XERQ

You're probably right, it was actually Micron's claim that we used (end of first paragraph: http://www.micron.com/products/solid-state-storage/enterpris...).

They're still ridiculously fast. Once we can justify the expense, I would love to get Fusion-IO's or the Micron P320h's on our platform.

Regarding Ubuntu, we're just using the vanilla Ubuntu 12.04 server distribution for our image templates. Of course, if people wanted OpenStack we would support it and possibly create another template for easy provisioning.

We built and added Ubuntu 12.04 to our provisioning system for cloud servers at SSD Nodes (http://www.ssdnodes.com). It boots very quickly on our hypervisors at just 5-10 seconds.

/plug

I don't mind constructive feedback, it helps us improve our services. I think we're both comparing two different things here. I mentioned in the previous post that our pricing model is scaling horizontally, rather than vertically.

I've seen many different uses for the 128MB node, either as backup servers, DNS servers, small web servers (nginx works amazingly well), private BSD development boxes, small-scale proxy servers, personal VPN servers, etc. I've also seen the 1GB of SSD storage used as cache for ZFS, which results in extremely low latency reads and writes. The 128MB node was initially offered because of demand and is actually one of our higher selling services.

Unfortunately, comparing the numbers from two different company offerings doesn't give the full picture on what either of them offer. There's a lot more that's included in our pricing, and you end up paying a bit more for new, under-utilized physical servers where you can actually use all of the resources provided with great disk I/O. There are a lot of providers out there who try to cram as many people as possible on a single box, and we're simply not one of them.

I appreciate you taking the time to write out your thoughts. If you have any more concerns feel free to put them here and I will try to address them the best I can. If you would prefer to discuss them in private, email me matt[at]ssdnodes.com

Dedicated boxes with enterprise sandy bridge processors (Intel E3-1270s), enterprise SLC SATA III SSDs, segregated gigabit public (12 network providers, 8x Tier 1) and private networks (with dedicated SSL/PPTP VPN), costs considerably more than $8.99 per month :)

Our pricing model based around scaling horizontally, rather than vertically. There are always different requirements for every project, and that's why I'll never say that our solution will fit everyone's needs.

Sorry I overlooked that last bit, we do offer pro-rated billing. The way it works is when a new client orders, that becomes their monthly billing date. Any upgrades are pro-rated with the remaining days in the billing cycle. If you order another package as an existing client on a different date than your monthly billing date, open a ticket with the billing department and we'll pro-rate it with the remaining days in the cycle. Some clients like having different billing dates for their services, others prefer them all to be on the same day each month. We're flexible and will accommodate to your preferences.

We're using XenServer, so auto-provisioning is still on our plate since we have to build all of that in-house (solutions like SolusVM don't work with our unique infrastructure). For the most part getting a new account up and running takes 15-30 minutes, and you can request an OS reload at any time through a support ticket.

We're very upfront with our cancellation policies, which is 24 hours from when your bill is due (I can't imagine companies requiring a month or two in advance, that's absurd). Our reasoning is that if the service is easy and painless to cancel, people will be more than willing to order again.

I run SSD Nodes, Inc. (http://www.ssdnodes.com) and we have various business clients using our services for their peak offloading while maintaining their in-house infrastructure (I can't be more specific than that because of our privacy policies). I would recommend doing both, mainly because scaling is super easy.

Verisign EV certs get the green text along with the name of the company in the browser (ex: https://paypal.com)

More information: http://www.verisign.com/ssl/ssl-information-center/extended-...

We've used Comodo certs for our projects, given out for free by our provider SSD Nodes (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1122631). I think the certs by themselves are $9-10/year if you decided to get them on your own.

Fortinet has a similar feature for the Fortigates. You can have the SSL cert (ex: secure.yourcompany.com) be presented from an IP bound to the firewall and be able to read all communications between the client and server. I'm not sure if the same applies to a certificate you don't own (ex: mail.google.com) for the same purpose.

We disabled Cloudflare after a month because of their awful nLayer routing. We were getting complaints of slow accesses from Telia customers in Europe. Now we're back with SSD Nodes and much happier with SoftLayer's peering and transit connections (they peer directly with Telia).

Your mileage may vary.