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vRocket.io - Need Advice from Community
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vRocket.io - Need Advice from Community

Hello everyone.

Petar from vRocket here. Hope you're all having a great day.

We've been in hosting business since 2004, however, last week we launched something new - a SmartOS hosting platform for developers.

We always loved the good-ole SliceHost (RIP), and of course DigitalOcean, but were enamored with what Joyent has been doing with SmartOS. We, as I keep on saying, are a tight-knit group of engineers (cloud, systems, network) who like to do cool new things on the side. vRocket is the outcome of this and a platform we use ourselves, which we now bring 100% to the public.

I do not want to go and make this into an ad. It is really not my intention. There are thousands of web hosts out there, from cPanel, to Linux VPS (XEN, KVM, OpenVZ, you name it). A lot of them are more affordable, faster, or whatever. We are not trying to do the same thing - rather do it better in some way where it counts.

We know we won't grow to DigitalOcean scale, and are genuinely interested in actually offering developers (our target market) what they need, versus just trying to make money. We're quite OK with being small, local (Columbus, OH), but doing things right.

What I would really like to get from you guys (if I may) is some constructive suggestions on what we could do to improve the offer? Lower prices? Increase cores? Add new features? You name it - and we'll consider it.

Please do keep in mind - we wish to cater to developers. While a good number of our customers hosts production workloads already with us, and we welcome it, we want an affordable, feature-full platform for developers. We are also SmartOS based, so while we offer Linux Branded Zones (where ubuntu, centos or debian can run within a zone), we're more unix-ish.

Our entry level plan is simple:

  • 1vCore, 512MB RAM, 30GB SSD fronted ZFS storage, Gigabit Uplink, 2TB bandwidth = $4/mo

In general each next plan adds 1/2GB RAM more, 10GB storage, 1TB bandwidth for another $4/mo.

Our main differentiators are:

  • SmartOS (OS based virtualization) - more unix-like than linux like
  • ZFS file system (devs and DB's can benefit from LZ4 compression and SSDs)
  • Solaris Zones (better security, even once we introduce KVM workloads within zones)
  • A lot of templates to bootstrap devs and shorten deploy times (apache, nginx, couchdb, cassandra, etc.)

What can we do to differentiate and offer better service or features than other guys out there, or, i.e. what should we be providing that would make you choose vRocket rather than say DO or someone else.

Thanks in advance! I really appreciate your insight.

Petar

«13

Comments

  • HBAndreiHBAndrei Member, Top Host, Host Rep

    vRocket_io said: A lot of them are more affordable, faster, or whatever. We are not trying to do the same thing - rather do it better in some way where it counts.

    Those are some ways where it counts... price and performance are like the top two things people look for when buying these services.

    If you're coming out with a product that other known and trusted providers already offer, you've got to give clients a very strong motive to buy from you as opposed to buying from the known/trusted providers.

    Your prices are a tiny bit smaller than DO and the same as Vultr, but you don't offer RAID10 pure SSD, you're also basically directing your clients to DO website on your DIY support page.

    I mean in no way to sound bashing or mean... just some feedback.

    Thanked by 1vRocket_io
  • vRocket_io said: that would make you choose vRocket rather than say DO

    $50 free account credit and double referral bonuses.

    .....and 100 MB/s++ DD results or I'll send you a ticket.

  • In the near future we do wish to offer 100% ZFS SSD (SmartOS is really not built to be used with traditional RAID), but at the start ZFS fronted w/ SSD's (considering we have enough SSD cache to fit all customer data into it) we chose to do this as v1.0. But I see your point, I guess we're in the time/place where pure SSD is all people want, and justifiably so. They sure are cheap enough nowadays. I will make sure we move to that for all new clusters.

    As for $50 free acct credit - we're just a bit too small at this point to be able to afford it, honestly. Or, in other words - I'm just too afraid that a ton of people would jump and overrun us :)

    Our first cluster is spun up and has about 500GB of RAM capacity. Our second cluster is being built right now (2TB RAM capacity, 192 cores), so once we deploy it I will be in a position to offer something like this. Guess nothing advertises better than FREE I suppose :)

    Thanks for the feedback @HBAndrei and @Coffee. I appreciate it and it does make sense. It's exactly what I was looking for!

