Genesis VMs

Frequently Asked Questions

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VMs can only be upgraded such that the storage is the same size or large due to the fact that block storage devices can't be resized smaller.  Upgrades must be performed by submitting a ticket.  We will simply charge the difference in cost pro-rated.

Yes, but you must order an upgrade to a large Flavor.  Upgrades must be performed by submitting a ticket.

Yes, but you can only change the Flavor of the VM such that the storage size is equal or greater in size to the current Flavor.  Upgrades must be performed by submitting a ticket.

Usually, VMs are provisioned within a minute or two.  Windows images can take a bit longer since they are larger than Linux images.  In addition, Windows performs the sysprep process upon first boot, so that can take a couple minutes.

An email is sent when the order is placed.  Another email is sent when the VM has been provisioned.  For Windows VMs, wait a couple more minutes for the sysprep process to finish.

Note that the firewall has only a single rule for outbound traffic, so you need to add a rule to allow inbound traffic.  For Linux machines, we automatically add a rule for SSH inbound.  For Windows machines, you need to add a rule for RDP inbound, which is done for security reasons since there have been many RDP vulnerabilities in the past few years.  You may want to filter RDP traffic by source IP if you have a static IP on your client.  Otherwise, just be sure that you update Windows often in case of future RDP vulnerabilities.

Not for Genesis VMs, which is designed for single server deployments that are easy to manage via a web UI.

Our OpenStack Public Cloud service is much more capable and better suited for various control methods, such as REST API, CLI, SDK, and Web UI.  Feel free to ask us about this service by submitting a Sales ticket.

Storage is on a shared NVMe SSD platform, not local to the compute nodes.  Storage is replicated across storage nodes so availability is extremely high. IOPS is not managed (except for Tiny instances) like our OpenStack gp2, gp3, and other related storage options, so storage is provided using on a fair-share methodology.  Storage is still quite fast, but is limited by the fact that it is shared.  We recommend you perform some benchmarks with fio (on Linux) or IOMeter (on Windows) to see how well it performs.  If you find that you need more performance, we recommend using our OpenStack Public Cloud service, which has many more storage options, including guaranteed performance (Provisioned IOPS) solutions.

Genesis VMs are provisioned as VMs on our OpenStack Public Cloud platform, which is connected via redundant 100Gbps links to each compute node.  Network bandwidth is restricted based on the Flavor of VM selected and ranges anywhere from 25Mbps up to 40Gbps.  See our specifications page for flavor definitions.
 

We use 3.7GHz Xeon Gold processors, so they are as fast as is possible within the constraints of the flavors.

Dedicated CPU Favors can result in similar scores, but are consistent since vCPUs are not shared across customers for these flavors.  We recommend you perform your own benchmarks with UnixBench for Linux or PassMark for Windows.  If you need assistance, let us know and we'll show you how.

For Linux machines:

vm.c5sd.xlarge flavor (2 shared CPU cores)
Geekbench Version 5 results:
976 Single-Core Score
1956 Multi-Core Score

vm.c5d.8xlarge flavor (16 dedicated CPU cores)
Geekbench Version 5 results:
979 Single-Core Score
11012 Multi-Core Score

Linux tests were performed on November 9, 2019 with a kernel version of 5.3.9.
All yum updates were performed on a CentOS 7 machine.

 

For Windows machines:

vm.c5sd.xlarge flavor (2 shared CPU cores)
Passmark 9 results:
5020 for CPU Mark
4737 for Integer Math
3744 for Floating Point Math
27 for Prime Numbers
212 for SSE
5154 for Compression
844 for Encryption
432 for Physics
3088 for Sorting
2074 for CPU single-threaded


vm.c5d.8xlarge flavor (16 dedicated CPU cores)
Passmark 9 results:
23409 for CPU Mark
38953 for Integer Math
30665 for Floating Point Math
198 for Prime Numbers
1603 for SSE
42335 for Compression
6875 for Encryption
1278 for Physics
25424 for Sorting
2122 for CPU single-threaded


Windows tests were performed on November 9, 2019 with Windows Server 2019.
All Windows Updates were performed prior to testing.

Yes, as long as you have configured the appropriate firewall rules.  We suggest you restrict traffic so you only accept traffic from your own VMs' private IPs to reduce the chance that another client's VMs can talk to your VMs.

We include 5TiB of outbound data transfers from your VM at no additional cost.  Beyond 5TiB, We charge for all outbound data transfers originating from your VM, regardless of where that traffic is headed.  We have a very low data transfer price, so typically data transfer charges are minimal, including those for Internet-bound traffic.

We default the firewall to not allow any inbound traffic, except for SSH Inbound, for security reasons.  Go to the respective Order for your VM (My Services menu -> My Orders) and look for the "Additional Tools" section.  Click the "Firewall" button to view the firewall rules.

If you deployed a Windows VM, you likely want RDP inbound access.  Click the "Add Rule" button, change the Port dropdown from "Custom Port" to "RDP".  In the "IP/IP Range" box, enter "0.0.0.0/0" if you want to allow access from anywhere.  Otherwise, specify a source IP address or source subnet to restrict access by IP.

As a side note, for Linux VMs, you will need to download the private key from the Additional Tools section (note that this can only be done once).  Use this private for public key authentication.

For Windows machines, the random Administrator password is provided and is required to be reset upon first login.  If you are not prompted to change the Administrator password on first login, your machine is likely compromised.

All VMs are created on the same network, which is behind 1:1 NAT to your public IP.  So, every VM is assigned a private IP which is translated to a public IP when traffic is sent outbound to the Internet, and vice-versa when traffic is sent inbound from the Internet.  VMs can talk to each other on the private network as long as you have appropriate firewall rules configured.  IP and MAC addresses are filtered, so spoofing either is impossible.

We do enable this ability, but we can not support this since there are too many factors that can go wrong.  So, we suggest you use this only for testing for DR environments where nested hypervisors is an absolutely necessity.

No - boot disks are volumes on our replicated NVMe storage, so if a physical server dies at Genesis, your data is not lost.

The base clock speed for the processors is 3.0GHz, but we lock the processor speed to its "all core turbo" speed of 3.7GHz.  So, all cores always run at 3.7GHz regardless of what cores are use.

Yes!  If you don't like your purchase for any reason, within 24 hours of the purchase, we will refund your purchase.

Terms and conditions apply, however.  If we find that the machine was used for any form of abuse, you will waive your right to a refund.