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Consumption-Based Cloud Servers Offer Savings to Linux Users

Eliminate manual provisioning and reduce disaster recovery costs? ElasticHosts says it's two of the big benefits of its new Elastic Containers cloud servers.

• By Wendy A. Hernandez
• 04/09/2014

London-based ElasticHosts Ltd. launch its new cloud servers that will be billed on consumption only. According to the company, Elastic Containers use the company's auto-scaling container technology, which allows the servers to expand and contract according to customer needs, eliminating manual provisioning.

Available only to Linux users, Elastic Containers are housed in the cloud server provider's global datacenters and backed by solid state drive storage. Because the servers require no additional software or configuration, customers can simply sign up for the service.

According to the press release, "By using Elastic Containers, companies can now handle all their usage peaks and valleys effortlessly, automatically scaling each container up to 64GB RAM." With the ability of the infrastructure to increase and decrease automatically, there's no need for an organization to manually manage or employ additional third-party software.

Richard Davies, CEO and co-founder of ElasticHosts, explains: "We've analyzed hundreds of servers from some of our largest customers and noticed two major differences: First, a server running a typical workload will see 50 percent cost saving versus other major [Infrastructure as a Service] clouds, since typically less than 50 percent of total capacity is used through a full weekly cycle. Second, a server that frequently runs below its peak capacity, either due to idle periods or because it only occasionally needs to handle a large load, can save 75 percent or more. To help customers take full advantage of these savings, we're billing in 15-minute intervals based on usage, as opposed to the common industry practice of hourly billing based on available capacity."

The company also claims Elastic Containers will "eliminate load balancers" because the scaling of the server is handled within the container itself. "By billing on usage, rather than capacity, immediate and automatic scaling up and down is always possible at no extra cost and with no additional software or hardware—such as load balancers."

ElasticHosts contends that an added benefit is a reduction in disaster recovery costs, as companies are often "replicating 50 percent to 100 percent of their servers as 'hot spares' and constantly provisioning them at full capacity." The company said it can "strip out 80 percent or more of these costs, as a fully configured version of the primary server … can be running continuously. This version is ready for action if needed, but runs at a minimal cost, [because] actual usage is very low on the idle 'hot spare.'"

In addition to the newly released Elastic Containers, ElasticHosts offers managed cloud servers and traditional virtual machines. Visit the company's Web site for more information.