Nine months ago, we launched the first public beta test of our WEDOS Cloud service. Despite the complexity of the service, we were able to collect enough comments and suggestions for improvement from experienced testers. In the end, we abandoned our planned public beta test and threw ourselves into nine months of intensive development …
9 months is a very long time in IT. A lot can change and improve, and there are important innovations coming that can set the course for many years to come. With a bit of exaggeration, we can say that we try to cover everything interesting that cloud specialists are craving right now 🙂
Probably the biggest new feature of WEDOS Cloud is Terraform support. Terraform IaC(Infrastructure as Code) allows you to manage the entire infrastructure of your future cloud datacenter as code in either HCL or JSON. This brings a number of advantages, for example you can version all virtual hardware (for example via GIT), it is easier to work with it, or it is easier to move it to us from a competitor.
We have also significantly strengthened the entire hardware infrastructure in terms of performance and redundancy. The WEDOS Cloud will initially consist of hundreds of physical servers, each connected at 2x 10 Gbps. So if you deploy your virtual servers appropriately, we would be happy to provide speeds up to 100 Gbps. Of course, you need slightly different hardware for this purpose.
As backbone “routers” we use smart Switches 100 Gbps – ARISTA 7280QR-C36. One can handle up to 4.32 Tb of data transferred per second or 1.44 billion packets per second. Thanks to this, we can be sure that they will not be overwhelmed even by very strong DDoS attacks.
One of the main reasons we chose them was EOS (Extensible Operating System). It is built on the Linux kernel. EOS is included in all Arista products. This allows EOS to use all the common Linux tools, which is exactly what we need.
Aristos have an incredibly low response rate. This is why they were chosen by, for example, the Chicago Board Options Exchange, the largest US options exchange, Lehman Brothers and RBC Capital Markets. A significant portion of Arista’s customers are big Wall Street firms. Those are decent references.
After years of very good experience, we have decided to make Arista the basis of the internal network for WEDOS Cloud as well. There are 10 pieces of Arista DCS-7050QX-32S in DC2 right now. Each has 32 ports for 40 Gbps. The switch has a capacity of 2.56 Tb/s and 1.44 billion packets per second, all with a response time of 550 ns. In case of problems, it also allows hot-swap of resources. This series of switches is designed for datacenters where performance is paramount and future smart infrastructure scaling is anticipated.
Our developers have also spent a lot of time tuning the service so that individual VMs (virtual machines) in the cloud do not need to be shut down during modifications. It’s quite common that when you make a “hardware” modification to a VM or network, it is necessary to shut down/restart the machine. In the cloud, you can avoid an outage simply by building another temporary branch of infrastructure to which you transfer traffic. We still tried to minimize the need to do this. Currently we are still solving the problem of network interface crashing, where it is necessary to restart the VM. It’s kind of the last item on the list.
Current status
At the moment, our developers are quite confident about the service. They are slowly preparing it for the first testing. The service itself is ready, it is connected to our customer administration, monitoring services, billing and an extensive library of images for quick installation on VMs (operating systems, routers, kubernetes, gitlab, we even have WordPress).
So we are waiting for the final meeting and orders from the management 🙂
Private testing
Private testing will take place first. We want to make it mandatory for every technician to try out the service and try to do something there. WEDOS Cloud is a real cloud and therefore nothing simple for everyday use. On the other hand, each of our technicians should be able to navigate in the service and be able to make a simple high availability solution for a website, where the failure of one VM (server or router) will not be known.
It will be available voluntarily for others, of course. Now we are all busy testing other upcoming services (WEDOS CD, WEDOS WebSite).
Another closed beta test
For private testing we would like to launch a second closed beta test as soon as possible. We have a number of testers already waiting, but we would like to add more. We’ll make free server resources available to you as needed, and in return you’ll write to us about what you like, don’t like, comparisons with competitors, etc.
We are all about feedback. We don’t foresee any problems with the service, although after so many years of experience we know that problems can always and everywhere 🙂
So if you have something to test in a real cloud environment, drop us a line.
Test operation
Depending on how the beta testing goes, we would start a test run. It will be similar to the WMS. The service is fully operational and we do not anticipate any significant changes. However, we need to fill the servers and let it run for a few months. Various tests and benchmarks cannot simulate several months of live operation.
Service Extension
WEDOS Cloud is designed for a small group of cloud specialists who can use it to its full potential. We would like to offer them a stable service that will continue to develop. We are even counting on regular conferences in Hluboká Nad Vltavou. We believe that this will also give us further suggestions on where to take WEDOS Cloud in the future.
At the moment, the plan is mainly for low-cost drives. We would like to offer not only Czech customers a large cheap data storage space in the heart of Europe. All under the jurisdiction of the Czech Republic and fully compliant with GDPR requirements.
Conclusion
But it doesn’t stop there. The WEDOS Cloud service will be the subject of further articles in the coming weeks. You have a lot to look forward to 🙂
But it doesn’t stop there. We are already preparing and soon you will see WWS – WEDOS Web Services – all possible services in a container controlled with one click… But that’s giving away too much 🙂