# RamNode looking for a new panel



## D. Strout (Mar 16, 2014)

On Friday, @Nick_A posted this on WHT, seeking developers for a new VPS panel to replace SolusVM. It look like a good project, and it seems like besides the core functionality that SolusVM offers, there will be lots of nice new stuff. You can read the thread yourself (pay particular attention to the "significant requirements") but the things that stood out most to me are:


OpenStack based
One login, integrating with WHMCS
Option for hourly billing
Internal IP functionality, as well as enabling distribution of /64 IPv6 blocks
It looks like a big project, but it will have a big budget too: $20k. We probably won't see it for at least 6 months to a year, but when it drops it will be awesome. Definitely will put RamNode at the top of the league in terms of VPS providers.


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## HalfEatenPie (Mar 16, 2014)

Dang!  That's some serious money and a serious project!  Definitely looks like it'd be a great project though!  

I kinda just can't wait until it's out already.  I just want it right now.


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## dcdan (Mar 16, 2014)

To be completely honest, the budget seems to be quite low... Unless Ramnode is willing to outsource it.


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## WebSearchingPro (Mar 16, 2014)

dcdan said:


> To be completely honest, the budget seems to be quite low... Unless Ramnode is willing to outsource it.


I agree, for a 6 month - 1 year expectation, 20k is not a very large budget for a project that large. If you consider the amount of work that went into Hostguard, Stallion, Feathur as well as prometeus's iw-stack (which I'm not sure if they have a custom panel as I've never used their service) . There are large corporations that hire multiple people to work on projects "like" these with similar timeframes as they step into virtualization with particular wants and needs.


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## notFound (Mar 16, 2014)

dcdan said:


> To be completely honest, the budget seems to be quite low... Unless Ramnode is willing to outsource it.


I think I have to agree with that too.



WebSearchingPro said:


> prometeus's iw-stack (which I'm not sure if they have a custom panel as I've never used their service) .


Right now it's just CloudStack with a lot of tweaks but a custom panel is/was being made, just takes time unfortunately..


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## Brad- (Mar 16, 2014)

Excited to see the outcome!


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## Amfy (Mar 16, 2014)

20k isn't that much for such a project, of course, this highly depends on the details, but just have a look what the bit better devs are charging as their hourly rate and good devs+virt/network skills are even more rare.

Also this isn't so new, he already looked for a dev on freelancer.com if I remember correctly, but the time back the budget was 8k.


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## vampireJ (Mar 16, 2014)

Just curious- doesn't ramnode already have a custom panel? If so this seems like a bigger and more ambitous project then


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## Brad- (Mar 16, 2014)

vampireJ said:


> Just curious- doesn't ramnode already have a custom panel? If so this seems like a bigger and more ambitous project then


AFAIK, they're using SolusVM and WHMCS


-Brad


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## dcdan (Mar 16, 2014)

Theoretically, one could pull this off with 20k (outsourced), but you'd have to be *very* lucky to find the right team (and you'd still have to cut the specs in half).


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## shovenose (Mar 16, 2014)

That is a lot of money just to pay some random person on WHT.


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## D. Strout (Mar 16, 2014)

shovenose said:


> That is a lot of money just to pay some random person on WHT.


Well, it won't be "some random person". At the end of the post, Nick says:



> Please send your proposals and any related information to: nick[at]ramnode[.]com


I'm sure he'll review any such e-mails thoroughly, get back to the person (or team) with further questions, ensure they know what they're up to, etc. before hiring them and paying them anything.


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## KuJoe (Mar 16, 2014)

Wow, I would add KVM support to Wyvern for much less than $20k but some of the other requests would be a deal breaker for me. 


(Mobile)


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## MartinD (Mar 16, 2014)

It's very difficult finding a good developer these days regardless of the cash you have. The amount of bullshit replies and 'applications' that he will receive will take up a load of time. Not the best budget either...but someone will do something for it.


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## tchen (Mar 16, 2014)

On the plus side at least, it's a nicely detailed RFP.  I wish most clients would go through the trouble to do that properly like this.


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## D. Strout (Mar 16, 2014)

If I knew Python (and had time), I'd do it. I could certainly use that $20k - maybe pay for a year of college.


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## Nett (Mar 16, 2014)

It must be awesome @Nick_A!


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## concerto49 (Mar 16, 2014)

Contacting Nick in regards to this


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## jarland (Mar 16, 2014)

Honestly for the right independent developer this could be a very good job and not that difficult. Nothing about a vps panel is really all that complicated when put next to so many other development tasks. There's just not that many strong developers with a passion for vps panels. The number has grown though.


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## Francisco (Mar 16, 2014)

WebSearchingPro said:


> I agree, for a 6 month - 1 year expectation, 20k is not a very large budget for a project that large. If you consider the amount of work that went into Hostguard, Stallion, Feathur as well as prometeus's iw-stack (which I'm not sure if they have a custom panel as I've never used their service) . There are large corporations that hire multiple people to work on projects "like" these with similar timeframes as they step into virtualization with particular wants and needs.


