5 ms·

Brightbox release new cloud service pricing

26 points by wlll 15y ago

thehodge 15y ago
About time :), Have been testing since the alpha and am really happy with the service
- strowger 15y ago
  perhaps they ran out of gravy
alexro 15y ago
What do they offer that AWS doesn't? They don't look like cheap either
- wlll 15y ago
  Better reliability wouldn't be hard, and the CLI looks pretty good.
  - asharp 15y ago
    Amazon has some pretty damn amazing uptime overall. Given the number of regions that are sitting at 100% uptime (like say, all of s3) it's hard to argue that they have uptime problems. They really do need to work on getting ebs to cold boot properly though. It seems to have a habit of biting them. (But there's a good chance that anybody else at that sort of scale would have the same sort of issues)
- rahoulb 15y ago
  No lock-in - easy to take your images and use them elsewhere.
  - ridruejo 15y ago
    You can also take your AWS images and run them on Eucalyptus. Amazon also has some initial support for exporting to VMWare. In any case, there will always be a certain degree of lock-in, but it should not be at the image level. You can always use something like http://bitnami.org http://bitnami.org (disclaimer, I am the author :) that allows you to share the same environment locally, as a VM or as an AMI
  - oldpatricka 15y ago
    In what sense is there less lock in with Brightbox than with EC2? I've run EC2 images on other IaaS clouds, and it's easy to pull an image out with ec2-download-bundle.
    - rahoulb 15y ago
      Oh. When I tried (admittedly a while ago) I couldn't get it working elsewhere and found a few others who had the same problem.
- petercooper 15y ago
  I find it hard to put into words but something about their service (which I've been on the beta of) feels more "direct" than AWS. I like and use AWS (EC2 and S3) but it feels like swimming in (tasty) treacle with layer upon layer of abstraction and minor delays (how long to boot an instance sometimes..?) Brightbox has its own downsides but there's a certain immediacy and directness to it that I find hard to explain here.
- comice 15y ago
  Few things: Persistent local storage (hardware raid6 15k rpm disks). Higher performance - fast hardware and access to more cores to burst to. We also use KVM, which is substantially faster than Xen (particularly in 64bit mode). Fast server creation - servers usually built and booted within 30 seconds. You can map Cloud IPs directly to Load Balancers (and more mapping options coming soon!) And as we use KVM, we already support pretty much any OS and any kernel, without any fiddling. FreeBSD works a treat, with no special support required. And we've got loads of ace stuff in the pipeline too, so more to come! Also, all Brightbox customers are eligible for free hugs. We're just plain nicer ;) (full disclosure: I'm a Brightbox bod, obviously!)
asharp 15y ago
Interesting offering, looks damn cool ^_^. There are a few interesting questions raised, though. Are you guys using local disks or SAN? Are you guys using Eucalyptus? Also, it's interesting that you charge less for incoming data then outgoing. I understand that standard asym links are cheaper upload then download, due to them being basically "slack" cap from Adsl tails/etc. Why is your outbound data more expensive then? How are you securing KVM? (assuming somebody from there is around, or that anybody else would have answers....)
- jeremyjarvis 15y ago
  > Are you guys using local disks or SAN? No SANs, anywhere! :) > Are you guys using Eucalyptus? It's our own stack. Eucalyptus afaik doesn't handle zones as geographically distinct datacentres and, when we looked at it a long time ago, had some pretty worrying SPOFs. > Why is your outbound data more expensive then? Transit is symmetrical, and incoming bandwidth is less utilised compared to outgoing so we charge less for it. > How are you securing KVM? In what sense? (Co-founder at Brightbox)
  - asharp 15y ago
    > No Sans Ephemeral disks? Or persistent local? > Our own stack Very cool ^_^ How do you deal with geographic zones? Are they silod? > Bandwidth Ok, makes perfect sense. Thanks. > Securing KVM Do you use cfgroups/selinux to deal with compromise of a kvm domain? I've seen quite a few vulnerabilities coming out on the debian/etc. security mailing lists.
    - comice 15y ago
      > Ephemeral disks? Or persistent local? Persistent local disks (hardware raid6 15k rpm). More storage options on the roadmap too. > Very cool ^_^ How do you deal with geographic zones? Are they silod? Our zones are different datacenters in different buildings, with completely different power supplies, UPSes and backup generators. > Do you use cfgroups/selinux to deal with compromise of a kvm domain? cgroups currently, selinux in development. (full disclosure: I'm a Brightbox bod too!)

