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  1. #1
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    How can digitalocean.com be Cloud, if they use KVM on Single Servers?

    Hi all,

    This all cloud definition and standards is really confusing me. The most recent thing thas has come up that take my attantion was digitalocean.com ssd cloud servers services.

    They call it "Cloud SSS Servers" but how can it be a cloud if they are based on KVM and hosted in single dedicated servers with storage runing RAID inside the server?

    Can anyone explain this to me? Are they really a cloud provider or this can be consider has false advertising from their end?

    Thanks

  2. #2
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    Their definition of cloud is:

    https://www.digitalocean.com/what-is-cloud-hosting

    It has nothing to do with redundancy, fault tolerance, high availability etc... in other words, it's just another VPS provider..

  3. #3
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    Its a cloud as it's easy to provision with hourly billing and you can spin up / destroy servers as you require.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by dediserve View Post
    Its a cloud as it's easy to provision with hourly billing and you can spin up / destroy servers as you require.
    Ok, so if i understand correclty is a cloud because of its provisioning and billing flexibility / model.

    Regarding other features commonly seen on a cloud like redundancy, shared sans, etc.. does not exist.

    In a simple way, digitalocean.com, just seels standard vps servers with a very flexible provisioning and billing, is this correct?

    Thanks

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kingfish85 View Post
    Their definition of cloud is:

    https://www.digitalocean.com/what-is-cloud-hosting

    It has nothing to do with redundancy, fault tolerance, high availability etc... in other words, it's just another VPS provider..
    Hi Kingfish85,

    On the link you provided where digitalocean.com describes its own definition of a cloud service it says under the Secure feature the following and i quote:

    "By distributing server data across redundant servers, information hosted in the cloud is protected against hardware failure."

    How is this possible if their vps servers are using just local raid storage?

    Thanks

  6. #6
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    That correct. To tell the trust about 90% of "cloud" provider use same technology. So if you want real cloud you need try to find real cloud provider. Please also note that real cloud will cost you more than above "cloud" due to more expensive h/w and s/w. Also sometimes you will need modify your web application to comply cloud terms.
    TK Rustelekom LLC Dedicated server since 2002, RIPE NCC member, LIR

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by pedrojose View Post
    Hi Kingfish85,
    "By distributing server data across redundant servers, information hosted in the cloud is protected against hardware failure."

    How is this possible if their vps servers are using just local raid storage?

    Thanks
    Maybe they simply make copies of the data to active backup servers? I've used them once and they were very reliable, but I can agree with it not being true "cloud", however all servers are on a single physical server, whether it be cloud, vps, etc.

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by pedrojose View Post
    Ok, so if i understand correclty is a cloud because of its provisioning and billing flexibility / model.

    Regarding other features commonly seen on a cloud like redundancy, shared sans, etc.. does not exist.

    In a simple way, digitalocean.com, just seels standard vps servers with a very flexible provisioning and billing, is this correct?

    Thanks
    Pedrojose, keep in mind WHT (with the exception of some posters above) is a bit skewed in its definition of cloud as its very small-scale and SANs centric. If you visit sites dedicated to high scalability or even the IEEE cloud conferences, Digital Ocean and others like it that concentrate on provisioning and the capacity planning behind it are closer to the cloud definitions there.

    Yes, it is basically a VPS with flexible provisioning. Is it false advertising? No. Their definition just aligns better with their target demographic.

    As for the "By distributing server data across redundant servers" bit, I think they really ought to rewrite that. They might have been referring to the ability to transfer volume image snapshots across regions, but that's so poorly worded it gives everyone the wrong impression.
    Last edited by tchen; 11-26-2013 at 03:26 PM.

  9. #9
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    Cloud is just a marketing term. As most people are only looking for cheapest price, not quality or redundancy, Digital Ocean does what the market asks for.
    It is really hard to stand out as a High-Availability provider because most customers prefer cheap price and the opportunity to complain about bad service later.

  10. #10
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    Cloud has become a "buzzword" and it lost it's meaning if you ask me

  11. #11
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    Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet
    so technically you get a reseller account and call it a cloud it fits the general definition.

    A cloud service has three distinct characteristics that differentiate it from traditional hosting. It is sold on demand, typically by the minute or the hour; it is elastic -- a user can have as much or as little of a service as they want at any given time
    No mention of redundancy or fall-over. Its just a Buzzword

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by HostingBig View Post
    so technically you get a reseller account and call it a cloud it fits the general definition.

    No mention of redundancy or fall-over. Its just a Buzzword
    Right. You can go through the shared hosting/reseller hosting and see how many providers claim to be cloud but they just use 'cloudlinux' and claim that's cloud.

    A few claim to use onapp to 'cloudify' themselves but who knows if that's true.

    Francisco

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by DeltaAnime View Post
    A few claim to use onapp to 'cloudify' themselves but who knows if that's true.

    Francisco
    That is far more provable as generally you will find onapp branding around the panel....
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  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by respite View Post
    That is far more provable as generally you will find onapp branding around the panel....
    Nah nah.

    There is a few that sell cpanel that's run on a XEN that's part of an onapp deployment

    Francisco

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by DeltaAnime View Post
    Nah nah.

    There is a few that sell cpanel that's run on a XEN that's part of an onapp deployment

    Francisco
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  16. #16
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    There is a few that sell cpanel that's run on a XEN that's part of an onapp deployment
    if they are runing cloud Linux that would make them a double cloud WOW "sarcasm"

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by DeltaAnime View Post
    Right. You can go through the shared hosting/reseller hosting and see how many providers claim to be cloud but they just use 'cloudlinux' and claim that's cloud.
    If you use the same classification as DO does then yes you could call it "cloud" at least from a isolation point of view anyway. There's so many providers speaking cloud this cloud that half of them don't have any type of real cloud setup anyway as you already know.
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  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by OvcaX View Post
    Cloud has become a "buzzword" and it lost it's meaning if you ask me
    this is partly true - and its a fair comment as once marketing got ahold of the term, it can and is regularly abused.

    having said this, what cloud computing actually and fundamentally represents, is the transformation of IT into a utility.

