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No Fluff Cloud Hosting Is Here

November 16th, 2011|

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No Fluff Cloud Hosting Is Here

Welcome to the Blacknight Cloud

Over the last few months our technical team have been working on a number of new services.

The first one to “go live” is our new cloud hosting solution – which is aimed at replacing our existing VPS services.

We’ve never been into “buzzwords” and we don’t like “jumping on bandwagons”, so we’ve taken our time with “cloud” as we wanted to see how the technology would mature before “diving in”. (Do you really want to be a “beta tester” when you’re paying for a service that you’re using for your business?)

So what are we offering exactly?

With our cloud based virtual servers you’ll get a lot of power and an impressive array of options to suit even the most demanding needs.

To “get the ball rolling” we’re offering a range of cloud based plans with fixed resources, ranging from 512 MB of RAM up to 12 GB of RAM. Of course RAM is pretty useless without CPU, so we’re offering from 1 vCPU to 8 vCPUs (we’re talking virtualisation here, so they’re virtual processors). And in terms of hard disk space we’re offering from 15 GB to 85 GB and oodles of bandwidth!

The entire system is running on Dell Blade servers hooked up to Compellent SAN storage.

You’ll be able to choose from a wide range of “templates” in both Linux and Windows. On the Linux side we’re offering Centos, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Ubuntu and OpenSuse, while on Windows you can pick Server 2008 R2 (web edition)
We’re also offering a very wide range of JumpBox virtual machines which turn your cloud based virtual machine into an “application appliance”. Jumpbox is a very nice way to get up and running quickly and easily. Choose, for example, a Jumpbox template with WordPress and you get everything you need to run WordPress on its own virtual machine..

We have an easily manageable firewall, we enable it during provisioning,  set some basic ports to be opened to let your manage your VM. You can edit these at any time and add any rules that you may need.

We also offer enhanced support services to those needing help configuring their Virtual Machines. Tasks such as creating apache vhosts, installing or configuring applications can all be handled by our support and engineering teams if you choose to avail of these services.

We’ll be adding more features and options to our cloud hosting in the coming weeks, so keep an eye on our blog, Twitter and Facebook for developments.


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About the Author: Michele Neylon
Known for his outspoken opinions on technology and the Internet, Michele Neylon is the award winning author of several blogs and co-host of the Technology.ie podcast. A thought leader in the Internet community, Neylon is active within ICANN and an expert on policy, security, domains, ICANN, Nominet and Internet Governance. You can stalk him on various social media networks including Twitter and Instagram
15 Comments
  1. Brian O'Neill November 16, 2011 at 22:55

    Is there any control panel with the cloud packages?
    Also is there support or it like the old vps where it is all up to you?
    Thanks

    • Howster December 1, 2011 at 20:12

      You can install kloxo quite easily – its free too. Just trying to get ny head around setting up email and all the mx stuff. kloxo work on centos 5.x x86 i.e not on 64 bit,

      see http://wiki.lxcenter.org/Kloxo+Installation+Guide

      after add centos 5.6 say and installing kloxo you wull have lamp installed and a good wesite hosting interface if thats what your after

  2. Michele Neylon November 17, 2011 at 10:13

    Brian
    There’s a control panel to manage the cloud server itself and we will be offering a number of templates with control panels included such as Plesk and others in the coming weeks.
    We’re also offering a management option which you can get at the time of purchase.
    Michele

  3. Shane November 21, 2011 at 10:42

    Any timeline on if/when the current vps will be moved to this service?

  4. Michele Neylon November 21, 2011 at 10:45

    Shane
    The current VPS are not being moved – they’re two totally different services.
    Regards
    Michele

  5. Macky Anderson November 21, 2011 at 18:20

    I’m ready, but quite wondered about it’s security. Can you tell something about it’s security features?

  6. Michele Neylon November 21, 2011 at 20:03

    Macky
    You can control the firewall for your virtual machine via its control panel.
    Beyond that if you have a specific query please let us know
    Michele

  7. Bernhard Rohrer November 23, 2011 at 00:40

    Hi Michele
    could you please add Zentyal? i know it is theoretically available via Ubuntu Lucid, but a native install is sweeter.
    cheers
    Bernhard

  8. Bernhard Rohrer November 23, 2011 at 01:38

    Hi Michele
    can I encrypt the file system/use encrypted LVM? And what are your backup/restore plan? What do you use for visualization?
    Thanks
    Bernhard

  9. Michele Neylon November 23, 2011 at 09:49

    Bernhard
    I don’t think we’ll be able to easily due to the licensing.
    Michele

  10. Michele Neylon November 23, 2011 at 10:21

    Bernhard
    I’d recommend you contact our support team with your technical queries, as I can’t answer all of them
    Michele

  11. John November 24, 2011 at 20:41

    How exactly does your “cloud” offering differ from your VPS offering? On your cloud site you state:

    “Traditionally a server would be physically placed and require a lot of electrical fail safes to ensure it stayed running. Physical maintenance and servicing added to the running costs of traditional servers.”

    Are you telling me that a cloud server somehow doesn’t physically exist and somehow doesn’t require maintenance and servicing?
    Does this mean that you’re now just reselling shared virtual space in a colo or something?

  12. Michele Neylon November 24, 2011 at 21:36

    John
    Both VPS and the cloud offering use virtualisation technologies, but there’s quite a big difference in how they do things. The VPS uses Parallels Virtuozzo, while our cloud runs on Xen.
    The cloud’s infrastructure uses Dell blades with SAN storage, which is more flexible and scalable than the VPS setup. We’ll be offering custom and scalable options in the coming weeks.
    With respect to your queries.
    When you get a cloud server you’re not getting a single physical machine – you’re harnessing the power of our infrastructure. Obviously the underlying infrastructure would require maintenance, but it’s not a single server so the paradigm is quite different.
    I’m not sure what you mean by your last question.
    Thanks for your comment
    Michele

  13. Niamh November 28, 2011 at 17:39

    Thanks for answering all the guests Michele – should put a lot of people’s minds to rest.
    So how does this compare to what dediserve.com in Ireland offer?
    Why should clients choose you?

    • Michele Neylon November 29, 2011 at 17:50

      Niamh

      Unlike most of the other companies offering cloud based hosting in the Irish market we control our entire network end to end. We also offer a more comprehensive range of hosting and domain services than our Irish based competitors and are members of RIPE, Hotline.ie and other organisations.

      Thanks for your comment

      Michele

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