26 points by wlll 15y ago

thehodge 15y ago

About time :), Have been testing since the alpha and am really happy with the service

strowger 15y ago
perhaps they ran out of gravy

alexro 15y ago

What do they offer that AWS doesn't? They don't look like cheap either

wlll 15y ago
Better reliability wouldn't be hard, and the CLI looks pretty good.
- asharp 15y ago
  Amazon has some pretty damn amazing uptime overall. Given the number of regions that are sitting at 100% uptime (like say, all of s3) it's hard to argue that they have uptime problems. They really do need to work on getting ebs to cold boot properly though. It seems to have a habit of biting them. (But there's a good chance that anybody else at that sort of scale would have the same sort of issues)
rahoulb 15y ago
No lock-in - easy to take your images and use them elsewhere.
- ridruejo 15y ago
  You can also take your AWS images and run them on Eucalyptus. Amazon also has some initial support for exporting to VMWare. In any case, there will always be a certain degree of lock-in, but it should not be at the image level. You can always use something like http://bitnami.org http://bitnami.org (disclaimer, I am the author :) that allows you to share the same environment locally, as a VM or as an AMI
- oldpatricka 15y ago
  In what sense is there less lock in with Brightbox than with EC2? I've run EC2 images on other IaaS clouds, and it's easy to pull an image out with ec2-download-bundle.
  - rahoulb 15y ago
    Oh. When I tried (admittedly a while ago) I couldn't get it working elsewhere and found a few others who had the same problem.
petercooper 15y ago
I find it hard to put into words but something about their service (which I've been on the beta of) feels more "direct" than AWS. I like and use AWS (EC2 and S3) but it feels like swimming in (tasty) treacle with layer upon layer of abstraction and minor delays (how long to boot an instance sometimes..?) Brightbox has its own downsides but there's a certain immediacy and directness to it that I find hard to explain here.
comice 15y ago
Few things: Persistent local storage (hardware raid6 15k rpm disks). Higher performance - fast hardware and access to more cores to burst to. We also use KVM, which is substantially faster than Xen (particularly in 64bit mode). Fast server creation - servers usually built and booted within 30 seconds. You can map Cloud IPs directly to Load Balancers (and more mapping options coming soon!) And as we use KVM, we already support pretty much any OS and any kernel, without any fiddling. FreeBSD works a treat, with no special support required. And we've got loads of ace stuff in the pipeline too, so more to come! Also, all Brightbox customers are eligible for free hugs. We're just plain nicer ;) (full disclosure: I'm a Brightbox bod, obviously!)

asharp 15y ago

Interesting offering, looks damn cool ^_^. There are a few interesting questions raised, though. Are you guys using local disks or SAN? Are you guys using Eucalyptus? Also, it's interesting that you charge less for incoming data then outgoing. I understand that standard asym links are cheaper upload then download, due to them being basically "slack" cap from Adsl tails/etc. Why is your outbound data more expensive then? How are you securing KVM? (assuming somebody from there is around, or that anybody else would have answers....)

jeremyjarvis 15y ago
> Are you guys using local disks or SAN? No SANs, anywhere! :) > Are you guys using Eucalyptus? It's our own stack. Eucalyptus afaik doesn't handle zones as geographically distinct datacentres and, when we looked at it a long time ago, had some pretty worrying SPOFs. > Why is your outbound data more expensive then? Transit is symmetrical, and incoming bandwidth is less utilised compared to outgoing so we charge less for it. > How are you securing KVM? In what sense? (Co-founder at Brightbox)
- asharp 15y ago
  > No Sans Ephemeral disks? Or persistent local? > Our own stack Very cool ^_^ How do you deal with geographic zones? Are they silod? > Bandwidth Ok, makes perfect sense. Thanks. > Securing KVM Do you use cfgroups/selinux to deal with compromise of a kvm domain? I've seen quite a few vulnerabilities coming out on the debian/etc. security mailing lists.
  - comice 15y ago
    > Ephemeral disks? Or persistent local? Persistent local disks (hardware raid6 15k rpm). More storage options on the roadmap too. > Very cool ^_^ How do you deal with geographic zones? Are they silod? Our zones are different datacenters in different buildings, with completely different power supplies, UPSes and backup generators. > Do you use cfgroups/selinux to deal with compromise of a kvm domain? cgroups currently, selinux in development. (full disclosure: I'm a Brightbox bod too!)