eNlight - So what can you actually get?

[drifter]

Hi,
I am a fairly long term eukhost customer, primarily working on Windows-based hosting environments. I spent a couple of years with a Windows 2003 semi-dedicated server, and then spent the last couple of years with a Windows 2008 Hyper-V semi-dedicated server. Overall I have been pleased with my experience.

Moving with the times, I'm now looking at the potential benefits of cloud-based hosting. eNlight looks quite interesting, from a resource scalability perspective, only paying for what you use, etc.

But I'm a bit surprised that the resource scalability is the only aspect that there's any real detail about. Maybe it's because it's still a new service and the documentation isn't complete yet. Or maybe I am missing something...

What I'm really interested in is what can I do with it? The detail of what can be put on to it, either preconfigured or otherwise, seems to be scant to non-existent. What operating systems can be loaded on it? Are they preconfigured with applications and are there costs associated with doing so? Basically, the equivalent of the Packages you would get with a VPS or dedicated server.


Let's look at a specific example. If I were setup with eNlight, could I use it as a direct replacement for my existing Windows 2008 Hyper-V semi-dedicated server?

This would mean having eNlight setup with perhaps 60GB disk space available, up to 2GB RAM, etc, Windows 2008, and core applications such as Plesk, MailEnable, MySQL, SQLServer Express installed.

Are there additional costs involved? And what exactly would those be?


Sorry if I am missing the point as to what eNlight is about! Another option would of course be Hyper-V Cloud hosting, but a lot of the time I don't need the full resource allocation, which is why eNlight sounds attractive. So if you could provide some info about the things I mentioned, it would be really helpful.

Thanks!

[Rossi]

Glad to know that you are interested in Enlight Cloud server

Resources like RAM and CPU would auto-scale as per the load on the server and bandwidth will be used according to the traffic on the website. Web space is the only resource which can't auto-scale as its physically assigned to the VM. You have to manually increase/decrease it from your Enlight Control panel. There isn't any documentation of resource scalability because we can't provide the real time resource usage of a Live VM. We have a Billing predictor which has a option of "% Usage" where you can predict the actual % of resources which the VM will use.

You will be able to see the real time resource scalability of your VM from the Enlight control panel once you create a new VM. We have provided separate graphs for CPU, RAM, Bandwidth and Space usage in the Enlight Control panel which will help you to check the actual resources used by your VM.

You can set space and RAM according to your requirements. We will have to manually install Windows 2008 OS, Plesk, MailEnable, MySQL, SQL Server Express once you create a VM. There are no additional charges for installation. Only charges applicable would be the license cost.

As per our tests and research Enlight saves upto 60% of the monthly cost as its a pay per use server.

Charges of licensed applications are

Operating System

Windows 2008 Standard Edition (64 bit) :- £5/month
Windows 2008 Datacenter Edition (64 bit) :- £5/month

Control panel

Plesk 10 Domains - £3.00 GBP
Plesk 30 Domains - £5.00 GBP
Plesk 100 Domains - £10.00 GBP
Plesk Unlimited Domains - £15.00 GBP
cPanel/WHM - £5.00 GBP

Current offers on Enlight are

£5 off while signing up by using coupon code "Enlight"
£30 one time credit once your account becomes active
1 TB bandwidth free on each VM per month

Feel free to post if you have more queries related to Enlight.

[eUK-Rishi]

What I'm really interested in is what can I do with it? The detail of what can be put on to it, either preconfigured or otherwise, seems to be scant to non-existent. What operating systems can be loaded on it? Are they preconfigured with applications and are there costs associated with doing so? Basically, the equivalent of the Packages you would get with a VPS or dedicated server.

Let's look at a specific example. If I were setup with eNlight, could I use it as a direct replacement for my existing Windows 2008 Hyper-V semi-dedicated server?

This would mean having eNlight setup with perhaps 60GB disk space available, up to 2GB RAM, etc, Windows 2008, and core applications such as Plesk, MailEnable, MySQL, SQLServer Express installed.

Are there additional costs involved? And what exactly would those be?

You are correct, eNlight is a special cloud platform which has some out of the box features.
It is similar to other cloud offerings but it has a very unique intelligence of scalability.

With eNlight Cloud you get a cloud server ( complete OS root/RDP access ). You can install any applications on it that you may need.

We have below offerings with eNlight

* Plain Linux CentOS scalable server
* Linux CentOS with CPanel ready to use server

* Windows 2008 Standard ( no control panel or DB )
* Windows 2008 Datacenter ( no control panel or DB )

CentOS comes with minimum 20GB disk and Windows comes with minimum 30GB C: .

There are few limitations depending on the OS type.
* Linux servers has the capability to scale CPU from 1 to 24
* Linux servers has the capability to scale RAM from 512MB to 64GB ( security restriction on 16GB )
* Windows servers has the capability to scale RAM from 1GB to 4GB
* Windows servers come with default 4 CPUs.

