# SolusVM SOLD and acquired by OnApp



## drmike (Sep 16, 2014)

*BREAKING NEWS!*

SolusVM has been sold.

The buyer is OnApp.

As per: http://solusvm.com/


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## drmike (Sep 16, 2014)

Press Release:

OnApp acquires SolusVM, kickstarts the next phase of growth for the OnApp Federation

Acquisition extends OnApp’s position as most widely deployed IaaS automation platform for service providers
*London, 16th September 2014* - OnApp has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SolusVM, the virtual server management system used by thousands of service providers to offer Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud hosting. The acquisition extends OnApp’s position as the leading Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform provider for the hosting and service provider market, with more than 3,000 customers, and a product portfolio that spans the complete spectrum of Infrastructure-as-a-Service.

Following the acquisition, OnApp will extend SolusVM to be able to access infrastructure from the OnApp Federation, the world’s largest public cloud. The OnApp Federation is based around OnApp Market - a wholesale service provider-to-service provider marketplace for compute, RAM, storage, and CDN capacity, that currently covers more than 170 global locations. The addition of 2,000 SolusVM service providers to the OnApp Federation will create significant demand in the OnApp Market, which translates to new revenue streams for infrastructure suppliers.

Commenting on the news, Ben Welch-Bolen, CEO of Site5, a long-term OnApp and SolusVM customer, said:

“This is a great move for OnApp and the SolusVM community. There’s a big market for basic VPS services and SolusVM is already a well-regarded solution for hosts looking for a proven, no-frills platform. Now SolusVM has the backing of OnApp I’m looking forward to seeing it develop and grow while keeping that pure focus. Opening up SolusVM to the OnApp Federation is an interesting move, and I think providers like Digital Ocean and Linode will be keeping a watchful eye on how that develops. OnApp has disrupted established markets more than once in the past and could be about to have a big impact again.”

“This is very cool news for OnApp and SolusVM customers, and, we hope, for the whole hosting industry,” said OnApp CEO, Ditlev Bredahl. “This is a significant transaction that adds a few million to our revenue, a large number of customers to our community, and a new OnApp product that enables the kind of streamlined, bare-bones cloud that developers love. It’s a perfect complement to the fully integrated cloud, dedicated, CDN and storage services that the core OnApp platform brings to service providers.”

“Most importantly, though, this is the next phase in the growth of the OnApp Federation and the OnApp Market. You have to balance supply and demand when you’re building a new marketplace. Over the last couple of years we’ve built up an amazing supply of infrastructure in the OnApp Federation, with a huge range of price and performance options for CDN and now compute resources too. Bringing the Solus community into OnApp will create a huge boost on the demand side, and enable SolusVM providers to offer quick and easy cloud servers that can be deployed on demand, all over the world.”

The SolusVM team, led by Phill Bandelow, will become part of the OnApp technical team and will be expanded to increase the pace of innovation and development.

“We’re delighted to be joining OnApp, to be part of the force changing the hosting industry,” said Phill. “Adding SolusVM to the OnApp portfolio is a natural fit, and is great news for our customer base who can look forward to a faster pace of innovation while getting access to the service and support that OnApp is famous for. We’re getting the backing and stability of an industry leader, and a team that understands hosting inside-out, and cares about delivering what SolusVM users need.”

With the addition of SolusVM, the OnApp product range now enables service providers to offer the full spectrum of Infrastructure-as-a-Service products, from bare-bones cloud servers running on SolusVM, to fully integrated cloud, bare metal, hybrid smart servers, storage and CDN running on the OnApp platform. It also means that service providers can use the OnApp portfolio to sell services based on Xen, KVM, VMware and OpenVZ, the most popular container-based and hardware virtualization platforms.

The terms of this cash deal were not disclosed.

*About OnApp*
OnApp software enables hosts, telcos and other service providers to sell the complete range of Infrastructure-as-a-Service products, from bare-bones virtual servers to fully-automated cloud, dedicated servers, CDN, storage and more, and scale on demand using infrastructure from OnApp’s global federated cloud.

OnApp launched in July 2010. Today more than 3,000 service providers in 87 countries run on OnApp software. OnApp has 140 staff across the EU, U.S. and Asia-Pacific and is headquartered in London, UK. For more information visit http://onapp.com.


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## blergh (Sep 16, 2014)

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out, considering the past "oopsies" that OnApp has shared with us.


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## AshleyUK (Sep 16, 2014)

Hopefully it is good news, and with the larger company backing they can get some more developers on and start pushing out the long requested features that will really improve the panel.


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## HalfEatenPie (Sep 16, 2014)

But...

I mean...  

Isn't OnApp like riddled with terrible bugs or problems to begin with? (Anyone have any specific examples?  This is all from what I hear)

I have incredibly mixed feelings about this... Mostly because I don't have too in-depth knowledge about OnApp's software side.


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## drmike (Sep 16, 2014)

OnApp like most companies has had prior issues.  I expect the probably have some sore spots currently with a vocal subset of customers and/or former customers. Who doesn't though?

