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Nouvelles et annonces de VEXXHOST
One of the most recent updates that we have made to our system is the addition of support for booting instances from UEFI, based on a customer request. Now, the difference between UEFI and the original BIOS isn’t always common knowledge, so we’re getting into the basics and giving you a very good reason as to why this update may affect you.
What is UEFI?
To get familiar with UEFI, which stands for User Extensible Firmware Interface, it helps to first know it’s predecessor: BIOS. Both of these interfaces work as the in-between to connecting a computer’s firmware to its respective operating system. However, BIOS, because it has been around from the very beginning, stills functions in 16-bit mode, meaning that the extent of code that is able to be read and executed from the firmware ROM is quite constricted.
UEFI, on the other hand, serves the same purpose as BIOS but delivers through fresh features and possesses advantages that are outside of the scope of traditional BIOS, making it the natural replacement in the future.
The Benefits of UEFI
There are numerous advantages that differentiate UEFI from BIOS. One of the most significant being that UEFI can boot up the operating system directly as opposed to the self-test process employed by the BIOS, enabling faster booting. This is possible through the UEFI housing all the startup and initialization information within a .efi file. This particular file is kept in an EFI System Partition, abbreviated as ESP, that also contains the boot loader programs required by the operating system that is installed on the computer.
Another benefit to UEFI is that, whereas with the legacy BIOS users were unable to use large drives, they are now able to handle drives larger than 2 TB. Additionally, UEFI features a more user-friendly graphical interface and as well as much more satisfying and fuller setup menus than BIOS.
Furthermore, UEFI is capable of simplifying remote troubleshooting and configuration through its proficient support of network functioning within the firmware itself. There is also the support provided by UEFI for a secure startup, where the operating system’s validity can be reviewed and verified as a means of protecting against malware affecting the startup process.
Why You Should Get Excited
Now, the above benefits alone are reason enough to get excited about UEFI, however, VEXXHOST hasn’t only made it available to our own users. Since we make use of OpenStack technology and OpenStack supports both BIOS and UEFI, our team of engineers actually fixed this in upstream, thereby making it available to any and all OpenStack-Ansible users!
Open source technology doesn’t have to be scary, start taking advantage of everything OpenStack has to offer today and leverage the VEXXHOST team’s expertise through our consulting offering.
VEXXHOST is excited to announce the revamp of our public cloud billing model! We’re always looking for ways to improve our offerings and deliver on the needs of our clients. That’s why we have recently made the switch from hourly billing to per minute billing for our public cloud clients.
This update not only enables VEXXHOST to deliver increasingly competitive pricing but also provides other significant benefits to our users.
User Benefits
The primary benefit to our public cloud users comes is the form of reduced costs. For those whose workloads are static and planned, a change in price may not be immediate, however, for those whose workloads are less predictable and fluctuate, the cost savings will be more noticeable. This is because VEXXHOST’s public cloud users are now paying more specifically for the resources they need only when in use. For example, if a resource is running for 20 minutes, that is the amount the user will be charged for as opposed to a full hour.
Additionally, VEXXHOST’s public cloud users will be able to have better control over their costs and instance configuration. Users can further improve their costs by harnessing more compute power by way of increasing the number of instances they use for the jobs they run.
This billing update also provides a safety net to our users in cases where they may have accidentally spun up more machines than intended. In an hourly billing situation, should a client input 300 instead of 30 into their code, their spend could have a detrimental impact. With per minute billing, however, users have the opportunity to reign in the outcome and pay a minute per instance instead.
As an experienced cloud computing provider, VEXXHOST knows the importance of bringing on new and beneficial features without playing favourites between solutions. If your company is looking for an extensive and competitively priced public cloud offering, you can sign up for a free trial of our offering today!
The VEXXHOST team is excited to announce that we have tested and deployed IPv6 on our Santa Clara region public cloud infrastructure, officially resulting in all of our regions running IPv6. Now, each of VEXXHOST’s servers across our entire infrastructure, through the use of stateless auto-configuration, is automatically designated with an IPv6 address.
IPv6 enables each individual user to have an many IPs as the entirety of the internet as opposed to each individual having only a singular IP address. This delivers on VEXXHOST’s differentiators as many cloud providers only offer IPv4, whereas when a user sets up a virtual machine with VEXXHOST, we can offer both IPv6 and IPv4 in simplified ways.
What this means is that there is nothing manually required from users in regards to the servers as they will have an existing pre-configured IPv6 address. This address can also be found within each users control panel, located under the server overview.
