Launch of VMware Cloud VPS Hosting

**James** · #1 (**permalink**) 21-01-10, 02:27 PM

After weeks of planning and successful testing, we at Webhosting.uk.com are ready to launch Cloud VPS Hosting powered by VMware technology on 26th Jan 2010. We are always looking for ways to offer innovative tools and technologies to our customers and this is yet another step in that direction. This VMware based cloud solution guarantees 100% uptime in a virtual environment. We have opted for Vmware technology because it supports some vital features which other Virtualization softwares do not support. We have invested huge amount in the setup of this cloud vps solution and all this has been done just to guarantee 100% uptime to our customers and thereby ensure complete peace of mind.

Some of the key features of VMware are:

VMware® Fault Tolerance :
• Provides zero-downtime and zero-data-loss continuous availability in the case of hardware failures
• Eliminates even the smallest of disruptions in the event of hardware failures

VMware® High Availability (HA) :
• Continuous monitoring of servers in a pool and automated restart of virtual machines on alternate servers in the event of hardware failures
• Automated restart of virtual machines in the event of OS failures

VMware® Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)/VMware® Distributed Power Management (DPM) :
• DRS continuously monitors virtual machines and physical servers to optimally align compute capacity to application requirements based on business priorities
• DPM optimizes DRS clusters for the lowest possible power consumption

VMware® VMotion :
• Live migration of virtual machines from one server to another without disruption to users

We will not be disclosing the prices as of now, the complete details of the plans and prices would be made available on the launch date itself.

**Sanersone** · #2 (**permalink**) 21-01-10, 11:21 PM

Hey James, glad to know that!!!

Thank you for updating about the same. I think this would be a great move from the ordinary VPS hosting plans to Cloud Computing. This would ensure no downtime for all our customers that would result as a long term relationship

I hope that Cloud Hosting could be the future of hosting industry. What do you say?

Solipse · #3 (**permalink**) 22-01-10, 10:51 AM

Hi James,

I was just about to buy a Linux VPS with you. Should I wait for this new VMWare Cloud product or go ahead with the purchase of an Ubuntu VPS?

Peter

IanSmithISA · #4 (**permalink**) 24-01-10, 09:09 AM

Good morning,

Firstly best wishes on the new service.

As a customer I am already slightly confused by the difference between the Hyper V VPS (which I am on) and the Semi Dedicated server options, adding in a cloud option will only confuse me further.

Is the plan to phase out advertising the current two options once you have confidence with the cloud?

Looking at offerings from other cloud providers, simply because I was bored, showed no price advantage to those of us with a static demand for resources. What these sites did do is to confuse me on processing power, some try and hide it, some talk about equivalence to say a 0.4GHz processor and each new node adds an extra 0.4GHz and some have a completely incomprehensible Instruction Cycles metric with charges for exceeding it.

I do appreciate that on the current options we don't really know what sort of processing power we have either.

I do wonder if the type of people who are explicitly looking for a cloud solution would be put off by the amount of domestic/value hosting offers on this site and if a completely separate site would be a good idea. Of course you can link to that site from this one.

Whilst I can see the attraction of clouds, dedicated server(s) would be my preferred expansion route, there is a lot to be said for "These are my servers, running my app". I would be sad if you were to drop the dedicated webhosting server options in the future.

I started programming just as punched cards were being phased out . So I have seen the movement away from a centralised mainframe running apps decided upon by the IT department to the PC where resource intensive apps like the spreadsheet (they were resource intensive back then) could be run.

If we are not careful we could move back into the old model where certain apps can't be run because the cloud either has insufficient resource or the resource is too expensive. If this sounds silly think about Google's attempts to get us using a browser based spreadsheet where the computing power was on the server not the pc running the browser.

Bye

Ian

**James** · #5 (**permalink**) 25-01-10, 05:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Solipse

Hi James,

I was just about to buy a Linux VPS with you. Should I wait for this new VMWare Cloud product or go ahead with the purchase of an Ubuntu VPS?

Peter

Hi Peter,

If you are not in hurry then go for the VMware Cloud Servers you can order it tomorrow from our website.

**James** · #6 (**permalink**) 25-01-10, 06:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by IanSmithISA

Good morning,

Firstly best wishes on the new service.

Thank you for your good wishes.

Quote:

As a customer I am already slightly confused by the difference between the Hyper V VPS(which I am on) and the Semi Dedicated server options, adding in a cloud option will only confuse me further.

We use Hyper-V based hardware virtualization platform for Windows Hyper-V VPS and Virtuozzo based software virtualization platform for Semi-Dedicated Servers. VMware is also a hardware based Virtualization platform which we are using for the Cloud server setup because the VMware based cloud solution guarantees 100% uptime in a virtual environment.

Quote:

Is the plan to phase out advertising the current two options once you have confidence with the cloud?

Yes, we might discontinue Virtuozzo based VPS in future.