OnApp seems to be doing more interesting things lately like pushing their cloud.net offering.

I look at this as a good step / acquistion for the industry and  I hope OnApp gets busting tail on the new acquisition.  SolusVM has stagnated for a long while and I am sure 50 different people could send in their wants, wishes, overdue features.  

I know the folks at OnApp are reading --- so go ahead


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## sv01 (Sep 16, 2014)

and how about pricing ?
OnApp not targetting low end market


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## Francisco (Sep 16, 2014)

@AnthonySmith made a comment on WHT that while they aren't going to jack the price this very second, it's likely going to go up a little bit at least.

Virtualizor might suddenly see this as their chance to really dice up the market but I dunno.

I hope their first task is doing a complete rewrite and to do only maintenance releases for a year to get it in place. Does the project really need more incomplete features? It has a shopping list of them already.

Francisco


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## NullMind (Sep 16, 2014)

Pricing has been the main concern it seems, but we have stated, we have no plans for increasing it, and I can assure you, the price you get today will always be attainable 

This is indeed good news for Solus providers, we are bringing more developers and resources to the project, the ability for Solus providers to consume from the federation and much more, why be stagnant when you can grow ?


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## Francisco (Sep 16, 2014)

NullMind said:


> Pricing has been the main concern it seems, but we have stated, we have no plans for increasing it, and I can assure you, the price you get today will always be attainable
> 
> This is indeed good news for Solus providers, we are bringing more developers and resources to the project, the ability for Solus providers to consume from the federation and much more, why be stagnant when you can grow ?


Oh no no, by all means, bump the price all you want, it makes no difference to me 

I stopped paying for that crap many moons ago.

I don't think you know Solus' market very well if you think users are going to be looking to sell onapp resources. Many (read: 51%+) of their users are all budget driven hosts that work with extremely tight margins. Do you think they'll be able to upsell a $30/m cloud redundant VPS or would be willing to take the chance of that kind of chargeback blowing out their piggy banks for the month?

If you're wanting to make the federation stuff a two way street (SolusVM customers are able to offer into the onapp federation platform for low/no cost) then I really hope your users like Buffalo, Buffalo, a dash of Atlanta, Buffalo, Buffalo, etc. For your own sake i'd recommend against such horrible ideas. There's *countless* SolusVM using hosts that go through their users data w/o permission to try to find violations to terminate them without a refund.

In the dating world there's a very wise saying of "Don't stick your dick in crazy", but there's also the flip side "Don't let crazy stick it's dick in you". It's hilariously offensive but it's fitting.

Francisco


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## NullMind (Sep 16, 2014)

Francisco

You are correct in your view that a big portion of hosts that offer Solus today are not "Cloud" type hosts, but allot of it it's due to how much it costs to run a cloud.

The federation opens the doors for them to offer it to some of the clients who need a redundant system, instead of loosing the client to other providers, it's not for everybody, but for those who can take advantage of it, it will open a whole new market.

Somebody should make a bumpersticker of that saying ... made my day


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## serverian (Sep 16, 2014)

HalfEatenPie said:


> But...
> 
> I mean...
> 
> ...


Don't worry. Noone is that capable to make SolusVM worse 

In SolusVM world, everything is designed by the principle that every single command executed should work perfectly, without any errors. No checks, what so ever. And that's why you end up with issues like:

- Containers created without IPs

- Zombie containers hanging out randomly on the nodes

- Suspended containers that are still running

- Containers supposedly powered on but offline

- And pretty much everything that can fail, fails *without letting you know*.


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## Francisco (Sep 16, 2014)

Francisco said:


> The IP one is hilarious. When we used Solus we saw it happen *all the time* when you'd fire 2 provisions at once.
> 
> After a little logging I found out why it happens and simply signed out for the day.
> 
> Francisco


The IP one is hilarious. When we used Solus we saw it happen *all the time* when you'd fire 2 provisions at once. It was so bad back then that you'd have 2 VM's provision with the same IP's, but only one of them having the IP bound in SolusVM itself.

After a little logging I found out why it happens and simply signed out for the day.

Francisco


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## DomainBop (Sep 16, 2014)

Francisco said:


> I don't think you know Solus' market very well if you think users are going to be looking to sell onapp resources. Many (read: 51%+) of their users are all budget driven hosts that work with extremely tight margins. Do you think they'll be able to upsell a $30/m cloud redundant VPS or would be willing to take the chance of that kind of chargeback blowing out their piggy banks for the month?


That's close to the thoughts I voiced on OnApp's ability to woo current SolusVM users a few days ago.



This acquisition really doesn't change my feelings that OnApp's lack of inroads into the corporate cloud market (and its reliance on small to mid sized webhosting clients) are going to be a stumbling block going forward and place it at a disadvantage in gaining marketshare in the "cloud arena" to OpenStack and CloudStack which have been widely embraced by many corporate giants.



