RamNode - DDoS Filtering, New Pricing/Plans, Control Panel and RIP Coupons

[mojeda]

Got this email in my box just a few moments ago:

Hello,

This message is to all clients. We have a bunch of news to share with you, so please forgive us for the length of this email! Some of this you may already be aware of, but we wanted to take the opportunity to fill you in on a variety of changes at RamNode over the past several months. We also want to give you a sneak peek into our plans for the future.

New Location / DDoS Filtering

We have recently opened a New York City location! As with our other US locations, we fully own and operate our servers and network in NYC. We now offer our SSD and SSD-cached VPSs in four locations: Atlanta, Seattle, New York City, and the Netherlands. We have also made DDoS filtering an optional add-on in each location. You can read more about our filtering solutions in the FAQ and order a DDoS-filtered IP from the Client Area.

New Layout / Plan Changes

You may have noticed our recently redesigned home page and a newly created VPS page (which lists our available plans in an easier to read manner). As part of the redesign, we have made changes to existing VPS plans, as well as added new 8GB RAM plans for CVZ and CKVM. You will notice on the new VPS page that all plans now come with more SSD or SSD-cached space. This storage increase is available to existing VPSs as follows:

• SVZ(v2) and CVZ clients - You will not need to do anything to receive the upgrade. We will upgrade all SVZ(v2) and CVZ VPSs within the next week or so automatically. If you need more space immediately, you can open a ticket in the Client Area.
   
• SKVM and CKVM clients - You will need to open a ticket to request the additional space and will need to use a tool like GParted (available in our control panel) to resize your partitions once you receive it. We may not be able to accommodate all SKVM upgrades in particular immediately, but we can discuss this on an individual ticket basis.
   
• Clients with retired plans - If you are on an older SVZ(v1), CKVM-E3, or CVZ-E3 VPS, the space increase will not be readily available to you. You can see which host nodes this applies to here: https://clientarea.ramnode.com/announcements.php?id=367 We are currently in the process of moving all SVZ(v1) VPSs to SVZ(v2) nodes. We will email you before the move is made, and you will have the new disk space afterward. If you urgently need more disk space, you can open a support ticket. CKVM-E3 and CVZ-E3 clients will need to request a migration to our new CKVM/CVZ systems in order to take advantage of the increased storage. You can open a support ticket for that.

In addition to the above changes, we are temporarily disabling our weekly/monthly automated backup system. We understand the concerns this may raise among many of you. We plan on reinstating backups in the not too distant future with a better system. That may happen with SolusVM, who have promised a more flexible backup system with their next big update, or it may happen with our new control panel system (more information below). In the meantime, we hope the free extra disk space makes up for this temporary change. Regardless of where you host and what backups your host provides, we always recommend that you take your own backups on remote storage. Note: this change does not affect OpenVZ Quick Backups.

Coupons

We are no longer accepting coupons with our new pricing scheme. This does not impact existing services. Only new orders or upgrades/downgrades will be affected by the new pricing scheme.

New SSD Plans

We will be launching entirely new SSD plans (OpenVZ and KVM) in the next few weeks. These will be listed under a category labeled [standard] on our VPS page. Keep an eye on our website and Twitter (@RamNode) for more information!

New Control Panel

As mentioned above, we are beginning work on a new control panel system! We know that this has been a significant point of interest for many of you for a while. We do not have many details to share at this time, but work on this project will begin within the next couple weeks. It will be done entirely in-house by full-time RamNode staff. The focus will be ease of use and automation. We will likely offer a public medium through which you can share your ideas and feature requests soon. Keep an eye on our Twitter (@RamNode) for more information over the coming weeks.


We greatly appreciate your continued business and support! These updates are all part of our effort to better serve you - our loyal clients. As always, you can reach us via support ticket in the Client Area or drop by our IRC channel. Please follow/bookmark http://twitter.com/ramnode for general news and http://twitter.com/nodestatus for network related updates.

Thanks!

Nick A.
Skype: RamNode
Twitter: @RamNode
Network: @NodeStatus
IRC: http://bit.ly/1gs3m5u

 

[drmike]

Coupons

We are no longer accepting coupons with our new pricing scheme. This does not impact existing services. Only new orders or upgrades/downgrades will be affected by the new pricing scheme.

While the natives on the other site were miffed about coupons and their endless Easter Egg hunts for the 42% maximum discount code, I welcome logical everyday pricing.

Why?  Because I consider hosts showing $29.95 a month prices on their website who sell 80%+ of their plans at like 80% off via LE* coupons to be engaging in insane amounts of fraud....   I've contemplated targetting some provider's customers who are being ripped off with over priced direct rate   But that might get a tad too creepy and set off a landslide somewhere in Buffalo.

"[custom panel] project will begin within the next couple weeks. It will be done entirely in-house by full-time RamNode staff."

I am mega concerned about this...  In house staff would be damn pricey and better be bona fide bad asses through the development, standards, etc. wringer.  Battle tested.  I think this is interesting and all, but it has me worried cause suddenly fubar'd code may get ugly exploited.  In fairness Solus has been exploited multiple times...

