AWS servers.

I use the htop utility to monitor memory and processes. The memory usage will depend on how you have configured your server to use connection pools in code, MySQL or services. Also what memory demands do you get in pean bandwidth times?

You can check your server memory details on Ubuntu with this command

cat /proc/meminfo

Output

MemTotal:        2048104 kB
MemFree:           96176 kB
MemAvailable:     693072 kB
Buffers:          183476 kB
Cached:           526124 kB
SwapCached:            0 kB
Active:          1467220 kB
Inactive:         243228 kB
Active(anon):    1070464 kB
Inactive(anon):    27004 kB
Active(file):     396756 kB
Inactive(file):   216224 kB
Unevictable:        3652 kB
Mlocked:            3652 kB
SwapTotal:             0 kB
SwapFree:              0 kB
Dirty:                64 kB
Writeback:             0 kB
AnonPages:       1004504 kB
Mapped:           114664 kB
Shmem:             94192 kB
Slab:             192692 kB
SReclaimable:     171892 kB
SUnreclaim:        20800 kB
KernelStack:        3072 kB
PageTables:        20528 kB
NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
Bounce:                0 kB
WritebackTmp:          0 kB
CommitLimit:     1024052 kB
Committed_AS:    2424332 kB
VmallocTotal:   34359738367 kB
VmallocUsed:           0 kB
VmallocChunk:          0 kB
HardwareCorrupted:     0 kB
AnonHugePages:    247808 kB
CmaTotal:              0 kB
CmaFree:               0 kB
HugePages_Total:       0
HugePages_Free:        0
HugePages_Rsvd:        0
HugePages_Surp:        0
Hugepagesize:       2048 kB
DirectMap4k:       67440 kB
DirectMap2M:     2029568 kB

Use Memory or Disk (Swap)

You can configure the use of Memory over Disk by configuring your/etc/sysctl.conf file (setting value “vm.swappiness”)

You can check your swap file settings by running the following command

cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
1

Or By running

sysctl vm.swappiness
vm.swappiness = 1

Set a new swap file value by editing /etc/sysctl.conf

sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf

Set the following to use more ram over the swap disk.

vm.swappiness = 1

Read about swappiness values here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swappiness

Service Performance

Performance (and allocated resources) depends on the demands of your operating system and installed software

What operating system do you have?

lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS
Release:        16.04
Codename:       xenial

View NGINX Status, how much memory does it use?

/etc/init.d/nginx status
● nginx.service - A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Fri 2018-05-25 21:28:25 AEST; 1 weeks 3 days ago
     Docs: man:nginx(8)
 Main PID: #### (nginx)
    Tasks: 3
   Memory: 58.9M
      CPU: 33min 11.515s
   CGroup: /system.slice/nginx.service
           ├─#### nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx -g daemon on; master_process on;
           ├─#### nginx: worker process
           └─#### nginx: cache manager process

PHP (and Child Worker) status how much memory does it use and how many child workers do you have? Read my add PHP child workers post here (and update to PHP 7.2 here)

sudo service php7.2-fpm status
● php7.2-fpm.service - The PHP 7.2 FastCGI Process Manager
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/php7.2-fpm.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Fri 2018-05-25 21:28:26 AEST; 1 weeks 3 days ago
     Docs: man:php-fpm7.2(8)
 Main PID: #### (php-fpm7.2)
   Status: "Processes active: 0, idle: 20, Requests: 75911, slow: 0, Traffic: 0.1req/sec"
    Tasks: 21
   Memory: 694.2M
      CPU: 20h 49min 45.132s
   CGroup: /system.slice/php7.2-fpm.service
           ├─ #### php-fpm: master process (/etc/php/7.2/fpm/php-fpm.conf)
           ├─ #### php-fpm: pool www-acc
           ├─ #### php-fpm: pool www-usr
           ├─ #### php-fpm: pool www-usr
           ├─ #### php-fpm: pool www-usr
           ├─ #### php-fpm: pool www-usr
           ├─ #### php-fpm: pool www-usr
           ├─ #### php-fpm: pool www-usr
           ├─ #### php-fpm: pool www-usr
           ├─ #### php-fpm: pool www-usr
           ├─ #### php-fpm: pool www-acc
           ├─ #### php-fpm: pool www-usr
           ├─ #### php-fpm: pool www-usr
           ├─ #### php-fpm: pool www-usr
           ├─ #### php-fpm: pool www-usr
           ├─ #### php-fpm: pool www-usr
           ├─ #### php-fpm: pool www-usr
           ├─ #### php-fpm: pool www-usr
           ├─ #### php-fpm: pool www-usr
           ├─ #### php-fpm: pool www-usr
           └─ #### php-fpm: pool www-usr

MySQL Status

sudo service mysql status
● mysql.service - MySQL Community Server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/mysql.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Fri 2018-05-25 21:28:27 AEST; 1 weeks 3 days ago
 Main PID: ##### (mysqld)
    Tasks: 35
   Memory: 405.9M
      CPU: 2h 17min 31.822s
   CGroup: /system.slice/mysql.service
           └─#### /usr/sbin/mysqld

Shared VM Hosts

One of the biggest impacts (after server latency) for your server is not the disk performance but the number of hosts/websites on the server who are also using the disk and server resources.

