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Why RAMNODE is moving out from SolusVM to Openstack (Fleio) ?
Dear Friends,
Managing VM's based on Xen / OpenVZ through SolusVM is easier and cost effective, but i am wondering why RAMNODE moved out from SolusVM to Openstack (Fleio).
Want to know the advantages of Openstack over Xen / OpenVZ. Also managing Openstack is tedious as per my understanding.
Comments
Isn't that more of a moving out of solusVM? Fleio provides more services (e.g. custom images, networking, hourly billing, etc.), and the face that SVM is owned by the same company who owns cP would be a great reason to move out
Probably you could find out more here: https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/159155/ramnode-openstack-cloud-launched
Easier and cost-effective for whom? It's point-and-click for the customer either way, but Fleio gives you more to point-and-click at + an OpenStack API.
A company like RamNode (@Nick_A) should probably invest in their in-house panel (hint: BuyVM's Stallion)
I am not saying Fleio is bad or something, I'm sure it would be good enough but in the long run and with the reputation of a company RamNode, in-house should be a safer bet against all future uncertainties in pricing.
That's one way to look at it (which isn't wrong) but again, depending on a 3rd party for a crucial business process can lead to uncertainties in near future.
A small company, if relies on 3rd party for such crucial business process, is alright as they lack sufficient funds (investment) to develop stuff on their own. But RamNode has quite a good reputation and has been running strong (stable) since years now.
Investing in their own in-house panel would be a pretty good asset. Yes, it might create a lot of headache in the process but once everything is set their dependencies on 3rd party will become less and make their future a bit more certain.
Just my 2cents
I can't think of any provider here who has their own billing panel, which is a crucial business process everyone relies on a 3rd party for.
I did my own years ago to remove the dependency on 3rd parties but I have said ever since it was the one decision I would reverse if I could go back. The time and effort to keep it maintained is not worth the alternative of $20 or whatever for WHMCS/Blesta to do it for me.
Same applies to everyone reliant on cPanel, which providers really have the resources to do their own version.
There is a balance between how much time/effort you spend on each part of your service vs what is best left to those who can provide it for you. Of course, you need to always have one eye on what if...
We did our own billing panel where I used to work. It wasn't that big a deal. It didn't have to accomodate a billion services or plugins that we didn't care about. It was just for our own stuff and if we wanted to change anything, we could. I asked the guy who wrote it why not use something like WHMCS, and he said something about missing features.
Yes if you want to write something well packaged and with enough features to satisfy a wide range of user setups, it's a lot of work; but if it's more narrowly focused it's just another chunk of code. I mentioned in another place that one thing went badly wrong (we didn't bother chasing after clients with outstanding bills), but that was a process failure rather than a software issue.
Define we? On the basis, most providers here are 1 or 2 people doing it all.
At the time the billing panel was written I think it was about a 5 person company. It was somewhat bigger when I got there. The billing panel was a fairly small part of the software that got written there.
An important caveat to keep in mind here, is international tax rules. If you want to support clients from around the world, you'll probably end up investing a lot of time looking into tax/invoicing requirements for all the different countries. It's much easier if it's local-only.
Though billing/accounting/client management is a crucial business process and I really have no answer why the big players are not getting it done in-house but for VPS/Server provisioning the stable & long run providers do have their own panel developed. We don't know their internal affairs but it did work for them and perhaps it might work for RamNode too at this moment and would definitely give them an edge over the other VPS providers (they do have an edge but to have a more far fetched edge
)
I can name few, BuyVM, HostHatch, VirMach, HostUS etc. They, in my perspective, made a wise decision to invest in their own panel for provisioning thus eliminating dependencies on SolusVM, Virtualizor, Proxmox and other panels.
Criticism of panels aside, it would be unfair to undervalue the amount of work something like WHMCS/Blesta does for you and then needs to provide as the landscape changes. cPanel pricing changes, VAT MOSS and so on.
Sure, many could probably code something but is that something good, secure, compliant, extensible and so on? Probably not.
Don't think they all do apart from BuyVM they are all using Solus in some way. I may be wrong.
Oh, then it changes everything...
wasn't aware of it.
Guess I made a fool out of myself
The big ("cloud") players are all doing it in-house, I thought.
We did have international customers but I don't think we put any significant effort into this. They may have all been smaller accounts who paid by credit card through Stripe. We invoiced larger accounts if the customers wanted that, but I don't know if any of those were international. I don't think we collected VAT or anything like that. I've never heard of a US company doing that.
Every provider loves to have their own control panel. But the major challenge is Maintaining the development team.
Many US-based hosting providers do collect VAT now from EU customers, as is legally required since the new VAT legislation.
Wow...
.......
Seconded...
Probably there should be a history for such question. Long story short - I had massive problems with Virtualizor. And developed alergy for software from India
.
But I never experienced Romanian software quality.
Ignore him, he just enjoys insulting Indian coders. I have seen it in his other posts and ignores the rule: Don't be a dick
I did not insulted anyone. Just asked a question. If you see insult in simple question - maybe your interpretation is wrong?
Let's be mature about it and not try to hide behind words/phrases. You know you deliberately do it. It's ok!
What's wrong with virtualizor. It looks so nice.
They're better than Indians
Well, because solus, a price increase is imminent but RamNode did worked on this long before.
Additional to that, they worked a while with Fleio and I suspect they got some kind of a custom contract, where also features they need will be done relatively quickly, so good for them.
Would be also cheaper, then do it by yourself with 3-5 Dev's.
I like the odds of Fleio succeeding, because Nick of Ramnode is no fool.
It's a pretty positive 'signal' about the quality of the code.
It's a win win for Ramnode, to be able to get good product for a lifetime license (I'm guessing). There are worse ways to spend your war chest.
Ramnode is back. They never left.