Basic cluster solution from Greenhousing starting from 4990 CZK! Anyone who activates one of the cluster tariffs by the end of November 2014 will automatically receive a birthday discount of 30% off the regular monthly fee for the next 4 months. Greenhousing's new cluster offering provides two basic levels. The first is the contractual resilience of servers and thus hosted services. The second level determines what access the client gets to the failover/cluster service and how they will control it. Let's take a closer look. What is a server cluster
If clustering is nothing new to you, skip right to the next paragraph. The rest of you can read on. A cluster is a grouping of loosely coupled computer servers
that are networked together, work closely together, and can appear to the outside world as a single computer. The advantages of such a solution are obvious. It can increase computational speed for solving demanding operations at a substantially lower cost than a single large supercomputer of comparable performance would cost. For example, if we urgently needed to understand the language of aliens or women, deciphering would be more efficient if we connected multiple computers and let them work together. With our server cluster, we can also achieve greater reliability. And that's the case we want to talk about. All cluster solutions that Greenhousing offers are so-called failover. This means that when a server on one side "crashes" for any reason, the same task continues running on the second server. If one or more servers in the cluster are not running, the project will still stay up. Clustered servers can reside in one "shelf" or rack, and even though Greenhousing has backup connectivity and power, there's still a negligible possibility of outage. You never know what might happen, which is why Greenhousing offers its customers a service consisting of servers distributed across three different locations in Prague. In the medium term, it's preparing server distribution across the Czech Republic and long-term within Europe.
Unbeatable reliability In the case of geographically separated servers, the risk of outage is reduced to an absolute minimum. "We are convinced that the service will work and that it is unbeatable, but in fairness we don't claim one hundred percent reliability. For failovers we state 99.96% and for clusters we give 99.99%. The moment we don't achieve our promises, we reduce the customer's monthly fee according to the contractual SLA evaluation," says Zdeněk Maršál from Greendata company, which manages Greenhousing services. The cluster offering starts at 4990 CZK for a technical solution based on two 4-core Dell Power Edge servers, with Greenhousing offering four additional more demanding technical solutions. As an add-on, it gives customers free Green VPS maker
, which ensures simple cluster virtualization. Within the server, customers have container technology prepared that they control themselves. It's up to them how many containers they want to have on individual servers and how the servers will be backed up. They also have easy access to the TurnKey Linux library with nearly 200 pre-installed programs. Greenhousing customers don't need to search for, download, or install anything else and can find everything they need for their own clients in the dropdown menu. Simple control The entire solution can be dedicated or so-called managed for the customer. In the first case, they get their root access and administer the cluster themselves. "The second option is assisted administration. This is intended for less experienced or inexperienced users. When a customer has a problem they can't handle themselves, they contact us through the information line and then resolve the whole matter through our administrators to help them," says Zdeněk Maršál and adds: "If, for example, they make some mistake - which can happen - then we're there to fix it. We supervise, help, install, or restore from backup. This add-on service costs 1500 CZK monthly." Experience from Great Britain
The entire solution is being prepared in cooperation with the English company Advice Forge. "At this moment, the service is tested by both Czech and English customers. As we promised, as part of our mission in England, we're trying to bring the best of what drives the internet market to the Czech Republic," says Zdeněk Maršál. Based on experience from the islands, he claims that British customers are several years ahead. "They are bigger connoisseurs, focus on details, and are more sensitive to outages," he explains. People who invest in internet marketing tools like PPC in England know exactly how much they spend on their advertising per month, per day, or per hour. They calculate that if a reliable cluster solution costs them 270 pounds monthly and they lose 500 pounds on an hour of outage, it makes sense to invest in technology that prevents potential failure. "Here, everyone focuses on saving every crown, but no one looks further. By saving once, someone can actually lose a lot of money in the future. It's similar to wanting to save on car operation by not going to service. Short-sighted savings can become unpleasantly expensive one day," says Zdeněk Maršál. Birthday discount Anyone who activates one of the cluster tariffs by the end of November will automatically receive a 30% discount off the regular monthly fee for the next 4 months. The discount applies only to new activations of cluster tariffs: cluster.greenhousing.cz red + Zdeněk Maršál