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[Market Research] Budget "Cloud" OpenVZ
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[Market Research] Budget "Cloud" OpenVZ

serverianserverian Member
edited November 2013 in General

We are thinking about launching a new set of service and would love to hear what you have to say.

Proposed Features:

Technical Details:

  • RAID10 SSD Cached Storage on the hardware nodes
  • Backup storage on the SAN
  • In-house secure control panel with almost everything you need in one place
  • East Coast, Central, West Coast, USA locations

Hourly Billing:

  • Add credit before creating the container
  • Billing by assigned vCPU, Memory, vSwap, Disk Space, Traffic, Backup/Template Space
  • No billing for vCPU, Memory, vSwap on powered off container
  • Ability to purchase dedicated MHz (or CPU Priority)
  • Ability to purchase IO Priority

Virtual Datacenter:

  • Create/destroy containers anytime
  • Enter any values for resources such as vCPU, RAM, Storage, Traffic, IPs, etc.
  • Upgrade any resources on the fly, without reboot
  • Set auto scale when needed (Add vCPU, Memory on the fly, when needed)
  • Ability to create internal network across containers in the same location

Backups/Templates:

  • Ability to create backups on demand or set automated backups (Every x hour, keep x amount of backups)
  • One click restores
  • Ability to create new container from backup (template)
  • Ability to download/upload backups

Failover IPs across nodes/locations:

  • Ability to use the same IP in multiple locations (For DIY failover across locations)
  • Ability to use the same IP in multiple nodes in same location (For DIY failover across nodes)

Firewall:

  • Ability to configure basic rules, such as allow from IP, disable all UDP per container

Licenses:

  • Purchase software licenses such as cPanel, Plesk and assign them to a container

Example Pricing:

2 vCPU
1GB Memory
20GB Storage
500GB Traffic
1Gbps port
1 IPv4
$0.01/hour

«1

Comments

  • I was thinking about this too and think that would work out great.

    I'll speak to you on Skype regarding some small tweaks

  • Definitely would buy, I'm in need of something like this where I can have stuff running, but not pay when turned off. DO doesn't tickle my fancy.

  • If you can make this KVM I'm buying today.

    Thanked by 1dnwk
  • @kontam said:
    If you can make this KVM I'm buying today.

    This won't work with KVM since it's not possible to scale it without rebooting.

  • This is very interesting. What are the chances of other locations, outside of the US?

  • This would be amazing. Always been wondering about the possibility of having an OpenVZ cloud.

  • It's the same way like iwstack, but with no ipv6 :)

    Thanked by 2rm_ jimpop
  • rm_rm_ IPv6 Advocate, Veteran
    edited November 2013

    ErawanArifNugroho said: It's the same way like iwstack, but with no ipv6 :)

    Made my day! And also iwStack is at least KVM.

    Personally I am seeing a few black flags here in today's privacy-conscious world, one being OpenVZ with no isolation from the host (or from whoever hacks the host) whatsoever, and the second one being US-only locations (say hi to NSA).

    And to be entirely honest OpenVZ seems so outdated, are they even thinking about 3.x kernel? Or 2.6.32 still not even fully stable? It amazes me people are still planning new OpenVZ-based projects in 2013.

  • @serverian said:
    $0.01/hour

    For a 30-day month that works out to $7.20. So you'd only be able to advertise it here in February...? :o)

    Thanked by 1c0y
  • @ErawanArifNugroho said:
    It's the same way like iwstack, but with no ipv6 :)

    I'm not really sure what virtualization does iwstack use. But it's not possible to have on-the-fly scaling with KVM. That's the only reason I'd like to use OpenVZ.

    Also please read all of the features. I don't think iwstack has multiple locations and ability to use same ips.

    And, even if it's exactly same thing with iwstack. Is there anything wrong with it?

    Also, how do you know this won't have IPv6?

    Thanked by 1ErawanArifNugroho
  • If you can offer both ovz and kvm, then that"d be even better for pricing flexibility. KVM doesn't need to scale on the fly as I'd use it mostly for db clusters and heavier stuff. Traffic pooling would also be a godsend since most cluster VMs will be internal chatter anyways.

  • @rm_ said:

    I don't like to use OVZ myself, either. However, I don't think there is any other way to provide all the listed features with KVM.

  • @tchen said:
    If you can offer both ovz and kvm, then that"d be even better for pricing flexibility. KVM doesn't need to scale on the fly as I'd use it mostly for db clusters and heavier stuff. Traffic pooling would also be a godsend since most cluster VMs will be internal chatter anyways.

    I like the way you think. Yeah, offering both OVZ with extreme flexibility and KVM for heavy duty geeky stuff on the same "cloud" would be perfect.

  • rm_rm_ IPv6 Advocate, Veteran
    edited November 2013

    serverian said: Also, how do you know this won't have IPv6?

    Because at the end (Example pricing) you said 1 IPv4 and nothing about IPv6.

    serverian said: However, I don't think there is any other way to provide all the listed features with KVM.

    Are you sure you aren't over-estimating the importance of those features? On the fly scaling? What's the use case for that really? "Look we are better than DO, when you upgrade your $5/mo VPS to $10/mo VPS you don't have to reboot"? And in any even remotely serious high-load scenarios, projects tend to use multiple instances and scale by adding/removing instances, not by trying to scale a single one.

