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Luna Node: KVM Cloud with Snapshots, Load Balancers, Private Networks, Volumes, an API, and more!
Luna Node is a simple, reliable, and feature-packed cloud virtualization platform. We're based in Canada, and have locations in Toronto, Montreal, and northern France. With a powerful array of cloud features, from snapshots to tenant networks, our platform allows you to manage your servers with minimal effort. Sign up now!
Snapshots
With just a couple of clicks, you can snapshot your virtual machine. A snapshot is an image containing a consistent state of your VM's disk. Our snapshot is built on qemu and libvirt live snapshotting technology, so no downtime is required to take a snapshot. Snapshots have two primary purposes:
- Backup: in case something goes wrong (like a botched upgrade), you can restore an earlier version of your VM.
- Cloning and Templates: you can create additional VMs that have the same software and perform the same function as an existing VM. We use cloud-init to perform any system reconfiguration when deploying from a snapshot, such as setting the hostname and resizing partitions.
Custom Images
Right from our control panel, you can upload your own ISO images and qcow2 templates, and immediately begin provisioning VM instances from them. Use the browser-based noVNC client or your own desktop VNC client to complete installation from ISOs.
Tenant Networks and Load Balancers
Tenant networks are isolated virtual networks. Virtual machines provisioned on tenant networks can acquire any IP address in the assigned private subnet, enabling more complex network architectures.
Scalable load balancers can be created in tenant networks to balance TCP connections or HTTP requests between several VMs. You can define health monitors to periodically check on your VMs so that VMs are automatically disabled on the load balancers if a VM goes offline.
Volumes
Volumes are detachable block storage devices that are stored on our high availability Ceph RBD cluster. Volumes can be attached to and detached from virtual machines on demand; this means that, if you store application data on a volume, you can test a new version of the application on a new virtual machine, and commit the upgrade simply by detaching the volume from the old VM and attaching it to the new VM.
The root partition can also be stored on a volume so that your instance does not depend on local storage; this way, if a host node fails, your VM will be quickly rebooted on another host node via an automatic evacuation process, avoiding downtime for hardware replacement.
Security Groups
Security groups allow you to define ingress and egress traffic restrictions on groups of virtual machines. Unlike iptables and similar firewalls that run inside your VM, security groups are enforced at the infrastructure level and can be applied to multiple VMs; this removes the possibility of accidental firewall deactivation and simplifies firewall management.
Other Features
We offer several more useful features:
- Uptime Monitoring: we developed an open-source, fault-tolerant uptime monitoring application and provide it as a free service (excluding SMS and phone call notifications) that is configurable directly from our panel. Add HTTP, TCP, ICMP, and SSL certificate expiration checks so that you know when your application is down.
- API: our powerful API allows you to write software to automate VM management.
- Bandwidth: although VM plans come with a fixed bandwidth allocation, we have a pay-as-you-go system for additional bandwidth, where additional traffic is $0.003/GB ($3/TB). You don't need to reserve bandwidth in advance, so you end up only paying for what you use. Additionally, the bandwidth allocation is accounted on a per-region basis, so extra bandwidth from some of your VMs can be used on other VMs.
- Startup Scripts: create shell or cloud-init scripts that are executed when newly provisioned VMs boot for the first time. When creating a new VM, you can select any number of startup scripts that you have defined on your account. Use startup scripts to automatically configure VMs for your application.
- Advanced DNS Hosting: our DNS service, which is free for up to one million queries per month, includes advanced monitoring and geo-targeting functionality. Couple records with our uptime monitoring system to failover from a failed server to a backup server, or to disable specific records in a round-robin group when a subset of servers go down.
VM Pricing
All VMs come with 1gbps external network connectivity with unmetered traffic on our internal network, and are billed hourly. We accept payments via credit card, Paypal, Bitcoin, or Interac e-Transfer. SSD plans are only available in Toronto.
- SSD 512 - 512 MB RAM, 1 vCPU, 15 GB SSD RAID10 storage, 1000 GB bandwidth, $0.0063 hourly ($4.5 monthly)
- SSD 1024 - 1024 MB RAM, 2 vCPU, 20 GB SSD RAID10 storage, 2000 GB bandwidth, $0.0097 hourly ($7 monthly)
- SSD LL1024 - 1024 MB RAM, 1 vCPU, 15 GB SSD RAID10 storage, 1000 GB bandwidth, $0.0069 hourly ($5 monthly)
- SSD LL2048 - 2048 MB RAM, 1 vCPU, 20 GB SSD RAID10 storage, 1500 GB bandwidth, $0.0097 hourly ($7 monthly)
- 512 MB - 512 MB RAM, 1 vCPU, 15 GB SSD-cached storage, 1000 GB bandwidth, $0.005 hourly ($3.6 monthly)
- 1024 MB - 1024 MB RAM, 2 vCPU, 20 GB SSD-cached storage, 1500 GB bandwidth, $0.0072 hourly ($5.18 monthly)
- Special 2048 - 2048 MB RAM, 2 vCPU, 20 GB SSD-cached storage, 2000 GB bandwidth, $0.0097 hourly ($7.00 monthly)
Flexible Plans
Flexible plans come with fixed memory and storage resources, but CPU and bandwidth are billed based on usage to give more flexibility. CPU is priced at $16 per full CPU core per month (billed proportionally to usage); for example, if you use 20% of each of four cores over one week, then the charge is $3.20. Bandwidth is billed at 0.003/GB.
Flexible plans are perfect for RAM/bandwidth-intensive applications that need minimal CPU resources, or for applications that need to intensively use CPU in bursts.
