> Last time I benchmarked a VPS it was about the performance of an Ivy Bridge generation laptop.

I have a number of Intel N95 systems around the house for various things. I've found them to be a pretty accurate analog for small instances VPSes. The N95 are Intel E-cores which are effectively Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge cores.

Stuff can fly on my MacBook but than drag on a small VPS instance but validating against an N95 (I already have) is helpful. YMMV.