Hello,
We have a large client with many dedicated servers who does VPS hosting (actually a pretty popular provider here). They are looking to get into Cloud Hosting for their clients and came to us for help. I am wondering if there is a defacto howto somewhere or a good resource to start them off with? Something that would take them through a typical hardware and software setup - a howto. Any ideas?

your best bet would be to go with a turnkey platform - there are a few of them out there already that work with commodity hardware and deals with everything from deployment, HA, usermanagement and even billing.

:)
D

Start here if you want commercial with client interfaces:
http://onapp.com/ (OnApp utilizes your existing server infrastructure with Xen Hypervisor technology to provide a powerfully flexible and secure virtual architecture, enabling custom virtual machines and applications to be set up and hosted over secure cloud servers, both public and private.)

http://cloud.com/main/ (Cloud.com CloudStack software is designed to work with open source Xen and KVM hypervisors as well as enterprise-grade hypervisors such as VMware vSphere or Citrix XenServer.)

OnApp has their pricing listed, Cloud.com does not have it listed as far as I can tell. These are just two of the bigger options.

OpenStack
www.openstack.org (http://www.openstack.org)

Start here if you want commercial with client interfaces:
onapp.com (OnApp utilizes your existing server infrastructure with Xen Hypervisor technology to provide a powerfully flexible and secure virtual architecture, enabling custom virtual machines and applications to be set up and hosted over secure cloud servers, both public and private.)



2nd'ed, OnApp does all you are looking for.

http://onapp.com/ (OnApp utilizes your existing server infrastructure with Xen Hypervisor technology to provide a powerfully flexible and secure virtual architecture, enabling custom virtual machines and applications to be set up and hosted over secure cloud servers, both public and private.)
Used by VPS.net
+1 for them
If you have enough money to spend, I would recommend you VMware

Used by VPS.net
+1 for them
If you have enough money to spend, I would recommend you VMware

You can't really compare OnApp to VMware and be comparing apples with apples.

OnApp is specifically designed for Hosting companies so many of the functions are better for hosters.

You can't really compare OnApp to VMware and be comparing apples with apples.

OnApp is specifically designed for Hosting companies so many of the functions are better for hosters.

That and he's probably going to need so shell out a bunch of cash to code a client interface for VMware. :(

OnAPP uses Xen or KVM
VMware have their own technology

OnAPP uses Xen or KVM
VMware have their own technology

We are finalising VMware integration :)

OpenStack
www.openstack.org (http://www.openstack.org)
The thing with OpenStack is it will require a very significant investment to get it to work with your system. OpenStack is great, but it's not meant for hosting -- it's meant for enterprise clients, like Progressive Insurance, who can devote an entire team to the implementation.