  • My previous post wasn't that serious :-/

    Good luck to you anyway!

    Thanked by 1vRocket_io
  • The 1GB RAM plan costs double but you only get 33% more HDD and 50% more b/w :/ If you could double the HDD and bandwidth along with the memory and make the price a bit less than double.. I think that would make customers feel more like they are getting a better deal when buying larger plans.

    "VPS servers" -> cut the "servers"

  • @4n0nx said:
    The 1GB RAM plan costs double but you only get 33% more HDD and 50% more b/w :/ If you could double the HDD and bandwidth along with the memory and make the price a bit less than double.. I think that would make customers feel more like they are getting a better deal when buying larger plans.

    Actually a very good point. I shall re-evaluate the pricing model and see if it makes sense to offer it like so. Thanks!

  • "I don't want to turn this into an ad but.."

    So..... It's an ad.

    Thanked by 3ratherbak3d ucxo Rapta
  • MicrolinuxMicrolinux Member
    edited September 2015

    Avoid the race to the bottom, otherwise you'll be out of business very quickly. This is not the crowd to cater to if you want to make enough money to stay in business.

    I'm not sure I see anything tangibly new or innovative here, I see more of the same with a different color paint. Am I missing something?

    Things that are technologically cool and new to you and I mean nothing to the vast majority of people purchasing virtual servers. They just want something reliable.

  • This is the wrong place to ask about prices

  • Buffalo location!

    Thanked by 1raindog308
  • vRocket_iovRocket_io Member
    edited September 2015

    @Jonchun said:
    "I don't want to turn this into an ad but.."

    Incorrect quote, I never said "but" :)

    @Microlinux said:
    Avoid the race to the bottom, otherwise you'll be out of business very quickly.

    and

    @jh said:
    This is the wrong place to ask about prices

    I see your point :)

    @Microlinux said:
    I'm not sure I see anything tangibly new or innovative here, I see more of the same with a different color paint. Am I missing something?

    [...] They just want something reliable.

    Fundamentally it's Virtualization (VM's Virtual Private Servers, whatever) - but performance and reliability wise, at leas IMHO, SmartOS and the whole platform is a lot more reliable than the rest I played with. I'm a certified VMware architect, and have deployed very large IaaS clouds for larger ISP's in US, as well as large hosting environments based on Xen, and KVM. SmartOS on the other hand is proving to be the most reliable and simple implementation of all and I've seen a lot (since VMware 2.0) :-)

    Thanks for the comments. I appreciate it. It is providing a perspective I did need to see.

  • @vRocket_io said:
    Fundamentally it's Virtualization (VM's Virtual Private Servers, whatever) - but performance and reliability wise, at leas IMHO, SmartOS and the whole platform is a lot more reliable than the rest I played with.

    If you can show corroborated hard data definitively proving that, you have a premium product on your hands. Reliability is the big thing. Performance not so much, nobody cares how efficient your platform is - any provider will be able to meet and beat software efficiency with more hardware and lighter loading schemes. As you scale, efficiency becomes more beneficial to your bottom line - but again, that's not a selling point for a customer.

    I would run as fast as possible from this market and jump into the far more lucrative market of people who see value in reliability . . . and are willing to open their wallets for it.

    Thanked by 1vimalware
  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited September 2015

    It's cool to see someone offering something different! Maybe you can help me understand the reason though. I'm sure there's more to it than I realize, but basically to me when I see SmartOS I think KVM running on a fork of OpenSolaris. What benefit to the end user does this have over KVM on Linux?

