'Net Features : cloud hosting

Migrate Clouds With Ease

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:15:00 GMT

What is more challenging than moving to the cloud? You guessed it - moving from one cloud platform to another. Fortunately, solutions such as Cloud Converter are able to reduce or eliminate most (if not all) of the transition troubles.

Cloud Converter's technology gives users a way to move their cloud servers between supported platforms. That currently includes all major Linux operating systems on physical or cloud servers, as well as cloud providers such as Amazon, Rackspace, GoGrid, Host Virtual, Linode and others based on VMware, Xen, KVM, or OpenVZ technology.

The solution works by creating a unique fingerprint based on the cloud provider, technology and other variables between the source and target servers. The service then uses this fingerprint to convert and move data from one provider to the other. Most server installations are moved in between five and twenty minutes.

Hyve Delivers Performance Visibility with CopperEgg Cloud Monitoring

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 15:35:00 GMT

Cloud monitoring service CopperEgg, and Hyve, a cloud hosting provider in the UK, are joining forces to deliver CopperEgg’s cloud performance visibility data directly to Hyve customers.

Hyve has also joined CopperEgg’s Cloud Performance Partner Program, wherein participating cloud and managed hosting providers can offer their clients discounts on CopperEgg services – which are compatible with any IaaS or PaaS environment including OpenStack or VMware hosting infrastructures.

"Hyve prides itself on delivering the highest quality cloud hosting solutions to our clients," said Jon Lucas, Technical Account Manager at Hyve.

"We are committed to offer only the best of breed architecture and value to our customers, and in that spirit, we are excited to now offer CopperEgg best-of-breed cloud monitoring to Hyve clients. CopperEgg provides an unbiased view of cloud infrastructure performance of the entire cloud service and application being delivered by our customers, including our own service quality."

Confused About the Cloud? You Are Not Alone

Administrator — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 19:00:00 GMT

By Will Stevens, Webfusion

If someone asked you "what is the cloud" how long would it take you to come up with a good answer? Thirty seconds? A couple of minutes? Or would you have to regretfully shrug your shoulders and admit you don't really understand what it is?

It's fair to assume that most people in the IT industry would fall into the first two categories – even if you're not raising bootstrap funding for an innovative cloud-based start-up, the chances are that if you work in the sector in any capacity, you'll have some knowledge of the cloud. But it seems the general public are lagging behind when it comes to understanding one of the hottest computing buzzwords around, as this infographic demonstrates.

(Infographic credit: The Webfusion VPS Server team)

So what should we take away from a survey that indicates a huge number of Americans use cloud services, but appear to do so without realizing?

It's tempting to dismiss the findings as being no big deal – after all the public doesn't want to go on a crash course in computing, they just want to be able to access their emails and listen to their music. This attitude might be understandable if the IT industry didn't keep pushing the concept of cloud services as if it was a phrase that was well understood, but surely marketing your products using a buzzword that people haven't grasped makes little sense.

After all, among those 60 percent who profess to be ignorant about the cloud will be a significant number of existing and potential small business owners – exactly the kind of person business-related cloud services should be targeted at. But the demands of a small business owner go beyond those of casual users of services such as Gmail and iTunes – if you're looking to turn a profit it's not enough to know that something works the way it should most of the time, you need to know you're getting the cheapest, most reliable solution around.

If you work in the IT industry, you'll be aware the cloud does indeed offer a cheap, reliable solution for any number of business needs. But why use a term that has to be translated before your target audience understands what you're trying to sell them?

What's the point in telling someone the service they want will be delivered through the cloud when all they really want to know is if the product will save them money? If the words you're using carry little meaning for your target audience then you have drifted into the realm of empty buzzwords – small business owners are as likely to feel as engaged by "the cloud" as the average employee is by the kind of management speak which still dominates many companies. So perhaps it's time the IT industry forgot about the cloud and focused on the benefits of individual products. After all, small business owners aren't interested in some overarching buzzwords – they just want a service that's right for them.

The MicroCloud Arrives

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 20:45:00 GMT

Hosting provider Codero just announced the release of a new private cloud product dubbed MicroCloud which will enable its customers to manage their virtualization platform directly.

MicroCloud is available in various hardware configurations and offers a choice of preloaded hypervisors currently in VMWare ESXi or Citrix XexServer and will expand the product line to include more hypervisors and orchestration stacks in the next six months.

MicroCloud pricing ranges from $359-$499 depending on the processer type selected. “MicroCloud offers customers the flexibility of cloud computing in private, with 100 percent dedicated hardware. No matter how many virtual machines a customer launches on their infrastructure, the MicroCloud will always be at a set monthly price,” said Chandler Vaughn, SVP of Product for Codero Hosting.

