Fully Open Edge Cloud

Rapid.Space VPS Features And Limitations

A short presentation of Rapid.Space VPS that explains its features and limitations.
  • Last Update:2021-04-06
  • Version:002
  • Language:en

Agenda

  • Dedicated Powerful Server
  • Datacenters around the world
  • Available in China
  • Stable connection with SDN
  • Ease of connection with CDN
  • Performances close to baremetal
  • Flexible Solutions
  • Limitations
 

VPS Concept

Back to Basics VPS

Rapid.Space's concept is to provide to developers the minimum they need in order to deploy an application worldwide.

Rapid.Space VPS (Virtual Private Server) is between a dedicated server (eg. Hetzner) and a cloud VM (eg. AWS EC2). Just like a dedicated server, the full server is allocated to the user. Just like a dedicated server, storage is directly attached, for maximum write performance. Just like a VM, it provides isolation and simple remote operation (remote access, port redirection, etc.) and provides complete control for developers to install their applications.

Rapid.Space VPS

Rapid.Space VPS Illustration

The VPS basic service is a big server with a lot of RAM, computing power and SSD storage.

It is designed for fast I/O with direct attached storage (kernel pass-through), 10 Gbps LAN and 1 Gbps shared transit.

This combination is ideal for high performance database (ERP, CRM, data warehouse, etc.) or big data clusters (AI, BI, etc.).

Servers can be installed automatically based on Ansible technology (or pre-seed soon).

A single server can be partitioned with VMs, containers or jails.

VPS provides no system redundancy. It is up to developers to implement redundancy at application level if they need high availability or disaster recovery.

Rapid.Space Global Datacenters

World map DC

Rapid.Space already has data centers in France, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Bulgaria, China Mainland, Taiwan and Japan. VPS are available from any of the data centers, please feel free to check available VPS on https://www.rapid.space/order. Rapid.Space are continuing expanding sites around the world.

Unlike conventional cloud service providers, Rapid.Space welcome people/companies to join the Rapid.Space network and become provider. Interested in purchasing your own infrastructure and becoming a cloud provider? All you need to know is here: https://handbook.rapid.space/provider.

Rapid.Space VPS in China

  • Big (256 GB RAM, 4 TB SSD, 40+ vCore)
  • Fast I/O (DAS, 10 Gbps LAN, 1 Gbps shared transit)
  • Auto-install (ansible)
  • Partitions (VM, container, jails, etc.)
  • Application redundancy (no system redundancy)
  • Transit: China Telecom and China Unicom
  • Price: 1,888 RMB / month 

Rapid.Space VPS (256 GB RAM, 4 TB SSD, 40+ vCore) is also available in mainland China at the price of 1888 RMB/month/VPS, which is similar to European price but is 4 to 20 times cheaper than conventional public clouds in China. Rapid.Space servers are directly connected to both China Telecom and China Unicom networks.

All the features are same as VPS from anywhere else in the world, and of course, it is up to developers or system administrators to implement redundancy at application or system level if they need high availability or disaster recovery. It is also possible to use services such as Bunnyshell to automate all VPS operation, including redundancy and scalability.

In addition, in order to facilitate the communication inter-countries, Rapid.Space provides IPv6 backbone, which is based on a hybrid mesh network which relies on hundreds of routers worldwide. Thanks to babel technology (RFC 6126), all sorts of congestions can be avoided. Latency can be minimized. Combining with Rapid.Space global CDN: HTTPS front-ends (HTTP1, HTTP2, HTTP3) in 10 different locations worldwide (In China, Rapid.Space front-ends are places on all major carriers: China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile). Rapid.Space can ensure a global VPS service. 

Thanks to the consideration on sovereignty while designing Rapid.Space network, servers in each Rapid.Space's site belong to one or more local owner(s), which means the data on the server are 100% protected locally. The government of one site have no rights to collect data from the site in another country, even though they all share the Rapid.Space global network convenience.

Features:SDN-Global Ipv6 Backbone

For optimal network stability, Rapid.Space VPS are accessed using Rapid.Space SDN.

Rapid.Space SDN is based on Re6st (also called Re6stnet and pronounced resist), a multiprotocol random mesh generator. It is used to solve the current lack of reliability of Internet connectivity for distributed enterprise applications due to bugs in routers, packet inspection breaking TCP protocol, government filters filtering too much, etc. It is legally available in China thanks to the company GrandeNet which carries the "National VPN" license: 中华人民共和国增值电信业务经营许可证 (Value-added telecommunications business license of the People's Republic of China) 沪A1-20140091. 

Re6stnet guarantees that if there exists a route between two machines, traffic will be correctly routed between these two machines. Even if the registry node is down, the probability that the network is not connected is very low for big enough networks (more than a hundred nodes). Re6stnet can detect and take into account nodes present on the local network to optimize performance and work locally even with no internet. (Read more on Rapid.Space SDN Features )

Features:Global CDN

Rapid.Space VPS can be directly connected to Rapid.Space CDN.

