[BSD] Get a free KVM VPS to play with! And write about it II.

First part here:

[BSD] Get a free KVM VPS to play with! And write about it. 

Basically, I wanna write an update.

It's been some time since first article,  and honestly, I am a bit surprised that only 2 people are interested. I was expecting more people (634 views of article so far). But that's not the end of the world. 

Right now I am gonna write to the people and I will decide which one will be first. I think I can give them up to 2 months or so. We all have personal life so we shall see. 

First person wants to write about BSD for begginers, the second wanna write about some benchmarks and so. So both looks good to me. If you think you can beat them, let me know and VPS is yours ;]

I'll keep you updated.

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BSD KVM VPS - Feathur control panel settings

So second part of series is here. You might wanna read first part here to know what's going on in here.

So title says:  Feathur control panel settings

Right, BlueVM (affiliate link) created their own control panel, because they had some security issues with 3th party ones. But that's not the reason why I wanna write about it. The reason is something I mentioned in previous post: they let you change some settings. So that would be the first step - understand what it means.

So paste from previous part:

Network cards: 
realtek 8139
Intel (recommended)
VirtIO
realtek 8029
PCNet

Disk driver:
SCSI
IDE (recommended)
VirtIO


Pretty much this goes easy. I mean research. Kinda.

The best results I should be able to get with VirtIO. What I mean with "kinda" is that it works like that with Linux. With BSD reports vary. Depending on what OS and what version.

So yeah, I am gonna try most of BSD distros and do some tests.

What kind of test would you recommend? I asked on Google+ BSD community but didn't get a lot of ideas.

I installed FreeBSD 9.2 with SCSI driver and Realtek, but both download speed and disk results were bad. Don't remember them, but no matter, I will write about it later.

I decided to install OpenBSD first and then do tests with FreeBSD when 10 is out. Because installing software with FreeBSD ports is not that fun one would thought.

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BSD KVM VPS - Let's play

I did write some time ago how I wanna learn BSD, and that's the reason why I am writing this blog. And that I wasn't successful with running any BSD on my spare laptop (for whatever reasons).

And I also got interested in VPS. I bought one (3euro/yr) and I wrote the website about it (because I wanna learn web-dev stuff, too). And that got me into looking into many website with cheap unmanaged VPS deals and so. Few days ago I found one interesting offer: 1GB RAM unmanaged KVM VPS for less than 30 bucks a year. 

KVM is the way to run BSD OS, right? And this one is pretty cheap. Yeah, let's get one!

I checked reviews of company, and it looked good, so I went for it.

Details?

It comes from BlueVM (affliate link).

• 1GB RAM
• 3 CPU Cores
• 30GB Disk space
• 2TB Bandwidth
• 1Gbps uplink
• 1x IPv4 address
• KVM/Feathur
• $29.95/Year

I also used 10% Off code so in the end I am gonna pay $26,96 USD a year. To compare, without this special offer, the price is $7.50 USD a month. Ah, yeah, that's why I bought it.

Location is Buffalo, NY, USA.

So?

So I need your help. I bet I can find a lot of readers having more experience than me (as mine is zero). I can always use some advice.

What BSDs they offer to install? 

They have:

FreeBSD 9.2
pfSense 2.1 LiveCD
OpenBSD 5.4
NetBSD 6.1.2

I can also use my own ISO, if I open a ticket with link to location.

So no DragonFly and others.

Other things?

I can change some settings:

Network cards: 
realtek 8139
Intel (recommended)
VirtIO
realtek 8029
PCNet

Disk driver:
SCSI
IDE (recommended)
VirtIO


So my questions to readers?

Which OS do you recommend to use? 32 or 64? 
Which setting would you pick?
Ideas?

What I wanna do with this VPS is learn. I will probably install server and some database and do some pet project. Might be some Rails or so.

Sure, I will write about whatever I will do. There will be a lot that I will discover when doing stuff...

I guess I will start with comparing features of BSDs, but go ahead, help me figure out and make some comments!

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