Cloud Hosting Series, Part 5: Do You Sell Cloud?

As a hosting company we hear this question all the time, but it usually misses the mark of what hosting consumers are actually asking for. And a misunderstanding about what hosted Cloud services are and do can lead to solutions that might not fit the problems customers are trying to solve. So what do consumers actually mean when they ask, “Do you sell Cloud?”

Due to the server-centric types of products that hosting companies have typically offered, when traditional hosting consumers ask if a hosting provider “sells Cloud,” they are likely asking if that provider offers a Cloud IaaS solution when, in fact, their needs might be better served with a PaaS or even SaaS solution. Confused yet? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Let’s take a minute to look at these terms to try to understand a little better just what Cloud has to offer the hosting consumer.

IaaS
IaaS—or Infrastructure as a Service—refers to the now ubiquitous “server in the Cloud” concept. With an IaaS solution, you receive a virtualized server OS and a generalized application stack on top of it (such as a LAMP). This basic unit of hosted Cloud IaaS is known as an instance, and it can be delivered on top of virtualization technologies such as Xen, KVM, or even Virtuozzo Containers. With IaaS, everything beneath the OS installation and the virtual networking provided with it (i.e. the virtualization software, the hardware, and the physical network build-out) is a “black box” to the end user, which is fine because few users have a real need to interact directly with the server hardware.

PaaS
Platform as a Service is a conceptually higher layer than IaaS. In PaaS the operating system joins the hardware and virtualization as part of the black box that users cannot see into. The end user simply interfaces with a programming language such as php, Java or Ruby. PaaS offers this programming environment—the platform—to the user.

Anyone familiar with these terms knows that this is something of a simplification of the IaaS/PaaS relationship. After all, the definitions of these terms are somewhat of a moving target in the industry right now. For an interesting article that illustrates some of the nuance of why simple definitions do not always suffice, click here.

SaaS
There’s another higher-order layer that is important to mention and will come up again later in our discussion: Software as a Service. In SaaS, a single application such as WordPress is exposed to the end user. The functioning application itself is the service while everything beneath it that makes it run is hidden from the end user. WordPress is a great example of SaaS when hosted on wordpress.com.

So, if you’re wondering if you can buy a highly scalable virtualized Cloud instance to move your server into, the question is not Do you sell Cloud? but Do you offer a hosted Cloud IaaS solution? But is asking whether you can move a server into the Cloud, really the right question?

To be clear, one -aaS is not better than another, each just targets different levels in the technology chain to solve problems. In fact, SaaS and PaaS solutions are most likely delivered on top of IaaS—and SaaS may be delivered on top of PaaS. The key is to know what you’re looking for and shop accordingly. Do you need a turn-key solution for a single application that stresses ease-of-use and low maintenance? Look at SaaS for that particular application. Or do you need a highly-customizable environment from which you can build one-off applications? Look to PaaS for a single programming environment. Or look to IaaS for the ultimate in flexibility to design your solution.

Some of you may remember in Part 2 of our Cloud Series I discussed some of the truly awesome new possibilities with Cloud hosting technology, and the associated learning curve: the ability to divorce the application from the OS and the hardware and have many instances working in tandem to accomplish a greater goal, each instantaneously scalable and clonable to meet traffic demands on the fly. This is where Cloud IaaS shines.

To be sure, individual applications can be custom built on top of IaaS server instances and tap into the incredible scaling some Cloud solutions offer, but being able to leverage a PaaS or SaaS solution allows you to skip some of the complexity of having to build a one-off solution in an IaaS environment. As the future of Cloud unfolds PaaS solutions that are specifically tailored to languages like Java, Ruby and PHP as well as SaaS solutions that offer turn-key application environments like WordPress, phpBB, and Magento will become the norm.

So, back to the original question, “Do you sell Cloud?” The answer you receive to that question may not provide you with the information that you really need when choosing a provider. However, you will quickly be able to home in on the right answer and provider if you know what you’re looking for, or if you find a provider who is willing to work with you to help you determine the optimal solution for your requirement.

