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Luna Node Dynamic: Hourly-billed Toronto KVM -- Floating IPs, Detachable Volumes, Virtual Networking
Luna Node Dynamic - dynamic virtualization platform (KVM)
Luna Node Dynamic is an hourly billing virtualization platform in Toronto featuring rapid virtual machine deployment, snapshotting capabilities, an API for automation, complementary minimal server monitoring / DNS hosting, security groups, detachable volumes, and more. Register an account in our panel!
Luna Node offers reliable KVM virtual private servers at affordable prices. We use OpenStack for the Luna Node Dynamic backend.
Here's a more detailed feature explanation:
- Hourly billing - you can create or destroy virtual machines at any time, and then only pay for the hours that VMs were used for. This allows you to provision test containers or scale your Internet application without having to pay for a month per container. The service is prepaid, with Paypal and Bitcoin (via Coinbase) as our current billing options.
- Custom operating systems - simply submit a URL, and the system will download your ISO image or qcow2 template. Once downloaded, you can provision new virtual machines with the custom operating system. For ISO images, OS installation can be completed over VNC (noVNC client).
- Snapshotting - hit a button to snapshot your virtual machine, and the current state of the disk image will be saved to our distributed filesystem. You can then use it to restore your virtual machine to a previous saved state or to provision more VMs. Snapshots are charged at $0.04 / GB / month (billed hourly); the first 20 GB is currently free but this is subject to change.
- API - we provide a simple API that you can use to manage your servers without going through the web UI.
- Track billing - a Billing tab is included in the Luna Node Dynamic panel that allows you to easily check your expenses for each month, with expenses sorted by day. Invoices are also posted at the end of each month for users who require such documents.
- Floating IP addresses - you can keep IP addresses on reserve in your account for $1/month (billed hourly). This means you can easily switch an external IP address between different virtual machines on your account. Additionally, if you don't need a VM for the time being, you can snapshot it and then disassociate its floating IP address so that you only have to pay for the storage space and IP.
- Redundant cloud storage - VMs may optionally be provisioned on top of a distributed, fault-tolerant filesystem to prevent data loss or downtime in case of a host node failure.
- Private virtual networks - you can create a private virtual network, and the private interface of virtual machines in that network will be isolated from other clients. (Each network is $4/month, billed hourly.)
- Load balancing, firewall, VPN as a service - inside your private network, these features are available. See https://wiki.lunanode.com/index.php/Virtual_networks for details.
- Detachable volumes - create arbitrary-sized block devices (volumes) and attach/detach them to virtual machine instances on the fly. For example, you can store application data on a separate volume so that the OS can be upgraded independently.
- Server monitoring - we offer basic server monitoring at no additional cost, where you can set up checks (e.g. ping, TCP connect), and receive notifications over email or SMS when the checks fail.
- Security groups - define external traffic restrictions on a VM-group level to make securing your software easy.
- Startup scripts - specify shell or cloud-config scripts to be run the first time your new VM instances boot.
To get started, you can register an account from our panel; an initial deposit of $12.00 is required. After the initial deposit, more credit in smaller increments (minimum $5.00) can be added when needed. We accept payments through Paypal and Bitcoin.
Plans
- 512 MB - 1 vCPU, 15 GB storage, 1000 GB bandwidth, $0.005 hourly ($3.6 monthly)
- 1024 MB - 2 vCPU, 20 GB storage, 1500 GB bandwidth, $0.0072 hourly ($5.18 monthly)
- Special 2048 - 2 vCPU, 20 GB storage, 2000 GB bandwidth, $0.0097 hourly ($7.00 monthly)
- Special 1536 - 1 vCPU, 15 GB storage, 2000 GB bandwidth, $0.0072 hourly ($5.18 monthly)
Port speed is 1 gbit/s. Click here for full plan list.
You can open a ticket within the first week to request a refund of remaining credit on your account, no questions asked.
Note that Canadian customers will be charged sales tax when adding credit.
Locations
Test IP for Toronto location (245 Consumers Rd 300 Toronto; Cogent DC) is here: http://toronto-test.lunanode.com/100MB.test
About
LunaNode Hosting Inc. is a registered company based in British Columbia, Canada. We first launched in August 2013, focusing on low-cost, reliable KVM virtual private server hosting. We use OpenStack for our back-end and an in-house billing / VM management panel called lndynamic on the front-end (we also developed and continue to maintain pbobp, a free software billing panel, and use it for managed hosting services).
Upload your PGP key to https://lunanode.com/gpgmw to receive encrypted email from our mail server.
New features
We have two additional low end plans in beta: Flexible 2048 and Flexible 4096. Flexible plans come with fixed storage and memory resources, but CPU and bandwidth are billed based on usage to give more flexibility. CPU is priced at $16 per full CPU core per month (billed hourly); for example, if you use 20% of each of four cores over one week, then the charge is 0.2 * 4 * (16/4) = $3.20. Bandwidth is billed at 0.003/GB.
The volume management system has been recently refactored to allow for more control over volume attachments. You can now boot virtual machines from volumes, after creating the volume from an image in the Volumes sidebar tab. Features to convert a volume to an image, to snapshot a volume without having it attached to an instance, and to clone volumes are all planned.
We have also upgraded the network attack mitigation system to automatically remove null routes. Clients will also receive an email after an attack is detected and null route is activated detailing the duration of the null route (which will increase in powers of two from ten minutes up to maximum of around five hours). We hope to add attack log (which would contain tcpdump short listing of a couple thousand packets) soon, currently this is only emailed to staff but customer can open ticket to request.