Through this update that consolidates all of our public cloud regions to be IPv6 compliant, our users can not only benefit on the individual level, but they will also be able to offer their own services via IPv6 as well, resulting in its accelerated adoption worldwide.
If you or your company are interested in VEXXHOST’s cloud computing offering, you can sign up for a free trial today using OpenStack’s Passport program. For any questions you may have regarding this update or VEXXHOST’s complete solution, you can also contact us!
The VEXXHOST team is thrilled to announce that we are currently running Stein, OpenStack’s latest and 19th official release. Last year, we were the first company to have OpenStack’s Rocky release up and running, impressively deploying it on the same day it was launched. VEXXHOST is proud to say that this release is no different, with this announcement being made alongside that of Stein’s official release from The OpenStack Foundation.
An immediate advantage of this update is that we’re able to offer each of our clients extremely high stability, while another key benefit for our users is the availability of the latest version of Kubernetes, version 1.14, as well as the increased speed with which users can deploy a cluster.
“The VEXXHOST Team is excited to once again be able to deliver an OpenStack update in tandem with its release.” Said VEXXHOST CEO, Mohammed Naser, “This is what our clients have come to expect from us and holding ourselves to such high standards is just one of VEXXHOST’s many tried and true differentiators.”
This upgrade, executed by our engineers, was carried out in such a smooth manner on both public and private clouds that clients were completely undisturbed, enjoying a seamless transition. As a result, the VEXXHOST team is the first to have a production-ready private cloud running Stein.
Furthermore, we’re ecstatic to have been deeply involved in the development of OpenStack’s Stein release and are proud to have contributed to making this upgrade possible through working with upstream. This not only shows our adeptness and level of expertise in OpenStack software but also demonstrates how we have become the strong and trusted partner that our clients rely on.
If you or your company is ready to explore the new features of Stein or looking to step into OpenStack technology for the first time, simply sign up to VEXXHOST’s OpenStack Passport Program for a free trial today.
VEXXHOST has announced the latest update to their cloud computing offering, introducing Kubernetes Enablement as a part of their solution. This offering enables businesses with existing OpenStack private clouds to integrate and consume Kubernetes as a fully managed solution. VEXXHOST previously announced that they had received certification from the CNCF for their Kubernetes and this Kubernetes Enablement offering was developed to make their Certified Kubernetes service increasingly accessible to their cloud users.
“We’re always excited to see Certified Kubernetes companies like VEXXHOST make their Kubernetes services increasingly available to their cloud users. It really speaks to the value and importance of the CNCF certification programs,” said Dan Kohn, Executive Director, Cloud Native Computing Foundation.
VEXXHOST’s Certified Kubernetes have been available to their public cloud users since 2017, resulting in quick, on-demand access to Certified Kubernetes. This Kubernetes Enablement offering will effectively act as an extension to the initial service at the private cloud level. VEXXHOST’s offering manages to relieve the stress associated with the deployment of Kubernetes and reduce the extent of the undertaking for VEXXHOST’s clients by being a fully managed service.
Clients benefit from access to VEXXHOST’s OpenStack engineers and their support 24/7 as well as the total monitoring of the service every five minutes. VEXXHOST also provides incident management and a strong commitment to ensuring that all of their services and solutions are deploying the most recent releases.
This offering delivers to private cloud users the software and high-level expertise they require as a part of the successful deployment and management of their Kubernetes clusters. Powered by OpenStack’s container project, Magnum, VEXXHOST’s private cloud provides users with a software layer that is compatible with both bare metal and virtual machines.
“VEXXHOST always strives to deliver the best that cloud computing has to offer.” Said Mohammed Naser, VEXXHOST CEO. “That’s why we felt it was important to make the latest version of Kubernetes, version 1.14, available to our clients regardless of the version of their OpenStack infrastructure.”
VEXXHOST’s Kubernetes Enablement offering delivers to users secure container clusters through enhanced isolation and upgraded performance due to faster deployment times and simplified extensive service integrations.
Should your organization be interested or want to take advantage of the scalability, orchestration and velocity that VEXXHOST’s Kubernetes Enablement has to offer, contact VEXXHOST today and get started on the road to modernized API efficiency.
VEXXHOST is excited to announce a revamp of its current private cloud offering. The company has taken it upon themselves to expand their original solution in order to better serve users, providing them with an all-encompassing, fully managed, flexible, and customizable solution.