“Our goal at Codero is to enable customers to leverage the best of both virtualized and dedicated servers so that they can place their workloads on preferred platforms, all with the reliability and exceptional service Codero is known for.”

Cloud Bursting - Cloudshare Integrates with TFS

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 00:30:00 GMT

Cloud solution provider Cloudshare announced an integration with Microsoft TFS (Team Foundation Server) which will provide its customres both on-premise and cloud-based development and testing labs.

Cloudshare customers will be able to create new multi-serve environments or use pre-confifured environements which can be used for building, unit-testing or functional testing via TFS Lab Manager. Developers will likely be interested in this as having build-and-test labs which can be deployed in the cloud can have significant savings on expenses, not to mention improving development and testing agility.

"For CloudShare, development and testing is our fastest growing customer segment. CloudShare was built to fit pre-production needs -- new application developers gain fast access to the cloud and can easily collaborate on projects -- making for an agile development and testing process," says Zvi Guterman, founder and Chief Strategy Officer at CloudShare.

Google’s Cloud Going Primetime

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:30:00 GMT

Google announced several enhancements to its cloud services over the past week that are worthy of note. The improvements will likely be attractive (or at least interesting) to businesses looking to build apps on its platform, as competition in the marketplace - from Microsoft’s Azure to Amazon’s AWS – heats up.

Are Google’s cloud services ready for developer primetime? Here’s a quick roundup of the new features and offerings:

- Premier accounts for App Engine have been released. Priced at $500/mo, the enterprise SLA promotes “premier” support and a 99.5% uptime guarantee, along with the ability to create an unlimited number of apps in the account.

- Google recently announced a limited preview of Google Cloud SQL, which powers applications on App Engine with a relational database. The offering is now available free available free of charge but Google indicated it will likely have to charge developers in the future – right after it works out the “kinks”.

- Developers are now able to read and write files to Google Could Storage via the App Engine Files API, and Google will be providing detailed access information, including access analytics and storage use data.

- Those interested in machine learning will be excited by the v1.4 release of Google’s Prediction API – which now includes two user-suggested features including PMML v4.01 and data anomaly detection.

Codero Offers Cloud Hosting by the Hour

Linc Wonham — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 11:00:00 GMT

An on-demand cloud hosting service from Codero is now available in monthly or hourly billing plans, and prices are below market price for those who sign up during the initial beta period. Set-up for both plans is at no charge and no contracts are required.

The hourly cloud computing plan allows consumers to turn on additional resources when their business demands it, and turn them off when their business does not, paying per hour of resource utilization instead of being forced into a monthly commitment. Cloud is designed to be elastic to accommodate traffic spikes and other variable load applications.

The Codero Cloud is especially well-suited for sites that expect to grow rapidly and sites with cyclical traffic. It has a control panel giving users the ability to manage their entire Cloud offering online. Codero’s cloud provides the benefit of changing the resources allocated to an existing Cloud VM, whether you want to increase or decrease the processing power, RAM or hard drive space.

The Planet and the Cloud

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 22:00:00 GMT

Web hosting provider The Planet has introduced its own cloud platform dubbed Server Cloud. The initial offering, according to the company, is designed for hosting companies and hosting resellers looking to compliment their dedicated server offerings.

Using KVM – Kernel-based Virtual Machine – for virtualization, customers gain access to next-generation cloud capabilities. KVM is rapidly becoming the open-source community standard for virtualization and the agreed-upon platform for future development. The Planet Server Cloud uses the Canonical Ubuntu Server for its KVM platform.

“The industry is rife with cloud services hindered by inconsistency and a lack of redundancy. By contrast, our customers count on us for high availability, rapid provisioning, seamless scalability and generous bandwidth, which they’ll find in our new Server Cloud. Customers are able to fully manage all aspects of their virtual servers, as well as include managed services for the platform, which provides the best value in the business,” said Carl Meadows, senior product manager for Cloud Services with The Planet.

Top Cloud Service Providers; Amazon, Google and IBM

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:52:00 GMT

Each and every day it seems an announcement is made about the availability of a new cloud service. With so many providers on the market, how should you decide which one is right for you? Perhaps you could listen to your colleagues.

Evans Data conducted a survey in September of over 400 software developers, measuring perceptions of leading vendors in the cloud space. Vendors and providers such as Amazon, Microsfot, AT&T, Rackspace, VMware, Sun and HP among others. Adoption, adoption intentions, completeness of offering, and ability to execute were rated by the developers along with capabilities such as security, scalability, low latency, reliability, no vendor lock-in, and cost to value ratio. In addition, developers positioned the vendors as better suited to either public or private cloud offerings.

