tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49354381516193720042024-03-19T07:27:47.912-04:00Cloudorado BlogMarcin Okraszewskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640227313632475132noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935438151619372004.post-79799839610763781572014-03-27T11:25:00.001-04:002015-10-09T12:40:35.938-04:00Google brings cloud to the new elasticity levels with sustained usage discounts<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Google announced their new Compute Engine pricing. While virtually everybody is focusing on significant price reductions, more important is their new model of <i><a href="https://developers.google.com/compute/pricing#sustained_use">sustained use discounts</a></i>. Seems innocent but this might be complete game changer in the market.<br />
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Up until now, virtually everyone who planned to host application in any cloud had to make very basic decision – <i>should I commit for long-term usage or go with on-demand servers</i>. This could be reserved instances in case of AWS or longer period subscriptions in case of other providers. In either case, you had to think how you expect your future usage would look like. Therefore, while you had simplicity of consumption-based billing for on-demand prices, you still had to plan upfront to achieve greater cost optimization on expense of risk that predictions were wrong causing additional costs. This in turn was spoiling the perfect image of pay-what-you-use premise.<br />
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The first change came from AWS when it introduced <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/purchasing-options/reserved-instances/marketplace/">Reserved Instance Marketplace</a> over a year ago. It enabled users to sell their reservations in case predictions turned out to be invalid. This definitely improved the situation but still the risk of finding buyer was on the client, letting alone the 12% fee and sadly limitation to US customers only. Later there were further improvements of moving reservations between availability zones as well as changing instance types of a reservation within the same family. It got even better but still not yet where we all wanted to be.<br />
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Google is the first one to make it no-brainer for customers but still encourage predictable workloads. You just use on-demand servers. However, as soon as your server is run 25% of the time, a discount is applied. Then further with 50% and 75%. So the closer you get to the permanent usage, the cheaper it gets. Without any planning. Just based on actual usage. Like a self-cost-optimization plan. This is Google that takes the risk of usage predictability, not you.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHBcxI-AOzzR1z4hfXNOvrA8bzZdAr2pgSGCNCshnPLV9bd1rgVgt9sx7v01GtG5kZ0X4HKuIRbs1hENrlKb86xvwOFPIdGdYiF_ZmwspTtpvRudy7EFT5J59I2CjYe8but1lff2EHpQg/s1600/sustained+use.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHBcxI-AOzzR1z4hfXNOvrA8bzZdAr2pgSGCNCshnPLV9bd1rgVgt9sx7v01GtG5kZ0X4HKuIRbs1hENrlKb86xvwOFPIdGdYiF_ZmwspTtpvRudy7EFT5J59I2CjYe8but1lff2EHpQg/s400/sustained+use.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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This is not so noticed but amazing step of even easier usage of cloud services, bringing cloud elasticity to completely new level. I’m extremely excited to see what will be the response of other cloud services. I hope it is going to settle new standard that others would follow, making things even simpler.</div>
Marcin Okraszewskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640227313632475132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935438151619372004.post-69056702123469783492013-07-02T11:15:00.000-04:002013-07-02T11:17:19.077-04:00How Google have lost opportunity to get millions of Google+ users<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Google Reader is gone now. Millions of frustrated users found their new home in Feedly, The Old Reader, Digg and more. The millions that could have become active part of the service that Google seems to care the most now – Google+. How? Obviously, very easy.</div>
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RSS is a stream of information you are interested in, therefore you start to follow it. You subscribe to a number of such sources and finally read a stream of it. Now, if you think about social networks, Google+ in particular, you start to follow people you are interested in and start to read their posts (OK, obviously you interact with them as well, but let us leave it for now). Hmmm, something sounds similar here …</div>
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So, what should have Google done? I guess you already know. If you could add RSS to circles, if you could automatically migrate all your Reader feeds to a <i>RSS circle</i> and read your favorite feeds directly in the Google Plus stream, would you do it? I would. I don’t care if I read my feeds in Reader or Google Plus. I just want that content. Once I started reading the Google Plus stream, quite likely I would start sharing and become active Google Plus user. I <i>would</i> but I <i>will not</i>. I guess substantial part of the Reader users <i>would</i>. </div>
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Probably Google hoped to see the users changing their habits to the more modern, social ones. But seems like the Reader crowd are just old dogs who do not learn new tricks. Apparently, I am an old dog. Regardless, I’ve read only about various RSS services breaking down under unexpected gift from Google, never about huge shift to Plus.</div>
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Google could have gained substantial part that Reader crowd to Google Plus. They could have had me looking into Google Plus many times every day. Instead, I feel left out without migration path, I’m now a user of a different RSS reader service and Google is where it was with its Plus service. Sorry Google.</div>
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Marcin Okraszewskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09640227313632475132noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935438151619372004.post-90009839656923347752012-11-12T18:45:00.004-05:002012-11-12T18:46:51.151-05:00AWS prices in Australia comparedWith the new Amazon Web Services region opened in Australia there were some comments on Twitter and even articles about higher prices than US. While apparently Australia is struggling with <a href="http://slashdot.org/story/12/10/25/0130224/australians-urged-to-spoof-ip-addresses-for-better-prices" rel="nofollow">high services prices</a>, the launch of the AWS region should be looked in a slightly wider context than comparison to US.<br />
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While prices in Australia are higher than US, it is somewhere in the middle for international AWS prices. EC2 and EBS prices are at the same level as Europe and Singapore, while Japan and Brazil and even US West (California) are more expensive. Transfer starts to be cheaper in Singapore only above 10TB, though here both US and EU are cheaper. S3 storage cost is at the level of US West (California), where only Brazil is more expensive. Overall Australian AWS prices are still in the middle of international AWS regions, while definitely not at the US East level. <br />
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But what is probably more important is how <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws" rel="nofollow">AWS</a> compares to other cloud providers in Australia. Australia unfortunately does not have a huge number cloud providers available. By far the most known Australian provider is <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=ninefold" rel="nofollow">Ninefold</a>, but there also others available – <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=opsource" rel="nofollow">OpSource</a> and <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=vpsnet" rel="nofollow">VPS.NET</a><span id="goog_1390585526"></span><span id="goog_1390585527"></span> has their international locations in Australia. There are also other local providers available, like OrionVM or CloudPeople. Unfortunately the last two are not yet supported by Cloudorado, so I’ll focus on current four.<br />
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To check how does AWS compare, we will make some sample configurations to check how they compare between providers.<br />
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<b>Note</b>: all prices in US dollars.<br />