    Thanked by 1bersy
  • MikePTMikePT Moderator, Patron Provider, Veteran

    Launched an instance @ vRocket, network performance:

    Download speed from CacheFly: 34.5MB/s
    Download speed from Coloat, Atlanta GA: 27.4MB/s
    Download speed from Softlayer, Dallas, TX: 8.99MB/s
    Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, JP: 5.37MB/s
    Download speed from i3d.net, Rotterdam, NL: 8.81MB/s
    Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, NL: 24.2MB/s
    Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 3.87MB/s
    Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 12.8MB/s
    Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 12.3MB/s
    Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 38.2MB/s
    I/O speed :  1.3 GB/s
    

    So far so good!

  • @Microlinux said:
    I would run as fast as possible from this market and jump into the far more lucrative market of people who see value in reliability . . . and are willing to open their wallets for it.

    We've done this for awhile on a per-customer basis, and most of our larger customers with dedicated clusters do pay a good buck for it, but have decided to also offer a quick - click a button, get a decent VPS at a low cost solution where, while we strive for 100% uptime, we ideally target developers who use the platform to do their work, and then maybe even host customers.

    @Jar said:
    It's cool to see someone offering something different! Maybe you can help me understand the reason though. I'm sure there's more to it than I realize, but basically to me when I see SmartOS I think KVM running on a fork of OpenSolaris. What benefit to the end user does this have over KVM on Linux?

    A decent explanation can be found in first couple of paragraphs here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating-system-level_virtualization

    If you read first 3 paragraphs it'll explain benefits of OS-based virtualization. That's what SmartOS utilizes. In short - better performance (no hardware emulation), SmartOS surpassed the limits where OS had to be the same so with LX branded zones one can run CentOS, Debian or even Ubuntu Linux natively within a zone (not necessarily KVM emulated), and Solaris zones are arguably the best security in segmenting virtual machines from any other platform out there (Xen, KVM, OpenVZ, and even VMware).

    Also, Joyent devs creating SmartOS are same people who also wrote the ZFS file system at Sun Microsystems before Oracle acquired them. They still write it and improve it, and since SmartOS is dedicated to be a Cloud Hypervisor, cool features are now in it which provide phenomenal performance disk-wise for all VPSs, but also protect from Noisy Neighbor issues other hypervisors cannot usually combat.

    So - overall - it is old Sun Solaris technology, brought to the 21st century by Joyent, and Open Sourced 100% last year. Twitter ran on this platform for awhile, and a lot of other large top 100 websites as well (and still do).

    What vRocket is trying to do is to bring it to the "little guy" where instead of paying $20/month for a bit less resources than at Joyent, they can pay $4/mo for more at vRocket.

    Once system outgrows us, or is ready for large scale production - one's welcome to go to Joyent, they sure do it at a 1000 X larger scale than we can :)

    Hope that explains it a bit.

  • @MrGeneral said:
    Launched an instance @ vRocket, network performance:

    > Download speed from CacheFly: 34.5MB/s
    > Download speed from Coloat, Atlanta GA: 27.4MB/s
    > Download speed from Softlayer, Dallas, TX: 8.99MB/s
    > Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, JP: 5.37MB/s
    > Download speed from i3d.net, Rotterdam, NL: 8.81MB/s
    > Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, NL: 24.2MB/s
    > Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 3.87MB/s
    > Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 12.8MB/s
    > Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 12.3MB/s
    > Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 38.2MB/s
    > I/O speed :  1.3 GB/s
    > 

    So far so good!

    Network-wise we should do quite well @MrGeneral, as we BGP peer with 32 service providers out there. The datacanter we colo in is very well connected and within first mile (or honestly, within the same building) as most major carriers in Columbus, OH.

    Thanked by 2MikePT bersy
  • @vRocket_io said: We've done this for awhile on a per-customer basis [...] but have decided to also offer a quick - click a button, get a decent VPS at a low cost solution where

    At least you have an already established base of profitable services. The "low-end" crowd just tends to be so damned fickle with commodity offerings.

    Good luck, it does sound like an interesting product from a technological standpoint.

    Thanked by 2MikePT bersy
  • The site template you're using, I've seen that many times already. And no lower ram for cheaper price?

