Rédaction2021-08-04T16:47:49+00:00

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Nouvelles et annonces de VEXXHOST

Atmosphere currently deploys Ceph out of the box on dedicated white-box hardware to allow you to get distributed & highly available storage out of the box without any dedicated appliances.  However, one of the common things we’re seeing is Atmosphere users who want to make use of their existing infrastructure before migrating to something like Ceph.

Dell PowerStore arrays

Over the past few weeks, we’ve worked on adding the implementation of Dell PowerStore arrays to Atmosphere, this will allow you with a few simple modifications to have a fully tested and integrated solution that will leverage your existing storage array rather than deploy a new instance of Ceph.

We’ve done this by integrating a few things such as allowing for different CSIs for the Kubernetes cluster used for operating the cloud.  The default is using RBD, powered by Ceph.  It also allows you to switch to using the PowerStore CSI if you’re integrating with an existing array.

For Glance, we’ve instead switched up the integration to point towards storing images inside Cinder so that it can make use of the PowerStore array for storing all images.  Finally, Cinder is configured to use PowerStore to create volumes there using either fiber channel or iSCSI.

We’ve validated all of this internally and we’ll continue to support this system.  We’re happy to find ways to get our customers to be able to make use of their existing infrastructure to integrate into OpenStack and allow them to get the best experience to get bare metal, virtual machines & Kubernetes all in one simple solution.

For more information about how this works, check out the Atmosphere documentation that covers this topic specifically.

We’ve got a lot more updates on the way, so stay tuned and make sure to subscribe for more updates on news and feature updates.

VEXXHOST Inc., a leading Canadian cloud computing provider has announced the launch of Atmosphere, a new tool that can deploy a fully integrated OpenStack environment. Furthermore, the company has made the technology open source so that it benefits all of the users of the cloud-based infrastructure-as-a-service platform. The announcement was made a few days ahead of the Open Infrastructure Summit happening in Berlin, where the company is a premier sponsor.

Built with open source technologies at its core, including Ansible, Prometheus, Kubernetes and Helm, Atmosphere is capable of integrating all key elements needed for a production-level cloud environment. The tool allows you to deploy a cloud that supports virtual machines (VMs), block and object storage, load balancers as a Service (LBaaS), Kubernetes, bare metal, and many more.

Atmosphere – Need and Benefits

“We are very excited about the launch of Atmosphere. It stems from a need we identified while working with OpenStack and its various users” says Mohammed Naser, CEO of VEXXHOST. “When speaking to different organizations who are looking to deploy OpenStack, many seem to be at loss attempting to turn all the right knobs to get a solid cloud up. For some, OpenStack configuration can be hard, with many tool options, and a lack of clarity on how to use them. So we used our 11 years of experience using the platform to curate the perfect combination of tools.”

With Atmosphere, users save a lot of time, as the deployment tool removes the burden of research to find and integrate many different OpenStack elements. Furthermore, it supports high availability controllers, and passes Tempest validation tests, allowing users to deploy OpenStack much faster.

Open Source Nature

According to VEXXHOST, Atmosphere can be a solution for anyone from single developers to multinational companies. OpenStack system administrators of any level can run the tool easily and deploy cloud environments according to their preferences.

“VEXXHOST has demonstrated extensive experience deploying the latest OpenStack versions in challenging production environments. With the launch of Atmosphere, anyone can now tap into that accumulated decade of experience and lessons learned,” says Thierry Carrez, general manager, OpenInfra Foundation. “It’s great that such an engaged, long-standing supporter of the community and the project has stepped up to give everyone the power they’ve created to run their own, OpenStack-powered public cloud.”

The tool is tried and tested, as VEXXHOST has been using it for a long time in their public clouds, and private clouds, and recommending it to their consulting clients. Making the tool open source ensures that the global open infrastructure community also benefits from it.

“Open source has been at the core of VEXXHOST’s values since its inception,” says Mohammed Naser. “We’re transparent that different open source communities have helped us get to where we are and we thought that this would be a great way to give back. Also, if you feel like contributing to this tool, we welcome you to do so,” he adds.