> You are correct in your view that a big portion of hosts that offer Solus today are not "Cloud" type hosts, but allot of it it's due to how much it costs to run a cloud.


Cost is part of the reason but a lack of technical competence is also a major reason that many SolusVM users are not "cloud type hosts" (especially the low end openvz segment of the market),  Read through a few threads on LowEndTalk or WHT and you'll find many hosts who have limited knowledge of Linux, programming languages, etc., etc. and would be lost if they didn't have a push button solution like SolusVM. I shudder to think what would happen if they tried to offer a "cloud" type product.



> The federation opens the doors for them to offer it to some of the clients who need a redundant system, instead of loosing the client to other providers, it's not for everybody, but for those who can take advantage of it, it will open a whole new market.


Higher paying customers who are seeking redundant HA solutions tend to have higher expectations for security and a provider's business processes, etc, and as Francisco alluded to (_"those mofos rifle through their customers data"_) many SolusVM providers have inadequate protections and policies in place.  Here's a little spreadsheet "Questions to Ask Your Cloud Provider".  I think many SolusVM providers would get failing grades if they answered those questions honestly. 

tl;dr I don't expect to see the average budget conscious customer of a SolusVM provider going for higher priced cloud offerings, and I really don't see high end customers going for the average SolusVM provider because of security concerns and concerns about a provider's business processes, etc. 

tl;dr, tl;dr the addition of "the federation" to SolusVM isn't going to cause higher paying Rackspace customers to migrate to the likes of GVH/CVPS, etc


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## Francisco (Sep 16, 2014)

WHY WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE SANS?


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## Enterprisevpssolutions (Sep 16, 2014)

WOW is all I got to say lmao. I can hear the clients now complaining opcorn:


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## DomainBop (Sep 16, 2014)

Francisco said:


> WHY WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE SANS?


Shakespeare often thought of them.. _"Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything"_


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## HalfEatenPie (Sep 16, 2014)

Francisco said:


> The IP one is hilarious. When we used Solus we saw it happen *all the time* when you'd fire 2 provisions at once. It was so bad back then that you'd have 2 VM's provision with the same IP's, but only one of them having the IP bound in SolusVM itself.
> 
> 
> After a little logging I found out why it happens and simply signed out for the day.
> ...



Did you...

Did you just quote yourself?

Or am I just seeing doubles?

I'm so confused.


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## MartinD (Sep 16, 2014)

Yeah, I deleted the first one because I thought it was a double post.. turns out he quoted his original post (that I deleted) and added more.. making me look like a mong


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## HalfEatenPie (Sep 16, 2014)

MartinD said:


> Yeah, I deleted the first one because I thought it was a double post.. turns out he quoted his original post (that I deleted) and added more.. making me look like a mong


Haha well ok then!  

I just realized Solus and OnApp have same/similar colors in their logo.  Grey and Blue.  I smell a conspiracy!


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## NullMind (Sep 16, 2014)

DomainBop said:


> Cost is part of the reason but a lack of technical competence is also a major reason that many SolusVM users are not "cloud type hosts" (especially the low end openvz segment of the market),  Read through a few threads on LowEndTalk or WHT and you'll find many hosts who have limited knowledge of Linux, programming languages, etc., etc. and would be lost if they didn't have a push button solution like SolusVM. I shudder to think what would happen if they tried to offer a "cloud" type product.


Thats the beauty of the federation, the cloud itself is deployed, secured and managed by providers who have allot of experience with deploying and maintaining complex systems like these, the federation consumer (ex: Solus host) does not need to worry about none of it, just provide such resources to their clients in a white label environment.

What runs inside a cloud vm and what runs inside a regular VPS is the same, support at that level is something a traditional VPS host can handle, now the fact there are some hosts who can't, it's something we can't police.


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## SkylarM (Sep 16, 2014)

NullMind said:


> Thats the beauty of the federation, the cloud itself is deployed, secured and managed by providers who have allot of experience with deploying and maintaining complex systems like these, the federation consumer (ex: Solus host) does not need to worry about none of it, just provide such resources to their clients in a white label environment.
> 
> What runs inside a cloud vm and what runs inside a regular VPS is the same, support at that level is something a traditional VPS host can handle, now the fact there are some hosts who can't, it's something we can't police.



What makes you think a VPS company using Solus that typically has a max $7/m VPS package (thanks LE*) is going to benefit from or try to sell/sell federation VPS that are significantly higher than the monthly cap their primary advertisement market is bound to? Not saying added features is a bad thing, but I don't realistically see this going anywhere with the vast majority of SolusVM hosts advertising within that $7/m upper limit on packages.

I don't see us selling that even if we offered it on our site just due to the market segment our clientbase comes from. Nor would I WANT to sell something I am playing middle-man on for something that isn't a software/license addon sold at-cost.


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## NullMind (Sep 16, 2014)

SkylarM said:


> What makes you think a VPS company using Solus that typically has a max $7/m VPS package (thanks LE*) is going to benefit from or try to sell/sell federation VPS that are significantly higher than the monthly cap their primary advertisement market is bound to? Not saying added features is a bad thing, but I don't realistically see this going anywhere with the vast majority of SolusVM hosts advertising within that $7/m upper limit on packages.