Quote:

Looking at offerings from other cloud providers, simply because I was bored, showed no price advantage to those of us with a static demand for resources. What these sites did do is to confuse me on processing power, some try and hide it, some talk about equivalence to say a 0.4GHz processor and each new node adds an extra 0.4GHz and some have a completely incomprehensible Instruction Cycles metric with charges for exceeding it.

We will allocate guaranteed amount of processing power to each Virtual machines on the VMware cloud server nodes. You will be able to view the allocated number of cores.

Quote:

I do wonder if the type of people who are explicitly looking for a cloud solution would be put off by the amount of domestic/value hosting offers on this site and if a completely separate site would be a good idea. Of course you can link to that site from this one.

Thanks for the suggestion but we do not wish to change our brand name.

Quote:

Whilst I can see the attraction of clouds, dedicated server(s) would be my preferred expansion route, there is a lot to be said for "These are my servers, running my app". I would be sad if you were to drop the dedicated server options in the future.

Not at all, we will not be dumping the dedicated servers. The amount of resources which you will get with the dedicated servers can not be compared with the VPS. We do provide 100% Power and Network uptime Guarantee on dedicated servers as well.

**James** · #7 (**permalink**) 26-01-10, 06:34 PM

The VMware Cloud Server hosting plans are live on our website. You can check the plans and pricing details at http://www.webhosting.uk.com/cloud-servers.php

IanSmithISA · #8 (**permalink**) 28-01-10, 03:31 PM

Good afternoon

I have had a look at your new cloud page and I find myself a little confused.

You have a 100% uptime guarantee both in the features for each plan and in the details at the top of the page.

I have an SQL Server database behind my site, obviously this has to live on a hard disc somewhere. Equally obviously that hard disc may fail, recently someone posted here that their site was down for a while as the RAID controller failed.

In the event that hard disc that stores my database becomes unavailable how does the 100% up time work? I understand how "The Cloud" can mirror the discs on each server to other servers and this would be fine for the static part of the web site which can be a few seconds out of date but how would this apply to the database?

Surely you would need to guarantee that the data is shipped from the server in the order that it is applied on that server and then applied on the copy in the same order. If it is done in any other order then the transaction log will be out of sequence with the tables.

Whilst you can accept a lost transaction (in the database sense) during this switch over to a replacement drive, you can not accept a corrupt database.

Having looked at the Hyper V and Cloud prices, there is not much difference, on the Windows packages there is the extra cost of Win 2008 but you do get more disc space.

That seems like a lot of benefit for very little money, so I guess that I am missing something!

Bye

Ian Smith

**Sebastian** · #9 (**permalink**) 29-01-10, 05:56 PM

Hello,

I have answered your questions as follows:

Most important thing is that we are using Redundant Shared storage with RAID 10 on our servers and our VMware setup, so you don't have to worry about disk failure and any hard drive related issues at all .

Additionally, we provide 100% uptime for the VM not for internal VM services. For example, if named service is down in your VM and because of which your websites are not working this won't be included in 100% uptime guarantee. Any internal VM issues are not considered towards the Uptime Guarantee. For this you will have to contact our System Admins for further troubleshooting. We have also enabled Fault tolerance feature for every VM. It ensures zero-downtime and zero-data-loss and continuous availability in the case of hardware failures. This eliminates even the smallest of disruptions in the event of hardware failures. I do agree that the new package that we have launched come with advance features and all the customers can take advantage of those plans.

Still if you have any doubts or questions, please feel free to post it here for further assistance.

[b]--
--------------------
Regards,
Seb

Webhosting.uk.com

kontra · #10 (**permalink**) 30-01-10, 04:58 PM

thanks bro

GamblingIn.co.uk · #11 (**permalink**) 04-03-10, 10:06 AM

Great news! When the migration will be done?

thanks.

steveb · #12 (**permalink**) 14-03-10, 07:24 PM

Is it possible to have flvtool ffmpeg mencoder as part of the package on a cloud server.

Thanks.

steveb · #13 (**permalink**) 14-03-10, 09:13 PM

Ok, i have submitted a ticket and had the pleasant news. You can run a video website cloud hosting.

This video website will be hosted on cloud hosting Great news.

**James** · #14 (**permalink**) 15-03-10, 10:49 AM

Hi Steveb,

FFmpeg, flv2tool and Mencoder can be easily installed on the Cloud server to run a video website. recession.tv is hosted on one of our dedicated sever, why do you wish to downgrade to the cloud server ?

steveb · #15 (**permalink**) 15-03-10, 11:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by James

Hi Steveb,

FFmpeg, flv2tool and Mencoder can be easily installed on the Cloud server to run a video website. recession.tv is hosted on one of our dedicated sever, why do you wish to downgrade to the cloud server ?

The server i currently have is a bit of an overkill for my needs. I am purley on a money saving exercise.