Kodo Technologies announces HostGuard VPS Control Panel

[HostGuard]

Cheyenne, WY, January 1, 2014 – For years, Internet hosting companies offering Virtual Private Servers, or VPSes, have been calling for a new control panel amid security vulnerabilities, buggy behavior, and lack of responsiveness from the developers of the industry standard control panel software. After over a year of development and several months of real-world testing, Richard Kwan and Nick Moeck of Kodo Technologies (Kodo, LLC) are proud to release version 1.0 of their new virtual private server control panel, HostGuard.

“Hosting companies have been growing more and more disillusioned with the VPS control panels that are available, and we felt that it was time to make a change,” said Kodo Technologies CEO Richard Kwan. He went on to say, “As the owner of a VPS hosting company myself, I no longer had confidence that the control panels that are out there could meet the needs of my business, especially when it comes to security and reliability, so I decided to team up with a talented young developer who could turn my vision for a better control panel into a reality.” To ensure that those security goals were reached, HostGuard brought in industry leading server security firm Rack911 to perform an extensive security audit.

Lead Developer Nick Moeck said, “HostGuard's first release is aimed at laying the groundwork for an entirely new approach to how we interact with our clients. We don't want to be just another software provider - our goal is to team up with companies to provide them with the tools they need to handle their day-to-day operations more efficiently and provide their customers with a first-class experience.” When probed about whether that means they're going to tackle a billing panel next, Nick said “We have a lot of exciting things in the works that we hope will revolutionize not just the VPS hosting industry, but the entire tech industry.”

About Kodo Technologies
Since it's founding by Richard Kwan in 2006, Kodo Technologies (Kodo LLC) has been providing stable, affordable web hosting to clients all over the world. Begining with shared hosting under the KodoHost brand, Kodo LLC's 2009 acquisition of StarkVPS marked their entry into the virtual private server hosting market, selling OpenVZ and Xen based virtual private servers. Later in 2009, the SonicVPS brand was launched, focusing on KVM virtual private servers.

More information about HostGuard, including pricing and full list of features, can be found on their website, http://www.hostguard.net or by emailing their sales department at sales [@] hostguard.net

 

[wlanboy]

Some comments:

• If you post about your product on a board please add screenshots and a tldr.
• If you do advertise your homepage - ensure it loads faster than 10 seconds [it is really slow].
• If you want be part of the community introduce yourself

 

[HostGuard]

Hey wlanboy,

G'day and Happy New Year!

The screenshots are on the main page and the last paragraph summarises the press release. I'm about 200ms away from where the site is hosted and a non-cached version loads in under 5 seconds.

I've been posting around the place and will continue to contribute where I can.

 

[HostGuard]

Here are some screenshots:

 

[Dylan]

 

ensure it loads faster than 10 seconds [it is really slow].

I'm about 200ms away from where the site is hosted and a non-cached version loads in under 5 seconds.

I'm about 100ms away and the site loads fairly quickly for me, for the record. Not the fastest site ever, but I wouldn't call it slow.

 

[vRozenSch00n]

Hey, that's Nick Moeck's laptop 

 

[Virtovo]

Cheyenne, WY, January 1, 2014 – For years, Internet hosting companies offering Virtual Private Servers, or VPSes, have been calling for a new control panel amid security vulnerabilities, buggy behavior, and lack of responsiveness from the developers of the industry standard control panel software. After over a year of development and several months of real-world testing, Richard Kwan and Nick Moeck of Kodo Technologies (Kodo, LLC) are proud to release version 1.0 of their new virtual private server control panel, HostGuard.

“Hosting companies have been growing more and more disillusioned with the VPS control panels that are available, and we felt that it was time to make a change,” said Kodo Technologies CEO Richard Kwan. He went on to say, “As the owner of a VPS hosting company myself, I no longer had confidence that the control panels that are out there could meet the needs of my business, especially when it comes to security and reliability, so I decided to team up with a talented young developer who could turn my vision for a better control panel into a reality.” To ensure that those security goals were reached, HostGuard brought in industry leading server security firm Rack911 to perform an extensive security audit.