Photo by Liber

Hurricane Irene and Disaster Preparedness at ServInt

With Hurricane Irene projected to make landfall on the east coast of the United States in just a few days, many customers have been asking about what ServInt is doing to prepare for this potentially severe storm.

During any extraordinary event, ServInt operates under a set of Major Event procedures that have been crafted and refined over the last 16 years. These procedures include augmenting facility staff through overtime and multiple levels of on-call, assignment of task forces to deal with any contingencies that arise, and opening and maintaining lines of communication with our customers and vendors to ensure smooth operation throughout the event.

These procedures are important for making sure we’re always ready to provide our normal level of customer care in abnormal situations.  But the bulk of our preparation for any given event takes place months to years earlier as we design and build our datacenters, choose our network providers and make our staffing decisions.

By choosing data center facilities that are expected to withstand any rationally conceivable event; by designing our network to quickly recover from the loss of any provider; and by making sure the staff we hire are reliable and steady in the face of the unexpected, we are able to work through most natural disasters without missing a beat.

In its 16 years, ServInt has weathered hurricanes, blizzards, tornadoes and—yes—even earthquakes. During Hurricane Isabel in 2003, while most businesses in the Washington DC metro area saw major disruptions, ServInt operated without customer interruption through the entire storm.

Frankly, our biggest concern during any natural disaster is making sure our employees can get to and from our facilities for their shifts. During any major event we roll out the cots and sleeping bags and stock the fridges. While we already run a 24/7 ship, we have to be prepared in the event that on-duty staff cannot make it home from a facility. Waiting for streets to be plowed or trees to be cleared is often our biggest concern.

Any web host’s true value is put to the test when extraordinary events occur, be it the explosion of traffic on a customer website, a hack or DDOS attack, or a natural disaster. These events and the host’s response are what customers remember. So as Hurricane Irene bears down on the eastern United States, rest assured that we are watching the weather carefully, unpacking our rain coats and dry-running all our disaster procedures. Our generators are fueled up and capable of powering your servers for a long time.  Our cupboards are filled to bursting with cans of soup and stew.  Our employees are ready.  Your sites are as safe as any hosting company could possibly make them, and we’ll do everything we can to keep them up and running, no matter what mother nature throws at us.

Photo by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

ServInt opens the Doors on its Newest Data Center

It’s been a hectic first quarter here at ServInt. We’re in the middle of a lot of very exciting improvements and new services slated to launch in 2011. And today marks the first. We have just completed build-out and opened the doors of our newest datacenter.

The Northern Virginia facility joins our Downtown DC and McLean data centers as part of the greater ServInt DC infrastructure. Not only does this new facility provide the room to grow that we require as we continue to expand our customer base and product lines, but its location along the area’s primary fiber routes augments our network infrastructure and connectivity at the same time.

If you’re interested in more of the specifics of our newest data center, take minute to check out our press release. And if you’re a current customer and want to know a little bit more about what this new facility means to you visit your customer portal for more details.

Cloud Hosting Series Part 2: VPS to Cloud?

I have to admit, I’m a bit baffled by some of the messages I’ve heard coming from our competitors and from customers recently about what Cloud Hosting means to our industry. I often get questions from customers and read advertising from other hosting companies that equate Cloud Hosting to being the obvious replacement for dedicated server or VPS hosting. We hear things like, “upgrade to our Cloud solution” and “host your website in our Cloud,” as if your website wasn’t working on its current platform, or with the advent of Cloud, your website would stop working all of a sudden.

Don’t get me wrong, Cloud Hosting has its place in the market, and it will become increasingly relevant with time. In fact, as a platform, Cloud will become a necessity over the next few years. But, right now – are you ready for it?

In the SMB realm, our industry continues to sell hosting as it has since pre-Cloud days. It’s all still server, VPS, or instance focused. Everything goes back to a software architecture and design philosophy that places the greatest emphasis on managing your operation on the server level, and automating as much of that operation as possible, hence the the proliferation of control panel software over the past 10 years. Control panels attempt to simplify web hosting management, a task that was previously highly technical and arcane, requiring deep knowledge, typically gained after years of experience.