Notable thing is *scalability* = *live scalability*, you will see the resource changes while the servers are running and without taking them off line. This feature takes away the pain of upgrades and downgrades and also waves off the worries for sudden spikes. It also improves the uptime and reliability.

With its Control panel you get below additional features
* Add / Remove / Move Disks anytime
* Monitor your server performance and billing usage
* Console access
* Server provisioning in less than a minute.
* Pay per use

The Cloud Platform is also Robust and Failsafe
* You get the power of X5660's
* High IOPS with our redundant 10Gig Storage
* Quality Internet bandwidth.

I agree with you that the system is in its new stage and hence we lack documentation but its getting popular and we will soon release the docs.

As mentioned by Ross, we have good offers on eNlight Cloud ATM so awaiting to see you on board

[Macdale]

You are correct, eNlight is a special cloud platform which has some out of the box features.
It is similar to other cloud offerings but it has a very unique intelligence of scalability.

The ability to scale the server resources automatically is the best feature in the eNlight solution. And I believe that such out of the box features differs eUkhost from other web hosting providers and makes eUKhost's Cloud Hosting solution superior than other web hosting companies cloud plans.

[DPS Computing]

The ability to scale the server resources automatically is the best feature in the eNlight solution. And I believe that such out of the box features differs eUkhost from other web hosting providers and makes eUKhost's Cloud Hosting solution superior than other web hosting companies cloud plans.

Most definitely. This is without doubt its Unique Selling Point and I'm going to be watching its success very closely .

[drifter]

I really do hope you guys are working on some documentation for customers, to explain the steps people will need to take after they create a VM in eNlight! Because it's about as clear as mud...

I took the plunge, ordered eNlight and paid my £15, just to see what's in there.

For benefit of anyone who doesn't have eNlight yet, before you create a VM, there are two buttons in the management panel, 'Manage Disk' and 'Create VM'.

I don't know what 'Manage Disk' does, there's no explanation. Does it expand the hard disk of an existing VM? Or does it add a new hard disk to a VM? No idea.

'Create VM' lets you create a new virtual machine. At present there are 4 templates available. The templates are;
CentOSCPanel - Linux 64 bit, with base configuration of 1 CPU, 512 MB RAM and 20 GB hard disk. I presume CPanel is pre-installed but it says you need to pay for a license separately. But where and how? Is it from the eUKhost main screen -> Order Now -> Addons -> cPanel License - eNlight? If so, then it's £7 per month extra to add this to your linux virtual machine.

CentOSPlain - Linux 64 bit, with base configuration of 1 CPU, 512 MB RAM and 20 GB hard disk. I assume no control panel or other software pre-installed.

Windows2008DC - Windows 2008 Data Centre Edition 64 bit, with a base configuration of 4 CPUs, 512 MB RAM and 30 GB hard disk. No software pre-installed.

Windows2008S - Windows 2008 Standard Edition 64 bit, with a base configuration of 4 CPUs, 512 MB RAM and 30 GB hard disk. No software pre-installed.

For the Windows options, the first thing you will see after logging into the server via remote desktop is that the copy of Windows requires licensing. Again, it would be useful if we could be pointed to where and how to do this. Is it from the eUKhost main screen -> Order Now -> Addons? Because on that page, there is a listing for 'Windows 2008 Data Centre - eNlight VM', but it's £11 per month. And there's no listing for Windows 2008 Standard Edition.

The reason I'm not sure is that earlier in this forum it was quoted at £5 per month for both editions of Windows 2008 on eNlight...

Then to get Plesk installed on the Windows server, I'm guessing we choose the appropriate 'Plesk (nn domains)' addon?


Just on the topic of Windows licensing and Control Panel charges, I assume that because these are billed separately from eNlight usage, that the flat charges will still apply on a monthly basis, even if a VM is turned off for some or all of the month.

Also, if I delete a virtual machine and create a new one, I assume the Windows licence doesn't just carry over to the new one, and I will need to get Support involved to licence the new VM. Hopefully without having to pay another £xx for that month.


I really, really want to like eNlight as I think it could be cool. But I'm just getting frustrated with having to try to guess or work out everything for myself, and I just don't have the time to waste on that. I know I can contact Support for assistance, but surely it would cut down their workload if someone sat down for an afternoon and wrote out a guide for getting a proper web hosting environment setup from scratch on eNlight. Just a thought...

[Rossi]

I really do hope you guys are working on some documentation for customers, to explain the steps people will need to take after they create a VM in eNlight! Because it's about as clear as mud...

We have a user manual for the same but its still in the final phase. It will be made live shortly.

I took the plunge, ordered eNlight and paid my £15, just to see what's in there.

For benefit of anyone who doesn't have eNlight yet, before you create a VM, there are two buttons in the management panel, 'Manage Disk' and 'Create VM'.