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<b>1. Standard Small</b><br />
The first shot for equivalent of Standard Small, which is 1.7 GB RAM and 1 ECU CPU. As in most cases persistence storage is used, we will take 50 GB EBS storage (I/O won’t be estimated here). In such case <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws" rel="nofollow">AWS</a> in fact provides the best option offer. (<a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/#advanced;(r:(p:1,r:5,s:/(n:%27Standard%20Small,%2050%20GB%20storage%27,os:1,bi:0,bo:0,c:(c:(c:1,d:0),u:0),r:(c:1741,d:0),h:(c:50,d:0),t:(u:7,t:100))!))">link to calculation</a>)<br />
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<b>2. Standard Small with twice the CPU</b><br />
According to our benchmarks, it looks like competition gives stronger CPUs for similar size. The second test assumes twice the CPU power from the first test, with rest or parameters unchanged. Surprisingly – <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws" rel="nofollow">AWS</a> from the lead position goes to the third, with <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=ninefold" rel="nofollow">Ninefold</a> and <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=opsource" rel="nofollow">OpSource</a> at virtually the same level. (<a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/#advanced;(r:(p:1,r:5,s:/(n:%272%20GB%20RAM,%202%20ECU,%2050%20GB%20storage%27,os:1,bi:0,bo:0,c:(c:(c:2,d:0),u:0),r:(c:1741,d:0),h:(c:50,d:0),t:(u:7,t:100))!))">link to calculation</a>)<br />
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<b>3. Standard Small with 2 TB traffic</b><br />
The last test assumes again Standard Small equivalent, but this time with a lot of traffic – 2 TB. This time <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=vpsnet" rel="nofollow">VPS.NET</a> has the price of less than half of <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws" rel="nofollow">AWS</a> price. (<a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/#advanced;(r:(p:1,r:5,s:/(n:%27Standard%20Small%20+%202%20TB%20transfer%27,os:1,bi:0,bo:2048,c:(c:(c:1,d:0),u:0),r:(c:1741,d:0),h:(c:50,d:0),t:(u:7,t:100))!))">link to calculation</a>)<br />
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It must be said that the prices of AWS in Australia are in general very competitive. When you play around, AWS is often at the top of the list. It is much, much more often than for other regions. But in all regions the same is true – when considering cloud provider, you should carefully <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/">compare cloud computing providers</a>. Depending on your specific requirements like resource ratio, transfer or acceptable commitment duration completely different provider might be best choice. <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/">Cloudorado</a> make it very easy to perform such individual comparisons. <br />
<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935438151619372004.post-21076941089578683762012-09-24T17:06:00.001-04:002012-09-25T14:25:29.915-04:00A new cloud computing provider for comparison – Stratogen<br />
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It has been a while since last noticeable update to the
service. We are working hard to deliver you the next version of the service, which
will allow you to do even more cloud provider comparisons to support you with data-driven
decisions. So keep your eye on Cloudorado. Meanwhile we have added a new provider.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://stratogen.com/">Stratogen</a> is a cloud computing provider based on VM Ware
vCloud Director, which makes it perfect if you want to move servers from your
VM Ware-based data center to the cloud. It is as easy as exporting OVF and
importing it to Stratogen.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Stratogen cloud servers are hosted in tier 3 data centers in
both US and UK which also have ISO27001 certification. Stratogen is strongly
focusing on network, providing 100% SLA, 10 Gb N+N redundancy. It is using Cisco infrastructure. On top of that, the internet transfer is for free, which
makes it an interesting option for network-intensive solutions. Servers are equipped
with Intel E5, which delivers a lot of power to your cloud servers. <o:p></o:p></div>
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There is both monthly and hourly pricing available which you
can mix depending on your needs. And on top of that there is a 7 day trial
period with a generous quota so you can really feel the power of the cloud. And
if it wasn’t enough, there is still 30 day money back guarantee. So you have no risk to try it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So, as usually – <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/">compare cloud computing providers</a> and check
if Stratogen is the perfect match for your needs.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935438151619372004.post-32479701382812311332012-04-05T18:38:00.000-04:002012-04-05T18:38:55.869-04:00Two new cloud computing providers: E24Cloud and Ninefold<a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=e24cloud">E24Cloud</a> is a European cloud computing provider with a unique offer of completely free transfer without any limits. While we already got used to free incoming transfer, outgoing was never free, at least not without limits. Seems like it might be great option for bandwidth intensive applications. Moreover there is also possibility to create very big servers, up to 64 GB RAM and 32 cores. So far only 4 providers in our service had so big servers available. <br />
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The second provider doubled our list of providers in Australia. <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=ninefold">Ninefold</a> is probably the best known Australian cloud computing provider. They provide not only cloud servers but also storage solutions. <br />
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Maybe our new providers will provide the best offer for you. Check this and <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/">compare cloud computing providers</a>.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935438151619372004.post-9805500920145278802012-03-19T10:10:00.001-04:002012-03-19T11:59:35.316-04:00Time To Reevaluate Reserved InstancesWith the latest Amazon Web Services <a href="http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2012/03/dropping-prices-again-ec2-rds-emr-and-elasticache.html">price list update</a> one important aspect has been lost in the whole buzz about dropping cloud prices – the profit point between on-demand and reserved instances has moved significantly. Therefore you should reevaluate reserved instances if you are using on-demand now, or check if you are still using the best suiting reservation option.<br />
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It hasn’t been said directly but the clue was in the <a href="http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2012/03/dropping-prices-again-ec2-rds-emr-and-elasticache.html">Amazon’s post</a> “<i>Reserved Instance prices dropping by as much as 37%, and On-Demand instance prices dropping up to 10%</i>”. The relation between on-demand and reserved instance prices was not kept and it means the switch point between them has moved as well.<br />
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The point when it is more cost effective to use reserved instances differs between instance types but in general it was about 30% utilization during one year reservation period, which is equivalent to 2630 hours. For standard and high CPU instances it was 31.8% (2786 hours), while 29.2% (2559 hours) for high memory instances. These are the points where you should switch from on-demand to one year light reserved instances in US East<br />
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With the new price lists the most affected were standard and high memory instances. The profitability point of the standard reserved instances moved from 31.8% to 19.2% (1683 hours). For high memory instances the change was from 29.2% to 17.5% (1535 hours). High CPU instances had just minor update from 31.8% to 31.3%. Cluster compute and GPU instances did not change the relation, but keep in mind Cluster Compute Eight Extra Large is still the winner with just 13.4% utilization (1178 hours) for the light reserved instance to be profitable. The profitability points for other types of reservations also changed but not that much. The maximum is from 76.9% to 65.2% for high memory medium utilization reserved instance. The heavy utilization changed by 2% at most.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0ljyLkTJJWQ/T2WoLcEin1I/AAAAAAAAABY/IFL6Dy0BORY/s1600/reserved.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="357" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0ljyLkTJJWQ/T2WoLcEin1I/AAAAAAAAABY/IFL6Dy0BORY/s400/reserved.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>The graph shows the change for High Memory XXL. The upper part shows price of various reservation types according to utilization with previous price list, the lower with current price list. The green areas indicate change of best reservation option – either from on-demand to light reserved instances or to higher reservation option.<br />