Lead Developer Nick Moeck said, “HostGuard's first release is aimed at laying the groundwork for an entirely new approach to how we interact with our clients. We don't want to be just another software provider - our goal is to team up with companies to provide them with the tools they need to handle their day-to-day operations more efficiently and provide their customers with a first-class experience.” When probed about whether that means they're going to tackle a billing panel next, Nick said “We have a lot of exciting things in the works that we hope will revolutionize not just the VPS hosting industry, but the entire tech industry.”

About Kodo Technologies


Since it's founding by Richard Kwan in 2006, Kodo Technologies (Kodo LLC) has been providing stable, affordable web hosting to clients all over the world. Begining with shared hosting under the KodoHost brand, Kodo LLC's 2009 acquisition of StarkVPS marked their entry into the virtual private server hosting market, selling OpenVZ and Xen based virtual private servers. Later in 2009, the SonicVPS brand was launched, focusing on KVM virtual private servers.

More information about HostGuard, including pricing and full list of features, can be found on their website, http://www.hostguard.net or by emailing their sales department at sales [@] hostguard.net

A few initial things:

1) It looks great and welcomed competition

2) First screenshot "supports the follow linux distributions"

3) Does it support panel based migration?

4) Any chance of a Blesta provisioning module?

 

[NickM]

A few initial things:

1) It looks great and welcomed competition

2) First screenshot "supports the follow linux distributions"

Thanks for your feedback!  Ah, typos.  I ran everything through spell-check, but of course, it missed that since it's a real word

3) Does it support panel based migration?

HostGuard does support migrations from within the panel itself.  You have the choice between near-zero downtime live migration, or offline migration.

4) Any chance of a Blesta provisioning module?

We do have plans to add support for more billing systems, Blesta included.  Our API documentation also documents all of the necessary API calls that a typical billing module would need access to, for those who might be interested in rolling their own module for their favorite billing software.

 

[Coastercraze]

Looks pretty good. I've got a few things...

1. How easy is it to customize?

2. Demo of the VM snapshots?

3. Why can't I assign IPv6 subnets smaller than /64 to each VM? -- Plan to re-consider this one? AFAIK, most providers give 1-2 /64 IPv6 blocks to a dedicated server, and a VPS with a whole /64 would probably take a while to reboot.

 

[Virtovo]

Thanks for your feedback!  Ah, typos.  I ran everything through spell-check, but of course, it missed that since it's a real word

HostGuard does support migrations from within the panel itself.  You have the choice between near-zero downtime live migration, or offline migration.

We do have plans to add support for more billing systems, Blesta included.  Our API documentation also documents all of the necessary API calls that a typical billing module would need access to, for those who might be interested in rolling their own module for their favorite billing software.

Thanks for the quick reply.  Is there anyone I can speak to via email regarding the roadmap for a Blesta integration?  I have a ticket open in your support desk, so that may be the best medium?

 

[HostGuard]

Looks pretty good. I've got a few things...

1. How easy is it to customize?

2. Demo of the VM snapshots?

3. Why can't I assign IPv6 subnets smaller than /64 to each VM? -- Plan to re-consider this one? AFAIK, most providers give 1-2 /64 IPv6 blocks to a dedicated server, and a VPS with a whole /64 would probably take a while to reboot.

1. Very easy and we will have generic Pure.io and Bootstrap templates available in the next week or so.

2. See screenshot - The limitations can be changed in the settings, and it's as easy to use by a few clicks.

3. A /64 is our minimum standard we can take a look at revising this if necessary.

 

[Virtovo]

Just tried the installer.  Seems to have completely bombed with multiple errors.  Should also probably list that there are some pre-requisites that need to be installed for the master in the installation guide.

Where should I submit my experience? 

 

[HostGuard]

Thanks for the quick reply.  Is there anyone I can speak to via email regarding the roadmap for a Blesta integration?  I have a ticket open in your support desk, so that may be the best medium?

Hi there,

I did get the ticket, but as you mentioned, I'll just respond here.

We can consider making our own Blesta module if there is high demand for it. I'll see where we can fit it in our timeline otherwise a small fee will be considered to fast track this feature and we will tailor it specifically to you. This will include direct support from us to ensure you are 100% satisfied.