Thats an incredibly wrong generalisation of the SolusVM client base, thats all I can say.


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## SkylarM (Sep 16, 2014)

NullMind said:


> Thats an incredibly wrong generalisation of the SolusVM client base, thats all I can say.



It's a pretty large portion of the SolusVM clientbase though. Not ALL of it, but a pretty large percentage of it. The federation feature will be targeting a fairly small chunk of existing SolusVM clients.

Question RE Pricing: Any plans to offer bulk discounts for those of us with a huge pile of licenses of SolusVM?


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## splitice (Sep 16, 2014)

Ill reserve my judgement until later. I fail to see how SolusVM could get significantly worse, however there is a large potential for improvement.


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## SkylarM (Sep 16, 2014)

splitice said:


> Ill reserve my judgement until later. I fail to see how SolusVM could get significantly worse, however there is a large potential for improvement.



I'm hoping for improvement! Assuming OnAPP leaves it mostly the same, but adds in their devs it should improve quality and features (hopefully) get released at a faster rate.

Happy with the direction Solus is (finally) taking to getting stuff on track. IPv6 subnets is awesome and needed, the audit should have been done ages ago, but it's a great step in the right direction.


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## NullMind (Sep 16, 2014)

SkylarM said:


> It's a pretty large portion of the SolusVM clientbase though. Not ALL of it, but a pretty large percentage of it. The federation feature will be targeting a fairly small chunk of existing SolusVM clients.
> 
> Question RE Pricing: Any plans to offer bulk discounts for those of us with a huge pile of licenses of SolusVM?


At the moment the main goal is to look at what can be improved and what else can be done to make it a better product, TBH the product is priced incredibly well


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## Aldryic C'boas (Sep 16, 2014)

I'm wondering how many OnApp developers suddenly started binge drinking after seeing the Solus source, and realizing what nightmare they were just walked into.


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## SkylarM (Sep 16, 2014)

NullMind said:


> At the moment the main goal is to look at what can be improved and what else can be done to make it a better product, TBH the product is priced incredibly well


Give us the option to provision a VPS with Tun/Tap/PPTP/Fuse/etc already enabled, also option for clients to enable Fuse, etc similar to the Tun/TAP (WHICH DOESN'T ALWAYS WORK!!) in the client area  Gogo.


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## NullMind (Sep 16, 2014)

Aldryic C said:


> I'm wondering how many OnApp developers suddenly started binge drinking after seeing the Solus source, and realizing what nightmare they were just walked into.


Heck, we have a big dev office in Ukraine, binge drinking ? thats morning coffee !


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## rds100 (Sep 16, 2014)

SkylarM said:


> Give us the option to provision a VPS with Tun/Tap/PPTP/Fuse/etc already enabled, also option for clients to enable Fuse, etc similar to the Tun/TAP (WHICH DOESN'T ALWAYS WORK!!) in the client area  Gogo.


This is really not an issue, we've been doing this for years with some additional custom scripting.


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## NullMind (Sep 16, 2014)

SkylarM said:


> Give us the option to provision a VPS with Tun/Tap/PPTP/Fuse/etc already enabled, also option for clients to enable Fuse, etc similar to the Tun/TAP (WHICH DOESN'T ALWAYS WORK!!) in the client area  Gogo.


Man, my eyes are playing with me, I read that as "Option to provision a VPS with Fun on Tap ..."


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## SkylarM (Sep 16, 2014)

NullMind said:


> Man, my eyes are playing with me, I read that as "Option to provision a VPS with Fun on Tap ..."


I'm good with a little Fun on Tap too!


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## NullMind (Sep 16, 2014)

SkylarM said:


> I'm good with a little Fun on Tap too!


Fun on Tap ... added to the wishlist


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## Jonathan (Sep 16, 2014)

NullMind said:


> At the moment the main goal is to look at what can be improved and what else can be done to make it a better product, TBH the product is priced incredibly well


I do agree, which is the only reason people are still with it I think.  For the cost, it's a reasonably complete product that people can at least use and ignore most of the annoyances even if they are extremely annoying.  That said, there's a ton of room for improvement - lets complete what's already there.

The first step to setting a good first impression and gaining the respect of your customers is going to be answering a few questions straight up:

Is there SolusVM 2 or has that been a lie and phony screenshots all along like I suspect?

What are you long-term intentions regarding pricing?  Will it remain on a per-node basis or go to a per-core model like OnApp?

Are you going to develop, maintain, and improve the feature set that's already there or try to push everyone into your "cloud" bubble?



Aldryic C said:


> I'm wondering how many OnApp developers suddenly started binge drinking after seeing the Solus source, and realizing what nightmare they were just walked into.