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<i>But what does it mean to me?</i> If you were below the threshold so far and you use on-demand instances, you should definitely check if now it isn’t cheaper to take light reserved ones. If your server runs for more than 4 hours 12 minutes a day – check reserved instances. If you know your server will run at least 2 months and 1 week all the time, you are again in the reserved instances zone. Similarly for 9 months of 8 hours per business day, or any other pattern in which you would exceed the required number of computing hours. Similarly you should also check if a higher reservation wouldn’t provide a better deal. If you use the <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/">cloud computing comparison</a> engine, it will tell if and which reservation is most appropriate in a given case.<br />
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To get maximum of the cloud economics you should always check if you use the best option. Currently many users will find profitable to either switch from on-demand to light reserved instances or going to higher reservation level. Check if you are one of them.<br />
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<b>Profitability points for 1 year reservations in US East:</b></div><style type="text/css">
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<tr> <td rowspan="2" style="text-align: center;"></td> <td colspan="2"><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Light Reservation</b></div></td> <td colspan="2"><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Medium </b> <b>Reservation</b></div></td> <td colspan="2"><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Heavy </b><b>Reservation</b></div></td> </tr>
<tr><td><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: right;"><b>Old</b></div></div></td> <td><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: right;"><b>New</b></div></div></td> <td><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: right;"><b>Old</b></div></div></td> <td><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: right;"><b>New</b></div></div></td> <td><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: right;"><b>Old</b></div></div></td> <td><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: right;"><b>New</b></div></div></td> </tr>
<tr> <td>Standard</td> <td><div style="text-align: right;">31.8%</div><div style="text-align: right;">2,786h</div></td> <td><div style="text-align: right;">19.2%</div><div style="text-align: right;">1,683h</div></td> <td><div style="text-align: right;">74.2%</div><div style="text-align: right;">6,500h</div></td> <td><div style="text-align: right;">69,3%</div><div style="text-align: right;">6,067h</div></td> <td><div style="text-align: right;">85.2%</div><div style="text-align: right;">7,466h</div></td> <td><div style="text-align: right;">83.3%</div><div style="text-align: right;">7,299h</div></td> </tr>
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<tr> <td>High Memory</td> <td>29.2%<br />
2,559h</td> <td>17.5%<br />
1,535h</td> <td>76.9%<br />
6,740h</td> <td>65.2%<br />
5,713h</td> <td>85.2%<br />
7,467h</td> <td>81.6%<br />
7,150h</td> </tr>
<tr> <td>High CPU</td> <td>31.8%<br />
2,786h</td> <td>31.3%<br />
2,739h</td> <td>74.2%<br />
6,500h</td> <td>67.6%<br />
5,925h</td> <td>85.3%<br />
7,474h</td> <td>82.8%<br />
7,257h</td> </tr>
<tr> <td>Cluster Compute Quadruple XL</td> <td>29.7%<br />
2,599h</td> <td>29.7%<br />
2,599h</td> <td>71.8%<br />
6,288h</td> <td>71.8%<br />
6,288h</td> <td>85.6%<br />
7,502h</td> <td>85.6%<br />
7,502h</td> </tr>
<tr> <td>Cluster Compute Eight XL</td> <td>13.4%<br />
1,178h</td> <td>13.4%<br />
1,178h</td> <td>74.8%<br />
6,550h</td> <td>74.8%<br />
6,550h</td> <td>84.9%<br />
7,438h</td> <td>84.9%<br />
7,438h</td> </tr>
<tr> <td>Cluster GPU Quadruple XL</td> <td>31.8%<br />
2,783h</td> <td>31.8%<br />
2,783h</td> <td>74.4%<br />
6,519h</td> <td>74.4%<br />
6,519h</td> <td>85.3%<br />
7,470h</td> <td>85.3%<br />
7,470h</td> </tr>
</tbody></table>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935438151619372004.post-39549870903809462722012-02-14T16:02:00.000-05:002012-02-14T16:02:06.398-05:00Two cloudy days in LondonLondon is definitely one of the cloudiest places in the world. But one week it was even cloudier. There were two cloud events which I attended to – <a href="http://www.cloudexpoeurope.com/">Cloud Expo Europe</a> and <a href="http://cloudcamp.org/">CloudCamp</a>.<br />
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Cloud Expo Europe is a two-day trade show which took place in Olympia National Hall on January 25-26. This is probably the biggest purely cloud event in Europe. There were about 100 exhibitors and 7 theaters with total of 130 speakers. Not so surprisingly the subject of cloud provider selection was topic of at least 3 talks. Moreover there was significant number of people visiting those talks. This shows how important aspect has been addressed by Cloudorado. One major inconvenience was virtually lack of any sound barrier between exhibit hall and speak theaters. They were just separated by walls as other stands so the noise from exhibit part was definitely disturbing. But this obviously does not lower any value of the speeches themselves.<br />
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The show was also a great opportunity to meet multiple people and companies involved in cloud computing. But Cloud Camp, which was held in the evening of the first day in Clerkenwell was a great opportunity meet the cloud computing community and “celebrities” in an informal atmosphere. It starts with a number of 5 minute lightning speeches where many different subjects are virtually just flashed out for further expansion later. The next part is in form of a panel, where anyone can ask a question to experts who were selected from the attendees. So, as there are virtually all involved in cloud computing virtually anyone could speak out their opinions on many cloud related subject. And finally, the most informal part – pizza, beer and talk to anyone.<br />
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It was great both events had synchronized schedules so that you can participate in both during a single visit. It is really a great opportunity get in touch with the cloud. I’ll definitely be back next time.<br />
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</div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935438151619372004.post-59390280636631074252011-11-21T17:37:00.002-05:002011-11-21T17:40:02.153-05:00Cloudorado Wins Second Prize in Startup Contest!<div class="separator" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="244" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-g7O8kBKIoJM/TsrR4H0w6QI/AAAAAAAAABQ/YoXI0U5281k/s320/for_web.JPG" width="320" /></div>We are proud to announce Cloudorado has beaten over 700 other startups and won the second prize in “Business Concept” (Polish “Pomysł na Firmę”) contest by Raiffeisen Bank. Startup contests are a great opportunity for verification of a service. Winning the prize confirms the direction taken and becomes an important milestone. We believe it also proves the value we bring to our users.<br />
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The contest constituted of three parts. Firstly participants had to send their business plans, which were the input to select 12 finalists. The finals happened 1.5 month later in Warsaw, were participants had to present their idea in 10 minute pitch followed by 20 minutes of questions. A week later the winners were announced during an event in Warsaw. <br />
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We really hope it is not the last contest we win!<br />
