Cloud Hosting HQ

Monitis was kind enough to give me a free account to review their service. They offer various kinds of server monitoring services, for instance:

1. WEBSITES: uptime and user experience
2. SERVERS: proactive failure prevention
3. DESKTOPS: includes assets monitoring
4. APPLICATIONS: email, VoIP, databases, online applications, transactions
5. NETWORKS: switches, routers, VPN, firewall, DNS, VoIP
6. CLOUD: Public and private

When you login to Monitis the first thing you see is a setup wizard, which is a good thing because without it I think most people would give up (the interface is no user friendly).

I setup a few sites which was relatively easy (though again they could use a lot of help in the UX department — this was obviously designed by programmers) and was watching them get pinged from 6 different locations every 3 minutes. Nice.

The main thing I don’t like about Monitis is the interface. It’s obviously based on extJS and it is small and clunky. It reminds me of an old Windows computer.

I also could not figure out how to stop daily email reports. It seems like that should be easy, but even though I thought I found the place to do it, it never changed. I emailed my contact about this but they did not reply.

The cost is $10/mo (or 20% off that if you buy a year in advance), and for IT professionals this service is probably worth it. I’ve always used free tools but they do not check as often nor do they have anywhere near as many features. You just need to have a tolerance for poorly-designed interfaces — but let’s face it, if you need this service, you probably do.

Rebooting a server sucks, because it usually means downtime. That’s why it’s exciting that Cloud Linux and Ksplice are launching the first “Rebootless Linux Distribution for Hosting Service Providers.”

Major Linux distributions ask their users to install a kernel update roughly once each month, which requires a reboot. Until a system can be updated, it can be vulnerable to security flaws. By allowing users to install kernel updates without downtime, Uptrack slashes the cost of system administration and bolsters security. In real-world tests, Uptrack dramatically increases the actual rate of compliance with security updates.

Read more in their press release.

Good news for you Windows lovers. CloudKick, one of Rackspace’s cloud solutions, now supports Windows. There will be a webinar on Tues, Sep 21st for those who want more information.

Charles Homes takes a look a brief look a few methods to help increase profitability with cloud hosting over at Portals and KM:

The union of cloud computing and hosting technology has produced wonders for the business community. The main progeny of this marriage has been a dynamic, scalable system that allows business to allocated informational resources with an efficiency hitherto only dreamed of. The hosting packages paid for by your business can be modified as needed as website traffic grows, with no need of strict hosting plans or even laid-out rules. Flexibility like this saves businesses money because they only have to pay for the services they use while simultaneously avoiding server down-time, one of the banes of the information technology industry.

In his latest The Wisdom of Clouds article, James Urquhart examines the link between the economy and cloud-computing.

Apparently, the idea is that tightening budgets have opened the minds of enterprises everywhere to the possibilities of cloud computing. That, in turn, seems to suggest that IT is somehow cheaper when run in cloud models.

That may or may not be the case, but I think the concept that the economic recession is driving interest in cloud is off the mark. What is driving enterprises to consider the cloud is ultimately the same thing that drives start-ups into the cloud: cash flow. Cash flow and the agility that comes from a more liquid “pay as you go” model.

This detailed article over at martdatacollective.com explains the concept of RAIC:

Well over a year ago, in a conversation with Alexis Richardson, I came up with a catchy acronym to articulate an idea that I had been kicking around as a simple way to respond to all of the Sturm und Drang in the press and the blogosphere about “lock-in”, “data portability” and reliability of cloud computing providers.  I said — “You know what, mate, done properly, it would be like a RAID setup — it would be an array of cloud providers.  Umm, yeah, it would be RAIC!  ‘Redundant Array of Independent Cloud providers’”.  Alexis, as I recall, burst out laughing, and said something like “You better trademark that, Mark.  That’s great.”