  • @sleddog said:

    Why February?

  • rds100rds100 Member
    edited November 2013

    serverian said: Why February?

    28 * 24 * 0.01 < $7 / month :)

    Thanked by 1rm_
  • serverianserverian Member
    edited November 2013

    @rm_ said:
    Are you sure you aren't over-estimating the importance of those features? On the fly scaling? What's the use case for that really? "Look we are better than DO, when you upgrade your $5/mo VPS to $10/mo VPS you don't have to reboot"? And in any even remotely serious high-load scenarios, projects tend to use multiple instances and scale by adding/removing instances, not by trying to scale a single one.

    Well, it's not just that. If I want to offer KVM, I'd rather not to cripple it like DO. I'd want to allow manual ISO installations. That makes it too damn hard to scale HDD even with rebooting.

    Another reason of OVZ is ability to stop abuse much easier.

  • @rds100 said:

    Ah lol. Well, that was an example config, with lower memory and disk space you'd get cheaper monthly cost of course.

    Thanked by 1rds100
  • @Ivan said:
    This is very interesting. What are the chances of other locations, outside of the US?

    In the future, sure. But not in the first phase.

  • @serverian said:
    Another reason of OVZ is ability to stop abuse much easier.

    Lolwot? This most be a joke, it's way easier to handle abuse with KVM, granted you know what you're doing

    vzctl enter'ing into people's containers to make sure they aren't torrenting etc is kinda.. kiddie host style

    Thanked by 1rm_
  • sleddog said: For a 30-day month that works out to $7.20. So you'd only be able to advertise it here in February...? :o)

    Also you sir, are genius

  • aglodekaglodek Member
    edited November 2013

    @serverian said:
    Example Pricing: 2 vCPU 1GB Memory 20GB Storage 500GB Traffic 1Gbps port 1 IPv4 $0.01/hour

    Nice. But I think you need to rethink the 500GB traffic per hour at $0.01 ;)

    Either traffic should be: (a) separate and billed based on use and not time or (b) expressed in bandwidth, e.g. 100mbps.

    This little bit aside, I also vote for OpenVZ and KVM. Rebooting shouldn't be an issue. All you need is a warning in the panel that the KVM will be rebooted after clicking on the button resizing/scaling it.

  • Windows on a KVM cloud would be pretty nice

  • @Frost said:
    vzctl enter'ing into people's containers to make sure they aren't torrenting etc is kinda.. kiddie host style

    Not vzctl enter'ing of course, even only the ability to blacklist processes would prevent too much abuse easily. Just preventing spam alone would need deep package inspection with KVM. Similarly, TOR.

  • @andrzej said:
    This little bit aside, I also vote for OpenVZ and KVM. Rebooting shouldn't be an issue. All you need is a warning in the panel that the KVM will be rebooted after clicking on the button resizing/scaling it.

    Yeah, that's a calculation mistake on my side. Traffic should be billed per GB usage.

    This little bit aside, I also vote for OpenVZ and KVM. Rebooting shouldn't be an issue. All you need is a warning in the panel that the KVM will be rebooted after clicking on the button resizing/scaling it.

    Well, the thing is this will still need to disallow manual ISO installation. I really don't like using templates for KVM.

    Also, please note that the keyword here is budget "cloud". This involves ability to develop the backend easily. If KVM gets involved, it'd triple the development time. Therefore, the original "budget" idea would interfere with it.

    So, we really need a balance here. This won't have features like out of the box HA, external SAN for storage etc. The idea here is offering much more flexibility than a regular openvz VPS plan and give people ability to do their own failover. You cannot do everything on a one system. You need to compromise on one thing eventually.

  • @dhamaniasad said:
    This would be amazing. Always been wondering about the possibility of having an OpenVZ cloud.

    There was the openvz Incero Vapor Cloud which never made it out of beta...

    Thanked by 2Sentinel Maounique
  • serverian said: Well, the thing is this will still need to disallow manual ISO installation. I really don't like using templates for KVM.

    KVM templates are fine. They're par for the course. Eventually, you could do something like AWS AMIs' but for a first-pass at 'budget' cloud hosting, I'd be more than fine having a set of standard minimal templates.

    For your target audience of people who'd be able to build their own failover, they're likely already going to be using Chef, Puppet or any slew of other provisioning tools.

  • I prefer KVM for my own sites. For customer reselling, I don't mind OpenVZ. But I only buy them from vendors I trust. If you offer this, I have the following suggestions:

    1. Focus your marketing that you offer secured services. (We hire trusted employees and do background checks, SSAE-16 Compliant data center, HIPAA Compliant, etc.,)
    2. Offer a feature to add "Block Storage", sort of like Amazon EBS volume. Customers would have the ability to mount it on internal or external servers.
    3. Private LAN.
    4. DDoS Attack Protection
    5. Load Balancer
    6. CDN
    7. Why RAID10 SSD Cached Storage? SSD only option?
    8. Plan

    2 vCPU

    1GB Memory

    30GB Storage

    500GB Traffic

    1Gbps port

    1 IPv4

    $0.01/hour

    That's all. :)

    Cheers

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