Nick contacted us about purchasing Stallion 2 but I wasn't interested.

To be honest Stallion 2 took me 3 months to push out the initial build that we launched. I since then added backups, /64 assignment, KVM templates, redesigned a few of the pages, etc. While 3 months isn't long, I knew exactly how I wanted to do things from the get go. I have enough years of experience to know what needs to be done on the OS side, etc.

Personally I feel the budget is low if he's wanting a ground up fully in-house solution.

Francisco


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## Shoaib_A (Mar 16, 2014)

Looking at the features makes me think he wants to make Ramnode another DO/Vultr look alike


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## concerto49 (Mar 16, 2014)

Francisco said:


> Nick contacted us about purchasing Stallion 2 but I wasn't interested.
> 
> 
> To be honest Stallion 2 took me 3 months to push out the initial build that we launched. I since then added backups, /64 assignment, KVM templates, redesigned a few of the pages, etc. While 3 months isn't long, I knew exactly how I wanted to do things from the get go. I have enough years of experience to know what needs to be done on the OS side, etc.
> ...


20K is like 4 months of salary of a Junior developer here. Depends on expectatiosn I guess 

It's like 1-2 months for a senior.

Sigh at expensive wages.


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## Nett (Mar 16, 2014)

DigitalOcean has their million dollar funding for their panel, Nick does not.


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## Hxxx (Mar 16, 2014)

@concerto49, well wow where ever you live, must be good to work there as Developer. 

Myself, I'm a developer with college education and yet I have not been able to find work, well paid as developer. Everybody wants stuff almost for free. 

So I ended up doing my own business, which is rather very difficult, no secure salary, etc etc.

The economy is going down everywhere.


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## concerto49 (Mar 16, 2014)

hrr1963 said:


> @concerto49, well wow where ever you live, must be good to work there as Developer.
> 
> Myself, I'm a developer with college education and yet I have not been able to find work, well paid as developer. Everybody wants stuff almost for free.
> 
> ...


Not really. Just the cost of living is high here. Everything is expensive and often you get worse products compared to other countries. That's all a balance game. it depends on what you want. If you like travel and buying big common items, such as iPhone then it might be good. However things like food are 10x as expensive as many other places.


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## D. Strout (Mar 16, 2014)

K2Bytes said:


> Looking at the features makes me think he wants to make Ramnode another DO/Vultr look alike


Why, just because he wants hourly billing? I don't think so. Hourly billing is just one of the things that Nick is looking for, I'm sure that the current plans will remain intact, he just wants to expand his options. I'm most looking forward to the option of a /64.


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## tchen (Mar 16, 2014)

Probably goes without saying... but a lot of these pieces are part of OpenStack.  Ceiliometer provides billing metering.  Ovz drivers for Nova.  The only part that makes me cry is WHMCS integration, but ModulesGarden is tackling that.  

It'd be nice if these components get one more test user


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## D. Strout (Mar 16, 2014)

tchen said:


> It'd be nice if these components get one more test user


I'd be first in line to test any panel put together that fits these requirements. Sweet stuff, all of it.


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## DomainBop (Mar 16, 2014)

> One login, integrating with WHMCS





> Definitely will put RamNode at the top of the league in terms of VPS providers.


I view the "integrating with WHMCS" request  as a negative.  He should drop WHMCS too (which has as many problems as SolusVM, if not more) and go for a panel that integrates both billing and VPS management.   There are several Solus-free WHMCS-free VPS/cloud providers with integrated panels developed in house(although none of them target the low end segment).



> Hostguard, Stallion, Feathur as well as prometeus's iw-stack (which I'm not sure if they have a custom panel as I've never used their service)


iwStack isn't custom, they use CloudStack.  One of my favorite in house VPS management panels is KiwiVM developed by IT7 (BandwagonHost/VPSBlast).


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## jarland (Mar 16, 2014)

+1 for the awesomeness that is KiwiVM. It was alright, but then they added self node migration. I mean come on, that's almost too much awesomeness in one panel.


Nick should throw out some discussion of licensing a product from them, just saying


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## Shoaib_A (Mar 16, 2014)

D. Strout said:


> Why, just because he wants hourly billing? I don't think so. Hourly billing is just one of the things that Nick is looking for, I'm sure that the current plans will remain intact, he just wants to expand his options. I'm most looking forward to the option of a /64.


Thin provisioning, compression, ability to create & destroy VMs on demand and backups & snapshots. SolusVM does not support most of these features but DO/Vultr have them.HA, automatic failovers would make it true cloud otherwise it really would be DO/Vultr looks alike


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## Navyn (Mar 17, 2014)

Excited to see the differebce b/w  RAMNODE new vps panel and DO panel.


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## raindog308 (Mar 17, 2014)

concerto49 said:


> Not really. Just the cost of living is high here. Everything is expensive and often you get worse products compared to other countries. That's all a balance game. it depends on what you want. If you like travel and buying big common items, such as iPhone then it might be good. However things like food are 10x as expensive as many other places.


Not sure where you are but I agree with your general sentiment.  The first world is very expensive.