When selecting a cloud provider it’s important to take into account not just current needs but any potential future needs as well. By doing so, the need to change providers won’t be influenced by their limitations or by having outgrown their offering. This update to VEXXHOST’s private cloud offering was made with that particular user struggle in mind, whether you’re a first-time buyer or coming from another vendor.
“One of the main features that will be made available to new and existing users is the ability to have virtual machines, bare-metal and containers operating all on the same environment. This addition is something VEXXHOST is very proud of as it not only addresses some of the roadblocks users face in finding a suitable provider, but also sets us apart from most other vendors,” says CEO, Mohammed Naser.
Users will also benefit from VEXXHOST’s multiple deployment models, where they can provide a secure, hosted private cloud, take care of setting up your private cloud on-premise, or even offer a hybrid cloud to account for and support any of your fluctuating workloads.
Another feature of VEXXHOST’s updated private cloud is that it will provide users access to multiple architecture options, be it Intel or Arm based, as well as access to enterprise-grade GPUs and customized hardware specifications. In addition, one of the many benefits of VEXXHOST using OpenStack is that all of the drivers are readily available for any of the existing hardware you may be using, ensuring that none of that investment goes to waste. Moreover, with their offering being based on open-source infrastructure, they’re able to not only maintain competitive pricing but also ensure that their solutions are cost-effective.
« Making the consumption of advanced, open infrastructure easier is important for application developers who want to focus on delivering value further up the stack,” said Heidi Bretz, Director of Worldwide Business Development and Alliances for the OpenStack Foundation. “VEXXHOST is continually expanding the capabilities of its service offerings to deliver the latest set of features, and their team’s enthusiastic engagement with the open infrastructure community sets an example for how service providers can make products powered by open source technologies deliver real value for end users. »
One of the latest additions to VEXXHOST’s offering is Certified Kubernetes. VEXXHOST supports the deployment of Kubernetes through the use of OpenStack’s Magnum project and received certification by the CNCF in early December of 2018. A key feature of their improved private cloud is that all upgrades to the latest OpenStack releases and any project updates are included in their service.
“We’re always happy to see CNCF members, like VEXXHOST, be so passionate about delivering improved cloud native experiences for end users. This commitment to the community and drive for innovation are integral to our growing ecosystem,” said Dan Kohn, executive director of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.
With VEXXHOST’s revamped private cloud offering, users can also take advantage of their OpenStack consulting services. This includes determining what your needs are and what OpenStack projects best fit into your overall strategy. As an extension of this service, VEXXHOST can also help you design a cloud that functions specifically for your use cases. For example, VEXXHOST can deploy high-performance CPUs for CI workloads, or large memory for big data workloads.
VEXXHOST also includes full, actionable monitoring with their updated private cloud. This means that every 5 minutes a report is created, verifying the functionality of your system. However, VEXXHOST believes in taking preventative measures as well and have built everything to be able to handle failures such as controller failures, and network failures. As a part of this commitment to excellent customer service, 24/7 support is now included as a part of their full monitoring. Therefore, in the case of any issues or failures, one of VEXXHOST’s engineers will be immediately assigned to your case.
As a user and contributor to open source infrastructure, VEXXHOST knows how critical it is to their users to refrain from encountering any significant downtime. That’s why, with the upgrading of their private cloud offering, they wanted to make use of live migrations which allows them to perform any necessary maintenance without the downtime. Additionally, all of VEXXHOST’s operational tools and processes are built to support high availability, based on the fact that there is a minimum of three controllers.
With the roll-out of this upgraded private cloud offering, VEXXHOST is able to offer an all-encompassing option to current and future users that will not only ease their selection process but give them peace of mind. With this private cloud offering, regardless of how much their needs grow, they can rest easy knowing that with VEXXHOST, they’re still covered. To learn more, visit our Private Cloud page.
About VEXXHOST Inc.
Founded in 2006, VEXXHOST Inc. is a Canadian cloud computing provider offering OpenStack public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud and consulting solutions 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.
VEXXHOST is a firm believer in continuous improvement as well as investing in the open source community. As such, there are a handful of exciting announcements surrounding the company’s participation with prominent and significant foundations, in addition to a substantial update on the product offering.
Firstly, VEXXHOST is proud to be a Sponsor of Kubecon North America 2018. Events like Kubecon give open source communities access to leading experts and contributors in the tech arena, an opportunity that goes hand in hand with the community’s overarching goal of distributing and sharing knowledge for the reason of technological advancement. You can find VEXXHOST in booth number S73.