Personally, this all seems like a way to try to step away from the Lowend world slyly, which if so, is long overdue.  Chasing peanut shells for a buck a month per customer is somewhere between insane and stupid.... Not many can make an art form out of it or operate a business even at scale on it for the long haul.

 

[mojeda]

While the natives on the other site were miffed about coupons and their endless Easter Egg hunts for the 42% maximum discount code, I welcome logical everyday pricing.

Why?  Because I consider hosts showing $29.95 a month prices on their website who sell 80%+ of their plans at like 80% off via LE* coupons to be engaging in insane amounts of fraud....   I've contemplated targetting some provider's customers who are being ripped off with over priced direct rate   But that might get a tad too creepy and set off a landslide somewhere in Buffalo.

I do not mind the discontinuation of promo codes, you really do get what you pay for with RamNode: Quality.

I've had a RamNode server that was up almost 1 year with absolutely no issues, I had to restart it to repatch OpenSSL during the Heartbleed fiasco, but nontheless never had a problem.

 

[MannDude]

I'm actually excited for the in-house panel. While I doubt it will be available anytime soon, I have services with a handful of providers with custom panels and it's enjoyable to use something different and gives me confidence that the provider actually has some technical ability beyond simply installing SolusVM/WHMCS/Etc.

Custom is good, so tired of seeing all these cookie cutter providers who all offer the same services (VPSes) from the same datacenters, using similar or the same hardware, and the same software... at the end of the day the only difference between some of these providers is their websites, pricing, support and if they put 50 customers on a node or 300. Variety is nice.

No coupons? No problem. It's not like their pricing is expensive. It may piss off some of the lowend crowd, but that's to be expected since most of them are coupon hunters anyway. They may feel like they're not getting a good deal because they don't get to enter a coupon. Pricing is still good. I'm sure Nick will find something to do for them come listing or polling time to win them over, but pricing is good as is anyhow.

I use a Ramnode box to host DailyServerDeals and to host an Observium install... can't complain. 

 

[ihatetonyy]

"[custom panel] project will begin within the next couple weeks. It will be done entirely in-house by full-time RamNode staff."

I am mega concerned about this...  In house staff would be damn pricey and better be bona fide bad asses through the development, standards, etc. wringer.  Battle tested.  I think this is interesting and all, but it has me worried cause suddenly fubar'd code may get ugly exploited.  In fairness Solus has been exploited multiple times...

After the success BuyVM has had with both iterations of Stallion, I don't think there's much to worry about with RamNode's pursuit of a custom panel - they're incredibly competent over there.

 

[WSWD]

I have a few VPSs with them that I use for backup DNS and the like.  I'm actually paying more with a coupon than with their new pricing.  No need for coupons.

 

[willie]

There was a regular vpsboard35 coupon for 35% off... I never understood easter egg hunting for the slightly better 40% or 42% coupons that showed up a few times, though I did use those (fell into temptation) when they did appear.  The new prices are about like the old ones with the coupons in use.  I guess it's more straightforward with no coupons, but it's no big deal to me one way or the other.

The new upgrades are nice.  The 128MB openvz hdd plan goes from 50gb of hdd space to 80gb, and the ssd plan goes from 10gb to 12gb.  It had gone to 10gb from 5gb not that long earlier.  The larger plans also all got upgraded.  I have 3 vps's and can use the extra space on all of them.

I'm not worried about the new panel if the developer(s) know what they're doing.  It sounds like Nick has managed to hire a programmer, as he was seeking a while back.  SolusVM fills a need but it's just a terrible product from what I can tell.  Lots of other companies have their own panels, of varying quality. 

Main thing I'd like to see is still storage plans .

 

[DomainBop]

In house staff would be damn pricey and better be bona fide bad asses through the development, standards, etc. wringer.

Hiring in house staff to develop a custom panel will cost more than outsourcing the development but it will reduce the long term risks and give them more control over, and understanding of, the finished product (example risk of outsourcing development >  development company goes out of business and you're left scrambling to find new developers who won't initially have a full understanding of the code which could mean service degradation if any problems occur before the new developers are fully up to speed on the panel's code).  In house development also means any bugs that are discovered can be fixed much quicker.

When I was looking for a Dutch "HA" "cloud" provider a few years ago I narrowed my choice down to 2 companies: Versio.nl's Cloudbox and CloudVPS.  One of the reasons why CloudVPS won out is because their custom panel was developed in house while Versio had outsourced the development of their custom panel to a US software company.

tl;dr I think RamNode made the right choice by bringing development in house.

 

[drmike]

tl;dr I think RamNode made the right choice by bringing development in house.

I agree with this... But the project is nothing to toy around with.  I cannot see one super hero pulling the project off on their lonesome.... Not in any reasonable timeline (i.e. a year).   Said hero isn't lowend cashola either...  And existing team/owner needs to spend time cycles on such, reviews, meetings, status updates, etc.  Costs.

