Little Happy Cloud - new service from LES

[AnthonySmith]

Hi Folks,

I thought I would externally advertise this here first, http://littlehappycloud.net this is a new member of the LES project and is another separate brand of Inception Hosting Limited.

It is essentially a KVM LES style service with a slightly higher price point and some minor differences.

There are 4 packages available and 1 location (i3d Rotterdam NL):



As you can see they come with more bandwidth and a full /64 ssh redirects for ipv4 are pre configured and HAproxy is integrated in to solusvm:



Once you add your domain it will be live within 5 minutes, no more messing with scripts.

As always you get 20x IPv4 ports forwarded as well and there is an option to purchase an external IP as an add-on at any time.

The project is still considered somewhat beta however the roadmap includes:

• Credit based hourly billing for quick dev environments much like DO/Vultr
• SNI for ssl over haproxy and mail records within haproxy
• More locations will follow depending on the sucsess of this.

Still tweaking things and adding service specific information but in brief:

• No Torrents
• No Tor (of any kind)
• No automated bots that run 24x7 hogging CPU time
• 30% over 24 hours is the maximum for CPU time
• Forum based support only
• No refunds

Any comments or questions are welcome.

 

[Asim]

Test IP for latency?

 

[AnthonySmith]

Test IP for latency?

On the right hand side of http://forum.lowendspirit.com/index.phpyou will see a link for all the LES test IP's by DC.

LHC is now in Singapore too

 

[Husky]

Explain how the shit this is a cloud service?

Is is high availability across multiple devices and or datacentres?

To me it just looks like another KVM host with the word "Cloud" tacked on to generate sales. There is nothing "Cloud" about it.

 

[William]

Yea, no cloud in that, just normal VPS.

 

[perennate]

Cloud is a meaningless term without any specific technical definition. Pretending otherwise is counterproductive.

Hell, these guys don't even advertise "cloud servers" or "cloud computing", they just have "cloud" in their name. If they changed their name to Little Happy Ocean or Little Happy Forest or Little Happy Monkey you wouldn't be crying about it so what's wrong with Little Happy Cloud?

 

[DomainBop]

Cloud is a meaningless term without any specific technical definition. Pretending otherwise is counterproductive.

I'll disagree that it is a meaningless term (and IEEE and NIST.gov will also disagree with you).  The standards haven't been finalized yet by the working groups but there is already a general agreement of what makes a "cloud", technical definitions of it, and a developing framework of standards.

http://www.computer.org/web/ieee-cloud-computing/standards

http://www.nist.gov/itl/cloud/

http://www.nist.gov/customcf/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=909024

The general definition of "cloud computing" from NIST.gov (Nat'l Institute of Standards and Technology) :

Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics (On-demand self-service, Broad network access, Resource pooling, Rapid elasticity, Measured Service); three service models (Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS), Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)); and, four deployment models (Private cloud, Community cloud, Public cloud, Hybrid cloud). Key enabling technologies include: (1) fast wide-area networks, (2) powerful, inexpensive server computers, and (3) high-performance virtualization for commodity hardware. 

and the definition of IaaS:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, and deployed applications; and possibly limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls).

The full detailed NIST definition of Cloud Computing and all related  essential characteristics, service models, and deployment models is available here: http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800-145.pdf

 

[perennate]

I'll disagree that it is a meaningless term (and IEEE and NIST.gov will also disagree with you).  The standards haven't been finalized yet by the working groups but there is already a general agreement of what makes a "cloud", technical definitions of it, and a developing framework of standards.

Anyone can make their own definition of cloud, it doesn't mean it reflects reality. Keep in mind that these definitions are all coming after cloud computing was already a commonly (and overused) term. IEEE may define cloud computing in the context of its research publications and conferences that use that term, but that doesn't necessarily reflect what we're talking about in the hosting industry; e.g. "cloud server" should have a much more specific meaning than "cloud computing" since we're already limiting ourselves to IaaS. Although really IEEE doesn't bother to define it, they just have conferences with "cloud" in the name, and in the conference description they go into detail about what topics the conference covers.

The NIST definition actually underscores why cloud is such a meaningless term (although it's actually defining "cloud computing", not "cloud"; because after all, clouds are in the sky) -- it lumps three disjoint areas (software, platform, infrastructure) into one definition. This lumping results in a clumsy definition: for virtualization services, "measured service" is kind of irrelevant (even AWS and Google Compute don't bill based on actual CPU usage, they charge for the allocation of some number of virtual cores); "broad network access" and "resource pooling" are obvious; and "on-demand self-service" and "rapid elasticity" simply mean you can provision or delete instances on the fly via an API. Notice how it says nothing about the live snapshots, load balancers, virtual networking, detachable storage, etc. that people have come to expect from cloud virtualization platforms.

