InfoboxCloud: cloud servers for business with a friendly interface (+promotion for Life Hacker readers)

Today Lifehacker will tell you about a very cool business IT hack. It allows you to abandon the usual scheme of relations with hosting providers "fixed tariffs - fixed capacity" in favor of flexible computing power, working on the principle of "use as much as you need now, and pay only for it."

A little bit of history

For objective reasons, it turned out that even with the development of services for the presentation of virtual servers, the client actually rented a fixed-capacity server. Given that the load on the servers is never a constant value, we always had to make a choice:

1. A more "sparing" option for money with subsequent problems of exceeding the load.
2. The configuration is "with a reserve of power" and the need to constantly overpay for performance that you do not use to the full when the load on the server is not maximum at certain moments.

The solution seemed obvious — hosting providers need to make sure that server performance can be changed on the fly, but in fact this resulted in the need for large financial injections to create such a solution. Small companies that provide computing power for rent did not want, and some could not, because of the cost, invest resources in development, although they understood the benefits of implementing "elastic" technology.

But the demand for the service gradually grew, especially from customers with large infrastructure. Obviously, the larger the technical base, the harder it hits the budget of the simple part of its capacity (lost profit, yeah).

For these reasons, large corporations have started providing computing services with the ability to change the power and configuration at any time (Amazon, Microsoft, Google).

Problems

Now almost everyone knows about Amazon Web Services. Here you can get both virtual servers of different capacities and services for programmers. However, along with the avant-garde of Amazon, the user will have to reckon with side effects: everything is in English (including management tools and support) + payment issues + not all Russian companies are satisfied with the placement of data outside the country. And their prices, to put it mildly, are not small.

And who will be responsible in case of problems with the service? There are no perfect technologies — people are not perfect. Will it be necessary to defend the rights under the financial guarantees of the service in the USA?

In addition, the main consumers of such services are small and medium-sized businesses, and the business manager, in this case, needs not only convenient, but also affordable.

Alternative

For quite a long time in Russia there has been an analogue of Amazon Web Services from the Parallels developer called Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure (PACI), which is provided as a service by InfoboxCloud. In fact, this is the only solution in Russia that gives the user similar Amazon capabilities, but at the same time focused on a technically untrained client.

Advantages over a classic virtual server

In addition to the obvious advantages inherent in a classic server, the cloud provides a few more delicious buns:

1. Instant scalability

Actually, this is exactly what everything was started for. The user can increase or decrease the capacity of each server at any time, adapting it to current needs. The owners of online stores with seasonal inflows perfectly understand what is at stake.

2. Hourly billing

All the advantages of scaling will come to naught without adequate billing. The same Amazon is attractive because it can count a subscriber by the clock, and InfoboxCloud can do the same. The principle of "how much to hang in grams" in all its glory.

3. Prices

InfoboxCloud is cheaper than Amazon and, moreover, much more visual in terms of calculating the cost depending on the required resources.

There is a convenient calculator on the service's website, in which each of the key parameters is implemented as a simple slider.

4. Management

Above we talked about the simplicity of changing the power of servers. All server settings in InfoboxCloud are changed through a single control panel and do not require expert knowledge. The control panel allows you to create from one server to an entire cloud infrastructure from cloud servers connected to a local network. At the same time, individual and fine-tuning of server operation, including automation of key tasks, is possible using the API.

Ideal use cases

Everything is clear with the technical advantages of the technology, and now we need to clearly identify the most relevant practical scenarios for using the cloud, in which the system will maximize its potential.

The first thing that comes to mind is web projects that are somehow related to seasonality. Any online store periodically feverish from sudden raids of buyers, and it does not depend on the subject and assortment: clothing, appliances, gadgets. Do not forget about state and other holidays, when people give gifts and buy especially actively. It is much more profitable to increase the server capacity periodically and for a short period in such cases.

At the stage of web application development, the cloud will allow programmers to instantly get the necessary servers for testing and suspend or delete them when testing is completed. You can implement almost any ideas, and at the same time not pay a lot. Do you want 100 servers per day? Easy. Don't want any more? Made by.

Already today, the use of a desktop in the cloud (remote desktop) is very popular among companies for employees. Together with cloud capabilities, the system will work even more efficiently: during the period of increased activity of employees, the server capacity increases. And with the growth of the company and, accordingly, the number of employees, the "regular" performance of the cloud increases.

Specialized tools work well in the cloud. Probably, every manager dreams of a full-fledged 1C in the cloud. For users, the difference will be almost invisible. This eliminates the fact of rejection and the need to retrain, but at the same time significantly increases the security and fault tolerance of the system as a whole.

What about the printing of documents? It's simple: printers connect to the cloud as local devices and do not require any new actions from the user to work.

The entire IT infrastructure of the enterprise can be transferred to the cloud. The number of virtual servers is not limited, which means that each system involved in business processes can be hosted on a dedicated virtual machine with managed capacity. In addition to the terminal server and cloud 1C, you can add a file server, backup server, application server and other specialized servers with dedicated roles. One of the main advantages of the cloud is that from the user's point of view, everything remains the same as if he worked on a "classic" system with a thick client and local servers.