Pure economics here,  very high $xx,xxxx to $xxx,xxxx for that development and ongoing infusions. Toss auditing by a real firm on top of that...

$100k+ probably or more depending on the end features.

Good concept, grand distraction perhaps.  Time shall tell.

 

[willie]

tl;dr I think RamNode made the right choice by bringing development in house.

I agree with this... But the project is nothing to toy around with.  I cannot see one super hero pulling the project off on their lonesome.... Not in any reasonable timeline (i.e. a year).   Said hero isn't lowend cashola either...  And existing team/owner needs to spend time cycles on such, reviews, meetings, status updates, etc.  Costs.

Can someone explain what this panel thingie actually does?  Most random vps hosts use whmcs and solusvm--are we talking about just a replacement for solusvm?  And what does that do really?  There are a bunch of command line tools for creating and controlling openvz and kvm containers, and the panel wraps a web interface around those, along with a per-user and per-vps configuration database, right?  Is rocket science involved?  I've seen a thing like this written in Ruby for database hosting, I'd expect VPS hosting would work about the same way.

Wasn't there also a project or two underway to do something like that as open source?

 

[DomainBop]

Can someone explain what this panel thingie actually does?  Most random vps hosts use whmcs and solusvm--are we talking about just a replacement for solusvm? 

Based on NickA's post in March he was looking for much more than just a SolusVM replacement.  Some of the desired new features were hourly billing, OpenStack integration, snapshots, create/destroy/resize containers, etc.

•  

• The system should work for both OpenVZ and KVM and have all of the current basic functionality of the SolusVM Admin panel.
• The system should be tightly integrated with WHMCS so that clients only need one login to access the control panel.
• The system should have the ability to invoice clients through WHMCS on an hourly basis (in addition to standard pre-paid invoicing which is already part of WHMCS).
• The system should run on OpenStack (negotiable but highly preferred).
• The system should allow clients to create, destroy, and resize servers (according to preset packages) on demand.
• The system should allow clients to create snapshots and backups on demand.
• The system should use Python (negotiable but highly preferred).
• The system should make use of thin provisioning and compression to save resources.
• The system should be able to automatically track and assign internal/private IP addresses (for both KVM and OpenVZ).
• The system should be able to automatically track and assign /64 IPv6 blocks to VPSs.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showpost.php?p=9046190&postcount=1

 

[drmike]

@DomainBop 's post.. yeah, the laundry list...

A lot of panels are just wrappers - either API or something that pipes to commandline or similar.

Basic concept is simple.... Getting it all to work right and with feature set while being secure, whole other ballpark.

Believe me, I am rooting for RamNode (and anyone else) for taking this step.  I am a proponent of roll your own solutions... But it isn't for the faint of heart.  When/if things break, whole big world of crap on the developer and the company and trying to survive under aerial raids.

 

[willie]

Thanks, the WHT post was informative.  The feature list is reasonable though the $20k budget is a bit on the aggressive side, at least for around here, given that something like that will tend to take some iterations with the customer.

 

[Nick_A]

Sorry I missed this thread - I was waiting for someone to randomly post my email on LET but overlooked it in this section.

Regarding in-house development - we scratched the idea of outsourcing with a one time deal contractor about two weeks after that WHT post. I quickly realized I needed to re-evaluate my strategy and priorities. We got the guy we wanted, without sparing much expense, and I do expect he'll fit the "hero" role well. Obviously time will tell, but I am confident in his abilities (as are other reputable individuals some of you may know).

On a different note, we're not exactly stepping away from the LE world. You'll see more of what I mean in a week or so.

 

[MannDude]

Sorry I missed this thread - I was waiting for someone to randomly post my email on LET but overlooked it in this section.

Regarding in-house development - we scratched the idea of outsourcing with a one time deal contractor about two weeks after that WHT post. I quickly realized I needed to re-evaluate my strategy and priorities. We got the guy we wanted, without sparing much expense, and I do expect he'll fit the "hero" role well. Obviously time will tell, but I am confident in his abilities (as are other reputable individuals some of you may know).

On a different note, we're not exactly stepping away from the LE world. You'll see more of what I mean in a week or so.

Sounds good. Looking forward to see what you come up with.

 

[WelltodoInformalCattle]

Can't wait to see what you guys come up with this time. I haven't been a customer for a while because I could no longer legitimate my monthly payment for a vps I didn't use but I might change my mind depending on what you fellas whip up.

 

[definedcode]

Sorry I missed this thread - I was waiting for someone to randomly post my email on LET but overlooked it in this section.

Regarding in-house development - we scratched the idea of outsourcing with a one time deal contractor about two weeks after that WHT post. I quickly realized I needed to re-evaluate my strategy and priorities. We got the guy we wanted, without sparing much expense, and I do expect he'll fit the "hero" role well. Obviously time will tell, but I am confident in his abilities (as are other reputable individuals some of you may know).

On a different note, we're not exactly stepping away from the LE world. You'll see more of what I mean in a week or so.

Awesome, good luck with the new development.