Frustration with OVH India Server
I failed in my attempt to install a Windows 2019 OS in the OVH server. Their tech support asked me to use their OVHcloud tempalte to install. It is as if they did not understand that THEIR version does not support GUI (it only runs on CORE edition :
The SG server which I configured earlier had IMPI “from a java applet” option. However the India (Mumbai) server does NOT. So i try to install a “custom OS” via KVM (since their IPMI did not support JAVA option…
I enabled the KVM via web browser:
Once the option is available, i select that:
I then can access the KVM via web browser. I then browse file to point to my ISO copy of Windows 2019 std edition. Then I click on “START” to load the ISO into the virtual DVD.
Next I configured the boot option for UEFI AND virtual CD/DVD booting:
Afterwards, I reboot the server :
then boots to this:
I don’t see how the OVH tech team can claim that there is NO underlying issue with the server, when a client like me is unable to install custom OS.
I did a tracert to see if there were network issues:
Update as of May 6, 2023
The OVH tech team did an intervention. They set the boot up option to do PXE boot to load an emergency LINUX code. They then CLOSED the ticket.
This is what happens now to the server when I attempt to install windows 2019:
and this is how they did it in the bios:
How does booting into network (PXE linux) solve my issue of not being able to boot windows ISO image using the supplied KVM/UEFI/virtual CD? I wonder how they could mark the ticket as resolved.
Still OVH refuses to either solve their technical server issues or to cancel the subscription as of this writing.
Update: their tech support forwarded the instructions on using IPMI
Using the IPMI with Dedicated Servers — OVHcloud
this is their Step#1
This OPTION is NOT found in their interface:
did they forget about the earlier (1 month ago) ticket that i raised, and which they unceremoniously closed ?
Update: May 14, 2023
I was asked to set the server to Rescue-Customer, and restart the server to be able to run several tests:
The test needs to be performed:
ethtool ethX| grep Speed
ethtool -S eth0 | grep error
iperf3 -c sbg.proof.ovh.net -4
iperf3 -c sbg.proof.ovh.net -i 2 -t 20 -P 5 -4 | grep “SUM”
wget http://proof.ovh.net/files/10Gb.dat -O /dev/null
iperf3 -c sbg.proof.ovh.net -4 -p5202
iperf3 -c sbg.proof.ovh.net -i 2 -t 20 -P 5 -4 -p5202 | grep “SUM”
For the iperf3 tests, if port 5201 is busy or not working you can try any of these ports as well: 5202, 5203, 5204,5205, 5206, 5207, 5208, 5209, and 5210.
I got as far as trying to restart the server (after setting the rescue boot option) . but everytime i hit the ‘confirm’ button, i am sent back to this same confirm screen:
This is what happens when we click the link to get the password:
Hmm.. i wonder if they tested these thoroughly!
And they claim there is no defect on their server. At this point, it is 2 months billed, with not a single day of actual usage.
OVH still refuses to acknowledge that their server has defect (this despite their inability to provide means to deploy custom OS).
Update: I was able to SSH into the rescue OS server and ran all the test OVH wanted to do. Here are the results:
root@rescue:~# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr d8:5e:d3:46:5a:08
inet addr:148.113.6.194 Bcast:148.113.6.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: 2402:1f00:8300:2c2::/64 Scope:Global
inet6 addr: fe80::da5e:d3ff:fe46:5a08/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:52747 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:28953 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:54497364 (51.9 MiB) TX bytes:4566989 (4.3 MiB)
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:65536 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
root@rescue:~# ethtool eth0| grep Speed
Speed: 1000Mb/s
root@rescue:~# iperf3 -c sbg.proof.ovh.net -4
Connecting to host sbg.proof.ovh.net, port 5201
[ 4] local 148.113.6.194 port 42502 connected to 51.91.75.40 port 5201
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr Cwnd
[ 4] 0.00–1.00 sec 385 KBytes 3.15 Mbits/sec 0 113 KBytes
[ 4] 1.00–2.00 sec 4.99 MBytes 41.9 Mbits/sec 0 2.52 MBytes
[ 4] 2.00–3.00 sec 12.5 MBytes 105 Mbits/sec 0 6.00 MBytes
[ 4] 3.00–4.00 sec 12.5 MBytes 105 Mbits/sec 0 6.00 MBytes
[ 4] 4.00–5.00 sec 13.8 MBytes 115 Mbits/sec 0 6.00 MBytes
[ 4] 5.00–6.00 sec 13.8 MBytes 115 Mbits/sec 0 6.00 MBytes
[ 4] 6.00–7.00 sec 12.5 MBytes 105 Mbits/sec 0 6.00 MBytes
[ 4] 7.00–8.00 sec 13.8 MBytes 115 Mbits/sec 0 6.00 MBytes
[ 4] 8.00–9.00 sec 12.5 MBytes 105 Mbits/sec 0 6.00 MBytes
[ 4] 9.00–10.00 sec 13.8 MBytes 115 Mbits/sec 0 6.00 MBytes
- — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr
[ 4] 0.00–10.00 sec 110 MBytes 92.6 Mbits/sec 0 sender
[ 4] 0.00–10.00 sec 110 MBytes 92.2 Mbits/sec receiver
iperf Done.
root@rescue:~# iperf3 -c sbg.proof.ovh.net -i 2 -t 20 -P 5 -4 | grep “SUM”
(no output)
root@rescue:~# wget http://proof.ovh.net/files/10Gb.dat -O /dev/null
iperf3 -c sbg.proof.ovh.net -4 -p5202
iperf3 -c sbg.proof.ovh.net -i 2 -t 20 -P 5 -4 -p5202 | grep “SUM”
Update: May 25, 2023, I decided to use OVH Windows Server 2019 server core template. I will then use it to upload the ISO image into a second partition and run setup.exe from there to reinstall Windows server 2019 desktop experience.
I still run into issue with the file upload.
There were a lot of intermittent ICMP RTOs (not known if these were filtered ICMP) . So I think i zeroed in on the issue: Network bottleneck.
Using Okla Speedtest on my fastethernet port, i was able to clock 799mbps download and 657mbps upload speeds:
However, while uploading the ISO image/ xcopy to disk using OVH windows 2019 server core template, I was only able to transfer at this speed (4.4mbps ):
