Feb 3, 2011 : OnApp Launches OnApp 2.1

📅 February 3, 2011 - Free update enables hosting providers to offer private cloud services, extends cloud resource billing capabilities and adds KVM hypervisor support.

OnApp, a cloud hosting provider, yesterday announced the launch of OnApp 2.1. The company claims that OnApp software lowers the entry barriers to cloud hosting, enabling hosts to offer fully-featured cloud services without huge up-front investment in software, infrastructure and integration.

It mentions that OnApp 2.1 introduces features that make cloud hosting accessible to a wider range of hosts, with new options for private clouds, cloud resource billing and resilience, and KVM hypervisor support. The new version of OnApp is free to existing customers. For new customers, the company offers a free 12-month trial of OnApp 2.1 (for deployments of up to 100 CPU cores) followed by a low monthly license fee.

The company avers that the OnApp 2.1 highlight features are:

• Availability zones: Hosts can now group cloud resources into zones that make it easy to offer private clouds to end users - one of the fastest growing segments of the cloud hosting market. This is also significant for small hosts that don't always have the resources to build their own cloud. They can buy a private cloud from a larger host and use it to resell cloud hosting to their own customers. Zones also enable hosts to segment their data center infrastructure for added cloud resilience.
• IOPS billing: Hosts can now monitor and charge for IOPS, as well as the utility billing for CPU core, CPU priority, disk space and network resources already supported. This improves control over cloud storage resources, and provides new options for cloud hosting service design.
• KVM hypervisor support: OnApp 2.1 now supports hypervisors using KVM virtualization technology, which is increasingly popular in the hosting industry. OnApp already supports Xen hypervisors and will add support for VMware and Hyper-V in future releases.
  

Carlos Rego, OnApp's MD and Chief Architect, said, "OnApp 2.1 makes it easier than ever to build a successful cloud hosting business. In 2.1 we've made it easy for hosts to offer private clouds, as well as public, hybrid and VPS cloud offerings. We've expanded our hypervisor support, and introduced utility billing for IOPS. OnApp is the only cloud management tool designed specifically for hosts, and this release extends our leadership in this market."

"The cloud hosting market is growing rapidly, and the window of opportunity is shrinking for hosters to take advantage of the low CPAs and high margins our customers are seeing today," added Carlos Rego. "Hosts have three basic choices when moving to the cloud. They can build their own management system, or try to customize a generic cloud framework: however, the time, cost and complexity of these approaches is usually prohibitive. The alternative is to use OnApp, and have a cloud up and running in as little as a day."