Let’s find out what guarantees in terms of performance the cheapest virtual servers included in the new Aruba offer can ensure. When your business grows and you need more versatility than, for example, a traditional hosting service, the Cloud is undoubtedly the best solution. A cloud-based platform helps the professional, the small business, and the larger company to manage workflows without worrying about hardware maintenance and network equipment and with the flexibility of a configuration that knows how to adapt to changing needs of each customer.
The virtual machines CLOUD VPS and CLOUD PRO are two types of proposals from which it is possible to choose. This article focuses on the differences between the two and how performance guarantees can be obtained at an affordable cost. Let’s take the new Aruba cloud computing offer as an example: what are the differences between VPS and PRO servers, why now you can choose between three different hypervisors, and how do you make sure that the machine’s performance is adequate for the requirements of the applications you are going to install and run?
Difference Between CLOUD VPS And CLOUD PRO
Regarding cloud computing, some vendors blur the differences between the various types of virtual machines so much that they are often presented as if they were the same thing.
Aruba escapes this “custom” by clearly differentiating its proposal: there are CLOUD VPS and CLOUD PRO virtual servers.
The CLOUD VPS ( Virtual Private Server ) servers combine an excellent choice of available configurations with maximum convenience, thanks to transparent monthly pricing. They are cheap but not non-performing: starting from a Linux machine with one vCPU, 1 GB of RAM, and 20 GB of SSD storage for only 1.99 euros per month to get to Linux or Windows Server configurations based on 16 vCPUs, 32 GB of RAM and 320GB of NVMe SAN storage.
If you do not need unlimited data traffic, if you are satisfied with only one public IP address (in the case of the machine at 1.99 euros per month, it is only IPv6), and if you do not have to insert the server in a virtual private network, then VPS is the right choice. They can also be used as test machines to “test drive” your projects using a device that is always connected to the Internet and has its public IP address.
The CLOUD PRO servers are freely customizable in terms of hardware and software configuration (operating system image that is pre-installed when the machine is started), offer guaranteed resources and unlimited traffic, allow you to create complex virtual infrastructures with the possible addition of switches, firewalls, load balancers, and unified storage. Pricing, in the case of Aruba’s CLOUD PRO servers, can be hourly, monthly, or yearly depending on your preferences.
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In this case, prices start at just 13.20 euros per month for a CLOUD PRO based on OpenStack hypervisor (one vCPU, 2 GB of RAM, 20 GB of SAN NVMe storage) to get to more structured configurations with 32 vCPUs, 64 GB of RAM and 480GB of NVMe storage. Users can also choose between general purpose and “Memory” configurations, useful in mission-critical applications requiring a high allocation in terms of RAM (RAM/CPU ratio 4:1).
In terms of uptime and service continuity, PRO servers offer the best guarantees with an SLA ( Service Level Agreement ) of 99.95%. In the case of CLOUD VPS servers, the SLA communicated by Aruba at the time of writing the article is 99.80% for VMware machines and 99.90% for OpenStack ones. Overall, as observed in the article dedicated to Aruba cloud computing, the new CLOUD VPS and PRO offer rests on some crucial cornerstones:
- Competitive, transparent, and predictable price
- Maximum choice of configurations
- Power and performance
- Latest generation technology
- Guarantees of computational resources
- Enterprise-level architecture
In the case of CLOUD VPS and CLOUD PRO, we discuss virtual machines made available to customers using a hypervisor. In virtualization solutions, the hypervisor manages the functioning of the virtual machines and the operating systems installed and used in them. The hypervisor also makes part of the resources the host machine offers, i.e., the one running the virtualization solution, visible to the virtual machines and the operating systems in them.
In the case of CLOUD VPSs, however, the virtual machines run on a single host; a CLOUD PRO server, on the other hand, bases its operation on a more elaborate and redundant configuration that provides for a cluster of physical machines, which contributes to the process of the virtual systems. When one of the hosts fails in a cluster, the virtual machines are automatically moved to another physical host.
The technological stack chosen and deployed by Aruba makes it possible to minimize the so-called Point-of-Failures, therefore, the failures that could occur. Aruba is the first European cloud provider to provide the ability to use three different hypervisors: OpenStack, VMware, and Hyper-V. The first, being free and open-source software, allows you to activate cheap virtual servers because there are no license costs reflected in the fees paid by end users.
Aruba’s Cloud services can be tried for free: new customers can activate and use the CLOUD VPS and CLOUD PRO servers at no cost with a credit of 100 euros for companies and 20 euros for private users. By clicking on the various hypervisors present on the same page in correspondence with the CLOUD VPS and CLOUD PRO boxes, it is possible to know all the available configurations.
The configuration proposed by Aruba helps push the issue of data sovereignty, which is increasingly dear to the European legislature. All data stored on its CLOUD VPS and CLOUD PRO servers remain within European borders, are accessible only by the customer and any administrators authorized by them, and are in no way made accessible to Aruba personnel. From the Aruba Cloud Control Panel, we, therefore, suggest clicking on Create new server and trying the CLOUD VPS and CLOUD PRO combinations that are proposed by acting on the following preferences:
- Hypervisor (“choice of technology”)
- Operating system and preconfigured settings (“choice of template”)
- Characteristics of the virtual server: vCPU, RAM, storage (disks), data traffic
- Configuration of network cards (public and private IP )
- Server name
- Account for remote access to the server or root (other accounts can be added after the first connection)
- Pricing method
How To Size CLOUD VPS And CLOUD PRO Servers
Those with IT experience can easily select the most suitable VPS or PRO server for their needs using the configurator integrated into the Aruba Control Panel. Assuming you need to host an application on the Cloud, it is simple to size the machine when the application is already running on a physical server or another virtual machine (for example, at another manager).
If the application has not yet been “launched,” it is possible to choose the best CLOUD VPS or CLOUD PRO server by evaluating its overall size, expected traffic, number of regular users, and desired page views for each user. Let’s assume we are dealing with a newly developed application not running on a real server but created on a local machine within its infrastructure (one would say on-premises ).
In terms of bandwidth, to give a concrete example, the data relating to a site with 1 million page views per month can be estimated. If the single page of the site weighed about 2 MB, calculating a redundancy factor of 1.8, the figure would be approximately 3,600 GB/month. Apart from any traffic peaks, this is a connection of about 11 Mbps.
Suffice it to say that both in the case of CLOUD VPS servers and CLOUD PRO servers, Aruba provides connectivity at 1 Gbps: the traffic included in the offer changes which in the first case is limited every month while in the second, as already mentioned, it is unlimited. Besides the space (storage) needed on the Cloud, the choice of vCPU and RAM allocation could be more complex.
An overprovisioning of the vCPUs, therefore allocating more virtual processors to the server than necessary, is generally not recommended: it is preferable to balance the choice of vCPUs and RAM. Furthermore, the memory available on the virtual machine is one thing. In contrast, the allocated memory is quite another, i.e., the amount of RAM the guest operating system can use thanks to the hypervisor. If you plan to run a cloud system with Windows Server, staying within 8 GB of RAM is advisable. At the same time, with Linux, especially if you manage the machine via SSH without any desktop environment, it is sometimes possible to opt for more “conservative” configurations. CLOUD PRO servers offer excellent upward scalability: the virtual server’s configuration can be dynamically adapted to the changing needs of your business by modifying, if necessary, the allocation of CPU and RAM. Thus it is possible to pay only for the resources that are used and correct any errors in the dimensioning of the machine.
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