Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Cloud Hosting : I'm confused. How does Parallels = Cloud?

[lostmind]

Seriously, their whole site is plastered with cloud cloud cloud. They speak at all the cloud conferences and sponsor a ton of them too. They've positioned themselves in the cloud arena quite well.

But I read the site and they are packaging software that helps automate and deliver standard hosting products (shared, vps). We use parallels Virtuozzo, it's good as a VPS solution. Fast, nice control panel. But... even pulling together all their products, you can't build out a system that is highly available (imho, a requirement for the "cloud") and it can't provide utility style billing really.

You can make virtuozzo be HA but not with their automation tools and it's not really supported by Parallels.

This is not some big "I hate Parallels" thread, but a serious question. Am I missing something here? Where's the cloud?

[DeltaAnime]

They're marketing the 'cloud like features' with the automation side, not the high availability.

Cloud is supposed to also give easy upgrade/downgrade of all aspects of your plan (IP's, resources, etc).

Francisco

[Cristi4n]

You do know that all Parallels does, and it does it well, is marketing, nothing else ?You do also know that they have a lot more sales reps than programmers/developers ?
Everyone wants cloud, they tell them it's cloud. Regardless if their solutions can be considered a cloud solutions or not, the same products were there last year and 4 years ago.
While I do funny jokes around regarding Paralles because I consider their products to be very buggy and very costly because you need a lot more people to take care of them and their bugs then you would need with other products I will ask you something else: Where's the cloud in XCP (Xen Cloud Platform) or for that matter where's the cloud in Xen ? Where's the cloud in RackspaceCloud ?

[lostmind]

Parallels definitely markets themselves well. I am lucky I suppose as I haven't found their virtuozzo product buggy. It's the only Parallels product I've used.

Xen Cloud Platform I have not tested (we only tested Xenserver with HA).

Rackspacecloud just appears to be a glorified VPS product. They brag about local raid 10 storage, but then where is the high availability and so on? Not really much info on their site to make a real decision about what it is I guess. Likely just good marketing.

[Winky]

the term "cloud" is really ambiguous. HA is not a requisite of cloud, but it is one of the key options. some people call any virtualized environment a cloud, whereas, others expect the optional features to be considered true cloud.

[Coolraul]

This is true for not only Parallels but many providers and software companies. Riding the "Cloud" buzzword. I submit that HA isn't an option a Cloud instance to me MUST include High Availability. If it doesn't to me it isn't a cloud, just virtualization.

How is it new or different to be able to scale up resources but it is prone to a single point of failure?

[CloudWeb]

Originally Posted by Coolraul

This is true for not only Parallels but many providers and software companies. Riding the "Cloud" buzzword. I submit that HA isn't an option a Cloud instance to me MUST include High Availability. If it doesn't to me it isn't a cloud, just virtualization.

How is it new or different to be able to scale up resources but it is prone to a single point of failure?

And to take it one step further, HA should also be achieved on the network side as that is too a common single point of failure I see. Many Cloud providers also fail to provide HA past that. They'll have a small Cloud setup and they're all running on the same switches and routes. So if that single switch goes down, say goodnight!

[IRCCo Jeff]

We spend in excess of $50,000 at HostingCon so I can imagine that Parallels spends at least $200,000 - 500,000 by comparison. All of this effort and the couple of sales requests that i've sent to them have been ignored.

[p1net]

Originally Posted by IRCCo Jeff

We spend in excess of $50,000 at HostingCon so I can imagine that Parallels spends at least $200,000 - 500,000 by comparison. All of this effort and the couple of sales requests that i've sent to them have been ignored.

Agreed the sales staff are very slow to respond via any of the contact forms they have on the website. However if you get in touch with a good sales rep they are quite helpful.

[lostmind]

Originally Posted by IRCCo Jeff

We spend in excess of $50,000 at HostingCon so I can imagine that Parallels spends at least $200,000 - 500,000 by comparison. All of this effort and the couple of sales requests that i've sent to them have been ignored.

Agreed. I had to call them about 10 times. I had basically given up when someone called me back over 6 weeks later. I don't get it.

Originally Posted by p1net

Agreed the sales staff are very slow to respond via any of the contact forms they have on the website. However if you get in touch with a good sales rep they are quite helpful.

Eh, I found they were eager for a sale, but not so helpful. I had to tell them exactly what I wanted, because they kept trying to sell me different products (I was interested in Virtuozzo, they tried to sell me plesk and business automation stuff, no word about virtuozzo).