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Nice idea, not sure I would include the seedbox element, tends to attract trouble.
Yes there always will be trouble with this but at the same time this would be useful for transferring backups / large files, this will help people with unstable ISP's alot because the bittorrent protocol allows resuming uploads/downloads at any time. I can't think of any other software that handles this better than the BT protocol. You could block public tracker URLs if copyright notices become a problem to reduce the amount of complaints.
Fair point, I think btsync would be a better option then.
So the list so far is:
Thanks for the ideas, to be completely honest some hosts already offer some of the more specialized things here, while I like the idea of affordable DNS services to be honest I think a number of good options already exist which I consider very affordable to begin with.
Object Oriented Storage was a good idea however this is a big thing to maintain and quite specialist so I am not sure I would reinvent that wheel in any form that would be as attractive as the current options.
VPN is easy to do but the recent paypal issues with VPN providers bothers me, not to say I could not offer it as a combo service as per @Mark_R's suggestion.
Ideas I think would be enjoyable to implement as a hosted service are the Hosted Ghost Blogging platform, could throw droplet in there as well, Hosted Desktops, Hosted iSCSI/NFS, the hosted mysql/mariadb is certainly interesting but I need to look in to that a bit more in terms of scale.
Appreciate the ideas guys, always enjoy these sorts of discussions feel free to throw any other ideas out there no matter how small scale or silly they might sound
You need a Windows CAL and a RDS CAL. Not cheap at all
I know you deal with SPLA more than I do these days, I can get SPLA status no problem however iirc you can do per socket/CPU CAL instead of per user cant you?
There is always the Ubuntu Based desktop as an option as well pre configured properly with Wine.
Why would people use this? To scam?
Not exactly. I am not a Microsoft licensing specialist so I may be in error, but I remember that the RDS CAL license is not allowed on the general service provider scenario, with resources shared between customers. This scenario needs SPLA RDS SALs (Subscriber Access Licenses), with a monthly cost that I believe is around 4$ per user. Last time I checked, it was twice the cost of the regular RDS CAL that any company could install on non-shared hardware. The Windows server license is still needed. I believe that the Windows CAL license can be avoided in this scenario; this compensates the "high" price of RDS SALs.
The current low end Windows offer is still in the stone age, and is lacking many options already well entrenched in the business scenario. There are many examples, I list just two of them related to the remote desktop feature, because I see that many people here buy Windows VPSs for this purpose.
According to my knowledge, there are no low-end Windows VPS with GPU support and full USB device redirection (both features are offered by the Microsoft RemoteFX protocol).
Another useful Windows service that no one is offering (in this low-end context) is the Terminal services remote desktop gateway. RDS gateway support is integrated in the Remote desktop connection client since Windows xp sp3 and FreeRDP since version 1.1.0. With this service, the RDP connection is tunneled on https standard port (443) and therefore the connection travels trough most proxy servers and firewalls, with protocol optimizations that makes it faster than regular RDP over a VPN. This solution also overcomes the limitation of the standard listening port of RDP (3389), blocked by public hot-spots. It is possible to change the RDP port to 443 or 80, of course, but any traffic inspection firewall will detect and block the packets. The usual workaround is to use a third party remote desktop product such as Teamviewer; this places over the end user a burden that should be solved by the infrastructure.
I think BuyVM already offer a lot of this with the Turnkey templates they offer.
I could double check on monday what our pricing is when it comes to rds cal or sal.
I let the customer and the sales person decide on the price.
I'm a tech, I don't care about the price.
I tell the customer what they need, sometimes it is nice to do it that way.
Nah just messing around, I'm not a big fan of traffic exchange programs...
@pcan @AnthonySmith
Some rough prices (in SEK and remember that Sweden usually is expensive)
150 / month for the Win SAL (cpu license)
50 / month / user for the RDS CAL
You dont need the SAL+CAL though do you I thought it was one or the other?
Depends on who you ask at Microsoft.
To be on the safe side, we always do the windows user license (call it cal or sal) and then add on the rds user license.
Since I don't have access to the current price list I can only do an educated guess that if you pay per user instead of the cpu license, you would brake even at 3 users.
So if you calculate that you could have 30-35 users on a server the cost per user is not that much (since you have cpu license).
I have a "dream" about a solution where the user could pick different applications and resources and everything would have a price tag.
Rds = $X / month
Office = $Y / month
Exchange mail = $Z / month
Disk = $C / gb / month
Etc, etc......
A complete infrastructure with Active Directory/ GPO / storage / DFS / redirected folders and central profiles.
Bunch of RDS servers in front for the users.
Someone with a heap load of money who wants to do this?
Something that support the implementation of HA Cluster (DRBD, Corosync, Pacemaker, failover/floating IP).
Last time I did, it was at dediserve.
I need more providers that support this at LEB prices.
@MikHo A well managed Windows infrastructure, as you depicted, may not exactly fit the current requirements of the general public. It resembles Apple products: stability and security are good, but the user is constrained to follow some rules (such as: do not save documents in random filesystem locations). Apple users are used to this. Many Windows users not so much yet, but they will have to adapt (according to the latest Microsoft trends).
In the future, we may see some implementation of this managed desktop scenario directly from Microsoft, but it will not be the cheapest because Microsoft is used to get lavish profit margins.
I was not aware that the RDS SAL can be licensed per processor in SPLA contracts. If someone will venture into this, it should be aware that Microsoft may change prices substantially with short notice. They already have done this last year.
You take that back!
this year alone I've done two Microsoft license audits for customers. Companys with ~30-50 users, nothing fancy.
Took 2 and 3 months to convince MS that the information I sent was correct, not even Microsoft staff knows how the licensing works.
Distributed File System?
Anthony might be talking about MS-DFS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_File_System_(Microsoft)
And so was I.
Yep!
Why not?
It is pure evil.
Is not! Then you are doing it wrong
Yeah, that is true, trust me when you get to about half a million DFS links in 2k3 shit gets real.
Guess you answered yourself there
Half a million and 2K3.
OSX remote desktop within LEB price range with xcode support.
How about offloaded mx spam protection - kind of spam/virus filtering proxy for one own's mail server?
There's a free german service called spambarrier.de - at time only available in german language ...
illegal I believe
Yes
Only two VMs are allowed on a machine as far as I know because of their wacky policy. But you asked and thats my dream :-)
However there are some companies who offer terminal servers (like iRAPP) but pricing is very high. Does anybody know a free alternative terminal server or how a software like this works?