I have 80 other web servers on my server (based on a reverse lookup).

I may move to a dedicated box when I can afford it.

Security

Above all else ensure that security is number 1 priority and make performance second priority.

Scan your site with Zap, Qualys and Kali Linux. Performance means nothing if you are hacked.

Simulated concurrent users

You can use Siege to test the maximum concurrent users accessing your site before the server starts to drop connections.

FYI: If you use Cloudflare (you should) this may not work as it will block connections.

Install Siege

sudo apt-get install siege

Test your server with 10 concurrent serves for 1 minute

siege -t1m c10 'https://yourserver.com/'

Results

siege -t1m c10 'https://yourserver.com/'
** SIEGE 3.0.8
** Preparing 15 concurrent users for battle.
The server is now under siege...
Lifting the server siege...      done.

Transactions:                    417 hits
Availability:                 100.00 %
Elapsed time:                  59.01 secs
Data transferred:               8.24 MB
Response time:                  1.62 secs
Transaction rate:               7.07 trans/sec
Throughput:                     0.14 MB/sec
Concurrency:                   11.46
Successful transactions:         417
Failed transactions:               0
Longest transaction:            2.26
Shortest transaction:           1.49

Keep upping the connections (from 10 above) to a limit where connections start dropping.

I tried 25 then 50 concurrent users hitting a server on Digital Ocean and it did not fail.

Conclusion

Choose a server near your customers
Change hosts if one is faster and cheaper
Measure or benchmark your server (and compare over time).
Use Cloudflare

Create your own server today

Create your own server on Vultr here.
Create your own server on Digital Ocean here.
Create your own server on UpCloud here.

And remember you can install the Runcloud server management dashboard here.

I hope this guide helps someone.

< Previous

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Measuring VM performance (CPU, Disk, Latency, Concurrent Users etc) on Ubuntu and comparing Vultr, Digital Ocean and UpCloud – Part 3 of 4

June 5, 2018 by Simon

How can you measure VM performance (CPU, Disk, Latency, Concurrent Users etc) on Ubuntu and comparing Vultr, Digital Ocean and UpCloud – Part 3 of 4

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 or Part 4

I used these commands to generate bonnie++ reports from the data in part 2

echo "<h1>Bonnie Results</h1>" > /www-data/bonnie.html
echo "<h2>Vultr (Sydney)</h2>" >> /www-data/bonnie.html
echo "1.97,1.97,servername,1,1528177870,4G,,656,99,308954,68,113706,33,1200,92,188671,30,10237,251,16,,,,,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,26067us,119ms,179ms,29139us,26069us,16118us,1463us,703us,880us,263us,119us,593us" | bon_csv2html >> /www-data/bonnie.html
echo "<h2>Digital Ocean (London)</h2>" >> /www-data/bonnie.html
echo "1.97,1.97,servername,1,1528186398,4G,,699,99,778636,74,610414,60,1556,99,1405337,59,+++++,+++,16,,,,,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,17678us,10099us,17014us,7027us,3067us,2366us,1243us,376us,611us,108us,59us,181us" | bon_csv2html >> /www-data/bonnie.html
echo "<h2>UpCloud (Singapore)</h2>" >> /www-data/bonnie.html
echo "1.97,1.97,servername,1,1528226703,4G,,1014,99,407179,24,366622,32,2137,99,451886,17,+++++,+++,16,,,,,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,11297us,54232us,16443us,4949us,44883us,1595us,264us,340us,561us,138us,66us,327us" | bon_csv2html >> /www-data/bonnie.html

Image of results here

Network Performace

IMHO Network Latency is the biggest impact on server performance, Read my old post on scalability on a budget here. I am in Australia an having a server in Singapore was too far away and latency was terrible.

Here is a non-scientific example of pinging a Vultr, Digital Ocean and UpCloud server in three different locations (and Google).

Test Ping Results

Vultr 132ms Ping Average (Sydney)
Digital Ocean 322ms Ping Average (London)
UpCloud 180ms Ping Average (Singapore)

Latency matters, run a https://www.webpagetest.org/ scan over your site to see why.

Adding https added almost 0.7 seconds to https communications in the past on Digital Ocean (a few thousand kilometres away). The longer the latency the longer HTTPS handshakes take.