In an ever-changing cloud computing world, the VEXXHOST team is committed to collective technological growth – the launch of Atmosphere and making the tool open source are testaments to this commitment. This move aligns with the company’s mission of providing efficient and secure services while being community-driven. Users can access Atmosphere with its source code and learn more about it in the documentation.

Pointe-Claire (Quebec), Wednesday, February 17, 2021 – VEXXHOST is excited to announce its collaboration with Ciena under the auspices of the ENCQOR 5G partnership in Canada. ENCQOR 5G is a transformational public-private partnership focused on the research and innovation of 5G technologies. 

As certified specialists in hosting and management of OpenStack, VEXXHOST’s contributions to ENCQOR 5G will be to provide a fully managed service of the existing OpenStack cloud environment. By being the cloud computing partner of this initiative, VEXXHOST will be handling the internal cloud environment for the ENCQOR Compute network supported by Ciena and ensure that it is set up with best practices in place. The responsibility of VEXXHOST is to keep the IT resources of ENCQOR 5G up to date in its 5 innovation centers located in Quebec (Montreal and Quebec City) and Ontario (Ottawa, Toronto, and Waterloo) updated on the latest releases and secure the smooth functioning and efficiency of cloud resources. 

ENCQOR has built a 5G network to enable companies of all sizes, IT professionals, researchers from the public and private sectors and post-graduate students to get early access to a state-of-the-art 5G development and test platform for prototyping new products and services. ENCQOR 5G now has five innovation hubs in Quebec and Ontario, located in Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Waterloo.  

“We are thrilled to be working in collaboration with the Ciena-ENCQOR 5G team in support of this innovative initiative,” said Mohammed Naser, CEO of VEXXHOST. “This is a milestone project that helps set up smarter communities across Canada harnessing the possibilities of 5G and we are glad to provide our cloud services to enable it,” he added.  

About VEXXHOST

Founded in 2006, VEXXHOST Inc. is a Canadian cloud computing provider offering OpenStack powered public cloud, private cloud and consulting services to its customers. From small businesses to governments in over 150 different countries, VEXXHOST delivers high-level expertise to help clients optimize their cloud infrastructure. The company has two public cloud regions in North America (Montreal and Santa Clara) and one in Europe (Amsterdam), all running on the latest OpenStack releases and featuring the latest enterprise-grade hardware.

For more information, visit https://vexxhost.com or follow @vexxhost on Twitter.

About ENCQOR 5G
The ENCQOR 5G initiative is funded by the governments of Canada, Quebec and Ontario, as well as key industry players: Ericsson, Ciena, Thales, CGI and IBM. ENCQOR 5G is coordinated by ENCQOR Innovation. It is issued in Ontario by OCE and in Quebec by Innovation ENCQOR, Prompt and ADRIQ. The program’s mandate is to bring together SMEs and the academic community to contribute to the advancement of research, innovation and application demonstration through a 5G pre-commercial testbed.

Sources: VEXXHOST

ENCQOR 5G

CIENA

For more information:  Frédéric Tremblay

ENCQOR 5G

Tel: (514) 874-1909

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VEXXHOST Collabore Avec Ciena dans Le Cadre du Partenariat Canadien ENCOQR 5G

Pointe-Claire (Québec), Mercredi 17 février, 2021 – VEXXHOST est heureuse d’annoncer une collaboration avec Ciena dans le cadre du partenariat ENCQOR 5G. ENCQOR 5G est un partenariat public-privé transformationnel axé sur la recherche et l’innovation des technologies 5G. 

En tant que spécialiste certifié dans l’hébergement et la gestion d’OpenStack, les contributions de VEXXHOST à ENCQOR 5G consisteront à fournir un service entièrement géré de l’environnement en nuage OpenStack. En tant que partenaire infonuagique de cette initiative, VEXXHOST s’occupera de l’environnement interne du réseau informatique d’ENCQOR 5G, soutenu par Ciena, et veillera à ce qu’il soit mis en place avec les meilleures pratiques. La responsabilité de VEXXHOST est de maintenir à jour les ressources informatiques d’ENCQOR 5G sur ses 5 centres d’innovation situés au Québec (Montréal et Québec) et en Ontario (Ottawa, Toronto et Waterloo) et de garantir le bon fonctionnement et l’efficacité des ressources infonuagiques. 

