Re: Reliable Cloud host ?

[Alex Brooks <askoorb+nanog () gmail com>]

Hello,

On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 10:56 PM, Randy Carpenter <rcarpen () network1 net> wrote:
> Does anyone have any recommendation for a reliable cloud host?
>
> We require 1 or 2 very small virtual hosts to host some remote services to serve as backup to our main datacenter. 
> One of these services is a DNS server, so it is important that it is up all the time.
>
> We have been using Rackspace Cloud Servers. We just realized that they have absolutely no redundancy or failover 
> after experiencing a outage that lasted more than 6 hours yesterday. I am appalled that they would offer something 
> called "cloud" without having any failover at all.
>
> Basic requirements:
>
> 1. Full redundancy with instant failover to other hypervisor hosts upon hardware failure (I thought this was a given!)
> 2. Actual support (with a phone number I can call)
> 3. reasonable pricing (No, $800/month is not reasonable when I need a tiny 256MB RAM Server with <1GB/mo of data 
> transfers)

Well, as everyone has been saying, unfortunately with "infrastructure"
clouds, you have to engineer your set up to their standards to have
failover.

For example, Amazon (as mentioned in the thread) give a 99.95% uptime
SLA *if* you set up failover yourself accros more than one
"Avaliability Zone" within a region.  Details are at
http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-regions-availability-zones.html
and http://blog.rightscale.com/2008/03/26/setting-up-a-fault-tolerant-site-using-amazons-availability-zones/
(though clearer, this one is a bit of an advert).  As mentioned, with
Amazon, you can use support if you pay for it, it's not included as
standard.

If you fancy some help though, people like RightScale sounds like
exactly what you are after to make management much simpler for you
http://www.rightscale.com/products/why-rightscale.php, but pricing for
services like that can be a little high for small setups, though they
do have a free edition that may be suitable.

You can get the same kind of 99.95% SLA from other providers if you
follow their deployment guidelines regarding their type of "zones".
Microsoft will do it for not too much
)http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/sla/) include online and
telephone support in the price and are in the process of making Red
Hat Linux available.

But let's not forget simply buying the software as a service is also
an option, where fail-over becomes Someone Else's Problem.  For DNS,
EasyDNS (https://web.easydns.com/DNS_hosting.php) are rather good and
not too expensive, and you can get a 100% up-time guarantee if you
want.  A review of them regarding availability is at
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/31/why_i_use_easydns/

Do let us know who you end up picking and how it goes.

Alex