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</div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935438151619372004.post-26034211826045745832011-11-02T19:03:00.000-04:002011-11-02T19:03:40.091-04:00JoyentCloud now available in CloudoradoToday we have added a new provider to <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/">Cloudorado</a> – <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=joyent">JoyentCloud</a>. JoyentCloud is positioning itself as a high performance provider. Interesting feature to mention is vertical scaling without any down time. From cost perspective noticeable aspect is 20TB transfer included per month per account and overage at the level of 8 cents per GB.<br />
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Check with the <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/">cloud computing price comparison engine</a> if <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=joyent">JoyentCloud</a> offers best deal for your needs.<br />
<div><br />
</div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935438151619372004.post-78223328944784259192011-10-11T18:22:00.001-04:002011-10-11T18:24:55.216-04:00VPS.NET added to CloudoradoToday we have added one more provider – <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=vpsnet">VPS.NET</a>. VPS.NET provides cloud servers in multiple locations in US (Chicago, Atlanta and Salt Lake City), Europe (London and Amsterdam) and Japan (Tokyo). They allow you to create servers that constitue of 1 to 45 blocks of 376MB RAM, 10GB storage and 600MHz dedicated CPU. Moreover each block comes with boundled 1TB tranfer. In addition to that you can extend server with 25GB SAN storage blocks or fast SSD storage in 2GB chunks.<br />
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Check VPS.NET offer with the <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/">cloud computing price comparison engine</a>.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935438151619372004.post-45135988633345666982011-09-28T17:38:00.000-04:002011-09-28T17:38:31.205-04:00eApps added to Cloudorado<div class="MsoNormal">Today we have added a new cloud hosting provider to the Cloudorado – <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=eApps">eApps</a>. eApps is a hosting provider since 1996. Cloud server resources can be chosen in range of 256MB to 16GB RAM, 1 to 12 CPU cores and 8 to 500 GB storage. Servers are billed in monthly periods. The cloud servers are located in Atlanta data center. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Check with the <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/">cloud hosting price comparison service</a> if <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=eApps">eApps</a> best serve your needs.</div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935438151619372004.post-46511167176667041282011-09-19T16:29:00.002-04:002011-09-19T17:28:11.034-04:00Amazon adds Windows support for Cluster instances<div class="MsoNormal">Today Amazon has added Windows support for their biggest instance types – Cluster Compute and Cluster GPU - see <a href="http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/09/now-available-windows-server-2008-r2-on-cluster-compute-and-cluster-gpu.html">AWS Blog</a>. These are the most powerful instances available in Amazon EC2, providing 8 Xeon Nehalem cores and 23 GB RAM, 10 Gigabit Ethernet and NVIDIA Tesla for the GPU instance. These instances weren’t so far available with Windows, what was limiting Amazon’s offer for CPU intensive applications running on Windows. Now the gap was closed. Obviously Cloudorado is already reflecting the change. </div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935438151619372004.post-78366401011744872922011-09-06T16:16:00.001-04:002011-09-06T16:25:08.884-04:00GigeNET - a new cloud hosting provider in Cloudorado<div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/">Cloudorado</a> has a new cloud hosting provider – <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=gigenet">GigeNET</a>. GigeNET has two datacenters in US – Los Angeles and Chicago. Apart from cloud servers GigeNET provides also dedicated servers and collocation service making it possible to build hybrid solutions. Cloud servers are charged on either hourly or monthly basis but the later includes free transfer. Internal traffic is free of charge including transfer to dedicated servers.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Check if <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=gigenet">GigeNET</a> is the right provider for you with the <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/">cloud computing price comparison engine</a>. </div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935438151619372004.post-85776444888181303042011-08-23T16:34:00.000-04:002011-08-23T16:34:51.893-04:00DediServe – a new cloud hosting provider in Cloudorado<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">Today we have added a new provider to the Cloudorado – <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=dediserve">DediServe</a>. DediServe is a provider with data centers in both US (Dallas) and Europe (London). Servers are billed on a monthly basis and also have transfer included (up to 4 TB). Incoming transfer is not billed and if the outgoing limit is exceeded, it is charged on a level of 3 cents per GB, which is the lowest price so far. This might be a good choice for transfer intensive applications. There are also many other items included in price - most notable backups, Windows Server Web Edition and support. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal">Check with the <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/">cloud hosting price comparison service</a> if DediServe is the best cloud provider for your needs.</div><br />
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Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935438151619372004.post-13874186477190954562011-08-11T12:00:00.002-04:002011-08-11T14:31:32.011-04:00Is Amazon the cheapest cloud computing provider? Cloud Computing Myth Busters!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Jsfk3rt-ABE/TkPmKEHVFlI/AAAAAAAAABM/GsMINM6ITHc/s1600/cloud+computing+myth+busters2.png" style="float: right; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 5px;" />When people think of cloud computing, they almost automatically think of <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws">Amazon EC2</a>. Amazon has become <i>the </i>cloud computing company and is commonly perceived as the cheapest, if not the only, IaaS provider. But is this really so? Let’s play <i>Myth Busters</i> as on the Discovery Channel. <i>Cloud Computing Myth Busters!</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><i><br />
</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">We will compare all of Amazon’s instances from <i>Standard </i>line with prices for cloud servers of at least the same parameters from other cloud computing providers. For this purpose we will use <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/">Cloudorado - the cloud computing price comparison engine</a>. For Amazon to be considered the cheapest, it would have to be the cheapest for every instance type they provide, since these are their strongest points. If this is not met, there is no point in checking any further.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">We will assume only cloud server costs. No transfer, licenses or load balancers. We will choose a full month of computing with on-demand prices. We could expand it to other instance types and other combinations, but there's no need to drag this article out with too many variations when you could easily try them on your own with the <a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><span id="goog_1825604830"></span>cloud hosting price comparison engine<span id="goog_1825604831"></span></a>.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">We will also provide one extension to Cloudorado calculations. As Amazon does not have persistent instance storage as other providers, we will also provide additional calculation of instances with a persistent EBS storage of equal size to instance storage. Unfortunately the cost of the EBS service depends on both size and number of I/O requests. As an estimate of I/O requests cost, we will use 100 I/O per second, resulting in $26 per month as indicated by Amazon in Projecting Costs section of <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/ebs/">EBS description</a>. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">OK, with all assumptions explained, let’s start!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"></div><a name='more'></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><b><br />
