Ex-colleague: “Parallels has released a new product. It’s superb!”
Me: “What’s it called?”
Ex-colleague: “PCS6…”
 
And this is how I first came to hear about PCS6 aka Parallels Cloud Server 6. This conversation occurred about a week before PCS6’s official launch on November 6, 2012. For the remainder of our chat, my ex-colleague went on to extol the benefits of the software. Truth be told, he really had me interested in this new direction that Parallels seemed to be headed in.
 
Parallels Cloud Server, for people who are new to the concept, combines the features of Parallels Server Bare Metal, Virtuozzo and Cloud technologies. Read the rest of this entry »

Virtual Private Servers are the primary choice of customers who can’t afford to buy a Dedicated Server, at the same time need same amount of flexibility and control. This industry is facing a serious threat from Amazon and Windows Azure Cloud Platforms. This article is focused on running a VPS business which can compete with these cloud platforms.

A thorough understanding of the features that end customers looks for in these services and implementing them at much lower price tag is the key for running a successful VPS hosting services. Windows Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. The key features of Azure are:

* 99.95% monthly availability

* Supports different OS and frameworks

* Instant deployment

* Instant Scaling of resources

* Pay only for the resources used

* Quality customer support

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud enables us to create a computing instance in Amazon’s network. The main highlights of these platform are:

* 99.95% availability

* Instant deployment and scalability of computing resources

* Web interface for managing firewall.

* Easy deployment using preconfigured images

* Custom configurations using custom images

* Pay for only the resources used

* Quality customer support

A normal deployment of a VPS server may take days with its regular routine of customer chating with the sales team, then another few days for the technician to set-up the server. Your website should provide the customers an option to create custom configurations, generate its cost and order it instantly. Providing predefined configurations and proper documentation of their pros and cons will also delight the customer. Once the customer has ordered the VPS, you should be able to deploy the server within hours.

Your plans should provide high availability. This can be implemented using high availability configurations like Xen Clusters. A lot of virtualization technologies offers high availability configurations.

Another factor is instant scaling or resources. The customer may be anticipating high traffic in in the next day and he may need to scale up the resource instantly.Scaling of computing resource can be done instantly in most virtualization technologies. An experienced support team can accomplish it in a few minutes. The only requirement is that you keep sufficient free resources in the hardware node. If the hardware node itself runs out of resources, you will need the DC technician to manually upgrade the resources. This can cause considerable downtime for server.

A web interface which allows the customer to login and perform tasks like viewing resource usage of his server, ordering new resources or servers etc will be an added advantage. The billing portal used by most hosting providers can be customized to implement these services unless you are using any third party applications like WHMCS.

Integrating a high availability configuration which provides instant scaling of resources coupled with quality customer support and competitive pricing will make the customer think twice before opting for Amazon or Azure.

The above is a very rough outline on Running VPS business competing amazon & azure , if you have any questions, we would be happy to talk to you!

About the Author :

Dipin.D works as a Software Engineer in Bobcares. He joined Bobcares in October 2010. He loves reading books and listening to music in his free time.

Blog edited by :

Appu Joseph Xavier works as a Software Engineer in Bobcares. He joined Bobcares in April 2012. He loves to watch movies in his free time.

Bobcares, on 8th May joined the the elite club of support providers by unveiling its Cloud Administration class of support plans. Starting with Cloud Migration Services plan, Bobcares is now offering web hosting companies a trusted and fool proof way to migrate from a legacy system to a cloud system. To know the unique benefits, features and pricing of the cloud migration plan, visit the Cloud Migration page now!

Bobcares is a leader in outsourced support with an industry experience of more than a decade. One of the first to venture into virtualization technologies in 2007, Bobcares quickly became the leader in VPS systems support. Cloud systems support came as an extension to the already established VPS support system, and Bobcares ventured into partnerships with major cloud providers like Eucalyptus as early as 2010. From then on Bobcares has been providing cloud support on a per-demand basis for existing clients, while consolidating the cloud support capability, and perfecting the procedures.

Now with the launch of Cloud Migration Services, Bobcares is offering a fool proof, battle hardened support system to safely migrate the existing legacy infrastructure to a cloud infrastructure. By choosing Bobcares, web hosts get unique benefits which includes but, not limited to:
1. Zero data loss guarantee.
2. Less than 30 minutes downtime.
3. 100% application compatibility.
4. 10+ years of accumulated industry expertise.
5. Peace of mind through ISO certified support process.
6. Options for bundled support plans.

With a rich portfolio of virtualization support expertise, Bobcares has helped its clients in the transition to virtualized environment since 2007. With industry majors like Parallels recognizing the value addition Bobcares can bring in virtualization support, Bobcares became a popular choice for web hosts looking for migrating their legacy dedicated server based farm to much more profitable virtualization model. Currently Bobcares support more than 250 clients with virtualization technologies that includes Xen, VmWare, OpenVZ, Virtuozzo, Parallels Server Bare Metal, KVM, HyperVM, etc.

Bobcares has been offering Technical Support and Software Development solutions since 2001. The technical support division of Bobcares currently manages over 60,000 servers and 15 million websites, making it the largest outsourced web hosting support company in the world.

If you have any questions, we would be happy to talk to you!