ENCQOR a mis en place un réseau 5G pour permettre aux entreprises de toutes tailles, aux professionnels de l’informatique, aux chercheurs des secteurs public et privé, et aux étudiants de troisième cycle d’accéder rapidement à une plate-forme de développement et de tests 5G de pointe pour le prototypage de nouveaux produits et services. ENCQOR 5G compte désormais cinq pôles d’innovation au Québec et en Ontario, situés à Québec, Montréal, Ottawa, Toronto, et Waterloo.  

« Nous sommes ravis de travailler en collaboration avec l’équipe de Ciena-ENCQOR 5G pour soutenir cette initiative innovante », a déclaré Mohammed Naser, PDG de VEXXHOST. « Il s’agit d’un projet important qui contribue à mettre en place des communautés plus intelligentes à travers le Canada en exploitant les possibilités de la 5G. Nous sommes heureux de fournir nos services infonuagiques dans le cadre de ces travaux », a-t-il ajouté.  

À propos de VEXXHOST

Fondée en 2006, VEXXHOST Inc. est un fournisseur canadien de technologie infonuagique qui offre à ses clients des services de cloud public ou privé basés sur OpenStack, en plus de services de consultation. VEXXHOST offre une expertise de haut niveau aux petites entreprises et aux gouvernements dans plus de 150 pays, pour aider ses clients à optimiser leur infrastructure infonuagique. L’entreprise possède deux régions de cloud public en Amérique du Nord (Montréal et Santa Clara) et une basée en Europe (Amsterdam), toutes fonctionnant avec les dernières versions d’OpenStack et dotées du plus récent matériel de qualité professionnelle. Pour plus d’informations, visitez le site https://vexxhost.com ou suivez @vexxhost sur Twitter.

À propos d’ENCQOR 5G

L’initiative ENCQOR 5G est financée par les gouvernements du Canada, du Québec et de l’Ontario ainsi que par les principaux acteurs de l’industrie : Ericsson, Ciena, Thales, CGI et IBM. ENCQOR 5G est coordonné par ENCQOR Innovation. Il est mise en oeuvre en Ontario par OCE et au Québec par Innovation ENCQORPrompt et l’ADRIQ. Le programme a pour mandat de réunir les PME et les millieux académiques pour contribuer à l’avancement de la recherche, de l’innovation et de la démonstration des applications par le biais d’un banc d’essai pré-commercial en 5G. ENCQOR 5G dispose de 5 centres d’innovation situés en Ontario et au Québec offrant une plateforme 5G où les PMEs peuvent développer et tester de nouvelles solutions. 

Sources: VEXXHOST

ENCQOR 5G

CIENA

Pour plus d’information: Frédéric Tremblay

ENCQOR 5G

Tel: (514) 874-1909

Montreal, 20 October 2020 – VEXXHOST Inc., a leading Canadian cloud computing provider, has announced a massive revamp in its public cloud offerings, including the set up of a new region in Amsterdam, during the Open Infrastructure Summit 2020. The Summit is being held virtually this year, and VEXXHOST announced the revamp during its keynote address today as a headline sponsor for the global event.

Other changes in the announcement consist of setting up new servers equipped with 2nd Gen AMD EPYC™ processors and NVMe storage in the Montreal region and new aggressive and competitive pricing initiatives.

“We are very excited about all the changes that we announced today. It is definitely one of our biggest announcements in recent times,” says Mohammed Naser, CEO of VEXXHOST. He also adds that the revamp is “part of the company’s current growth strategy, powered by our association with various open source foundations and communities across the globe.”

Team VEXXHOST keeps busy in its path of evolution in an ever-changing cloud computing world and allows the clients to reap the many benefits. This aligns with the company’s mission of providing efficient and secure services while being community-driven.