The CDN service accelerates content delivery to end-users by reducing the time for end-users to negotiate SSL/TLS sessions and by keeping a copy of content close to end-users. It can also be used to circumvent network congestion for global deployment of business applications of Web sites. The CDN service also provides a way to buffer IoT data and forward it to the data processing backend. It reduces the risk of losing IoT data due to network congestion or backend downtime. Users can always access corporate applications (ERP, CRM, etc.) with 100% success rate. This approach is much more suitable for corporate applications than DNS based technologies which only provide 99% success rate. (Read more on What Is A Rapid.Space CDN )

SDN provides a way to interconnect Rapid.Space CDN and VPS through a latency-optimized IPv6 network. This service is quite unique: it also provides a way to interconnect Rapid.Space to other cloud services (AWS, Azure, GCP, OVH, Alicloud, UCloud, Qingcloud, etc.) with good networking performance.

Features: Zero Knowledge technology

Zero Knowledge technology is adopted in Rapid.Space service so that NO password leakage is ensured. 

Features: Performance compare to bare metal

To compare the performance of VPS with bare metal, for CPU, networking or memory access, the performance loss due to para virtualisation is close to nothing. Detailed tests show that all operations run at the same speed (+/- 5%) except memory copy which can be in rare cases about 30% slower. In average, the performance loss due to para virtualisation is under 5%. Regarding disk I/O, typical performance measured by synthetics tests shows no loss thanks to "pass through" configuration (the VPS accesses directly the PCI bus and accesses attached SSD storage). However, benchmarks based on real application loads (ERP, CRM, etc.), read performance is almost same but write performance is 30% lower. Yet, this is an order of magnitude better than virtualised block storage.

Features: B2B dedicated solutions

Rapid.Space also provide B2B solutions for those who would like to have dedicated VPS service. Rapid.Space can offer to B2B customers dedicated racks with dedicated networking including dedicated router. The minimum order quantity is 16 VPS. This offer is equivalent to a virtual data centre (VDC).

Rapid.Space can offer to B2B customers a dedicated operation management system with dedicated user directory (a.k.a. SlapOS Master) that will isolate them entirely from other Rapid.Space customers yet provide them the same features. It can be deployed on premise or in the cloud. VPS servers can be deployed on premise or in the cloud. This offer starts at 2000€ per month and is equivalent to a virtual private cloud (VPC). It was deployed successfully for Teralab. Please contact Rapid.Space team by email to know more about this offer.

Limitations

  • Incoming traffic: IPv6 or HTTP(S)
  • Outgoing traffic: IPv6 or IPv4 with NAT
  • No Redundancy / No Resiliency
  • No DDOS

Rapid.Space does not provide IPv4 for incoming traffic by default because IPv4 is too expensive, for the cause of limited address space. Your VPS and VM are thus allocated a /64 block of 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 routable IPv6 addresses which can be contacted from anywhere in the world through any TCP/IP protocol over IPv6. Your machine can also be contacted through HTTP or HTTPS over IPv4 thanks to Rapid.Space CDN which acts as a proxy between HTTP(S) over IPv4 and HTTP(S) over IPv6. Since IPv6 is becoming increasingly adopted worldwide, it should thus be quite easy to find an IPv6 compatible ISP. IPv6Droid provides quite reliable IPv6 on Android about anywhere in the world. For countries like China where IPv6 adoption is still few, Rapid.Space offers Grandenet resilient IPv6 connectivity solution which is completely compliant with Chinese Laws.

Your VPS and VM can access any IPv4 reachable host through any TCP/UDP based protocol (ex. HTTP, QUIC, SSH, stunnel, etc.) that supports Network Address Translation (NAT).Your VPS and VM can access any IPv6 reachable host through any TCP/IP protocol (TCP, UDP, 6in4, GRE, etc.).

Rapid.Space architecture is not redundant because hardware redundancy increases costs a lot without improving resiliency much. Moreover, many kinds of applications do not need redundancy or even high availability. A Rapid.Space VPS is powered by a single server, a single ssd, a single network adapter, a single power supply unit in a single datacenter with a single Internet access. If any of those components becomes unavailable for some reason (fire, software bug, power outage, power surge, optical fiber cut on the nearby road by a truck, etc.) then your VPS becomes unavailable too, temporarily or permanently. Those events do happen, not very often, but often enough to be noticed. For statistics of occurrence, please refer to "Downtime statistics of current cloud solutions": even the most expensive public cloud providers are unable to provide true resiliency despite multi-level redundancy architecture (power supply, transit, datacenter, etc). Outages of a couple of hours still happen. Complete data loss still happen. If you need true resiliency, the only effective solution we can advice is to rent another machine in another datacenter and possibly from another supplier independent or Rapid.Space (ex. OVH, Online, Hetzner, Qingcloud, etc.), then setup a software (ex. SlapOS WebRunner) which automates daily tests of disaster recovery between the two machines. For further information, fell free to consult true resiliency test automation service to Nexedi.

To save the high cost of a DDOS mitigation system, Rapid.Space uses a whitelist approach. Rapid.Space charges for outgoing IPv4 and IPv6 traffic in a way that is economically acceptable for legal applications (ex. ERP backend, Big Data lake, continuous integration, etc.) and economically unacceptable for questionable applications or malware (ex. spam, botnet, scrapping, etc.). All incoming IPv6 traffic is blocked by default. As a user you have a free-of-charge, configurable whitelist of IPv6 that can access your VM. All outgoing IPv4 and IPv6 traffic is blocked by default. Exceptions include an official free-of-charge whitelist (debian, npm, git, feel free to contribute) and a paid, configurable whitelist of IPs (1€ setup plus 1€/month fee for every IP address you wish to add).