</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><b>Experiment 1 – Standard Small</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><i>Conditions:</i> 1.7 GB RAM, 1 ECU CPU power and 160 GB storage</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><i>Result: </i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws">Amazon</a> was second, just 60 cents more expensive than <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=elastichosts">ElasticHosts</a>. But the instance with the persistent storage was 70% more expensive than the winner.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img alt="Standard Small price comparison" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9XEu0mAeYnE/TkOpr3fl4WI/AAAAAAAAAAs/mM1_PR25DuA/s1600/std_S.png" usemap="#std_S_map" /><map id="std_S_map"><area alt="ElasticHosts" coords="76,35,102,35,102,218,42,272,12,242,72,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=elstichosts" shape="poly"></area><area alt="Amazon Web Services" coords="107,35,133,35,133,218,73,272,43,242,103,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws" shape="poly"></area><area alt="CloudSigma" coords="138,35,164,35,164,218,104,272,74,242,134,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=cloudsigma" shape="poly"></area><area alt="Atlantic.Net" coords="169,35,195,35,195,218,135,272,105,242,165,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=atlantic" shape="poly"></area><area alt="OpSource" coords="200,35,226,35,226,218,166,272,136,242,196,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=opsource" shape="poly"></area><area alt="Storm on Demand" coords="231,35,257,35,257,218,197,272,167,242,227,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=storm" shape="poly"></area><area alt="Amazon Web Services" coords="262,35,288,35,288,218,228,272,198,242,258,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws" shape="poly"></area><area alt="Terremark" coords="293,35,319,35,319,218,259,272,229,242,289,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=terremark" shape="poly"></area><area alt="BitRefinery" coords="324,35,350,35,350,218,290,272,260,242,320,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=bitrefinery" shape="poly"></area><area alt="Rackspace" coords="355,35,381,35,381,218,321,272,291,242,351,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=rackspace" shape="poly"></area><area alt="GoGrid" coords="386,35,412,35,412,218,352,272,322,242,382,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=gogrid" shape="poly"></area><area alt="Linode" coords="417,35,443,35,443,218,383,272,353,242,413,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=linode" shape="poly"></area></map></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><b>Experiment 2 – Standard Large</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><i>Conditions:</i> 7.5 GB RAM, 4 ECU CPU power, 850 GB storage</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><i>Result:</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws">Amazon</a> is again second but this time 24% more expensive than <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=storm">Storm</a>. Amazon with persistent storage was 80% more expensive!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img alt="Standard Large price comparison" border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8VjtyaFCUWk/TkOpvaYfhBI/AAAAAAAAAA4/50oONqeUoTQ/s1600/std_L.png" usemap="#std_L_map" /><map id="std_L_map"><area alt="Storm on Demand" coords="88,146,117,146,117,217,75,260,54,237,80,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=storm" shape="poly"></area> <area alt="Amazon Web Services" coords="129,136,163,136,163,217,115,270,98,248,125,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws" shape="poly"></area> <area alt="ElasticHosts" coords="177,129,209,129,209,217,147,280,134,260,170,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=elastichosts" shape="poly"></area> <area alt="CloudSigma" coords="225,115,254,115,254,217,195,277,176,260,220,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=cloudsigma" shape="poly"></area> <area alt="Amazon Web Services" coords="270,113,300,113,300,217,236,280,220,265,265,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws" shape="poly"></area> <area alt="OpSource" coords="315,113,345,113,345,217,292,272,275,252,310,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=opsource" shape="poly"></area> <area alt="Terremark vCloud Express" coords="360,83,390,83,390,217,333,272,316,277,355,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=terremark" shape="poly"></area> <area alt="BitRefinery" coords="405,35,435,35,435,217,380,275,360,260,400,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=bitrefinery" shape="poly"></area> </map></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div> <b>Experiment 3 – Standard Extra Large</b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><i>Conditions: </i>15 GB RAM, 8 ECU CPU power, 1690 GB storage</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><i>Result:</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">Finally, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws">Amazon</a> is the cheapest! It is 21% cheaper than <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=storm">Storm</a>, which had all resources more than doubled. But <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws">Amazon</a> with persistent storage was 16% more expensive than <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=storm">Storm</a>.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img alt="Standard Extra Large price comparison" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DYpzPi4ZBbg/TkOpuyi1sVI/AAAAAAAAAA0/wzRm-0inl_g/s1600/std_XL.png" usemap="#std_XL_map" /><map id="std_XL_map"><area alt="Amazon Web Services" coords="88,35,132,35,132,218,72,272,28,228,88,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws" shape="poly"></area><area alt="Storm on Demand" coords="139,35,183,35,183,218,123,272,79,228,139,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=storm" shape="poly"></area><area alt="CloudSigma" coords="190,35,234,35,234,218,174,272,130,228,190,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=cloudsigma" shape="poly"></area><area alt="Amazon Web Services" coords="241,35,285,35,285,218,225,272,181,228,241,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws" shape="poly"></area><area alt="OpSource" coords="292,35,336,35,336,218,276,272,232,228,292,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=opsource" shape="poly"></area><area alt="Terremark" coords="343,35,387,35,387,218,327,272,283,228,343,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=terremark" shape="poly"></area><area alt="BitRefinery" coords="394,35,438,35,438,218,378,272,334,228,394,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=bitrefinery" shape="poly"></area></map></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: -webkit-auto;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><b>Experiment 4 – Standard Medium</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">What? But there is no Standard Medium instance! You are right. We just wanted to show what happens if requirements go outside of Amazon space. Amazon does not have any instance between 1.7 GB RAM and 7 GB RAM. Standard Medium would be an instance twice as big as Standard Small – 3.4 GB RAM.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><i>Conditions:</i> 3.4 GB RAM, 2 ECU CPU power, 320 GB storage</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><i>Result:</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws">Amazon</a> gets 7<sup>th</sup> position, being twice as expensive as the winner – <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=elastichosts">ElasticHosts</a>. Amazon with persistent storage is 150% more expensive than ElasticHosts. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nGEC1qF3Woo/TkOpuTehIWI/AAAAAAAAAAw/ajpP8hLfSjo/s1600/std_M.png" usemap="#std_M_map" /><map id="std_M_map"><area alt="ElasticHosts" coords="76,35,102,35,102,218,42,272,12,242,72,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=elstichosts" shape="poly"></area><area alt="CloudSigma" coords="107,35,133,35,133,218,73,272,43,242,103,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=cloudsigma" shape="poly"></area><area alt="OpSource" coords="138,35,164,35,164,218,104,272,74,242,134,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=opsource" shape="poly"></area><area alt="Storm on Demand" coords="169,35,195,35,195,218,135,272,105,242,165,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=storm" shape="poly"></area><area alt="Atlantic.Net" coords="200,35,226,35,226,218,166,272,136,242,196,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=atlantic" shape="poly"></area><area alt="Terremark" coords="231,35,257,35,257,218,197,272,167,242,227,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=terremark" shape="poly"></area><area alt="Amazon Web Services" coords="262,35,288,35,288,218,228,272,198,242,258,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws" shape="poly"></area><area alt="BitRefinery" coords="293,35,319,35,319,218,259,272,229,242,289,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=bitrefinery" shape="poly"></area><area alt="Amazon Web Services" coords="324,35,350,35,350,218,290,272,260,242,320,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws" shape="poly"></area><area alt="Rackspace" coords="355,35,381,35,381,218,321,272,291,242,351,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=rackspace" shape="poly"></area><area alt="Linode" coords="386,35,412,35,412,218,352,272,322,242,382,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=linode" shape="poly"></area><area alt="GoGrid" coords="417,35,443,35,443,218,383,272,353,242,413,217" href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=gogrid" shape="poly"></area></map></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><b>Conclusion</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><i>Myth Busted!