New AMD Servers in Montreal Region

One of the notable changes announced by VEXXHOST is the introduction of new servers equipped with 2nd Gen AMD EPYC™ processors for its Montreal region. In the past few years, AMD has overhauled the server market with its revolutionary processors. The addition of the new AMD processor-powered servers to VEXXHOST’s Montreal region is undoubtedly a boost for the latter.

According to the team, the below given are the relevant specs of the new processors.

  • Driven by AMD Infinity Architecture
  • First x86 architecture processor for servers based on 7nm process technology
  • Up to 64 high-performance cores per SOC
  • Equipped with AMD Infinity Guard and PCIe® Gen 4 I/O security features
  • Hybrid, multi-die architecture

Additionally, here are some of the areas where the new processors bring about significant change to VEXXHOST public cloud servers in terms of better performance and secure computing:

  • Workload acceleration
  • Infrastructure
  • Data protection

Upgraded Storage from SSD to NVMe

The company has upgraded storage from SSD to NVMe, offering the fastest hard drive in the market to its public cloud users. The use of NVMe storage first began with just large-scale enterprises, but it is now trickling down to the consumer market. A stark benefit available with this storage type is due to faster parallel read and write capabilities. VEXXHOST jumped on this opportunity to make it available to their customers.

NVMe drives also have the advantage to work at speeds upwards of 2000MB/s compared to the typical SATA III SSD running under 600MB/s because of the interaction with flash memory through the PCIe interface, which is bi-directional and runs at stellar speed. NVMe is also more power-efficient, cutting power consumption by significant percentages when in standby mode. It is also a scalable alternative going beyond the four lanes found in most conventional PCIe SSDs.

“It is always great to be maintaining a competitive edge with our services. We are proud to have made the switch ensuring better performance to our users without having any downtime,” CEO Naser says. Elaborating on “without having any downtime,” he says, “There was no need for any action to be taken from the user’s side. We made the switch from SSD to NVMe possible using Ceph. The only change our users felt was in terms of better performance and speed after the switch.”

New Aggressive Pricing for VEXXHOST Public Cloud

Another exciting change for the clients of VEXXHOST is its new aggressive pricing strategy. The company is known for its competitive prices without compromising on product attributes. This is possible as VEXXHOST bases its operations on open source platforms, ensuring flexibility, speed, scalability, and cost-effectiveness, among other benefits.

“We also wanted to make sure that cloud solutions are more accessible to users, especially considering the current Covid-19 pandemic situation”, says CEO Naser. “Many companies are facing challenges in maintaining their infrastructure and are rapidly moving into cloud. We would like to make things easier for them and for our existing customers,” he adds.

According to VEXXHOST’s new introductory pricing model, the hourly rate for a standard 2 core, 8 GB offering is just $0.055, compared to the market rate, which stands at $0.086. The difference between the market rate and the new VEXXHOST rate is a staggering 36%. Higher core/memory offerings such as 4 core – 16 GB, 8 core – 32 GB, and 16 core – GB, will also carry proportionate price reduction.

The new pricing is available to all new users and existing customers who are making the switch to the latest offerings from VEXXHOST. The new pricing is introductory and subject to change at a later stage. With the addition of the most advanced technology to its fore and the launch of a new region for its operations, the pricing is an added advantage.

New Region in Amsterdam

Two years after the launch of their region in Santa Clara, VEXXHOST has announced the launch of a frontline data center in Amsterdam. The company started its operations in Montreal and already has a data center there. The Santa Clara region was launched in 2018 to better address the clientele in the United States. VEXXHOST also manages private cloud operations for different enterprises and organizations in various other parts of the world, in association with local datacenters. The launch of the new region puts them physically in Europe as well and cements their global footprint.

It is worth mentioning that operations in VEXXHOST’s new Amsterdam region will feature all the latest hardware announced, according to new aggressive pricing. More prominently, it will be running on OpenStack’s latest release Victoria. Victoria was launched just days ago on October 14th, and already having it on board in their newly announced region shows how ready and updated the VEXXHOST team is.