Internal network has also been upgraded to 10gbps.
Links:
Comments
Could you explain Flexible plans in more details?
Assuming I have ordered Flexible 2048 (2Gb RAM, 2 vCPU), it's marked as costing $5/mo.
How much I will actually pay if I utilize both cores (vCPUs) for 25% during the month billing period?
Explanations above aren't too clear.
Thanks.
Also, your ToS are making me somewhat uneasy by repeating "with or without notice". Personally,, I prefer "with prior notice" wherever possible. I don't like surprises of any kind.
Thanks.
Update: I have rad the Wiki and below I will try to calculate how much will cost Flexible 2048 with 20% of vCPU spent and 2000Gb consumed.
Total cost: $5 + $6.4 + $6 = $17.4
It means that Flexible 2048, utilized as 2048 plan, will cost 3.5 times as much. Are my calculations correct? If yes, I see little sense ordering Flexible. Even if used in the same capacity, they will cost significantly more.
We certainly do provide notices whenever applicable, and there has not been one incident yet where we had to suspend/terminate a client's service without prior notice. The term "without" notice is to allow us the ability to act immediately to protect against a serious violation/threat as during times like these waiting for a client to respond may compromise the security of our systems or the quality of service we deliver to our clients.
As for your other question regarding the flexible plan, Favyen can shed some light on that.
There is more detail if you click on the link, to https://wiki.lunanode.com/index.php/Flexible_plans
The price displayed in the matrix is base cost of the instance, for the fixed storage/memory resources. If you use each of 2 virtual cores for 25% over a month, then the price will be 0.25 * 2 * 16 = $8.00.
Yes, I have read the Wiki and tried to use its information in my calculations above. I just wish to understand whether I take it all correct (i.e., total cost: base price plus CPU usage cost, plus bandwidth usage cost).
Thanks.
The one under "Security" is in case someone attempts to run security exploits on our internal infrastructure that is only available to clients (e.g. the control panel, private network). Then we may need to terminate that client's access until we can evaluate what is happening, and if we are thinking about terms of service when that is happening then that could compromise services for other customers.
Under duplicate billing accounts is only about merging accounts, this will usually have notification, but may be otherwise if someone is trying to abuse affiliate system and using same IP address with fake customer information. We haven't merged any accounts yet, it is too much trouble since panel doesn't support it.
Items 9 and 10 are relatively standard among hosting providers, for example RamNode and Prometeus both have variations of it, some cases cannot be predicted. We would have to carefully analyze the impact of removing those items if we wanted to do that, but that would require financial resources that we simply don't have (to hire legal consulting firm and stuff).
Can you do a yearly OpenVZ plan based on this CPU and bandwidth idea. Would blow any other hoster out the water. And any news of a new location?
CPU usage cost: 0.2 * $16 * 2 (2 cores, 20% each) = $6.4
Bandwidth: 2000 * $0.003 = $6
Those calculations are correct. Hosting providers almost always oversell bandwidth since it is very unlikely that every client will use all or even 90% of their bandwidth allocation, this is true of any resource that is available up to a fixed limit, after which the resource either becomes unavailable or very slow (same for memory in OpenVZ, less true in KVM since container kernel probably going to use extra memory as page cache). The flexible plans allow you to pay for only what you use, for example if you don't need very much bandwidth at all but need to be able to use 100% of one virtual core for a month, then you can pay for the fixed resources plus $16.00; this is similar to a dedicated core in that case, except you have the added flexibility of bursting to more CPU resources or using less for a week if your needs change, and then you only pay based on that.
Similarly if you don't need much CPU but want the 2 GB RAM and 10 TB bandwidth for a month, you can pay $35.00.
Of course paying for fixed resources when there is a package that matches your requirements will be significantly cheaper than paying for flexible resources; but you may not even know what your requirements would be, and some customers may not want to worry about having too small package.
We exclusively use KVM virtualization, so there is no current or any future plans to support openVZ.
We plan on upgrading to SSD first, and then new location will be considered. These plans however both depend heavily on our profit margin.
Thanks for explanations. Two suggestions:
Thanks.
There is text when you provision flexible VM warning that there are additional CPU and bandwidth charges. When flexible plans are no longer in beta and we begin listing them at https://www.lunanode.com/pricing and such, the vCPU column will probably be updated to say "Up to 2", currently it has to be integer and is directly pulled from the table (the bandwidth already says 0 GB included).
Also we do have several customers using flexible plans for the memory, without using much CPU or bandwidth, so the monthly price amounts to at most $0.20 more than the base price. There is no specific maximum price on flexible plans since you can use more bandwidth.
Edit: I added maximum CPU charge to the wiki page, the $16.00 for full core is already there, but just inserted example that using all cores is then of course $16.00 times the number of available virtual cores.
im waiting SSD, eta?
Sorry, we don't have an ETA, probably before the end of the year.
it seems "Account creation" process is very slow eight hours passed,only response was
"This is a confirmation that we have received your account creation request. Once we complete a manual review of user details, you will receive an email notification along with details regarding the lndynamic system."
Yes, it can take up to twenty-four hours.
@perennate : Is your multi-location monitoring feature: https://wiki.lunanode.com/index.php/Server_monitoring
usable with just a minimum deposit? Or do I need running instances at all times?
Looks like good feature set and locations for server status verification.
What is the minimum poll interval? 60s?
usable with just a minimum deposit? Or do I need running instances at all times?
What is the minimum poll interval? 60s?
You need to have credit in your account to use that feature of course. You can sign up for https://bearmon.com if you want free monitoring, it is mostly the same thing.