Deploying a server to Singapore (in my experience) is bad if your visitors are in Australia. But deploying to other regions may be lower in cost though. It’s a trade-off.

Deploy servers as close as you can to your customers is the best tip for performance.

Also, consider setting up Image Optimization and Image CDN plugins (guide here) in WordPress and using Cloudflare (guide here)

Benchmarking with SysBench

Install CPU Benchmark

sudo apt-get install sysbench

CPU Benchmark (Vultr/Sydney)

Result

sysbench 0.4.12:  multi-threaded system evaluation benchmark

Running the test with following options:
Number of threads: 1

Doing CPU performance benchmark

Threads started!
Done.

Maximum prime number checked in CPU test: 20000


Test execution summary:
    total time:                          39.1700s
    total number of events:              10000
    total time taken by event execution: 39.1586
    per-request statistics:
         min:                                  2.90ms
         avg:                                  3.92ms
         max:                                 20.44ms
         approx.  95 percentile:               7.43ms

Threads fairness:
    events (avg/stddev):           10000.0000/0.00
    execution time (avg/stddev):   39.1586/0.00

39.15 seconds

CPU Benchmark (Digital Ocean/London)

sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=20000 run

Result

sysbench 0.4.12:  multi-threaded system evaluation benchmark

Running the test with following options:
Number of threads: 1

Doing CPU performance benchmark

Threads started!
Done.

Maximum prime number checked in CPU test: 20000


Test execution summary:
    total time:                          33.4382s
    total number of events:              10000
    total time taken by event execution: 33.4352
    per-request statistics:
         min:                                  3.24ms
         avg:                                  3.34ms
         max:                                  6.45ms
         approx.  95 percentile:               3.45ms

Threads fairness:
    events (avg/stddev):           10000.0000/0.00
    execution time (avg/stddev):   33.4352/0.00

33.43 sec

CPU Benchmark (UpCloud/Singapore)

sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=20000 run

Result

sysbench 0.4.12:  multi-threaded system evaluation benchmark

Running the test with following options:
Number of threads: 1



Doing CPU performance benchmark

Threads started!
Done.

Maximum prime number checked in CPU test: 20000


Test execution summary:
    total time:                          23.7809s
    total number of events:              10000
    total time taken by event execution: 23.7780
    per-request statistics:
         min:                                  2.35ms
         avg:                                  2.38ms
         max:                                  6.92ms
         approx.  95 percentile:               2.46ms

Threads fairness:
    events (avg/stddev):           10000.0000/0.00
    execution time (avg/stddev):   23.7780/0.00

23.77 sec

Surprisingly, 1st place in prime generation goes to UpCloud, then Digital Ocean then Vultr. UpCloud has some good processors.

Processors:

UpCLoud (Singapore): Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2687W v4 @ 3.00GHz
Digital Ocean (London): Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2630L v2 @ 2.40GHz
Vultr (Sydney): Virtual CPU a7769a6388d5 (Masked/Hidden CPU @ 2.40GHz)

(Lower is better)

(oops, typo in the chart should say Vultr)

Benchmark the file IO

Confirm free space

df -h /

Install Sysbench

sudo apt-get install sysbench

I had 10GB free on all servers (Vultr, Digitial Ocean and UpCloud) so I created a 10GB test file.

sysbench --test=fileio --file-total-size=10G prepare
sysbench 0.4.12:  multi-threaded system evaluation benchmark

128 files, 81920Kb each, 10240Mb total
Creating files for the test...

Now I can run the benchmark and use the pre-created text file.

sysbench --test=fileio --file-total-size=10G --file-test-mode=rndrw --init-rng=on --max-time=300 --max-requests=0 run

SysBench description from the Ubuntu manpage.

“SysBench is a modular, cross-platform and multi-threaded benchmark tool for evaluating OS parameters that are important for a system running a database under intensive load. The idea of this benchmark suite is to quickly get an impression about system performance without setting up complex database benchmarks or even without installing a database at all.”

SysBench Results (Vultr/Sydney)

sysbench 0.4.12:  multi-threaded system evaluation benchmark

Running the test with following options:
Number of threads: 1
Initializing random number generator from timer.


Extra file open flags: 0
128 files, 80Mb each
10Gb total file size
Block size 16Kb
Number of random requests for random IO: 0
Read/Write ratio for combined random IO test: 1.50
Periodic FSYNC enabled, calling fsync() each 100 requests.
Calling fsync() at the end of test, Enabled.
Using synchronous I/O mode
Doing random r/w test
Threads started!
Time limit exceeded, exiting...
Done.