</i> Amazon is not universally the cheapest cloud computing provider. Even with requirements perfectly matching Standard instance types, Amazon was the cheapest only once! It was once almost the cheapest and once 24% more expensive than the cheapest provider. With the persistent storage option (EBS), Amazon was never the cheapest, costing on average 55% more than the winner. It gets even worse if you get away from Amazon’s instance types, where we showed an example of Amazon being twice as expensive, but it can be much worse. So always be sure to <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/">compare cloud computing prices</a> for your specific needs. Don’t fall for myths that any given provider always offers the best deal.</div><div><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d4Su5bBexI0/TkPkGqRcPaI/AAAAAAAAABI/AJOq7C2pqjs/s1600/Myth+Busted2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d4Su5bBexI0/TkPkGqRcPaI/AAAAAAAAABI/AJOq7C2pqjs/s1600/Myth+Busted2.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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<span id="goog_559516998"></span><span id="goog_559516999"></span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935438151619372004.post-38380166225638510572011-08-03T12:27:00.008-04:002013-04-26T14:50:04.509-04:00Cloud hosting pricing models explainedWhen choosing a cloud hosting provider, it is important to understand its pricing model. Unfortunately, this is not always easy to do, especially for those who start with cloud computing subject. That is why we wrote this article, which summarizes different approaches for pricing cloud servers that we have met with while creating <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/">Cloudorado – cloud computing price comparison</a>. We hope this makes it easier for you to follow pricelists and helps you avoid any unpleasant surprises when it comes time to pay for cloud hosting.<br />
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Before we start, let’s limit scope of the article. We are going to talk only about Infrastructure as a Service providers (IaaS) and we will discuss only to the server part, and not go much into additional storage, load balancing, etc. Platform and Software as a Service (PaaS and SaaS) is completely out of the scope here.</div>
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<b>Cloud server – the basic entity you pay for</b></div>
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First of all, you need to understand how resources are divided into cloud servers. The most common model is a predefined set of server types with a bundled amount of RAM, storage, and CPU. You can find this type in <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws">Amazon</a>, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=rackspace">Rackspace</a>, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=gogrid">GoGrid</a>, and many other providers. </div>
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<a name='more'></a>Usually higher instances have all resources proportionally increased together with price. So for instance if an instance with 1GB RAM costs $10 then an instance with 4GB will cost $40. Very often the resource that specifies the type of server is RAM, while storage in small print and CPU often not even mentioned. </div>
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On the other side for server resources, there are providers that allow custom values for RAM, CPU, and storage. Each component is then charged separately, usually per unit-hour (for example, 4 GB-hours for 2 GB RAM used for 2 hours). This approach lets you adjust to your specific needs. Providers of this type are <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=bitrefinery">BitRefinery</a>, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=cloudsigma">CloudSigma</a>, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=elastichosts">ElasticHosts</a> and <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=opsource">OpSource</a>. </div>
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An option somewhere in the middle is when you have some fixed resources and others that you can choose freely. In such cases RAM and CPU are almost always bundled, while you can choose storage size. Here <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=terremark">Terremark</a> is a provider that has exactly such model. <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws">Amazon</a> becomes such option if you decide to use EBS (network block storage) instead of instance storage.</div>
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In most cases providers with fixed server types are cheaper and are a good choice if you can fit the resources provided by that server. But the more your needs diverge from the predefined servers, the cheaper it is to use a provider with custom resource allocation. For instance, if you need a lot of RAM but minimal storage and CPU, a provider with custom servers would be the right choice. </div>
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Some additional note needs to be said about CPU. Unlike RAM and storage CPU is much less emphasized in cloud offers. There is often no obligation at all about CPU allocation and the most of providers allows CPU bursting, which means your server can take as much CPU as possible as long as it is not used by others. It is also very difficult to benchmark then, because your CPU allocation will strongly depend on the neighbors your cloud server will share a physical machine. Some providers have fixed CPU allocation, like <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws">Amazon EC2</a> or <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=storm">Storm on Demand</a>. Others either allow selection of number of virtual CPUs (<a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=terremark">Terremark</a>, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=opsource">OpSource</a>, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=bitrefinery">BitRefinery</a>) and/or even minimal allocation in CPU (<a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=cloudsigma">CloudSigma</a>, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=elastichosts">ElasticHosts</a>). </div>
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<b>Billing periods</b></div>
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OK, so how they are charged now? Servers or are equally often billed per hour or month, but in the case of <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=cloudsigma">CloudSigma</a>, per 5 minutes. Hourly and shorter billing periods are what I would call real cloud offer, since in such case you stop paying as soon as you stop using server. With monthly payments, it gets much closer to VPS (Virtual Private Server).</div>
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A typical misunderstanding of cloud offers is about the time server is not used. It is not that you don’t pay if your server stays idle (there are no requests). You are charged whenever a server is running. But you may incur some charges even when the server is turned off. For example, providers that charge separately per resource (those with custom RAM, storage, and CPU values) will charge you for occupied storage during the period when a server is turned off but not charge you for RAM and CPU. For those charging per server rather than resource (fixed set of server configurations), you will usually pay regardless of whether the server is turned on or off. There are exceptions. ReliaCloud will charge you half of the server price if it is turned off. <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws">Amazon</a> EC2 will not charge you for a server that is turned off, but you will lose everything stored in instance storage and it will be reverted back to the base image when you restart the server unless you pay additional for EBS or S3 services. You must be aware of such conditions if you are going to have a server that is not always running (for example, you run an application only during your company work day or you scale your application for peak hours).</div>
