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What's Up With the Cloud for Resellers?
| Posted by BoardBoss, 08-07-2013, 10:19 AM |
| I have been doing research for a few weeks now, and maybe I am just missing something, but I cannot seem to get anywhere when I try to go down one path: Cloud Reseller Hosting.
If I understand the basic concept of cloud hosting correctly, an account is hosted such that if there is a hardware failure (CPU, RAM, drive, etc.), then another piece of redundant hardware takes over either instantly, or very quickly. Maybe I am wrong?
Anyway, my thought was to proceed into the cloud in one of two ways:
1) Get a 'traditional' reseller account running in the cloud. That really does not buy me anything in and of itself (except the "server" should never go down); however, my client's sites could affect my other client's sites competing for resources or via an exploit. There seems to be some disagreement that all clients for a reseller could be isolated from one another.
2) Get a reseller plan that essentially offers a bunch of VPS accounts, thus isolating each of my clients in their own space. A key issue here seems to be management. No one seems to offer cost effective management, as each VPS would be managed separately, although I tend to look at it like it would only one instance would need to be managed (updates, configuration, etc.), and then that instance could be copied to all others. Maybe I am wrong about this, too.
The bottom line is it seems that no matter how I try to configure a solution, it seems it either does not (yet) exist, or it is so expensive, I could not sell it and make a profit.
For those that might ask first "What is your budget?", please don't. I am a businessman. I will take offered solutions and determine if they fit my business model, and make sense for me and my clients. I am NOT looking for an "unlimited" everything account for $1/month. Not me, and not the clients I target.
I want a solid cloud infrastructure at a fair price, preferably on SSD, and running WHM/cPanel. IPv4s available for those few clients that need them (justified, of course), without my cost being $2-$3 each per month. Full management (server initial setup, hardening, WHM/cPanel updates as stable releases completed proactively and before the year ends). Full management to me includes recovering hacked/exploited root or client account, but NOT supporting third-party scripts, unless perhaps initial install if they require tight integration with the O/S.
Is this to much to ask?
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| Posted by WebNet Host, 08-07-2013, 10:42 AM |
| You make some good points. Its a bit confusing when searching for hosts and seeing so many different terms thrown out there without much explanation as to how everything works.
With a Traditional Reseller hosting, you are getting a small chunk of a dedicated server and can re-sell that to your customers, so technically you are getting a shared hosting account which allows you to resell to your customers.
With Cloud Reseller hosting if the host has done it right you are getting a reseller hosting account same as above, except its setup on a cloud network of VM's offering redundancy, auto healing, scalability and much more.
5 years ago I would tell you to go with traditional reseller hosting, but now I would 100% say go with Cloud reseller hosting as its the future and VM's now offer more benefits than a traditional dedicated setup.
Also any reputable host will offer WHM/cPanel, possible SSD setup, and IP Addresses at a descent price. Do not go for cheap, the cheaper you pay for your reseller account the cheaper there hardware setup and configuration is.
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| Posted by BoardBoss, 08-07-2013, 11:51 AM |
| Thanks for the reply. At least it sounds like I confirmed I am not completely off the mark.
It honestly appears to me that many different companies are trying to push similar solutions out to people, and maybe many of these solutions are similar (but spun so differently for marketing purposes) that their own reps don't fully understand their solutions.
I will continue trying to refine my knowledge in an attempt to better understand exactly what these folks offer. Hopefully by then I will have narrowed it down to a very short list of potential providers. Right now they seem like mirages. The closer you get to them, the more their features seems to disappear into thin air (or come at added cost).
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| Posted by DWS2006, 08-07-2013, 12:23 PM |
| If your cloud instance is Xen, KVM, or VMWare based, utilizing CloudLinux or BetterLinux can help with resource management and file security. Both offer the ability to virtualize the file system, to a particular extent, on a per account basis (Via CageFS and CloakFS respectively).
Whatever you do, don't scrimp on Cloud Hosting, I've researched many of the low-mid range options available with disappointing results (that's being generous). SAN failures/speed issues and faltering fail-over solutions can lower uptime below a typical shared account in a hurry.
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| Posted by BoardBoss, 08-07-2013, 01:03 PM |
| I have no intention of scrimping on anything. If I cannot find a cost-effective solution in the cloud hosting world, I will try to find a good dedi provider and stay with that type of solution. It is primarily the management that has become an issue of late, and not so much the boxes themselves.
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| Posted by StarWebHosting, 08-09-2013, 08:18 AM |
| I setup a cloud server as a trial with VPS.net at the start of 2013 with CloudLinux and LiteSpeed. I liked the fact that you could increase the number of nodes that you used as and when required and if there was any hardware issues the downtime would be minimal compared to restoring a whole server.
The only issue that i found was when you have quite a lot of customers on the server increasing the number of nodes can lead to some downtime (30-60 minutes) to resize the disk space. As long as your clients are aware that when you were increasing the number of nodes there would be downtime then thats fine.
Using CloudLinux and cageFS i found that high resource using clients on the server did not affect the smaller clients in any real way. I never received any complaints quite the contrary i received a number of comments about how fast the server was.
The server i setup started at around £60-70 per month but quickly increased to £140 per month.
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