Operations performed:  385920 Read, 257280 Write, 823266 Other = 1466466 Total
Read 5.8887Gb  Written 3.9258Gb  Total transferred 9.8145Gb  (33.5Mb/sec)
 2143.98 Requests/sec executed

Test execution summary:
    total time:                          300.0026s
    total number of events:              643200
    total time taken by event execution: 182.4249
    per-request statistics:
         min:                                  0.01ms
         avg:                                  0.28ms
         max:                                 18.12ms
         approx.  95 percentile:               0.55ms

Threads fairness:
    events (avg/stddev):           643200.0000/0.00
    execution time (avg/stddev):   182.4249/0.00

SysBench Results (Digital Ocean/London)

sysbench 0.4.12:  multi-threaded system evaluation benchmark

Running the test with following options:
Number of threads: 1
Initializing random number generator from timer.


Extra file open flags: 0
128 files, 80Mb each
10Gb total file size
Block size 16Kb
Number of random requests for random IO: 0
Read/Write ratio for combined random IO test: 1.50
Periodic FSYNC enabled, calling fsync() each 100 requests.
Calling fsync() at the end of test, Enabled.
Using synchronous I/O mode
Doing random r/w test
Threads started!
Time limit exceeded, exiting...
Done.

Operations performed:  944280 Read, 629520 Write, 2014432 Other = 3588232 Total
Read 14.409Gb  Written 9.6057Gb  Total transferred 24.014Gb  (81.968Mb/sec)
 5245.96 Requests/sec executed

Test execution summary:
    total time:                          300.0024s
    total number of events:              1573800
    total time taken by event execution: 160.5558
    per-request statistics:
         min:                                  0.00ms
         avg:                                  0.10ms
         max:                                 18.62ms
         approx.  95 percentile:               0.34ms

Threads fairness:
    events (avg/stddev):           1573800.0000/0.00
    execution time (avg/stddev):   160.5558/0.00

SysBench Results (UpCloud/Singapore)

sysbench 0.4.12:  multi-threaded system evaluation benchmark

Running the test with following options:
Number of threads: 1
Initializing random number generator from timer.


Extra file open flags: 0
128 files, 80Mb each
10Gb total file size
Block size 16Kb
Number of random requests for random IO: 0
Read/Write ratio for combined random IO test: 1.50
Periodic FSYNC enabled, calling fsync() each 100 requests.
Calling fsync() at the end of test, Enabled.
Using synchronous I/O mode
Doing random r/w test
Threads started!
Time limit exceeded, exiting...
Done.

Operations performed:  994320 Read, 662880 Write, 2121090 Other = 3778290 Total
Read 15.172Gb  Written 10.115Gb  Total transferred 25.287Gb  (86.312Mb/sec)
 5523.97 Requests/sec executed

Test execution summary:
    total time:                          300.0016s
    total number of events:              1657200
    total time taken by event execution: 107.4434
    per-request statistics:
         min:                                  0.00ms
         avg:                                  0.06ms
         max:                                 15.43ms
         approx.  95 percentile:               0.13ms

Threads fairness:
    events (avg/stddev):           1657200.0000/0.00
    execution time (avg/stddev):   107.4434/0.00

Comparison

sysbench fileio results (text)

Read

Vultr (Sydney): 385,920
Digital Ocean (London): 944,280
UpCloud (Singapore): 944,320

Write

Vultr (Sydney): 823,266
Digital Ocean (London): 629,520
UpCloud (Singapore): 662,880

Other

Vultr (Sydney): 1,466,466
Digital Ocean (London): 3,588,232
UpCloud (Singapore): 2,121,090

Total Read Gb

Vultr (Sydney): 5.8887 Gb
Digital Ocean (London): 14.409 Gb
UpCloud (Singapore): 15.172 Gb

Total Written Gb

Vultr (Sydney): 3.9258 Gb
Digital Ocean (London): 9.6057 Gb
UpCloud (Singapore): 10.115 Gb

Total Transferred Gb

Vultr (Sydney): 9.8145 Gb
Digital Ocean (London): 24.014 Gb
UpCloud (Singapore): 25.287 Gb

Now I can remove test file io benchmark file

sysbench --test=fileio --file-total-size=2=10G cleanup
sysbench 0.4.12:  multi-threaded system evaluation benchmark

Removing test files...

Confirm the test file has been deleted

df -h /
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/vda1        40G   16G   23G  41% /

Bonus: Benchmark MySQL (on my main server (Vultr) not on Digital Ocean and UpCLoud)

I tried to run a command

sysbench --test=oltp --oltp-table-size=1000000 --db-driver=mysql --mysql-db=test --mysql-user=root --mysql-password=#################################### prepare
sysbench 0.4.12:  multi-threaded system evaluation benchmark

FATAL: unable to connect to MySQL server, aborting...
FATAL: error 1049: Unknown database 'test'
FATAL: failed to connect to database server!

To fix the error I created a test table with Adminer (guide here).