In the USA, there are no good developers making less than $100K per year.  There are plenty of developers making less than that doing tweaks to Visual Basic.NET gas station point of sale terminals or writing Wordpress plugins in php, but every good developer I know who has at least 5-7 years as a full time developer is making well north of $100K.

The only exceptions are recently graduated students who lack much time on their resumes.

If you think that's a lot of money, consider that


Most of them live in places where the government takes half in income tax
Most of them live in places where a 2-bedroom house costs $500K-700K
Many have tens of thousands of dollars in student debt before their first paycheck
Their actual salary is +50% higher because the employer picks up various government requirements, health insurance, etc.
All of them can be terminated at any time for any (or no) reason without notice, so there is no job security.  I guess you could say market demand is the only job security in the US.


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## Nick_A (Mar 17, 2014)

I think the WHMCS integration part brings the cost down since it doesn't have to be standalone. I received plenty of scoffing the last time I tried finding someone to replace WHMCS, so we're sticking with it for now. I think from a client's point of view, it would be best to go that route for now. That is assuming WHMCS zero days don't start popping up all over the place again (we can hope, right?).

I certainly hope this doesn't take 6 - 12 months since the consensus seems to be the groundwork is already out there. I guess I just need someone to put it all together in a nice, neat package for me. I listed the budget at $25k on some other websites. I'm willing to pay more if justified.


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## raindog308 (Mar 17, 2014)

Whatever happened to @joepie91 's CVM...?

http://cvm.cryto.net/


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## concerto49 (Mar 17, 2014)

Nick_A said:


> I think the WHMCS integration part brings the cost down since it doesn't have to be standalone. I received plenty of scoffing the last time I tried finding someone to replace WHMCS, so we're sticking with it for now. I think from a client's point of view, it would be best to go that route for now. That is assuming WHMCS zero days don't start popping up all over the place again (we can hope, right?).
> 
> 
> I certainly hope this doesn't take 6 - 12 months since the consensus seems to be the groundwork is already out there. I guess I just need someone to put it all together in a nice, neat package for me. I listed the budget at $25k on some other websites. I'm willing to pay more if justified.


I would say whmcs increases cost as you'd have to hack around it. As to security... anyone that's looked at it knows it's errr broken.


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## D. Strout (Mar 17, 2014)

raindog308 said:


> Whatever happened to @joepie91 's CVM...?
> 
> http://cvm.cryto.net/


Hmmm...



> CVM is currently under development. No initial release has been made yet [...] The first production release is expected before the end of 2012.


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## Francisco (Mar 17, 2014)

D. Strout said:


> Hmmm...


I think Feathur is based off Joepie's framework, it's possible that it's using some of the CVM code too?

I know he's a pretty busy guy and usually has quite a few projects underway.

Francisco


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## Aldryic C'boas (Mar 17, 2014)

I'm still waiting for mtwiscool to step forward and release a Frontpage-developed 'panel beta' during one of these weekly 'new project' embarrassments.


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## MannDude (Mar 17, 2014)

Unsure if he'd be interested but @Novacha is a solid dude and created the advertising system and DailyServerDeals coding, all in Python. Figured I'd give him a mention.

Whatever happens and whoever Nick hires, I do look forward to seeing the panel come to completion. It's great there are providers out there who are trying to do their own thing, and in an industry full of 'cookie cutter' hosts who all look the same I love that there is a big push for new panels, custom stuff, etc. So props for that!


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## Nick_A (Mar 17, 2014)

I'm going to be evaluating any and all options for a while, so the more the merrier right now. Thank you for all of the helpful comments.


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## MannDude (Mar 17, 2014)

Make sure I can deploy a new VM with my SSH keys already setup and ready. I love that I can do this with my DO boxes. It's the little things that make life nice.


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## Nick_A (Mar 17, 2014)

A few people have suggested CloudStack instead of OpenStack. Like I said - willing to consider anything right now.


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## vampireJ (Mar 20, 2014)

Nick_A said:


> A few people have suggested CloudStack instead of OpenStack. Like I said - willing to consider anything right now.


As long as both have a great api- then it should be good. I will think about sending my application too.


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## Nick_A (Mar 20, 2014)

Looks like OpenStack will handle OpenVZ, so leaning that direction over CS.


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## DomainBop (Mar 20, 2014)

Nick_A said:


> A few people have suggested CloudStack instead of OpenStack. Like I said - willing to consider anything right now.



I prefer OpenStack.  I've been beta-ing the new CloudVPS OpenStack based panel and I prefer it to CloudStack but CloudVPS is using the Skyline Interface to OpenStack (not the stock Horizon) which they developed and contributed to the OpenStack project.

video of Skyline interface: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=y_zc0PUDoJ8



> Make sure I can deploy a new VM with my SSH keys already setup and ready



You can add them directly during the instance creation with the OpenStack Skyline interface.


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## concerto49 (Mar 20, 2014)

Nick_A said:


> Looks like OpenStack will handle OpenVZ, so leaning that direction over CS.


OpenStack does everything and anything. Doesn't mean much. It's a very very big hole.


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