Providing the best of standards in all aspects of cloud operations has always been a top priority for VEXXHOST, and the same goes for the new region in Amsterdam. The state-of-the-art data center we use in Amsterdam provides unparalleled service in terms of connectivity, efficiency, server protection mechanisms,  security, and reliability. The facility is built to Uptime Institute Tier 3 standards, the industry’s most stringent specifications, and is ISO 50001, ISO 27001, ISO 14001, ISO 9001, OHAS 18001, PCI/SOC, and AMS-IX certified. To deal with any server-related issues, an expert team is available 24×7 on-site, performing a wide range of management, maintenance, and troubleshooting tasks.

The Amsterdam DC boasts of a multi-tier security system, including a full perimeter fence surveillance system, 24×7 on-site security and monitoring, and highly secure access-card-based entry. To combat any sort of emergencies, there are conventional spot detection, VESDA like aspiration detection, and high-pressure water-mist suppression mechanisms in place. High energy efficiency with green standards, advanced global connectivity via being linked to AMS-IX, and high reliability in terms of failsafe electric supply with dedicated substations are also some of the salient features of the facility.

Does your enterprise need the latest in public cloud offerings? Avail it now with VEXXHOST at a  limited-time, introductory pricing, and chances of getting FREE credits on public cloud for your organization.

About VEXXHOST

Founded in 2006, VEXXHOST Inc. is a Canadian cloud computing provider offering OpenStack powered public cloud, private cloud, and consulting services to its customers. From small businesses to governments in over 150 different countries, VEXXHOST delivers high-level expertise to help clients optimize their cloud infrastructure.

For more information, visit https://vexxhost.com or follow @vexxhost on Twitter.

October 19, 2020In what is considered the announcement of the decade, the OpenStack Foundation (OSF) has announced its transformation to the Open Infrastructure Foundation (OIF). This move is part of the foundation’s multi-year initiative of community evolution, which will support OpenStack and help in the adoption and growth of other open source projects.

VEXXHOST is proud to announce that the company will be joining the foundation as a Founding Silver Member on this occasion. Being at the forefront of this evolution is a testament to VEXXHOST’s prolonged support for the foundation.

The Evolution from OSF to OIF

OpenStack Foundation’s transformation to Open Infrastructure Foundation is catalyzed by the various new demands placed on infrastructure driven by the latest use cases such as containers, machine learning, edge computing, etc. Providing support to the OpenStack project will remain at the heart of the foundation. The evolution focuses on adopting and developing new open source projects as well.

VEXXHOST has been associated with the OpenStack Foundation since 2011. Before becoming a Founding Silver Member under the OSF’s current transformation, VEXXHOST has been a Corporate Member, infrastructure donor, and a steady contributor and user of OpenStack, various OSF projects, and Zuul.

“VEXXHOST has consistently shown what being an engaged community member is all about, » said Mark Collier, COO of the Open Infrastructure Foundation. « Their documentation and sharing of how they deploy the latest versions of OpenStack on their public cloud on release day have helped others in the community map their own rapid migration plans, and their work with projects beyond OpenStack has been an important part of the community’s ‘integration engine’ story. We’re excited about their expression of commitment to the vision of the new Open Infrastructure Foundation, and we look forward to the next decade of work with their team.”

VEXXHOST was conferred with the Super User Award at the 2019 OpenStack Summit. The company sees the Foundation’s evolution as a moment of immense pride and advancement.

“We are delighted to be joining OIF as a Founding Silver Member during this historic moment,” said Mohammed Naser, CEO of VEXXHOST. “We are certain that this is a great opportunity for us to further our work with the foundation and together, aiding the growth of open source projects for the benefit of users across the world,” he added.

VEXXHOST has a range of offerings powered by OpenStack and other projects governed by the foundation. For a limited time, team VEXXHOST is calling on potential customers to schedule a call with them and get access to a free OpenStack environment.

About VEXXHOST

Founded in 2006, VEXXHOST Inc. is a Canadian cloud computing provider offering OpenStack powered public cloud, private cloud, and consulting services to its customers. From small businesses to governments in over 150 different countries, VEXXHOST delivers high-level expertise to help clients optimize their cloud infrastructure.