  • @Microlinux said:
    Good luck, it does sound like an interesting product from a technological standpoint.

    Thanks :)

    @asgarth said:
    The site template you're using, I've seen that many times already. And no lower ram for cheaper price?

    It's a ThemeForest template. I liked it so much I decided to use it, but nowhere else will you see it more tightly integrated. It's not just the site, but order/billing system, VPS management via Project Fifo, etc. :)

    As for lower ram for less cost - we are working on this, but it'll come in a form of Docker plans, not VPSs. At the current price, going lower in cost is almost impossible due to pure cost of IPv4 addresses, which are as high as $3/mo.

    Once we introduce IPv6 - then yes :)

  • Just my opinion but I would remove the reference to Digital Ocean on your homepage and there's also a mistake with the following: "it'll most likely be out up to you to take care of" under your GET FAMILIAR WITH OUR SUPPORT MODEL part.

    Looks like a pretty neat service :)

    Thanked by 1vRocket_io
  • @sin said:
    Just my opinion but I would remove the reference to Digital Ocean on your homepage and there's also a mistake with the following: "it'll most likely be out up to you to take care of" under your GET FAMILIAR WITH OUR SUPPORT MODEL part.

    Looks like a pretty neat service :)

    Typo fixed and advice taken care of as well :)

    Thank you!

  • In my opinion, the Solaris appeals the customer by zfs, zones, dtrace. Most of the command lines in Solaris sucks, and the package management is a nightmare.

    I can see the value of ZFS though:

    • instant snapshot, thanks to COW
    • high performance
    • dedup, which is effective for digital assets.
    Thanked by 1vimalware
  • @bookstack said:
    In my opinion, the Solaris appeals the customer by zfs, zones, dtrace. Most of the command lines in Solaris sucks, and the package management is a nightmare.

    I can see the value of ZFS though:

    • instant snapshot, thanks to COW
    • high performance
    • dedup, which is effective for digital assets.

    Tnx!

    We do have instant snapshots right now, and within a month I will re-enable the Project-Fifo feature which lets you backup VPSs live (both full and incremental backups).

    Cool thing about this backup is that you can also, in case of a host dying for any reason, re-hydrate it onto a new host, or utilize it to build your own images/datasets for deployment.

    Any thought about running LX branded Zones with a Linux flavor? I kind-of prefer these as that way you get best of both worlds in a way.

    Thanked by 1vimalware
  • MikePTMikePT Moderator, Patron Provider, Veteran

    Until now, things seem fine :-)

  • @MrGeneral said:
    Until now, things seem fine :-)

    As in, something happened just now, or - for now - all seems to be working fine? :)

  • MikePTMikePT Moderator, Patron Provider, Veteran

    @vRocket_io said:
    As in, something happened just now, or - for now - all seems to be working fine? :)

    Hehe, no. The server has been running great. Did notice a few issues, which I'll talk about next sunday.

  • Ye, like lx branded Debian zone not showing root drive utilization with df -h? :)

  • MikePTMikePT Moderator, Patron Provider, Veteran

    @vRocket_io said:
    Ye, like lx branded Debian zone not showing root drive utilization with df -h? :)

    Yes, not only that. Run bench.sh script in centos :p, you'll notice what's missing. The uptime command doesn't work as well.

  • @MrGeneral said:
    Yes, not only that. Run bench.sh script in centos :p, you'll notice what's missing. The uptime command doesn't work as well.

    The LX branded zones are still in Beta by Joyent... Within a week we'll have full KVM support as well, in which case you can really run Full Linux as expected.

    I suppose I have to make it a point to better describe that these are "beta" images :-)

    Our bread and butter really is SmartOS, i.e. unix/solaris rather than Linux.

    Thanked by 1MikePT
  • MikePTMikePT Moderator, Patron Provider, Veteran

    @vRocket_io said:
    Our bread and butter really is SmartOS, i.e. unix/solaris rather than Linux.

    Sure thing, completely understood. I am looking forward to test the KVM support! :-)

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