I think the biggest reason that WHMCS and Solus both won't release their source is not for fear of it being pirated, but for fear of embarrassment and being the laughing stock of the industry for a while whereas they can hide it and everyone go along using their terrible code as if it weren't there.  Ignorance is bliss.


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## Jonathan (Sep 16, 2014)

After a bit more reading of this "Exciting news for all of our customers" email, along with your defense of the OnApp Federation, it now seems obvious what this is all about:

By going after the general client-base of Solus (read kiddie hosts) by buying it, you can further your marketshare of resold "cloud" thus greatly increasing your profits by allowing more people to resell OnApp "cloud".

Smart move from a business perspective, but basically there's about to be OnApp resellers everywhere....boy does the future look bright.


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## NullMind (Sep 16, 2014)

KnownHost-Jonathan said:


> Is there SolusVM 2 or has that been a lie and phony screenshots all along like I suspect?
> 
> What are you long-term intentions regarding pricing?  Will it remain on a per-node basis or go to a per-core model like OnApp?
> 
> Are you going to develop, maintain, and improve the feature set that's already there or try to push everyone into your "cloud" bubble?


The Solus product will continue to evolve, as a VPS management platform with federation capabilities, it will continue to be developed and maintained to be the best on what it does, it's a different market than that of Cloud and we dont intend to change it's focus.

On pricing, honestly we have not made any plans to change it.


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## Munzy (Sep 16, 2014)

Wait, I saw "secured" by the providers somewhere in here!

Let me go pull that CVPS SolusVM dump again and find my user info again. 

The simple fact you are relying on the providers to secure it is idiotic, as many haven't even come out of HS yet.


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## AnthonySmith (Sep 16, 2014)

splitice said:


> Ill reserve my judgement until later. I fail to see how SolusVM could get significantly worse, however there is a large potential for improvement.


This sums it up for me, I am not expecting much but any improvements will be a bonus, frankly after 4 years with solusvm the only thing that I am waiting for is a viable and well thought out method of migration to another panel, if virtualizor come up with that (they are working on it) I will migrate to virtualizor, if onapp come up with it first then I will go to onapp, that is pretty much all I am waiting for at this stage.


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## NullMind (Sep 16, 2014)

Munzy said:


> Wait, I saw "secured" by the providers somewhere in here!
> 
> Let me go pull that CVPS SolusVM dump again and find my user info again.
> 
> The simple fact you are relying on the providers to secure it is idiotic, as many haven't even come out of HS yet.


Please read the whole thing again, you are mixing up things, Im talking about something completely different.


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## Jasson.Pass (Sep 16, 2014)

This would be a good time for some new products to come out and take SolusVM's place.


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## Jonathan (Sep 16, 2014)

Jasson.Pass said:


> This would be a good time for some new products to come out and take SolusVM's place.


There's already Virtualizor, HostGuard, VirtKick is a work in progress, and probably a few others I'm failing to mention.


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## DomainBop (Sep 16, 2014)

SkylarM said:


> Nor would I WANT to sell something I am playing middle-man on


Nor would I want to buy anything from you (or anyone) that you're playing the middleman on. 

The federation concept reminds me of a wholesale version of OneProvider's (now discontinued) retail OneCloud offering.  I question how many buyers who are looking for a redundant HA cloud solution are going to want to buy through a middleman rather than buying direct from the source (even if buying direct from the source means buying from 2-3-4-5 different providers).  Even if the "middleman" has the best customer service in the world they will still be at the mercy of the upstream when there is a problem which often means increased problem resolution time for the end user, and for higher paying cloud customers that added time can be a deal killer. 

While the end user of Provider A (let's call provider A Skylar) might not know that service at the cloud location in the UK they selected is being provided by Provider B (let's call the upstream VPS.net), the end user will notice any increased problem resolution time and will place the blame fully on Provider A.



> You don’t have to manage multiple clouds, multiple partners, multiple bills and support teams to go global with the OnApp Federation. It’s all managed through your OnApp control panel. The OnApp Federation launched with capacity from providers in more than 170 locations, in 113 cities, across 43 countries, and is growing in scale all the time.


http://cdn.onapp.com/files/brochures/onapp-federation-brochure.pdf


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## HalfEatenPie (Sep 16, 2014)

Alright well I guess making this a bit more of a discussion now 

What can we expect to see in the near future for SolusVM?  What's the long-term goal for SolusVM (in addition to white-label cloud?)? 

As a provider, what benefits should I see that comes out of this?  

Can we request an audit on the code of SolusVM (would that be a great investment)?

In addition to the previous questions asked (by me and others), what's the biggest 3 changes we'll see? 

Is there anything else you'd like us to know about this acquisition and the future of SolusVM and OnApp?

Just as a note while you're here, I've had to sometimes go through weird means to get certain actions done previously (as a client and as a provider).  Is there any way to get a completely new and refreshing UI for the Admin and the Client side? (either or even?)

*Edit:*

Here's another question.  Will (sometime in the future) OnApp's cloud platform and SolusVM actually merge and become one piece of software? (not in like a way to resell cloud service on OnApp's systems but actual like one thing setup together?)