For more information, visit https://vexxhost.com or follow @vexxhost on Twitter.

VEXXHOST is excited to announce the latest update to their Kubernetes offering, introducing the Kubernetes v1.18 update for 2020. Kubernetes v1.18 is the first update to Kubernetes in 2020. This version features a total of 38 enhancements, meaning that more upgrades and updates are available to users. Moreover, this fit and finish release works to refine user experience and continue to improve upon Kubernetes as a whole. In 2018, VEXXHOST received certification from the CNCF for Kubernetes available to their public and private cloud users. One year later, they developed their Kubernetes Enablement offering to create an accessible Certified Kubernetes service. As a result with the Kubernetes v1.18 update, VEXXHOST is enthusiastic about bringing all new features and enhancements to its users.

Kubernetes v1.18 Update

VEXXHOST has been offering Certified Kubernetes to its public cloud users since 2018. Furthermore, they have been alleviating the stress associated with the deployment of Kubernetes for users with fully managed services. They currently offer support to both v1.17.4 and v1.18 in their SJC1 data center region in Santa Clara, California. Their clients benefit from 24/7 access to VEXXHOST engineers through a ticketing system and total monitoring of the service every five minutes.

“VEXXHOST always endeavors to offer their users the very latest in cloud computing offerings available. Kubernetes v1.18 was no exception. We are excited to see the benefits of this update passed on directly to our users and improve upon their overall user experience.” Said Mohammed Naser, VEXXHOST CEO.

Kubernetes enables its users to utilize secure container clusters through enhanced isolation and upgraded performance. This is thanks to faster deployment times and simplified extensive service integrations. Moreover, new features in Kubernetes v1.18 such as Topology Manager feature and Server-side Apply give users even more choice in how they manage their containers.

Does your business want to experience the latest version of Kubernetes? Try it now on a VEXXHOST public cloud. VEXXHOST is offering a free $200 credit for organizations and open-source projects. Learn more about how you can test Kubernetes v1.18 today.

About VEXXHOST

Founded in 2006, VEXXHOST Inc. is a Canadian cloud computing provider offering OpenStack powered public cloud, private cloud and consulting services to its customers. From small businesses to governments in over 150 different countries, VEXXHOST delivers high-level expertise to help clients optimize their cloud infrastructure. For more information, visit https://vexxhost.com or follow @vexxhost on Twitter.

VEXXHOST is excited to announce that they are joining the Ceph Foundation as general members. Joining the Ceph Foundation is particularly exciting for VEXXHOST, as they have been leveraging Ceph for years for its storage. In collaboration with Ceph, VEXXHOST has been able to deploy public and private clouds in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

The Ceph Foundation exists to help empower individuals in the industry to pool resources together in support of the Ceph community. As community leaders, both the Ceph Foundation and VEXXHOST strive to empower individuals in the industry to pool resources together in support of open-source. VEXXHOST is looking forward to supporting the Ceph Foundation’s dynamic community of contributors, users, and global companies that work relentlessly to provide a forum for community stakeholders to continue their development, encourage participation and contribute to findings. 

As members of the Linux Foundation since December 2018, VEXXHOST is passionate about supporting and giving back to the open-source community. They are proud upstream contributors to many open source projects and donate infrastructure to the OpenStack Foundation and community. They believe that contributing to open-source creates better software.

“We are thrilled to have VEXXHOST joining the Ceph Foundation, bringing their expertise to the community to help support the project’s build and CI infrastructure, » said founder and architect of Ceph, Sage Weil. As general members of the Ceph Foundation, VEXXHOST will help to elect a representative who will contribute to building and approving annual budgets in support of the Ceph project, establishing committees to address the current needs of the project and meet regularly to discuss the status of the Ceph project. This contribution helps to provide a neutral home for the open-source community to collaborate together. 

 VEXXHOST uses Ceph for its bare-metal Kubernetes clusters, which happens to be the foundation of every deployment that they do. They also use Ceph for storage in both their public and private cloud solutions. Ceph is the preferred storage solution for all its public clouds in all of its regions because of its efficiency, agility, and flexible scalability.