That goes for any feature request as well. We have both an internal and public facing timeline. Internal timeline includes features we come up with and wish to implement by certain dates. The public timeline has feature requests by users, based on priority and popularity, we will change the overall timeline to find the right balance and fast turn around in development of that feature.

If we can get our hands on a Blesta license easily (or you can provide one) this will allow us to properly scope out what needs to be done and I can be more specific with our ETA.

 

[HostGuard]

Just tried the installer.  Seems to have completely bombed with multiple errors.  Should also probably list that there are some pre-requisites that need to be installed for the master in the installation guide.

Where should I submit my experience? 

Submit it in the ticket and we can work through the install with you.

 

[Virtovo]

Submit it in the ticket and we can work through the install with you.

To be fair, when I respun the VM to test again all installed fine.  No longer have the logs for the errors I encountered the first time around.  If I can reproduce will inform you.

Just to note the certificate error when downloading using wget from the master install instructions.  Non-Https works fine.  Also a note to let people know MySQL installed is a pre-requisite. 

 

[NickM]

To be fair, when I respun the VM to test again all installed fine.  No longer have the logs for the errors I encountered the first time around.  If I can reproduce will inform you.

Thanks

Just to note the certificate error when downloading using wget from the master install instructions.  Non-Https works fine.  Also a note to let people know MySQL installed is a pre-requisite. 

I thought we had https set up on the primary web server when I was writing the docs, but apparently we didn't.  I've adjusted the docs to reflect that http:// should be used, but we do intend to serve the downloads over https.

I'm a bit puzzled by your issue with MySQL - the install should have installed it for you.  Can you attach a copy of your install log to your support ticket so that I can see what happened? Thanks.

 

[Virtovo]

Thanks

I thought we had https set up on the primary web server when I was writing the docs, but apparently we didn't.  I've adjusted the docs to reflect that http:// should be used, but we do intend to serve the downloads over https.

I'm a bit puzzled by your issue with MySQL - the install should have installed it for you.  Can you attach a copy of your install log to your support ticket so that I can see what happened? Thanks.

I think that was part of the initial problem.  I don't have the error log but there were multiple issues like not being able to create the WHMCS directory and also some errors related to the PDNS conf.  Could very well be a local issue with the VM.  If encountered again will keep the logs.

The installer does ask for your MySQL root password as if it had needed to be installed.

Only issue facing now is a licence issue but have a ticket open on that.

The docs don't mention KVM node setup with regards to VM storage.  

Also (and I am sure this is not the case).  As the panel is encoded; where do we stand if you were to decide to walk away from this project.  Would source then be made available?

 

[NickM]

I think I understand the issue better now.  The error about WHMCS is definitely an error - the whmcs-module directory inside the release package (which contains the couple of files needed for the WHMCS module) isn't where the install script expects it to be.  We're re-rolling the package with an updated installer script now.

The MySQL issue seems to be an issue of the installer being vague and not letting you know that MySQL was installed.  You don't know that it installed MySQL, so when it asks for the password, it can definitely be confusing.  I'm going to adjust the wording of that area of the installer to prevent any confusion.

Can you be a little more specific about what you mean here:

The docs don't mention KVM node setup with regards to VM storage. 

As far as what would happen if for some reason Richard and I were to walk away from HostGuard (we're definitely not planning to!), we would definitely open source the product.

 

[Virtovo]

I think I understand the issue better now.  The error about WHMCS is definitely an error - the whmcs-module directory inside the release package (which contains the couple of files needed for the WHMCS module) isn't where the install script expects it to be.  We're re-rolling the package with an updated installer script now.

The MySQL issue seems to be an issue of the installer being vague and not letting you know that MySQL was installed.  You don't know that it installed MySQL, so when it asks for the password, it can definitely be confusing.  I'm going to adjust the wording of that area of the installer to prevent any confusion.

Can you be a little more specific about what you mean here:

As far as what would happen if for some reason Richard and I were to walk away from HostGuard (we're definitely not planning to!), we would definitely open source the product.

For the KVM question, KVM storage can be handled in many ways.  Do you handle storage in the same way as SolusVM (LVM fat provisioning?)

 

[Patrick]

It looks like a potential competitor against SolusVM however the name is totally unrelated and makes so sense to the product offered.