I was having some issues with my VPS instances (they would sometimes go down), so I looked for a monitoring system that would alert me when a VPS goes offline and also save statistical data. I initially looked at NodeQuery, but the problem with it was that it only updated every 5 minutes, so if a VPS became unavailable for 1-2 minutes, it barely noticed. I checked out other options too, but eventually settled on Observium.

I previously wrote a post about mikrovps.eu, concluding that it’s a very good host. Unfortunately, everything changes over time, and this was true here as well. I don’t know the background, I can only guess. I assume the owner took advantage of OpenVZ’s characteristics, and oversold the number of VPS instances on a node to the point where it became unstable, and my TF2 server on it was constantly lagging. I reported this to the operator, and they supposedly moved me to another node, but the problem persisted there too, so I decided to try the szerverplex.hu KVM package. Everything worked right away, setting up the system was simple, you can install pretty much anything on it, and I get unlimited data transfer (supposedly) on 100 mbit. I also set up the TF2 server today, and so far the feedback is that it’s perfect, no lag at all.