VEXXHOST was also recently given the opportunity to become Silver members of both The Linux Foundation and their subsidiary, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). These incredible foundations continue to play integral roles within the open source community and VEXXHOST is honoured to join and contribute to this journey.
Which leads to VEXXHOST’s next exciting announcement. VEXXHOST’s Kubernetes-as-a-service offering which runs on OpenStack’s Magnum container service has received certification by the CNCF.
“To be able to offer Certified Kubernetes is a significant achievement and means that VEXXHOST has met the high standards and required qualifications of the CNCF. We’re proud to be able to offer expertise and services to our clients that are backed by organizations of their quality.” Says VEXXHOST CEO, Mohammed Naser.
The purpose of this certification is to aid businesses when it comes to selecting the right vendor for their specific operational and production needs. When locating a service provider, it can be easy for companies to feel overwhelmed with information without knowing what it means, or even feel unsure as to what the full extent of their needs are. However, service providers who are awarded the Certified Kubernetes classification are deemed by the CNFC to not only be current and skilled in the deployment of Kubernetes-as-a-service, but also to be trustworthy partners capable of delivering support tailored to each companies needs.
All in all, VEXXHOST is thrilled to be supporting such substantial open source community organizations like The Linux Foundation, the CNCF, and events like Kubecon. VEXXHOST is also excited to be able to offer its knowledge of Kubernetes deployments to its clients along with the security of knowing they are working with a Certified Kubernetes partner.
About VEXXHOST Inc.
Founded in 2006, VEXXHOST Inc. is a Canadian cloud computing provider offering OpenStack public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud and consulting solutions 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.
VEXXHOST announced the launch of its latest cloud offering: enterprise-grade GPU instances on OpenStack® based public, private and hybrid cloud. The Canadian cloud provider is proud to be at the forefront of its industry with this latest addition to their evolving offering.
The new GPU offering will include new instance types and flavours to fit the market demand for high-performance cloud computing. The new instance types will include up to 245,760 GB of RAM. VEXXHOST new GPU instances use enterprise-grade NVIDIA Tesla K80 accelerators. Each GPU provides 12 GiB of memory (accessible via 240 GB/second of memory bandwidth), and 2,496 parallel processing cores. In order to deliver unparalleled speed, and differentiate itself as an industry leader, the hardware also includes PCI Express NVMe SSD local storage making this already powerful solution, incredibly fast and performant. Another important note is that the company does not oversell GPU and CPU within those instances. GPUs and CPUs are fully dedicated. The new instance types are powered by OpenStack’s latest release, Rocky.
“The whole point of software-defined infrastructure is to enable rapid evolution to meet the demands of new cloud workloads, and VEXXHOST’s GPU-enabled OpenStack Cloud is a perfect example of this trend in action” Mark Collier, COO, OpenStack Foundation.
Which workloads benefit from GPU instances?
The new instance type will empower users working with compute-intensive and high-performance computing (HPC) application to increase productivity and reduce costs. With datasets increasing at high speeds in technology sectors like AI, machine learning, blockchain and big data, enterprises can benefit greatly from powerful GPU cloud instances.
Enterprises in industries who use supercomputers stand to benefit most from GPU instances. Through the increased level of performance offered by GPUs, where data can be massively parallel processed, companies have the opportunity to lower their infrastructure costs as the time required to process data is dramatically reduced. The ability to process more data, quicker is highly beneficial for those in the Blockchain and big data industries, where time is one of their most valuable assets. GPUs also offer advantages where AI and machine learning is concerned as they permit the stored data to be accessed quickly, whenever necessary.
“An expansion of this nature is in high-demand and VEXXHOST is thrilled to be providing the most relevant and progressive options to its client base,” stated VEXXHOST CEO, Mohammed Naser.
Introductory Pricing
For a limited time, VEXXHOST is offering a 10% discount on GPU instances on its public cloud. To learn more or to sign up, visit VEXXHOST cloud servers page.
About VEXXHOST Inc.
Founded in 2006, VEXXHOST Inc. is a Canadian cloud computing provider offering OpenStack public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud and consulting solutions 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.
VEXXHOST, in collaboration with Arm, announced plans to offer commercially available Arm®-based virtual machines with OpenStack® API access. This architecture, which is exclusively offered at VEXXHOST, allows the Canadian cloud provider to give users access to virtualized 64-bit Arm hardware using existing OpenStack based public, private, and hybrid clouds.
The VEXXHOST solution eliminates the complexity of setting up Arm infrastructure for use with OpenStack. Developers building for Arm now have access to highly performant, readily available virtual machines. Additionally, it will be quicker and easier for open source projects to build and test for multi-architecture support.
