Launching TurnKey Linux into the VPS.NET hosting cloud

Today we're excited to announce the availability of the first cloud hosting option for TurnKey Linux, in partnership with VPS.NET, which will now offer instant deployment of all TurnKey Linux appliances as ready-to-use Virtual Private Servers at no extra charge.

Screencast demo

(Best viewed full screen. Don't worry - we keep it short and fast forward through the boring parts)

Why does this matter?

The strong security and performance characteristics of a true VPS usually comes at a steep price. Just like with a physical dedicated server the user is expected to setup and then manage his server on his own.

Deploying a TurnKey Linux appliance takes much of that pain away by providing the user with a pre-integrated server that's optimized for ease of use and just works, with little to no additional configuration required. This allows the user to deploy complex applications online in minutes rather than hours. Plus our appliances are designed to be easy to maintain, so security patches are auto-updated on a daily basis (by default). That's one less thing to worry about.

In a sense deploying a TurnKey Linux appliance as a VPS provides the user with the best of both worlds - the convenience of a managed shared hosting service, and the superior performance, security and control of a private server.

Best of all users can first install an appliance for free on a local computer and take their time to evaluate and experiment with it offline before deciding to launch it into the cloud.

This move brings us one step closer to realizing our vision of bridging that last mile between what we view as a tidal wave of open source innovation and the large mass of potential users who don't have the time or skill required to fully take advantage of it (or in some cases even discover it!).

Behind the Scenes

It's been a while since our last announcement so a quick update is in order. Since our last release we've had nearly 40,000 downloads and thousands of deployed installations of TurnKey Linux appliances on bare metal and virtual machines around the world.

Meanwhile we've been busy developing our next batch of appliances. Launching TurnKey Linux into the cloud was going to be a big part of that, but increasing demand from our users convinced us this is something we should make available sooner rather than later.

Users nudge TurnKey Linux and VPS.NET together

We started exploring our options when by happy coincidence Ditlev Bredahl the CEO of VPS.NET reached out to us. VPS.NET (his baby) is an interesting and relatively new cloud server hosting offering. We immediately liked Ditlev because despite his bigwig CEO title he's the kind of down to earth, accessible guy that will respond to feedback from users (both good and bad) himself on Twitter.

The funny thing is at the same time our community was asking us about appliance hosting options, VPS.NET's users were asking them about TurnKey Linux and made the connection for us!

We knew open source is a good model for collaborating on software development, but it turns out it's much more powerful than that. You know you're doing something right when your community cares enough to take initiative and evangelize passionately to make stuff happen. It's quite encouraging to get that kind of grassroots support.

An Important Milestone

Today's announcement is an important milestone for the project because up until now users have had limited deployment options for TurnKey Linux appliances. Installing an appliance into a virtual server on your local workstation or Intranet is about as easy as it gets, but that only covers a small range of usage scenarios.

Other times you want your server to be hosted in a high quality data center, where it will get the best network connection, power management and physical security that money can buy, and thanks to Moore's law and economies of scale, in a modern data center surprisingly little money will get you a long long way.

That's where VPS.NET comes in. They've built a user-friendly, elastic server cloud that provides virtual private servers in data centers in the US and the UK.

VPS.NET review

Software appliances and cloud computing fit together like a hand in a glove, so as appliance developers we've taken a keen interest in the development of cloud computing, and have been early adopters of competing services for a couple of years now. When VPS.NET approached us we were naturally curious as to how their cloud offering measured up.

Superficially it sounded interesting, but we wanted to get our hands dirty so one of the first things they did after approaching us was setup a test account and let us loose to explore their cloud.

Competition in this space is fierce so frankly we didn't expect much from a relatively obscure new entrant, but we came away from our technical explorations impressed. In a nutshell, Ditlev and his team have put together a highly ambitious, competitive cloud offering that rivals some of the best in this industry.

No Overselling

At it's core the cloud is based on Xen -  the same powerful virtualization technology that powers Amazon's EC2 service and other major cloud server offerings. Xen allows you to securely and efficiently carve up a physical server into allocatable resource units (VPS.NET calls these "nodes") and provision those resources on demand to virtual private servers in a way that guarantees each server gets it's fair share.

That's important because you can't oversell Xen so you know you get exactly what you're paying for. If you've ever been on the receiving end of a low quality shared hosting plan you know that can be a big deal.

Features and pricing

Besides supporting instant deployment of TurnKey Linux appliances, the VPS.NET cloud provides all the standard features we've come to expect from a real cloud server offering: An easy to use web management interface, full root access with an out of band console, automated backups, a programmable API, and on the fly resource provisioning that allows you to add or remove virtual servers and scale them up and down in response to your needs.

In addition it provides a few unique features we haven't seen in any other offerings such as automatic failure recovery (VPS.NET calls this "self healing") where a monitoring system is setup to detect the failure of a physical server in the cloud and automatically migrate virtual servers that ran inside it to other physical servers standing by. Their blog features an amusing entry from their beta period where an engineer stress tests their cloud's ability to heal by randomly pulling out network and power cables. Nice.

The pricing is also competitive. A VPS.NET node bundles a slice of dedicated server resources: 400 Mhz CPU, 256MB RAM, 10GB SAN storage, and 250 GB bandwidth. Nodes start at $20/month and with volume the price per node can go all the way down to $10/month. Good value, especially if you factor in the unusually generous bandwidth allotments.

We also like that you can create and scale virtual servers to any number of nodes you need and only pay for what you use with no advance commitments. By contrast, other cloud providers limit you to a much smaller range of possible server allocations, usually on a logarithmic scale (e.g., 256MB, 512MB, 1024MB, 2048MB, 4096MB, 8192MB).

Rough edges

Of course VPS.NET is a relatively new offering that's still evolving so during our exploration we occasionally bumped into a few rough edges.

For example, early on we discovered how to create a bottleneck in their SAN which could under some circumstances reduce virtual server IO performance. In response their engineering team mobilized quickly to diagnose and squash the problem.

Also, they didn't limit our test account so naturally we tried taking their cloud to the limits and creating huge virtual machines just to see what would happen. We didn't break the cloud, but we did discover that for large number of nodes the web management interface can get a bit clunky. Not a big issue for most users but still an area for improvement (they're working on it).

VPS.NET supports open source appliance development

Developing and maintaining an ever growing library of appliances requires a significant commitment of engineering resources we need to sustain somehow. Having our commercial partners help shoulder the burden goes a long way towards ensuring the project's long term viability and vitality. We're taking a long view with TurnKey Linux so sustainability is something that is very much on our minds.

For this reason we were delighted when VPS.NET generously offered to fund future development in proportion to the number of users that sign up through the TurnKey Linux website. For the referral to count, we have to use special affiliate links, so if you'd like to support open source appliance development make sure to use this link when recommending VPS.NET to your friends:

http://tr.im/vpsnet

With your support we're looking forward to being able to dedicate more resources to the project, expand our appliance engineering team and stimulate development of the underlying components we use by funding open source bounties. 

Looking forward

We're hoping our partnership with VPS.NET is only the first of many to come and we've already begun the process of reaching out to additional hosting services all over the world. If you're a service provider that would like to support deployment of TurnKey Linux appliances in your cloud please get in touch with us to discuss how we can work together to make that happen!