If, as a customer, you think of Cloud Hosting through this server-centric lens, you won’t reach the promise of Cloud. You can have your server in the Cloud, but it won’t give you and your hosting company anything more than a way to more quickly and flexibly provision and bill for VPSs. If you’re looking at hosting the way most do who have been consuming hosting services in the era of mass-market server virtualization, Cloud Hosting offerings in the market today can seem marvelously underwhelming. It’s virtualization with provisioning automation, or — put another way — it’s hosting where provisioning control has been given to the consumer.

Okay, so then why does anyone care about Cloud? What has truly captured the attention of the industry is not what Cloud Hosting currently is for the SMB community, it is the promise of what it can and will be. Cloud will revolutionize hosting, but not in the way that some seem to assume right now. It is not going to make server management more simple, or optimize the software platforms of today. And it won’t simplify your life. Cloud will, however, make possible a paradigm shift in the way that applications are hosted on the Internet.

What makes Cloud revolutionary is the mental shift that it allows in developing web-based applications. The ability for the hosting consumer and/or software developer to control resource provisioning allows development that goes in a completely new direction. Cloud Hosting creates a world in which server instances are transient and disposable. The instance is no longer important — the communication and cooperation between instances is. The developer writes provisioning logic into his application because, by breaking the functional requirements out into logically separable parts, he can build a system that can auto-scale to meet individual application requirements.

The problem is that many seem to assume that they’re going to bring their old applications, control panels, and knowledge to the Cloud, and that it’s all going to work even better. That’s not really the case. You will
be able to bring these things to the Cloud, but they will not take advantage of the true benefits of the Cloud. One solution to this problem is time – time for developers to begin writing applications to Cloud APIs and using technologies that allow for simple inter-server cooperation and synchronized data sharing and manipulation. This will naturally occur over the next few years, and it will come as a result of the creation of new development frameworks that make splitting hosting tasks into logical chunks a simple process.

Ultimately, Cloud Hosting is cool, and it is revolutionary. But right now, if you want to rush to the Cloud, ask yourself what problems you are trying to solve and who are you relying upon to solve them. For your own sake, make sure you know how your Cloud vendor will improve your operation. Otherwise, you might just end up getting sold a good old dedicated server “in the Cloud” — which you might even pay more for.

ServInt triples network capacity!

We’ve had quite a few exciting announcements these past few weeks. From yesterday’s announcement about our sponsoring DesertBus.org, to our recent hiring blitz, it’s been a busy month. Well, today, we have another exciting announcement about our network.

In support of a rapidly growing customer base and what we project to be our most aggressive growth ever, we’ve tripled our overall network capacity. I was asked to write up a very brief blog post today explaining how excited I am about it, and how proud I am of our team for pulling all this off with zero customer downtime. All this is true!

However, we’ve got a lot of major projects and initiatives underway and I’m wrapped up with those at the moment. So I thought I’d keep my words here brief, and instead point you to today’s press release.

Trust me, it’s good.

Sometimes Sometimes Redundancy Redundancy Fails

Stuff happens.

Of course, we all know that. Everyone has bad days where everything seems to go wrong and businesses are no different.

In our case, the hosting industry relies on thousands of pieces of ever-changing, ever-evolving hardware that need to be married with new standards and updated software. Problems do happen, even to those who plan carefully while building their infrastructure, but how a company responds when problems occur is far more important than whether problems happen at all.

At ServInt, we have always prided ourselves on being the kind of company that plans extensively. That being said, we are still faced with a serious, and slightly philosophical question:

Why do problems occur and how do we prevent them?

Our industry has always loved to tout how easy it is to be up all the time, immune to problems, and how technology can solve just about anything. Because the industry has been so successful at selling this message, we frequently hear comments like, “Well, if my server has RAID and you have redundant routers, how can anything go wrong?” Many assume, and justifiably so, that if something fails, the redundant resource should take over automatically.

More after the jump…

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Did you get the memo?