< Previous – Next >

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Measuring VM performance (CPU, Disk, Latency, Concurrent Users etc) on Ubuntu and comparing Vultr, Digital Ocean and UpCloud – Part 2 of 4

June 5, 2018 by Simon

How can you measure VM performance (CPU, Disk, Latency, Concurrent Users etc) on Ubuntu and comparing Vultr, Digital Ocean and UpCloud – Part 2 of 4

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 or Part 4

Measure Disk Performance with Bonnie++

Installing Bonnie++ on Ubuntu

apt-get install bonnie++

Read this. post on using Bonnie++

Benchmark disk IO with DD and Bonnie++

Starting Bonnie++

bonnie++ -d /tmp -r 2048 -u username

Bonnie++ Readme.

Disk io with bonnie++ on Vultr/Sydney

Writing a byte at a time...done
Writing intelligently...done
Rewriting...done
Reading a byte at a time...done
Reading intelligently...done
start 'em...done...done...done...done...done...
Create files in sequential order...done.
Stat files in sequential order...done.
Delete files in sequential order...done.
Create files in random order...done.
Stat files in random order...done.
Delete files in random order...done.
Version 1.97 ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
Concurrency 1 -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
servername 4G 656 99 308954 68 113706 33 1200 92 188671 30 10237 251
Latency 26067us 119ms 179ms 29139us 26069us 16118us
Version 1.97 ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
servername -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
16 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++
Latency 1463us 703us 880us 263us 119us 593us
1.97,1.97,servername,1,1528177870,4G,,656,99,308954,68,113706,33,1200,92,188671,30,10237,251,16,,,,,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,26067us,119ms,179ms,29139us,26069us,16118us,1463us,703us,880us,263us,119us,593us

Disk io with bonnie++ on Digital Ocean/London

Writing a byte at a time...done
Writing intelligently...done
Rewriting...done
Reading a byte at a time...done
Reading intelligently...done
start 'em...done...done...done...done...done...
Create files in sequential order...done.
Stat files in sequential order...done.
Delete files in sequential order...done.
Create files in random order...done.
Stat files in random order...done.
Delete files in random order...done.
Version 1.97 ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
Concurrency 1 -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
servername 4G 699 99 778636 74 610414 60 1556 99 1405337 59 +++++ +++
Latency 17678us 10099us 17014us 7027us 3067us 2366us
Version 1.97 ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
servername -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
16 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++
Latency 1243us 376us 611us 108us 59us 181us
1.97,1.97,servername,1,1528186398,4G,,699,99,778636,74,610414,60,1556,99,1405337,59,+++++,+++,16,,,,,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,17678us,10099us,17014us,7027us,3067us,2366us,1243us,376us,611us,108us,59us,181us

Disk io with bonnie++ on UpCloud/Singapore

Writing a byte at a time...done
Writing intelligently...done
Rewriting...done
Reading a byte at a time...done
Reading intelligently...done
start 'em...done...done...done...done...done...
Create files in sequential order...done.
Stat files in sequential order...done.
Delete files in sequential order...done.
Create files in random order...done.
Stat files in random order...done.
Delete files in random order...done.
Version 1.97 ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
Concurrency 1 -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
servername 4G 1014 99 407179 24 366622 32 2137 99 451886 17 +++++ +++
Latency 11297us 54232us 16443us 4949us 44883us 1595us
Version 1.97 ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
servername -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
16 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++
Latency 264us 340us 561us 138us 66us 327us
1.97,1.97,servername,1,1528226703,4G,,1014,99,407179,24,366622,32,2137,99,451886,17,+++++,+++,16,,,,,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,11297us,54232us,16443us,4949us,44883us,1595us,264us,340us,561us,138us,66us,327us

Now read this site on how to make sense of this data

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Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 or Part 4

Measuring VM performance (CPU, Disk, Latency, Concurrent Users etc) on Ubuntu and comparing Vultr, Digital Ocean and UpCloud – Part 1 of 4

June 2, 2018 by Simon

How can you measure VM performance (CPU, Disk, Latency, Concurrent Users etc) on Ubuntu and comparing Vultr, Digital Ocean and UpCloud – Part 1 of 4. Update: I moved my domain to UpCloud.

Update (June 2018): I moved my domain to UpCloud (they are that awesome). Use this link to signup and get $25 free credit. Read the steps I took to move my domain to UpCloud here.

Comparing Digital Ocean/Vultr and UpCloud Disk IO

I have a number of guides on moving away from CPanel, Setting up VM’s on AWS, Vultr or Digital Ocean (all in the search of extra performance) but how do you know when a server performance is ok apart from running GT Metrix and other external site benchmarking tools.

This post is split up as it was too long.

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 or Part 4

Spoiler: It all depends on where your server is located and what you do with it (Tweaks will improve the performance).