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<b>Getting complicated – subscriptions, reservations, packages, discounts, …</b></div>
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That is only the basics when you are on a fully on-demand model. But on-demand is bad for providers, since they cannot plan capacity, so they are very happy to give you a discount if you can make some commitments. And this is the place where most of the differences come in. </div>
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For example, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws">Amazon</a> provides reserved instances where you pay up front for a reservation and have a discount price when you use this instance, but if you don’t use it you don't have any additional costs. You can have a 1-year reservation that pays back after 6 months or a 3-year reservation that pays back after 1 year and 3 months for an instantly on server. </div>
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A similar approach is when you buy resources up front for a month or longer period, where you buy it at a significant discount compared to on-demand service (even 50% for <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=elastichosts">ElasticHosts</a>), but you are not compensated in anyway if you don’t use them fully. For <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=cloudsigma">CloudSigma</a>, on-demand prices are a way of adding more power to subscribed servers when there is additional load. Their “burst prices” are dependent on the current <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=cloudsigma">CloudSigma</a> load, with a maximum of twice the monthly subscription price.</div>
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Some providers offer prepaid packages of resource-hours to use, usually for a period of a month. These can offer you great savings if you match their plan, and often an overage is cheaper than normal on-demand prices. This is also where you can see cloud size affecting pricing. <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=gogrid">GoGrid</a> for instance is often quite expensive for a single server, but with packages it starts to become much more attractive if you need a larger cloud. Another interesting case is <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=opsource">OpSource</a>, which provides packages with a predefined amount of RAM, CPU, and storage hours. This defines its ratio, but otherwise you can select custom values for each resource.</div>
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<b>What else will I pay for?</b></div>
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Another factor to consider is data transfer, which is almost always charged per GB transferred. Sometimes there are discounts if you transfer more (<a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws">Amazon</a>, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=opsource">OpSource</a>), and there are predefined transfer packages available with discount transfer price (<a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=gogrid">GoGrid</a>, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=storm">Storm</a> on Demand) or just buy any transfer size upfront (<a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=cloudsigma">CloudSigma</a>, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=elastichosts">ElasticHosts</a>, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=linode">Linode</a>) . But it is important to note that many providers charge only for the outgoing traffic, which is perfect if your application will mostly consume data (eg. crawler or back up) – <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws">Amazon</a>, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=cloudsigma">CloudSigma</a>, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=gogrid">GoGrid</a>, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=opsource">OpSource</a>. <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=bitrefinery">BitRefinery</a> is the only provider that charges for bandwidth, not transfer size, and includes 3Mbps for free – a good choice if you are going to have a constant flow of data since the price per GB is then lower. Some providers will give you a transfer limit included in the server price. VirtaCore, for example, has a 3 TB limit.</div>
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And a final consideration: software licenses, which usually are limited to a Windows and SQL Server license. An important thing to note is that some providers (<a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws">Amazon</a>, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=atlantic">Atlantic</a>, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=rackspace">Rackspace</a>, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=terremark">Terremark</a>) charge per hour while others (<a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=cloudsigma">CloudSigma</a>, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=elastichosts">ElasticHosts</a>) charge per per month, even if they charge servers per hour and you need a server per hour. You should check this carefully if you plan to run Windows machines for very short periods. Note also that some providers have the same price regardless of whether a server runs Windows or a free OS (e.g., Linux) – <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=gogrid">GoGrid</a>, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=opsource">OpSource</a>.</div>
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As you can see, there are a lot of things to consider, pricing models of various cloud hosting providers are not compatible, and there are a lot of combinations to check to find best price. With Cloudorado you can <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/">compare prices of cloud hosting providers</a> with ease – just provide resources you need and it will help you handle the rest.</div>
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<div>
<a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/">Cloudorado – Cloud Computing Price Comparison</a></div>
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<b>Appendix: Pricing models used by selected cloud hosting providers</b></div>
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<table class="visible-table"><thead>
<tr><th></th><th>Server Types</th><th>Billing period</th><th>Windows billing period</th><th>Turned off payment</th><th>Server discounts</th> </tr>
</thead><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws">Amazon</a></td><td>Fixed / semi-flex</td><td>hourly</td><td>hourly</td><td>no / EBS storage</td><td>Upfront reservation entitling to usage discount</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=atlantic">Atlantic</a></td><td>Fixed</td><td>hourly</td><td>hourly</td><td>yes</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=bitrefinery">BitRefinery</a></td><td>Flexible</td><td>monthly</td><td>monthly</td><td>N/A</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=cloudsigma">CloudSigma</a></td><td>Flexible</td><td>5 min.</td><td>monthly</td><td>storage</td><td>prepaid subscription</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=elastichosts">ElasticHosts</a></td><td>Flexible</td><td>hourly</td><td>hourly</td><td>storage</td><td>prepaid subscription</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=gogrid">GoGrid</a></td><td>Fixed</td><td>hourly</td><td>free</td><td>yes</td><td>packages</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=linode">Linode</a></td><td>Fixed</td><td>monthly</td><td>N/A</td><td>N/A</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=opsource">OpSource</a></td><td>Flexible</td><td>hourly</td><td>free</td><td>storage</td><td>packages</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=rackspace">Rackspace</a></td><td>Fixed</td><td>hourly</td><td>hourly</td><td>yes</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=storm">Storm</a></td><td>Fixed</td><td>hourly</td><td>N/A</td><td>yes</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=terremark">Terremark</a></td><td>Semi-flex</td><td>hourly</td><td>hourly</td><td>storage</td><td>-</td></tr>
</tbody> </table>
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<table class="visible-table"><thead>