So who are the top cloud service providers as rated by survey participants?

- Amazon was seen as having the most complete solution
- Google was thought to have more ability to execute (and actually topped Amazon in most other categories)
- Adoption intentions in the next 12 months were much stronger fro Google than Amazon
- IBM was thought to be able to provide the most secure cloud environment
- IBM was also rated high in reliability and ability to execute

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Amazon S3 for WordPress: Cloud Hosting Solution for WP

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:51:00 GMT

Several weeks ago I received a frantic text message in the middle of the night from a friend whose website (a WordPress blog) I host on my Web server. Apparently, the site was receiving a surge of traffic. I immediately increased their bandwidth just in case they were to go over the limit previously established, but it made me think how this user could reduce costs and ease up the demands (storage and bandwidth) on my server. The answer was in the cloud.

There are quite a few cloud hosting providers on the market. Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is an online storage service that is perhaps the most well known. The Web service can be used to host static contents, like image files, instead of hosting them yourself. One of the biggest advantages of S3 is the reliability from Amazon servers during high traffic, and their bandwidth and storage prices are low compare to other similar services. Startup companies are embracing it for their online storage solution, and even bloggers are starting to use it to host their images and other static media.

The website had a WordPress installation which means, as in most things, there must be a plugin working with a cloud hosting provider like Amazon S3 wherein media content could be stored and served, right? Right!

Amazon S3 for WordPress is a plugin that allows bloggers to use Amazon's Simple Storage Service to host media for WordPress powered blogs. Once integrated into a WordPress install, WP users can upload files (images, video, audio, etc.) which are then saved into an Amazon S3 bucket without any extra steps. These files are delivered by Amazon S3 instead of your web host - problem solved.

The Cloud Conundrum

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:10:00 GMT

A survey released by RackSpace shows that businesses just don't undertstand the concept of cloud hosting. The findings show that more than half of UK (57%) and US (58%) businesses are unaware of the term.

Perhaps part of the confusion resides in the dual nature of the cloud, meaning both businesses and consumers use the cloud, but do so in different ways. Businesses use the cloud to host applications, and consumers tap the cloud to use those applications.

Most UK businesses (43%) defined cloud hosting as 'remote and multiple servers accessed via the internet.' In the US this was also the most popular answer (29%). Other responses from the UK included 'applications via the internet' (31%), 'virtualisation' (14%) and 'online storage' (8%), with a similar pattern being found in the US. However 27% of UK businesses 'don't know how they would use cloud hosting as part of their IT mix'. A third of US businesses (33%) agreed with this statement.

Lew Moorman, chief strategy officer at Rackspace Hosting, said: "Cloud technology is ideal for the current economic climate, but it is vital that businesses understand how it can best serve their organisation. At Rackspace we want to provide clearer guidelines on how they can get the most out of this technology as a matter of urgency. That is why we are launching a new cloud clinic web site."

Fortunately for those that have yet to grasp the "cloud" and its benefits for businesses and consumers, RackSpace has created a "cloud clinic" to "demystify the cloud".

Hostway Offers FlexCloud Infrastructure

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Web hosting provider Hostway announced a cloud computing infrastructure called FlexCloud™. The highlights of FlexCloud™ from Hostway, as from other cloud hosting providers, is the on-demand automated allocation of CPU, memory, storage and bandwidth for individual websites and greater reliability through inherently redundant infrastructure architecture and deployment. This announcement is notable because Hostway is one of the first traditional web hosting companies to move into the cloud.

Hostway's 60,000 North American hosting customers' websites will be moved immediately to the new cloud computing infrastructure.

"The primary benefit of FlexCloud for business hosting clients is gaining access to a multi-million dollar ultra-reliable hosting infrastructure that scales up and down at your command for as low as $15 per month. The secondary benefit, for some this may be the primary benefit, is that Hostway has made it easy," said John Lee, senior vice president of small business hosting.

Go Grid: Windows To the Cloud

Administrator — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:50:00 GMT

GoGrid, a provider of Windows and Linux cloud-based server hosting announced the availability of 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows Server 2008 within its Cloud Computing infrastructure - one of the first infrastructure as a service providers to offer Windows Server 2008 "in the cloud". GoGrid customers can now deploy Windows Server 2008 servers in just a few minutes for as little as 19 cents an hour, with no commitment.

"The ability to deploy and manage critical infrastructure systems in the Cloud is becoming increasingly important to customers," said Jason Hermitage, director of Windows Server marketing at Microsoft Corp. "We're excited that with Windows Server 2008 offered on GoGrid, customers will be able to run our most powerful enterprise server software in the Cloud and take advantage of the increased security, reliability and ease of management that Windows Server 2008 can bring."