P.S This is NOT a paid endorsement or conclusive test (just a quick benchmark/review).

What does your server do?

You need to know what your server does 24/7 and what resources the services need.

I use htop to view real-time and historical usage data for each process.

Tweaking Advice

A friend gave me good advice re-tweaking a cheap host to get good performance

yeah but you are trying to get speed out of budget hosting. Good, fast, cheap, pick 2.

— Kerry Hoath (@khoath) June 2, 2018

I am not a fan of just throwing more money at a host and expecting better performance. Host have unique features and cons., there is no shortage of hosts or host cons.

How can you run synthetic benchmarks to determine comparable performance metrics?

WARNING: Comparing synthetic benchmarks can be far removed from real-world speeds. Benchmark results below were from 3 different servers I have on 3 different hosts in three different locations (the only thing the same was the use of Ubuntu 16.04 $5/m servers). These results are not scientific and should not be used to compare host providers. Benchmark runs were one-off (not averages over multiple timezones/days).

Disk Performance

Speaking of disk performance I noticed this the other day on the RunCloud blog. Faster than SSD (UpCloud)?

UpCloud Faster-than-SSD Cloud Hosting Server (Promo Code Inside)

Runcloud is a server management console that can interface with your domains (read my old review here). I don’t use Runcloud but it is great for those who need a GUI to help manage VM via a dashboard. However, I prefer to know what is going on under the hood. I have investigated webmin in the past though.

Let’s do a quick IO benchmark test between UpCloud, Digital Ocean and Vultr on similarly low end $5/m servers,

Good advice on command line benchmarking tools from a friend.

depends on what sort of load you want to simulate. iozone is old but reliable. bonny might give you more figures you want.

— Kerry Hoath (@khoath) June 2, 2018

Installing iozone to test disk performance

I searched for a post on using iozone (Thanks thegeekstuff). I will be reviewing the “Writer report” and “Reader report”. Read more about iozone here.

View the iozone page for how to break down results.

(image snip from http://www.iozone.org/)

Install iozone on Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install iozone3

Run an iozone disk test and output the results to a spreadsheet.

iozone -a -b iozone.xls

Now let’s run a Read/Write test on Vultr/Digital Ocean and UpCloud. Multiple runs were not performed, this is not a scientific test (just a simple benchmark test (as is, ignoring sever load and local infrastructure/timezone load)).

iozone Benchmark results for Vultr “Read” (Sydney)

	“4”	“8”	“16”	“32”	“64”	“128”	“256”	“512”	“1024”	“2048”	“4096”	“8192”	“16384”
64	2133730	3363612	4274062	4564786	6421025
128	2248149	3536566	4135958	7082197	4135958	11720614
256	1884399	2699161	3879045	3667079	5971678	5687020	5687020
512	3140488	3736016	3684733	4262523	4610256	2638816	5067142	5684095
1024	1617808	1939207	3411938	3999762	4048778	4614246	3083680	5885083	6609617
2048	1926510	2569678	4423683	4997618	3937075	459605	2896324	3542524	4971585	4707314
4096	1701683	2151300	4209920	5001700	4751325	4869845	5389246	3647681	4928521	6207035	4347346
8192	2063424	2329346	3203763	2937280	3221485	3232699	3626431	3650706	3789200	4110603	3715045	4350542
16384	1738553	2778362	3397613	3679205	3693442	3171501	3524291	3393586	3004024	3552531	3456574	2693845	2488861
32768	0	0	0	0	2952894	3537153	3574875	3768155	4719613	3890280	3394995	2735222	2542914
65536	0	0	0	0	4057489	3610789	3619967	3800078	3275327	3591212	3607188	1770426	2826659
131072	0	0	0	0	3552270	1890742	5275167	3727339	3527607	1753893	3234736	2341111	1378601
262144	0	0	0	0	3798586	1302021	1491429	3712825	3228816	3757963	3715510	2592485	2481061
524288	0	0	0	0	2758756	2487923	3705741	1807328	2118309	3675988	3196367	3394330	2396842

iozone Benchmark results for Digital Ocean “Read” (London)