<tr><th></th><th>Free transfer in</th><th>Transfer discounts</th><th>Transfer included</th> </tr>
</thead><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=aws">Amazon</a></td><td>yes</td><td>thresholds</td><td>1 GB</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=atlantic">Atlantic</a></td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=bitrefinery">BitRefinery</a></td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>3 Mbps</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=cloudsigma">CloudSigma</a></td><td>yes</td><td>prepaid</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=elastichosts">ElasticHosts</a></td><td>-</td><td>prepaid</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=gogrid">GoGrid</a></td><td>yes</td><td>packages</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=linode">Linode</a></td><td>-</td><td>prepaid</td><td>yes; depends on server size</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=opsource">OpSource</a></td><td>yes</td><td>thresholds / with server package</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=rackspace">Rackspace</a></td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=storm">Storm</a></td><td>-</td><td>packages</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=terremark">Terremark</a></td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr>
</tbody> </table>
Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935438151619372004.post-26762218040886589142011-08-01T17:59:00.003-04:002011-08-01T18:11:40.436-04:00How to reduce costs of on demand instances with spot instancesFor those who want to reduce costs of on demand instance prices, there is an interesting tip how to do it with spot instances. In general spot instances are sold in form of an auction when there is unused capacity available at cloud provider. Well actually I think only Amazon has it in this form. In longer term it turns out that spot instance costs are somehow at a level of reserved instances, but you don’t need to pay reservation fee upfront. If you want to ensure your instance is not terminated just overbid, give even much higher price than normal on demand price – this is just a maximum you are willing to pay, but the final price will come when clearing price is set, which will be usually much lower. Obviously I wouldn’t recommend this method for mission critical servers.<br />
<br />
You can find out more on this subject here:<br />
<ul><li><a href="http://cloudcomments.net/2011/05/16/dont-forget-spot-instances-on-aws/">Don’t forget Spot Instances on AWS</a></li>
<li><a href="http://cloud-computing-economics.com/business-benefits-applications/delivering-reliable-services-spot-instances/">On delivering highly available services using spot instances</a></li>
</ul><br />
<div>Would you like to see such pricing model implemented in <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/">Cloudorado - cloud computing price comparison engine</a>?</div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935438151619372004.post-38135859197187084532011-07-15T18:12:00.000-04:002011-07-15T18:12:12.572-04:00Filtering results with data center locationWe have just added a new functionality - filtering with location of the cloud data center. Location is very important factor when choosing a cloud hosting provider, since network application performance, page load times in particular, strongly depends on latency which is proportional to distance. Therefore try to choose cloud providers which have data centers close to your users.<br />
<br />
To filter results by location use tabs just above the result table. Currently tabs are for continents only, which should be enough in far the most cases. For providers that have price lists dependent on data center location (eg. Amazon EC2), the price will update to prices in the selected region. If there are multiple data centers with different price lists in the selected region, the cheapest one in this region will be used.<br />
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We hope it will make the process of provider comparison even more accurate and result in finding really the best cloud hosting provider for your needs.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935438151619372004.post-47264181274560553732011-07-07T19:02:00.001-04:002011-07-07T19:07:32.771-04:00Three new cloud hosting providers available in CloudoradoToday we have added 3 new cloud server hosting providers: <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=storm">Storm on Demand</a>, <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=elastichosts">ElasticHosts</a> and <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=atlantic">Atlantic.Net</a>.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=storm">Storm on Demand</a> should be welcome by the most demanding customers. They have unique offer called <i>Bare Metal Servers</i> where a cloud server fully occupy a physical machine without sharing with any other cloud server. Such servers are still automatically provisioned and charged on hourly basis. <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=storm">Storm on Demand</a> also provides probably the biggest cloud servers in the market – up to 32 cores and 96 GB RAM.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=elastichosts">ElasticHosts</a> is UK based IaaS provider that has datacenters in both United States and United Kingdom. This offer should be interesting for those who need to provide services in both North America and Europe.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/redirect.jsp?id=atlantic">Atlantic.Net</a> has 18 years of experience in hosting solutions. Therefore they provide full portfolio of hosting capabilities. Starting from collocation, though dedicated servers and finishing on public and private clouds. This provides more capabilities for those who need more than just cloud servers.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/">Check prices for your cloud server needs at the new cloud providers with Cloudorado</a>.<br />
<div><br />
</div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935438151619372004.post-25636321229184567822011-07-01T11:14:00.000-04:002011-07-01T11:14:14.031-04:00Amazon EC2 and Windows Azure switch to free incoming transfer<div class="MsoNormal">Today both Amazon and Microsoft have updated pricelists of their cloud solutions. Started by Microsoft Windows Azure and followed by Amazon AWS incoming transfer will be now free. Apart from that Amazon also reduced incoming transfer fees by 20% and more. It is a noticeable event because Amazon did not change price lists for a long time. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Free incoming traffic is not uncommon thing among cloud computing providers, but rather as a differentiator for Amazon’s competition. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We expect that the change done by the big players will cause updates in pricing for other vendors as well, making it an industry standard. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The change will be most notable for applications which mostly require incoming transfer, like crawling or backups.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Check with <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/">Cloudorado</a> how the change will affect price for your cloud server needs. Cloudorado is obviously already using the latest prices.</div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4935438151619372004.post-51640531081960269632011-06-30T18:19:00.004-04:002011-07-03T17:40:32.166-04:00Cloudorado Blog Is Starting<div class="MsoNormal">We are proud to announce start of a blog for the <a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/"><b>Cloudorado</b> - cloud computing price comparison engine</a>. In this blog we intend to include not only information about changes in the service but also articles about cloud computing, especially the economical side of it.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.cloudorado.com/">Cloudorado</a> is a price comparison service for cloud hosting providers. It could be also referred as a price calculator for multiple providers, since the comparison is performed by calculating price for individually set server needs. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Manual comparison of cloud hosting offers is extremely tedious and requires analysis of different pricing models used by cloud vendors. But limiting yourself to just few of them may cost you a lot – difference between cheapest and the most expensive can easily exceed 10x! With Cloudorado you can effortlessly find the right offer for you and improve profits from your service by minimizing of cloud hosting costs.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0