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## Serveo (Sep 16, 2014)

Congrats @NullMind, nice move. Though I have also a question will SolusVM clients be able to sell on the Federation or only use it for CDN?


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## MannDude (Sep 16, 2014)

Honestly, I think this is great.

Solus must have been tempted to sell, and I do not believe people sell out when their product is on the up and up and they have faith for it's future. They've had their fair share of issues and probably recognized the best way to move forward and improve is to have some new life breathed into it.

As far as licensing goes? It's already cheap, isn't it? I'm not a fan of raising prices on existing customers, but I don't see the issue in doing so for new customers or even offering a support package. SolusVM is pretty heavily documented as is, though I'm sure there is still a lot of support tickets submitted from newb hosts on their $50/mo datashack server who want to sell 4GB VPS plans for $6/mo... "hi sir y dis not work?"


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## Francisco (Sep 16, 2014)

Serveo said:


> Congrats @NullMind, nice move. Though I have also a question will SolusVM clients be able to sell on the Federation or only use it for CDN?


From the wording above, it looks like users will be able to sell *from* the federation, I don't see OnApp wanting the cesspool of LE providers mucking up their golden cow. They could always do heavy verification of providers to make sure they hold water and aren't a laughing stalk but then they're pitting their own product lines against each other.

Francisco


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## MannDude (Sep 16, 2014)

Francisco said:


> From the wording above, it looks like users will be able to sell *from* the federation, I don't see OnApp wanting the cesspool of LE providers mucking up their golden cow. They could always do heavy verification of providers to make sure they hold water and aren't a laughing stalk but then they're pitting their own product lines against each other.
> 
> 
> Francisco



I see that it could turn into how most of us treat domain name registrations. Why would I order a domain from you, or any other of my providers when I can get it from an actual registar or one of their glorified resellers like what NameCheap is to eNom? That is how people will begin to view the whole Federation thing. Why buy it from xyz123redcatextremehost when I can get the same product, minus the middle man for a better(?) price by going closer to the source?

EDIT: And that's not really a complaint, because for the purpose of offering that it doesn't matter _who_ the end-user signs up with. Up top and looking down, a cloud vps sold here or a cloud vps sold there is still a cloud sold.


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## Francisco (Sep 16, 2014)

MannDude said:


> I see that it could turn into how most of us treat domain name registrations. Why would I order a domain from you, or any other of my providers when I can get it from an actual registar or one of their glorified resellers like what NameCheap is to eNom? That is how people will begin to view the whole Federation thing. Why buy it from xyz123redcatextremehost when I can get the same product, minus the middle man for a better(?) price by going closer to the source?


Yep.

For domains, some people like paying a single source for all their needs as the time saved from having to

deal with multiple vendors is worth the couple bucks.

I don't see there being a big price difference between solusvm federation plans and onapp ones. Since it's just pass through you'll see people charge $1 + paypal fees ontop of base cost and claim that they've paid for a Lamborghini Aventador off it.

Francisco


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## MannDude (Sep 16, 2014)

Francisco said:


> see people charge $1 + paypal fees ontop of base cost and *claim that they've paid for a Lamborghini Aventador off it.*


Ouch... burn. I don't think he's a member here anyhow though.


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## DomainBop (Sep 16, 2014)

> the middle man


These are recent actual quotes (borrowed from LET) from a SolusVM using middleman provider (who shall go nameless) when something went wrong which illustrate why I have always avoided middlemen when I'm buying something mission critical like a dedicated server (or a "redundant cloud"):

_"[redacted] has *absolutely no control* over our dedicated server hosting offerings' technical support,...In almost all situations, such as this one, we are simply acting as a middleman and are forwarding responses back and forth between the upstream and our customer."_

_"I apologize, again we have no control and are simply working as a middleman in this situation, forwarding responses back and forth."_

_"Again, the situation was *completely out of our control*. Obviously we're trying to do all we can to help you but we're not NOC technicians so all we can do is try to rush this to completion for you."_

_"We can't diagnose IPMI, however we're being told it's working. I responded to the ticket, still waiting for a response, I can't do anything further. Please trust me on this one that we're doing all we can .. and I don't know how you can put the blame on us when we are not NOC technicians that had absolutely no part in setting up your server, the IPMI, nothing -- We've simply been acting as a support middleman forwarding responses back and forth and are doing all we can."_

tl;dr: I expect to see an increase in WHT/LET threads blaming the middleman when there is a problem with their resold cloud offerings.  You might make a few extra bucks by reselling cloud offerings but your reputation could take a hit anytime there is a problem.


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## Nikki (Sep 16, 2014)

NullMind said:


> At the moment the main goal is to look at what can be improved and what else can be done to make it a better product, TBH the product is priced incredibly well


Scrapping the whole code base and rewriting it will likely improve it greatly. From what I can remember, it's pieced together from the original product without much consideration for how well it works with large-scale operations now.