    Quote Originally Posted by pedrojose View Post

    Regarding other features commonly seen on a cloud like redundancy, shared sans, etc.. does not exist.
    well, redundancy is not mutually exclusive with having a SAN backend. A SAN backend may or may not be redundant itself, so, simply having a SAN and having hypervisor failover isnt enough for high availability. There is also enough data out there where a redundant local storage RAID array has been shown to be more reliable and demonstrate better performance then SAN based storage - it strictly depends on how each environment is setup. If these nodes are built properly, disk, network, etc are all redundant. Are there single points of failure in such setups? of course there are, but, there is a strong argument to be made that many local storage environments are more reliable and demonstrate better performance then many/most SAN based environments.

    Also, the concept of utilizing infrastructure to achieve high availability is a bit archaic - or, at the very least - represents a transition period. why accept the native performance loss of moving storage to the network (vs the server backplane) when applications are being built to accommodate HA and do not want or need the infrastructure to try and compensate for poorly written applications. This becomes even more important when one realizes that the primary failure point is not hardware, but, rather services running on the virtual machines (ie IIS, Apache, MySQL, etc). Building high availability applications is the ultimate end game for cloud computing, and turning infrastructure into simple commodities. utilizing fail over at hypervisor layers is nice and has many valid use cases - but, it is not really a determining factor on cloud vs not cloud

    In a simple way, digitalocean.com, just seels standard vps servers with a very flexible provisioning and billing, is this correct?
    well, this is pretty much what cloud computing is. there is also different types of VPS solutions. for example, an openvz type of VPS differs from a hypervisor type of VPS. so, part of the confusion out there is VPS companies differentiating themselves - ie the difference between openvz/virtuozzo VPS with shared OS kernels and xen/kvm/vmware type of VPS with independent OS installs across commodity infrastructure. this 2nd type of VPS, when combined with utility delivery, billing, automation, etc are pretty accurately (although confusing at times) are correctly marketed as cloud.

    how cloud is delivered can and widely vary and I can tell you, there are distinct advantages and disadvantages to every method available of delivering cloud computing
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  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by cartika-andrew View Post
    how cloud is delivered can and widely vary and I can tell you, there are distinct advantages and disadvantages to every method available of delivering cloud computing
    That's very well put.

  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by cartika-andrew View Post
    this is partly true - and its a fair comment as once marketing got ahold of the term, it can and is regularly abused.

    having said this, what cloud computing actually and fundamentally represents, is the transformation of IT into a utility.



    well, redundancy is not mutually exclusive with having a SAN backend. A SAN backend may or may not be redundant itself, so, simply having a SAN and having hypervisor failover isnt enough for high availability. There is also enough data out there where a redundant local storage RAID array has been shown to be more reliable and demonstrate better performance then SAN based storage - it strictly depends on how each environment is setup. If these nodes are built properly, disk, network, etc are all redundant. Are there single points of failure in such setups? of course there are, but, there is a strong argument to be made that many local storage environments are more reliable and demonstrate better performance then many/most SAN based environments.

    Also, the concept of utilizing infrastructure to achieve high availability is a bit archaic - or, at the very least - represents a transition period. why accept the native performance loss of moving storage to the network (vs the server backplane) when applications are being built to accommodate HA and do not want or need the infrastructure to try and compensate for poorly written applications. This becomes even more important when one realizes that the primary failure point is not hardware, but, rather services running on the virtual machines (ie IIS, Apache, MySQL, etc). Building high availability applications is the ultimate end game for cloud computing, and turning infrastructure into simple commodities. utilizing fail over at hypervisor layers is nice and has many valid use cases - but, it is not really a determining factor on cloud vs not cloud



    well, this is pretty much what cloud computing is. there is also different types of VPS solutions. for example, an openvz type of VPS differs from a hypervisor type of VPS. so, part of the confusion out there is VPS companies differentiating themselves - ie the difference between openvz/virtuozzo VPS with shared OS kernels and xen/kvm/vmware type of VPS with independent OS installs across commodity infrastructure. this 2nd type of VPS, when combined with utility delivery, billing, automation, etc are pretty accurately (although confusing at times) are correctly marketed as cloud.

    how cloud is delivered can and widely vary and I can tell you, there are distinct advantages and disadvantages to every method available of delivering cloud computing
    Yus remember that Softlayer.com is completely cloud all there Dedicated Servers
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  21. #21
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    I do not agree with DigitalOcean's definition of cloud. It seems like they're just offering virtual private servers just like most providers do. They're definitely really affordable though, I can give them that. But I would not go with them if you're looking for the same redundancy and failover that a proper cloud set up can offer.

  22. #22
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    Cloud is simply a marketing term. You will always want to inquire about their infrastructure if it is not clearly outlined when purchasing said products.
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  23. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by dediserve View Post
    Its a cloud as it's easy to provision with hourly billing and you can spin up / destroy servers as you require.
    I can't tell if you are joking. Are you joking?

    Just hourly billing that's your definition of cloud?
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  24. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by Coolraul View Post
    I can't tell if you are joking. Are you joking?

    Just hourly billing that's your definition of cloud?
    Well, Linode is pretty much that and claims cloud. They're also the ~gold standard.

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  25. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by Coolraul View Post
    I can't tell if you are joking. Are you joking?

    Just hourly billing that's your definition of cloud?
    He probably didn't mean that.

    If yes, then my daughter can beat him since she knows what a cloud computing is.

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