Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Cloud Hosting : What would you look for in a cloud provider?

[Plutomic-Andrew]

Strait to the point question: What requirements, features, ect would you look to find when shopping for a cloud computing provider?

This could mean geographic load balacning, user interface and self service options. I'm curious what people are looking for since this type of offering is completely different from the average shared and reseller packages.

Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated.

[bhavicp]

I personally would go for a provider whos systems are mostly Automated and would also be cool if they had clouds in different geographic areas and you could move in between them..

Oh, Also the user interface is very important to me. Something which is easy and simple to use yet has the most needed features for basic and advanced management.

Hope that helps!

[raja314]

The Cost, User Interface and The types and levels of Support

[the_wanderer]

How about some level of Security that includes network based intrusion detection, early today one of my servers was being hammered by an ssh brute force attack that was initiated from an instance within the Amazon WS Cloud.

Like any internet server instances within the Cloud should be secured with multiple layers of protection.

Snip:
Jun 17 15:53:47 htarget02 sshd[10047]: pam_unix(sshd:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=ec2-67-202-57-35.compute-1.amazonaws.com user=root
Jun 17 15:53:44 htarget02 sshd[10045]: pam_unix(sshd:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=ec2-67-202-57-35.compute-1.amazonaws.com user=root
Jun 17 15:53:42 htarget02 sshd[10043]: pam_unix(sshd:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=ec2-67-202-57-35.compute-1.amazonaws.com user=root
Jun 17 15:53:39 htarget02 sshd[10041]: pam_unix(sshd:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=ec2-67-202-57-35.compute-1.amazonaws.com user=root

[plumsauce]

How about a *substantial* history of 100 percent uptime?

No point in being on the cloud if it can't beat shared hosting reliability.

[Techiant]

Right now the cost is the major turn-off. If the costs come down considerably where they are even with VPS (time will come in 2-3 years IMO, as market saturates), I may consider it again.

[jstanden]

Scalable storage, shell access w/ Linux; geographical endpoints (USA coasts, Europe, Hong Kong); custom automation; snapshots

[cedricd]

Accept paypal; Doesn't charge when the server is powered off

[West-Wire]

I'd like to know about clouds that do paypal & no charge for downtime - even if its switched off

[bin_asc]

- Persistent+Scalable storage
- Elastic IPs ( I`d wish )
- API(!)
- Paypal would be nice
- Public+Private network
- Geographically Dispersed Datacenters
- Failover Equipment

[astutiumRob]

Originally Posted by bin_asc

- Persistent+Scalable storage
- API(!)
- Paypal would be nice
- Public+Private network
- Geographically Dispersed Datacenters
- Failover Equipment

And this is different from a properly setup Shared Hosting environment how ?

>- Elastic IPs ( I`d wish )

please explain ...