Other than that, you really need to look into the way the application is structured. Logic is all over the place, support for old versions of PHP should be dropped (5.4 minimum these days) - especially on the nodes (who doesn't have a version with json now?), and it could really benefit from a framework of some kind, even if it's a small in-house one to handle basic routing.

I don't think OnApp should be looking at merging features into SolusVM either, improve SolusVM, then look into other options.


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## blergh (Sep 16, 2014)

Gör om, gör rätt.

*

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Swedish_proverbs#G


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## Virpus-Ken (Sep 16, 2014)

serverian said:


> Don't worry. Noone is that capable to make SolusVM worse
> 
> In SolusVM world, everything is designed by the principle that every single command executed should work perfectly, without any errors. No checks, what so ever. And that's why you end up with issues like:
> 
> ...


To add to this, their API for WHMCS was a joke.  Terminations never worked (VM's would be suspended before termination, but their API wasn't smart to know that onapp requires the VM to be unsuspended first, then terminate).  

Additionally, we'd find IP's randomly removed from the VM.

At one point I questioned the development of OnApp moreso than SolusVM.  Their API alone has been bugged for YEARS.


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## kaniini (Sep 16, 2014)

KnownHost-Jonathan said:


> There's already Virtualizor, HostGuard, VirtKick is a work in progress, and probably a few others I'm failing to mention.


All of which have the same basic design flaws.


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## Geek (Sep 16, 2014)

If VirtKick is executed correctly, I wouldn't expect to see it for a while. Development/Staging/QA for such a project has got to take a goodly amount of time and patience -- I deflect to the elder members here who have accomplished this, however. I signed up for the KVM beta. I don't 'do' hypervisors, so I'm not sure how I can help there. Just going to have to see how it goes until OpenVZ support begins. There are certain things I'd like to see changed with SolusVM's integration with OpenVZ ... things like ... a base OS template that's not from 2009, a default configuration for RHEL6 that doesn't use a beancounter controlled container origin, sane values for the vswap origin files, iolimit/IOPS control, ploop backup/migrations for those using it, and if I recall something still has to be done with the traffic shaping.

It would be nice if an up-and-coming project like this could get enough financial support to have their code professionally audited prior to its release.  Seems like it would be good advertising long-term.  Audited and secured right from the start?  Sounds good to me.  I mean, I'd be impressed by that. On the other hand, I'm truthfully not sure how much a good audit should cost.  It would be a shame for it to go the way of HyperVM, and certainly not with the same outcome.


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## Epidrive (Sep 16, 2014)

Congratulations on the move @NullMind , just out of interest, what is your role on onapp?


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## Francisco (Sep 16, 2014)

Geek said:


> It would be nice if an up-and-coming project like this could get enough financial support to have their code professionally audited prior to its release.  Seems like it would be good advertising long-term.  Audited and secured right from the start?  Sounds good to me.  I mean, I'd be impressed by that. On the other hand, I'm truthfully not sure how much a good audit should cost.  It would be a shame for it to go the way of HyperVM, and certainly not with the same outcome.


The problem is that short of SolusVM tripling the price or something (or forcing a minimum volume per month, OnApp style), they aren't going to swap.

I'm not sure if you read VPSB back when SolusVM was passing $_GET to SETUID system(), but there was literally a dozen or so panels that were starting up and 'ready to roll on a minutes notice' all of a sudden. The only panels that that actually released were @KuJoe's & Feathur. I think Joe kept his panel to himself and many people wish that BlueVM had done the same with Feathur.

Francisco


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## NullMind (Sep 17, 2014)

Epidrive said:


> Congratulations on the move @NullMind , just out of interest, what is your role on onapp?


Thanks, Im the CVO and one of the co-founders


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## NullMind (Sep 17, 2014)

HalfEatenPie said:


> Alright well I guess making this a bit more of a discussion now
> 
> What can we expect to see in the near future for SolusVM?  What's the long-term goal for SolusVM (in addition to white-label cloud?)?


The longterm roadmap is still to be mapped, but for now, it's improve on whats there and open the federation access




> As a provider, what benefits should I see that comes out of this?


The backing of a well established software developer, you can rest assure your software provider is going to be there tomorrow, plus we want to make the product more solid.





> Can we request an audit on the code of SolusVM (would that be a great investment)?


Actually, one was just performed not long ago, and our own guys of course are going trough it now in detail.




> In addition to the previous questions asked (by me and others), what's the biggest 3 changes we'll see?
> 
> Is there anything else you'd like us to know about this acquisition and the future of SolusVM and OnApp?


As said before, the long term roadmap is still to be defined, but watch this space





> Just as a note while you're here, I've had to sometimes go through weird means to get certain actions done previously (as a client and as a provider).  Is there any way to get a completely new and refreshing UI for the Admin and the Client side? (either or even?)


We do have plans to make the UI/UX better, thats one of the things we are passionate about here at OnApp, good UI/UX



> *Edit:*
> 
> Here's another question.  Will (sometime in the future) OnApp's cloud platform and SolusVM actually merge and become one piece of software? (not in like a way to resell cloud service on OnApp's systems but actual like one thing setup together?)