Chief Executive Officer of VEXXHOST, Mohammed Naser, said “We’ve been using Ceph for so long and on so many use cases. It’s very exciting to have the opportunity to finally be giving back to the project and the foundation.” VEXXHOST is currently running the latest version of Nautilus and users are now able to leverage the latest features and benefits of Ceph’s newest release. 

Ultimately, the Ceph Foundation strives to provide a neutral home for the community to collaborate, grow and contribute to open-source. That is something that VEXXHOST has been committed to encouraging and enriching since it began in 2006 and will continue to work towards as new members of the Ceph Foundation. 

About VEXXHOST

Founded in 2006, VEXXHOST Inc. is a Canadian cloud computing provider offering OpenStack powered public cloud, private cloud and consulting to customers, from small businesses to governments, from over 150 different countries. VEXXHOST Inc. delivers a high level of expertise to help clients optimize cloud infrastructure so they can focus on their core competencies. For more information, visit https://vexxhost.com or follow @vexxhost on Twitter.

VEXXHOST is excited to announce the launch of our fully managed Zuul solution, one of the first to reach the market. This offering is available not only to VEXXHOST’s public and private cloud users but also to any organization that wants to take advantage of this effective project gating, CI tool through consuming this software-as-a-service offering.

With the development and testing of builds continuing to grow not only in complexity but also in scale, the need for improved, efficient management of approvals and merges has evolved as well. This is where Zuul software truly shines as a DevOps tool.

Zuul was designed to resolve a common struggle faced by both the development and operations teams by delivering a solution for the automatic merging, building and testing of any new changes being made to a project, producing an automated gated workflow pipeline. This means that new or changed code is prevented from making it into production without passing the unit integration tests designed and defined by the project keeper.

Furthermore, Zuul also simplifies the code review process for managers. Considering that projects across departments and teams consist of not only many moving parts, but can also require aspects and features of each other, the dependency testing delivered by Zuul empowers users to test across different projects all while managers are assured that each branch and commit work together cohesively before being merged.

« The OpenStack community created Zuul to solve a big problem: stop merging broken code in a massive, global project where thousands of developers made 65,000 commits in 2018, around the clock. OpenStack is one of the three largest open source projects on the planet, and Zuul makes it possible to ship code that works. The power of Zuul is now being used by dev teams in industries including automakers, e-commerce, cloud providers, and FinTech. The managed, commercial offering launched today by VEXXHOST brings that power to a more diverse set of users and projects of all sizes.”

Another benefit of Zuul lies in the extensive integration options that it offers. Both GitHub and Gerrit interface with Zuul as source code managers while support is available for OpenStack, Kubernetes, AWS and OpenShift. The key advantages of these wide-ranging integrations are twofold. Firstly, the user is able to enjoy a continuous, straightforward experience as it remains unchanged from their original one. And secondly, it enables organizations to take advantage of and further their multi-cloud strategy, as VEXXHOST is fully equipped and well versed in delivering fully managed, vendor agnostic, OpenStack solutions.

“As a company whose entire cloud infrastructure is powered by OpenStack, we’re extremely excited to be adding support for the OpenStack Foundation project, Zuul, to our growing list of offerings,” said Mohammed Naser, VEXXHOST CEO. “Our fully managed Zuul solution is one the first of its kind and having been avid users and supporters of this software for quite some time, VEXXHOST truly felt that there was not only a need for this Software-as-a-Service solution but a strong case for Zuul as the most effective and efficient gatekeeping software.”

However, Zuul can present a challenge for organizations looking to handle the installation and management process internally. This is where VEXXHOST’s fully managed Zuul solution comes in as it enables users to consume Zuul as a service while VEXXHOST takes care of the infrastructure layer underneath as well as provides constant monitoring and upgrades. VEXXHOST’s fully managed Zuul solution also makes use of approved software since this project has been tested directly against our cloud to ensure its efficient and effective functionality. 