Locations
- Toronto (245 Consumers Rd 300 Toronto; Cogent DC): 38.110.117.201 / http://toronto-test.lunanode.com/100MB.test
- Montreal (OVH BHS): 167.114.196.211 / http://montreal-test.lunanode.com/100MB.test
- Roubaix, France (OVH RBX): 51.254.227.19 / http://rbx-test.lunanode.com/100MB.test
About
Based in British Columbia, Canada, LunaNode Hosting Inc. first launched in August 2013, focusing on low-cost, reliable KVM virtual private server hosting. We use OpenStack for our back-end and an in-house billing / VM management panel called lndynamic on the front-end. We are committed to security and privacy and believe in the necessity of free software (see our GitHub profile). Our staff consists of experienced developers, system administrators, and network engineers; we are constantly monitoring and improving our infrastructure to ensure maximal uptime, and developing new tools to help you better manage your virtual machines.
Upload your PGP key to https://lunanode.com/gpgmw to receive encrypted email from our mail server.
Links
Comments
Damn, that's cool.
I'm a relatively new customer, but so far I'm extremely impressed with their service and support. Definitely recommend giving them a try.
Do you give access to the Openstack API in case I wanted to use Terraform?
They don't, everything is done through their own API. I'm not familiar with Terraform, but should be able to get it to work w/ the custom API.
Also, our API specification is available at https://wiki.lunanode.com/index.php/API
We provide OpenStack project with access via OpenStack API / Horizon panel for large businesses, but this is far from the low-end range.
Thanks for clarifying! I use Terraform at work on AWS, and would love to use it on my personal projects as well (without spending too much, of course), but looks like I'll have to keep looking.
Have you looked at iwStack? They use CloudStack (and you have access to API) with locations in Milano, Dallas, and I think Amsterdam.
Edit: also, if you are looking for Toronto location, then it looks like Terraform has a provider for Digital Ocean (and DO has Toronto region).
One downside I find is the forced non-root user config on all new instances created. I fully understand respective security implications, but given that this is an unmanaged service, the default (i.e. root user) config should be the norm, or at the very least, an option. The example cloud-init start-up script you had provided, allowing starting new instances with root user doesn't seem to work (can't log in as root).
Hm, you tried the shell startup script at https://wiki.lunanode.com/index.php/Startup_scripts ? Which template did it fail on?
Note that "default config" is actually certainly NOT to allow direct login as root user. We are using industry-standard cloud image templates for all our operating system images. For example, our Ubuntu template is pulled directly from https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/ and our CentOS template from http://cloud.centos.org/.
I didn't like that either, I ended up uploading a default debian 8.2 net iso and installing from that ( I keep a root user with "without-password" for key based login and disable passwords while only allowing connections from my IP)...then you can make a snapshot/image of the finished install and provision it on a new virtual machine and you can do live snapshots.
Thanks for the feedback.
If it's only for one VM, you can also just set a root password on that VM. The SSH config won't be overwritten when you reboot, since cloud-init will see that the instance ID hasn't changed.
Also, live snapshots are finally working for instances provisioned from ISO!
Be that as it may, yours is the only CP that forces a non-root user. All other providers' templates I have used - and I have used 20+ different providers at one time or another - start up as root. Without exception. Offering unmanaged service, they leave proper security protocols to the client. This is what I meant by yours not being a "default config".
Nope, I tried the cloud-config startup script you provided in reply to my ticket. Having tried the referenced bash script just now, I'm happy to report it works like a dream. Nice one. Problem solved, thanks
Question: making a snapshot is one thing, but have you actually tested snapshot recovery/installation of a new instance from this? If memory serves, there's something in LunaNode's knowledge base about the need for additional configuration via start-up script if reinstalling from a snapshot set up with a password-protected login...?
This aside, some apps (Aegir for one) will not work when reinstalled from a template. Hence, I'm taking a different route playing around with Ansible. And I love it! What control freak wouldn't?
)
It used to be that, if you provisioned from a snapshot that had cloud-init installed, then cloud-init would reset the configuration on the new VM so that only login over SSH key is permitted. But there is now a checkbox that you can select when provisioning from custom image to enable password SSH login.
If cloud-init is not installed, configuration won't be changed. This could still cause problems. For example, network won't work if network configuration has hardcoded MAC address (I think the default CentOS/Fedora install does this) or isn't set up to acquire IP over DHCP. Also, SSH host keys won't be regenerated.
Thanks for the update. Good one. I plan to do a test run soon...
Assuming the snapshot is generated from a running instance made from one of your templates (as opposed to ISO's), then cloud-init is still installed and will configure the new instance accordingly - correct?
Yep.
I want to buy a SSD 4096(high memory) with 2vcpu! It`s pure ssd raid10 or ssd-cache? Can you put a DD test ?
The drives are very fast, this is on my production server at Lunanode ($7/month 1cpu/2gb ram plan with SSD Toronto)
It is RAID10 array with pure SSD.
Hi, a create an account, put 27 U$ with paypal, create VMs for test and my account has been blocked! Whats happened? [email protected]
@renesamaral your payment was refunded and account closed. See Ticket #2747 for details.
Hi! Why? I received and paypal email with refund of 2 transcations, 12 and 15 U$! I tried to use my other account renesamaral, paid with my paypal 12U$ and have been block too! What do i need to not be blocked?
See Ticket #2747. E-mail [email protected] if you did not receive this ticket.
Since Jarland say's luna node is great, and many community members also says the same, I believe it too.
But I have a clarification. Not long ago, OVH based service is frowned upon. Did the condition changed a lot in the present that there should be not much concern for OVH? I also now see many providers use it and has not heard much complaints.