	4	“8”	“16”	“32”	“64”	“128”	“256”	“512”	“1024”	“2048”	“4096”	“8192”	“16384”
64	4564786	7100397	9006179	10402178	12902017
128	4717434	7082197	8548124	9795896	10567140	10779307
256	4840911	7073132	8271916	9868433	10148242	10651598	1E+07
512	4742616	6909408	8140399	9304292	9638369	10044089	1E+07	10044089
1024	4249053	5917516	6208343	7537599	9300377	10454984	7E+06	7113161	9946527
2048	3885431	6967792	6603549	6845629	10401883	9808036	9E+06	7903836	9308497	7817519
4096	2506983	5953231	6263611	6953144	7774379	6225028	6E+06	8081580	7683972	8081580	8240513
8192	3665114	4850463	5479317	6141364	6277120	6108608	6E+06	6569983	5732541	7166033	6633402	5479317
16384	3673501	4828584	5416182	6187150	6614761	6298872	6E+06	6430310	5984033	6402750	6046159	4791883	3405527
32768	0	0	0	0	4692542	6140929	6E+06	6295642	5231224	6545707	5781108	4513475	3702577
65536	0	0	0	0	6315430	5830131	6E+06	6444695	6219125	6473838	5338595	4248118	3679324
131072	0	0	0	0	6130002	6461496	6E+06	5958068	5983423	6387547	6138078	3994888	3602079
262144	0	0	0	0	6456746	6323727	6E+06	6504146	6390176	6486151	6433963	3955165	3654188
524288	0	0	0	0	1667337	6381456	6E+06	6445708	6448714	6421071	5981200	4155185	3770740

iozone Benchmark results for UpCloud “Read” (Singapore)

	“4”	“8”	“16”	“32”	“64”	“128”	“256”	“512”	“1024”	“2048”	“4096”	“8192”	“16384”
64	6421025	6421025	10821524	12902017	15972885
128	4889281	6406138	9129573	10779307	14200794	14200794
256	5320671	3879045	10758322	8815202	10245071	12812277	12228612
512	4305250	5115422	8844453	8234036	7091952	8394979	7540170	10235583
1024	4339202	4762630	5821271	6163794	6819511	4674510	6479979	8183918	10230845
2048	4204968	5319484	5800851	5816563	6243566	6378005	5953632	6851089	7940367	8229438
4096	4526013	5556581	4817948	5404504	7301864	5759634	5810280	6007355	6919538	8620945	6281934
8192	4298295	5019093	5927357	6036702	6781341	6082655	5855636	6527546	6553692	6792065	6466126	4437634
16384	4282172	5849558	6313919	6635840	6741958	6657054	6423097	5536622	6558575	6442970	4527032	3784777	3901898
32768	0	0	0	0	5825460	5423408	6504198	6665385	6365329	6426343	5263076	3718605	3705971
65536	0	0	0	0	6908075	6623116	6493259	6609738	6311805	6483610	5489674	4035982	3561526
131072	0	0	0	0	5650180	5718949	2465429	5391253	3495911	5784844	5367408	3733490	3582175
262144	0	0	0	0	6814627	6691250	6189661	5906786	6081645	5799913	5247919	4121250	3637601
524288	0	0	0	0	6404764	6309263	5673979	5751609	6288245	6305103	5978680	3911984	3767116

iozone Benchmark results for Vultr “Write” (Sydney)

	“4”	“8”	“16”	“32”	“64”	“128”	“256”	“512”	“1024”	“2048”	“4096”	“8192”	“16384”
64	289322	532815	507625	429630	566551
128	398921	465304	434078	417212	669577	821147
256	530031	613985	820398	474937	891956	815414	370025
512	387576	754083	709019	819085	702295	609421	924123	496091
1024	297233	448522	716089	923488	854073	817340	1203137	1072453	601636
2048	408697	634655	695383	1358134	549657	1295458	821154	797520	964207	258493
4096	236150	433804	1215774	1245025	820832	809958	1371339	914269	921083	1004682	1481431
8192	611113	666677	806286	715219	779825	824294	875947	870091	1046378	791192	1023592	453248
16384	435454	706149	718313	845499	893495	888068	812778	842885	820591	941120	839610	862672	406590
32768	0	0	0	0	465196	786067	938881	627294	890917	968147	872369	871329	842843
65536	0	0	0	0	515057	790172	937568	915601	897235	867197	907562	852002	743856
131072	0	0	0	0	501091	480492	813147	870886	880239	805333	684630	1117578	633185
262144	0	0	0	0	387126	323185	323656	473258	405744	369599	422554	468992	453563
524288	0	0	0	0	325588	380450	392965	451608	303255	355148	386250	432054	416512

iozone Benchmark results for Digital Ocean “Write” (London)