Bottom line is:

A) saying you offer a "cloud" service gives no information. Even within virtualization, there are many different billing models (e.g. monthly resource pools versus hourly billed instances versus dedicated cloud) and components (hourly billing, the features I mentioned above), and everyone's needs are different (e.g., if you're running a large distributed platform for your website, then "high availability", where individual VMs are provisioned on distributed storage, is useless; you don't care if some VMs go down because you're designing your platform to handle just that).

B) people can define cloud however they want, but its obvious that the majority doesn't follow that definition, and criticizing people for being in that majority is counterproductive; you're better off encouraging people to use better terms and be more clear about the services provided.

Edit: also the idea that a cloud server should be highly available is in complete opposition to the idea of cloud, where your application should be distributed across multiple machines. High availability at the infrastructure level is NOT high availability at all, it almost always just means that your disk image is on distributed storage; unless you're using something like Remus (which is, admittedly, pretty fucking awesome), you're going to suffer several seconds and possibly a few minutes of downtime while your server is rebooted.

This also again underscores why cloud is such a meaningless term and we should stop complaining about alleged "misuse", since people like Husky above don't even agree with NIST's definition of cloud and instead are looking for something stronger; something that they can run their single-server application on and expect it to be highly available. Let's just agree that we all have different requirements and stop trying to claim "cloud" for our specific ones.

 

[perennate]

Put another way, the NIST definition doesn't provide any specific definition for cloud, it just lumps together a broad range of service models. So on that point NIST and I agree. Where we disagree is that I claim this lumping is useless and irrelevant to most people, while NIST thinks that their definition will "serve as a means for broad comparisons of cloud services and deployment strategies, and to provide a baseline for discussion from what is cloud computing to how to best use cloud computing". I'm right because clearly almost no one gives a shit about NIST's definition.

Edit: when I say useless, I'm obviously excluding the purpose of quoting it in an attempt to argue that cloud is not a meaningless term

Edit2: BTW from what I can tell, the IEEE standards are meant to provide interoperability between cloud computing providers (i.e. via standardized protocols, file formats, etc.), not to support a particular definition of cloud computing.

 

[HN-Matt]

Put another way, the NIST definition doesn't provide any specific definition for cloud, it just lumps together a broad range of service models. So on that point NIST and I agree. Where we disagree is that I claim this lumping is useless and irrelevant to most people, while NIST thinks that their definition will "serve as a means for broad comparisons of cloud services and deployment strategies, and to provide a baseline for discussion from what is cloud computing to how to best use cloud computing". I'm right because clearly almost no one gives a shit about NIST's definition.

Edit: when I say useless, I'm obviously excluding the purpose of quoting it in an attempt to argue that cloud is not a meaningless term

No way, man. It is only from NIST.gov's etymological authority that we shall divine the One True Meaning.

 

[KuJoe]

I guess that says a lot about @AnthonySmith's service when the only thing people can complain about is the name.


Full disclosure: we don't really use dragons to secure our servers at Secure Dragon.

 

[perennate]

@KuJoe shh, people aren't going to complain about Secure Dragon but that AFreeCloud in your signature is just asking for criticism.

ofc it's also free

 

[KuJoe]

@KuJoe shh, people aren't going to complain about Secure Dragon but that AFreeCloud in your signature is just asking for criticism.


ofc it's also free

But AFreeCloud is hosted on a service with cloud in the name so it's descriptively correct.

 

[zed]

ITT we pretend "cloud" in a hosting service name shouldn't imply the typical definition of cloud in a hosting service. Cuz dragons and things.

 

[HN-Matt]

Can't we just scrap cloud and start focusing on cluster?

 

[DomainBop]

I guess that says a lot about @AnthonySmith's service when the only thing people can complain about is the name.

My objection is mainly to the "little happy" part of the name not to the "cloud" part.  The first time I heard the name it reminded me of the Teletubbies for some reason and I got this sudden desire to grab my baseball bat and take a swing at some knee caps.  Sorry Anthony. 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3W08CJp2WI

it lumps three disjoint areas (software, platform, infrastructure) into one definition.

buy some Mirantis Unlocked Appliances and the three areas are no longer as disjointed.  cloudin-a-box...

 

[wlanboy]

I read "happy little cloud" and just thought that it is a cool name for a LES service.

Cannot imagine that someone thought that this could be something like a new Azure competive...

 

[KuJoe]

If we want to get technical, wouldn't setting up 2 KVM VPSs in geographically different locations to server the same content be considered a "cloud" in the most common sense of the word? LHC is essentially giving you the building blocks for a "happy little cloud" of your own. And for ~$6/year I don't think anybody will mistakenly try to run Facebook or Google on one of them. I can understand why people are upset with the name but seriously, there are more important things to get upset over rather than an incredibly cheap service from an upstanding member of this community and the hosting field as a whole.

Again, if the only negative part of the service is the name then that's a pretty damn good service.

As for what a "cloud" is, having received my Cloud+ cert I still have no clue the exact definition.

 

[zed]

I don't for a minute believe ser Anthony means to mislead anyone mind you, I just found the discussion amusing

 

[perennate]