Additionally, through this fully managed Zuul solution, users benefit from VEXXHOST’s extensive experience. Not only is VEXXHOST familiar with Zuul as it is used internally for our continuous integration, but we are also able to leverage our experience in managing Canada’s largest OpenStack public cloud, in addition to many private clouds, and make use of our extensive expertise in the areas of OpenStack Foundation projects and OpenStack projects – ranging from upgrades to consulting.

About VEXXHOST Inc. 

Founded in 2006, VEXXHOST Inc. is a Canadian cloud computing provider offering OpenStack powered public cloud, private cloud and consulting to customers, from small businesses to governments, from over 150 different countries. VEXXHOST Inc. delivers a high level of expertise to help clients optimize cloud infrastructure so they can focus on their core competencies. For more information, visit https://vexxhost.com or follow @vexxhost on Twitter.

VEXXHOST is excited to announce that we have reduced our pricing for both our solid-state drive storage and hard disk drive storage!

For our solid-state drive storage, users will benefit from a $0.35 price drop as it is now only $0.15 per gigabyte, per month. While our hard disk drive storage has dropped down from $0.12 to $0.02 per gigabyte, per month delivering another substantial saving to our users.

With this significant reduction in price, each of our users will be able to see the difference effective immediately, as well as on their next billing cycle. VEXXHOST is committed to continuously bettering our service while remaining competitively priced, ensuring that our users reap the benefits.

For more information on our pricing, you can visit our pricing page!

VEXXHOST is thrilled to announce that the much sought-after service of OpenStack Upgrades is now available within our offering. VEXXHOST’s OpenStack Upgrades service is available to companies who have an existing private cloud that is running an older release, delivering to users an updated OpenStack infrastructure running the latest release, Stein. As the OpenStack Community releases its software every six months or so, the ability to run their latest release is invaluable.

Why Upgrades Matter

Organizations that aren’t up to date with their OpenStack software can face some significant challenges. For example, through the Rocky release, users were given the ability to recover machines after power faults, access Fast Forward Upgrades, manage BIOS settings, and implement improved security within key projects. Not only are they unable to take advantage of these new features and improve upon their existing infrastructure, but they run the risk of their release becoming outdated and deprecated, leaving them to create or hire a support team to maintain it.

« VEXXHOST is a recognized member of our open source community, » said Thierry Carrez, vice president of Engineering for the OpenStack Foundation and elected member of the OpenStack Technical Committee. « Beyond providing project infrastructure resources, they contributed back their experience, leadership, and code. This upstream investment allows them to anticipate new releases, upgrade early, and often make new versions of OpenStack available to their customers on release day. Upgrading complex infrastructure early and often to benefit from the latest features remains a challenge. We are thrilled that today, VEXXHOST is making its OpenStack upgrade expertise available to any cloud operator who needs it. »

VEXXHOST’s public and private clouds have not only remained up to date with each OpenStack release but have been running the upgrades on the same day that they are launched by OpenStack. For example, when Stein was released by the OpenStack Community on April 10th, we were offering this 19th upgrade to our clients as well. It is through this hands-on approach and significant experience that we’re able to help our users upgrade each release.

How This Benefits Our Users

“VEXXHOST is passionate about delivering the best to our users, and being able to guide and support them not only in the successful upgrade of their OpenStack software but also in their goal of getting the most out its features in regards to their use cases.” Says Mohammed Naser, VEXXHOST CEO.

Through the OpenStack Upgrades offering, users benefit from our extensive OpenStack expertise and commitment to continuous upgrades. We not only ensure that our users can leverage the latest and greatest OpenStack releases, but also that these updates are done in a way that our users don’t incur any complications. This is achieved through the employment of OpenStack’s Tempest, a project developed specifically to validate deployments.

VEXXHOST has offered this service to our users in the past through our consultation offering, however, to make it easier for users to take advantage of it, we have broken out OpenStack Upgrades into its own simplified solution. Should you or your company be interested in learning more about the advantages of VEXXHOST’s OpenStack Upgrades offering, simply visit the consulting section of our website or contact us to get the conversation started.

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