	“4”	“8”	“16”	“32”	“64”	“128”	“256”	“512”	“1024”	“2048”	“4096”	“8192”	“16384”
64	831569	566551	1279447	1363961	1392258
128	652488	1319723	1421023	990891	1663139	1561553
256	1185399	1152323	1534342	1598292	1826695	1707589	1514860
512	1166599	1296159	1399189	1620980	1620980	1361920	1589779	1672748
1024	1079190	1321200	1584972	1917562	1592612	1701108	1718120	1462960	1643814
2048	1210394	1470172	1621719	1550584	1796378	1643753	1713598	1759581	1649117	1488257
4096	916513	1287575	1574718	1406594	1742237	1734148	1652418	1583280	1599346	1661045	1533532
8192	1109745	1318748	1178567	1544201	1502340	1371492	1466747	1499521	1479759	1564878	1291292	1347609
16384	1106205	1282084	1374037	1503649	1429398	1461407	1496119	1578132	1547289	1333431	1203371	1198815	1501316
32768	0	0	0	0	1270914	1406589	1513114	1468226	1558303	1552038	1516336	1443280	1440360
65536	0	0	0	0	1319322	1327984	1311504	1411955	1266988	1359645	1386446	1347092	1368295
131072	0	0	0	0	1100658	1229326	1227197	1318631	1265552	1233306	1227747	1237896	1233502
262144	0	0	0	0	1167160	1064078	1155828	1185185	1086152	1193673	1080872	1062611	1141960
524288	0	0	0	0	977835	1124816	1052757	1219183	1128972	1140177	1091954	1141635	1132063

iozone Benchmark results for UpCloud “Write” (Singapore)

	“8”	“16”	“32”	“64”	“128”	“256”	“512”	“1024”	“2048”	“4096”	“8192”	“16384”
64	1143223	1255511	1562436	1452528	1279447
128	1451764	1406136	1543594	1504659	1852520	1749872
256	1642294	1829808	1970871	1855098	1802167	1952947	2000242
512	1537424	1854787	1801873	2294796	1983258	2124526	1895721	1417662
1024	1434138	1553442	1609925	1931359	2098375	2044438	1872419	1768345	1892218
2048	1562145	1901771	1817281	1848169	1967097	1296240	2267786	2081497	1915768	2007554
4096	1625372	1966378	1924741	1342092	1950306	2078175	1914873	1459656	1995152	2102849	1326855
8192	1444062	1808330	1956503	1924397	2127300	2042328	2135630	1986478	2062557	2061319	1337016	1812049
16384	1667066	1820248	1898495	2051339	2012530	2111080	2119806	1491217	2060875	1974254	1934789	1815823	1921911
32768	0	0	0	0	2057506	1454537	2075621	2070899	1869795	2052896	1892347	1855382	1873440
65536	0	0	0	0	2067127	2077673	2088994	2179809	2087471	2099108	1904723	1642505	1832204
131072	0	0	0	0	1234663	1824959	1304340	1775514	1287481	1560379	1631992	1085609	1675467
262144	0	0	0	0	685774	808487	823824	662524	681762	548308	814946	645663	732176
524288	0	0	0	0	547296	517384	503422	521173	538714	518429	528950	529593	512944

Here is my quick unscientific take on a one-pass benchmark results above.

These results need some decoding.

Next >>

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 or Part 4

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Update (June 2018): I moved my domain to UpCloud (they are that awesome). Use this link to signup and get $25 free credit. Read the steps I took to move my domain to UpCloud here.

Revision History

v1.2 added the fact that I Moved to UpCloud.

v1.1 Re ran iozone -a -b iozone.xls on all servers.

v1.0 Initial post

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Monitoring cronjobs on Linux

Create a healthchecks.io account

Pricing

Creating Monitors (Checks)

Badges

Cron Jobs

Reports

Conclusion

Sending Emails

Links

How to backup and restore a MySQL database on Windows and Linux

Why backup and restore

Murphy’s Law

Backup (the easiest way) with Adminer

Restore (the easiest way) with Adminer

Bonus methods.

How to install PHP 7.2.latest on Ubuntu 16.04

Adding two sub domains (one pointing to a new UpCloud VM and the other pointing to an NGINX subsite) on Ubuntu 18.04

Upgrading an Ubuntu server on UpCloud to add more CPU, Memory and Disk Space

Measuring VM performance (CPU, Disk, Latency, Concurrent Users etc) on Ubuntu and comparing Vultr, Digital Ocean and UpCloud – Part 4 of 4

Measuring VM performance (CPU, Disk, Latency, Concurrent Users etc) on Ubuntu and comparing Vultr, Digital Ocean and UpCloud – Part 3 of 4

Measuring VM performance (CPU, Disk, Latency, Concurrent Users etc) on Ubuntu and comparing Vultr, Digital Ocean and UpCloud – Part 2 of 4

Measuring VM performance (CPU, Disk, Latency, Concurrent Users etc) on Ubuntu and comparing Vultr, Digital Ocean and UpCloud – Part 1 of 4

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Code

Tech

Wordpress

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on

Create a healthchecks.io account

Pricing

Creating Monitors (Checks)

Badges

Cron Jobs

Reports

Conclusion

Sending Emails

Links

Why backup and restore

Murphy’s Law

Backup (the easiest way) with Adminer

Restore (the easiest way) with Adminer

Bonus methods.

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Security

Code

Tech

Wordpress

General