While the needs of any data center will vary, and the software applications will be equally varied, there are core applications types found across the vast majority of cloud providers that tend to be extremely RAM intensive.
Google has taken a large step through the introduction of the Chromebook, a laptop seeking to integrate the many features of Google's extensive array of products into a single device. While at first glance it may appear to be just another product in an overly saturated market, the Chromebook offers several features that many users may find useful.
Having crossed the US $1 billion threshold in its 2012 financial year, a first among its open source company peers, Red Hat has set its sights on the $3 billion revenue mark by 2017.
In order to achieve this ambitious target, the company is betting big on China's cloud market growth. As pointed out by the Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst, China offers the greatest market potential when compared to other developed countries like the US. This is because it doesn't shoulder the burden of having legacy systems. It is from this point of view that the company views China as its next growth frontier.
The recent surge in use of open source software, like Linux, by government organizations and businesses is a clear indication that public perceptions are changing in regards to the notion that open source software only offer benefits in terms of cost. As of late, free and open source software have been found to contain numerous benefits and advantages to those offered by other closed source or proprietary software. A case in point is ClearOS, formerly referred to as ClarkConnect, which is a Linux distribution software designed specifically for use by SMEs as a network server and network gateway that utilizes a web based administration interface.
According to ClearFoundation, the company responsible for developing the software, ClearOS is essentially an enterprise Linux distribution for both desktop and server environments. It further states that the software's goal is to offer near binary functionality and equivalency that is typically required in upstream distribution.
The software, available “on-demand” via VPS.NET cloud servers, also offers numerous other benefits including:
It's no secret that keeping your operating system up to date is a key step in avoiding software failures, security issues, and hardware malfunctions. Many people have experienced the frustration of having to reboot a system each time an update is downloaded and installed. This process sometimes happens automatically, causing system reboots at inopportune times. Enter Ksplice, which eliminates these problems by removing the need to reboot; and, the license is free inside your VPS.NET control panel.
Over the last several years, interest in cloud hosting, particularly Virtual Private Servers (VPS), has shot upwards —reflecting a keen understanding that a VPS offers considerable advantages over both shared hosting while limiting the complexity that’s present on a dedicated server.
The guys over at Nerdgraph posted a pretty neat new infographic the other day on why more and more businesses are moving to the cloud. The infographic really highlights a lot of the benefits the cloud has to offer, and why any business that is looking to improve its IT infrastructure needs to consider the cloud.
Find more amazing infographics on NerdGraph Infographics
I've been building websites since 1997 -- I was 12 years old at the time. Most of my friends were amazed; "Doesn't it cost a ton of money to do that?"
Of course not. I was using various free web hosting providers - Spree, Tripod, Angelfire, Dencity... etc. You name a free web hosting provider, and I probably used them. Occasionally I did well, and made a site that was worth something, and was able to sell it to someone else for a few days worth of lunch money. Sometimes I turned around and bought a new site that interested me. Regardless, one of the first things I learned was that your hosting provider may be the very single most important part of your website (besides the topic of course). Features, flexibility, and reliability are all three that were important to me back then, and are still the most commonly asked questions we get in the pre-sales queue at VPS.NET.
A Cloud VPS from VPS.NET is able to accomplish all these, while also having several other value addons, like the scalable technology, which when combined with the high availability aspect of the cloud, is something every site could certainly benefit from.
Features
The ease of performing certain tasks ranks high for a lot of users. Having to deal with a hassle is never fun; we've attempt to bring in a number of outside features that'll add a tremendous amount of value for our clients. We offer free billing programs in Blesta and HostBill, free CodeBase accounts and free SSL certificates. Along with that, you can purchase Server Density licenses, a number of control panel licenses (cPanel, DirectAdmin, Plesk), along with cool tools like CloudLinux and KSplice.