“The OpenStack APIs have emerged as a standard, and you can see this in the demand for support of new architectures,” said Mark Collier, COO, the OpenStack Foundation. “By offering a commercially supported OpenStack public cloud on Arm, VEXXHOST is meeting that demand and accelerating the growth of OpenStack software worldwide.”
The Canadian cloud provider believes this integration is an essential step in building a multi architectural ecosystem and showcases the diversity of the architectures that OpenStack supports. As an existing OpenStack infrastructure donor, VEXXHOST is pleased to provide Arm-based infrastructure to the OpenStack community further strengthening support for the Arm architecture.
“We could see the benefit of offering a multi-architecture platform which made the decision to integrate 64-bit chips into our infrastructure an easy one. We are grateful to have worked with Arm to make this possible and to offer this alternative to clients with use cases that will benefit from it,” said Mohammed Naser, CEO of VEXXHOST.
VEXXHOST users benefit from the reduced costs associated with the new Arm-based virtual machines. The Arm architecture consumes less power, requires less cooling and is well supported by a wide variety of open source software that reduces licensing fees, VEXXHOST passes on the savings to its clients and offers competitive pricing. Additionally, integrating servers running 64-bit Arm-based chips into their OpenStack public cloud platform results in a flexible and on-demand solution for users. Public cloud users are now able to provision hourly, on-demand instances which eliminate the capital expenditures attached to acquiring hardware. Users simply pay for the hours of usage they have accumulated.
“Arm is committed to enabling developers with highly performant and efficient technologies,” said Mohamed Awad, vice president of marketing, Infrastructure Line of Business, Arm. “The collaboration with VEXXHOST is a significant step forward in delivering best-in-class architectures for OpenStack and further strengthens support for Arm-based solutions across the ecosystem.”
Starting today, users can choose between launching instances using the existing Intel x86 architecture or the new Arm-powered virtual machines, both running the latest OpenStack Queens release and very soon to be Rocky.
To celebrate, users can now sign up and take advantage of a limited time 15% discount offered for virtual machines based on Arm technology. Get more information about public cloud.
About VEXXHOST Inc.
Founded in 2006, VEXXHOST Inc. is a Canadian cloud computing provider offering OpenStack public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud and consulting solutions 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.
VEXXHOST, a leading OpenStack® infrastructure-as-a-service provider, announced today the launch of its new OpenStack consulting service. This service is aimed to provide companies with the assistance and guidance needed to get any OpenStack project up and running smoothly.
VEXXHOST consultants and engineers have been running the company’s current line of services, OpenStack based public, private and hybrid clouds, for over six years. The operational experience gained from running these infrastructures is at the core of the company’s new consulting service. VEXXHOST consultants can offer guidance in implementing OpenStack projects such as compute, network, object or block storage, orchestration, load balancing, big data, file sharing, cloud images and container services as these services are all currently offered on the VEXXHOST suite of cloud services.
VEXXHOST’s new OpenStack consulting service can also provide help to companies looking to deploy a new OpenStack environment, which can be a very overwhelming project. VEXXHOST’s consultants can help by understanding the needs and requirements of the organization and advising on best practices to reduce both time and risk. VEXXHOST’s consultants can also assist with upgrading an existing OpenStack infrastructure to newer releases.
“There is no doubt that an OpenStack infrastructure can provide benefits to many companies, though we have noticed that the complexity of the software has made some organizations wary of it. Our goal with this service is to provide consulting to help organizations leverage OpenStack without the complexities that come with it,” says Mohammed Naser, CEO of VEXXHOST and a longtime OpenStack contributor. “We are excited to officially have consulting as part of our OpenStack solution lineup, something which we have provided in the past directly for large enterprise customers.”
« The OpenStack vendor community continues to grow, evolve and mature. That rich ecosystem includes services that help make OpenStack faster to deploy, easier to consume and tailored to the unique demands of specific industries and workloads. Vexxhost has been an important participant in the OpenStack project, and the addition of services to their lineup will only expand the value and insights they can bring back to the community at large. » Heidi Bretz, Director of Business Development at OpenStack.
VEXXHOST is currently offering a free initial 30-minute consultation. For more information or to request a quote, please visit https://vexxhost.com/openstack-consultation/
About VEXXHOST Inc.
Founded in 2006, VEXXHOST Inc. is a Canadian cloud computing provider offering OpenStack public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud and consulting solutions 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.