No, we don't see it that way, these will remain two separate software packages with their own target audiences.

Carlos


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## HalfEatenPie (Sep 17, 2014)

Wow thanks for answering those questions! Sorry to be "that guy" but I'd like to follow up with a bit more questions if you don't mind 

 



NullMind said:


> Actually, one was just performed not long ago, and our own guys of course are going trough it now in detail.


Was there a report made on this (the audit)?  Is it available online?  Can we take a look at the report?  



NullMind said:


> We do have plans to make the UI/UX better, thats one of the things we are passionate about here at OnApp, good UI/UX


Really excited about this actually.  I've seen screenshots of OnApp's client-side interface and it looks interesting and more appealing that's for sure.  Hopefully you guys can bring some of that nice eye candy into Solus  while also not hampering it's performance 



NullMind said:


> No, we don't see it that way, these will remain two separate software packages with their own target audiences.


So... from my understanding the current Solus team is basically an extension of the OnApp team now right?  If so, then what will the team's relationship with the OnApp company be?  Would OnApp perform more as an "advising" role (aka Solus continues to operate the same way it has always done except now have additional resources available in terms of even more skilled coders, designers, hardware resources, etc.), or would OnApp take on a more direct approach and actually integrate their own management into Solus?  

I was actually never aware Solus was looking for a buyer, but if you don't mind me asking, why was Solus on sale? 

Would Solus now make Pocket Lamps to send to their clients?


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## NullMind (Sep 17, 2014)

HalfEatenPie said:


> Wow thanks for answering those questions! Sorry to be "that guy" but I'd like to follow up with a bit more questions if you don't mind


Not a problem, we are here to answer them



> Was there a report made on this (the audit)?  Is it available online?  Can we take a look at the report?


The audit is not public, but was part of this release, you can see it mentions don the first line

http://blog.soluslabs.com/2014/08/04/solusvm-v1-16-00-release-security-updates/



> Really excited about this actually.  I've seen screenshots of OnApp's client-side interface and it looks interesting and more appealing that's for sure.  Hopefully you guys can bring some of that nice eye candy into Solus   while also not hampering it's performance


Thanks, personally I am sucker for UI/UX, we sure will bring some eye candy to Solus



> So... from my understanding the current Solus team is basically an extension of the OnApp team now right?  If so, then what will the team's relationship with the OnApp company be?  Would OnApp perform more as an "advising" role (aka Solus continues to operate the same way it has always done except now have additional resources available in terms of even more skilled coders, designers, hardware resources, etc.), or would OnApp take on a more direct approach and actually integrate their own management into Solus?


Actually we have multiple teams in OnApp, such as CDN team, Storage Team, Core Team, etc, Solus is now one more all managed under the CTO and with the same goals and work system.



> I was actually never aware Solus was looking for a buyer, but if you don't mind me asking, why was Solus on sale?


As you can imagine, I can't disclosure the details of the deal 



> Would Solus now make Pocket Lamps to send to their clients?


Well, Solus staff is now part of OnApp, if they have time to do a kickstart on Pocket Lamps, they better do it out of hours 

Carlos


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## AnthonySmith (Sep 18, 2014)

Will you be making a simple automated and supported migration path from solusvm to OnApp and if so when?

Will Xen support be picked up again as solusvm have literally ignored it now for 3 years?

Thanks.


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## NullMind (Sep 18, 2014)

AnthonySmith said:


> Will you be making a simple automated and supported migration path from solusvm to OnApp and if so when?
> 
> Will Xen support be picked up again as solusvm have literally ignored it now for 3 years?
> 
> Thanks.


We are creating now the to-do list, those are indeed some of the items, no ETA

Carlos


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## AnthonySmith (Sep 18, 2014)

This is not meant to sound as ridiculous as I know it does but..... any ETA on the ETA?


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## Amitz (Sep 18, 2014)

Soon™, I guess... ;-)


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## NullMind (Sep 18, 2014)

AnthonySmith said:


> This is not meant to sound as ridiculous as I know it does but..... any ETA on the ETA?





Amitz said:


> Soon™, I guess... ;-)



What he said


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## George_Fusioned (Sep 18, 2014)

Indeed, a simple upgrade path from SolusVM to OnApp would be nice (especially for hosts that only use KVM or Xen which are supported by OnApp anyway).


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## Sonwebhost (Oct 6, 2014)

I like them both solus and whmcs they get my payments each month and I feel good about the service and performance. Hope they get better with time. Enjoy


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## iWF-Jacob (Oct 7, 2014)

We have both Onapp (not federation) as well as Solus, and I've got to say despite all of the issues with Solus, we haven't had any stability issues. Onapp on the other hand we've just had tons of strange, quirky issues with. I'll be watching this closely. My feature request is it would also be great for bi-directional transfers, IE Solus to Onapp, Onapp to Solus.


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