Flexibility
With any VPS, you have the flexibility of a dedicated server, being able to install any services or features that you need. You're able to run your Cloud VPS as necessary for your site. Not only can you install the necessary services, but unlike a dedicated server, you have the flexibility to pay for only the resources you need. With the ability to scale your resources up and down on demand, you can give your site as many resources as it needs at the time. This will not only save you money, but also, if your site ends up receiving a significant amount of traffic, avoid a lot of downtime.
Reliability
Our Cloud VPS product is built from the ground up for reliability. The way we're able to offer this is through the auto-healing aspect the cloud is able to offer. If at any time the server hosting your VPS experiences a problem, it is migrated over to a new server. This benefits you in comparison to a dedicated server, as you would wait for the server to at least be rebooted, if you're lucky don't have to wait for a hardware replacement . We also utilize redundant SANs (storage area network), which means your data is stored across multiple storage arrays. If one of the SANs experiences a problem, the other SAN will take over the work, and your website will carry on with no problem.
Adding to our global footprint, VPS.NET has launched our first Amsterdam cloud. Our Amsterdam cloud gives you extremely loading times to users located throughout the Netherlands and makes for a great alternative to our London based clouds for European clients.
This cloud is based on the same technology as our London H & I cloud, which features the OnApp software on the back end, which is what powers and manages our self-healing cloud infrastructure. The cloud also features the same 48 drive redundant SAN setup; this setup is one of VPS.NET's advantages over competing cloud hosting companies. The way the system works is there are two 48 drive SANs, each in a RAID 10 array with multipath I/O. What this means is data is constantly going in and out of both SAN units as they're both in an active/active state, so essentially at all times there are 96 active hard drives at your disposal.
Our Amsterdam location is located in the EvoSwitch datacenter, which is in Haarlem, Netherlands, which is just west of Amsterdam. The datacenter features 431,000 square feet of datacenter space, of which VPS.NET has a cage. The datacenter has all the necessities you'd expect, like a A+B power grids, and VESDA fire protection. The datacenter is also completely carbon neutral, and has signed on as part of the MJA, which aims to cut power consumption by 30% over 15 years.
While the work week technically never ends here at VPS.NET, today seems like a good day to post a quick round up of everything we've accomplished this week!
Our new Chicago Cloud Server location is online. It's located at the stunning Dupont Fabros Technology data center. This brings our total number of Chicago clouds to 3. In addition to the new Chicago cloud, our new London cloud went live yesterday, bringing the total there to 3 as well. The London cloud is located in the UK2Group datacenter, which is the same location as the prior 2. For those curious, besides the Chicago and London locations, we also have 2 located in Atlanta, Georgia, and 1 in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The new license manager module is now available in the VPS.NET control panel. You can find it under the "Edit this VPS" option. The license manager allows you to manage each of your software licenses purchased through VPS.NET, which includes cPanel, ISPManager, ServerDensity, RVSkin, Softaculous, LiteSpeed, and soon KSplice and DirectAdmin.
We've also released a few more banner advertisements and buttons for your websites. We now have both US & UK banners and buttons available. These are great for those who participate in our affiliate program. If you're not already an affiliate, check out my post from earlier this week on why you should be and how to implement it on your site. As someone who's been building websites since the '90s, I can honestly say I really haven't ever seen an affiliate program that pays out as well as the one we have going on here.
In addition to our announcements, the activity on the VPS.NET forums is really starting to pick up. Some hot posts this week are:
VPS.NET Module for HostBill [Official Release]
How to get Akamai on Demand Streaming to work
A friend sent me a link to a Gizmodo article titled, "Google's insane number of servers visualized." They created an image to show how many servers Google has in comparison to other companies, and it's truly impressive. It, unfortunately, doesn't take into account the processing power of each of those servers, but it's still fascinating to see.
That's all for me this week. Hope you all enjoy the weekend - it's looking like it's going to be a gloomy one here in Cleveland, so I guess it'll be what I call a "Netflix weekend" for me!