I don't know what 'Manage Disk' does, there's no explanation. Does it expand the hard disk of an existing VM? Or does it add a new hard disk to a VM? No idea.

Manage Disk is to add more disk to your existing VM. You can add more space to your current at any point of time.

'Create VM' lets you create a new virtual machine. At present there are 4 templates available. The templates are;
CentOSCPanel - Linux 64 bit, with base configuration of 1 CPU, 512 MB RAM and 20 GB hard disk. I presume CPanel is pre-installed but it says you need to pay for a license separately. But where and how? Is it from the eUKhost main screen -> Order Now -> Addons -> cPanel License - eNlight? If so, then it's £7 per month extra to add this to your linux virtual machine.
For the Windows options, the first thing you will see after logging into the server via remote desktop is that the copy of Windows requires licensing. Again, it would be useful if we could be pointed to where and how to do this. Is it from the eUKhost main screen -> Order Now -> Addons? Because on that page, there is a listing for 'Windows 2008 Data Centre - eNlight VM', but it's £11 per month. And there's no listing for Windows 2008 Standard Edition.

Price of addons will be the same as mentioned in my above reply. Thank you for bringing the addons page to our notice, prices on the same will be changed shortly. You can contact our Billing team via Live chat or Email to get a invoice for the same.

CentOSPlain - Linux 64 bit, with base configuration of 1 CPU, 512 MB RAM and 20 GB hard disk. I assume no control panel or other software pre-installed.

Windows2008DC - Windows 2008 Data Centre Edition 64 bit, with a base configuration of 4 CPUs, 512 MB RAM and 30 GB hard disk. No software pre-installed.

Windows2008S - Windows 2008 Standard Edition 64 bit, with a base configuration of 4 CPUs, 512 MB RAM and 30 GB hard disk. No software pre-installed.

Then to get Plesk installed on the Windows server, I'm guessing we choose the appropriate 'Plesk (nn domains)' addon?

cPanel license is a trial license and Windows license is unactivated and is in evaluation mode. You can either purchase the license from us or provide us the license you have and our support team will get it installed for free on the server.

Server won't have any application apart from OS and cPanel pre-installed on it. All the applications needs to be installed once you create a new VM. You can email our support dept along with the VM login details and the list of applications. Our support team will install all the applications at no additional cost.

Just on the topic of Windows licensing and Control Panel charges, I assume that because these are billed separately from eNlight usage, that the flat charges will still apply on a monthly basis, even if a VM is turned off for some or all of the month.

You don't need to pay the invoices once you take down the VM. You can initiate a chat or email our Billing dept to get the invoices cancelled.

Also, if I delete a virtual machine and create a new one, I assume the Windows licence doesn't just carry over to the new one, and I will need to get Support involved to licence the new VM. Hopefully without having to pay another £xx for that month.

Yes, if you delete a particular VM, then you can use the license of that VM on a new one till the next renewal date at no additional cost.

I really, really want to like eNlight as I think it could be cool. But I'm just getting frustrated with having to try to guess or work out everything for myself, and I just don't have the time to waste on that. I know I can contact Support for assistance, but surely it would cut down their workload if someone sat down for an afternoon and wrote out a guide for getting a proper web hosting environment setup from scratch on eNlight. Just a thought...

I too agree with you on the same. As I said that we are still in the final phase of making all the necessary documents live. It will be made Live shortly and will cover all the points you mentioned above.

[eUKhost.com]

I really, really want to like eNlight as I think it could be cool. But I'm just getting frustrated with having to try to guess or work out everything for myself, and I just don't have the time to waste on that. I know I can contact Support for assistance, but surely it would cut down their workload if someone sat down for an afternoon and wrote out a guide for getting a proper web hosting environment setup from scratch on eNlight. Just a thought...

We made an Airplane and we knew what should be pulled to takeoff and what button to be pressed to go on auto-pilot, but we didn't make a manual for the learning pilots at the same time.

Your feedback is sincerely appreciated and we are coming up with some Flash tutorials and User manual in next few days.

Please keep on posting here, your support will help us to further improve eNlight and move the entire hosting industry with this revolutionary cloud hosting platform.

[drifter]

Thanks guys for your feedback. Much appreciated.

[flesso]

If you're after some guides, check the blog over the coming weeks as there will be some stuff on its way

[DPS Computing]

Please forgive how silly this next question probably sounds but......

With the extra licensing charges related to cPanel / Plesk / Windows etc... if you were going to have lots of accounts all requiring the same software etc... what is stopping you having one massive VM as opposed to lots of little ones?

For example..... if you were going to host 100 accounts - couldn't you host them all under one big VM rather than hosting 25 on 4 separate VMs (and therefore incurring 4x the license fees)?

Be kind, I'm still learning about eNlight .

[ejsolutions]

...With the extra licensing charges related to cPanel / Plesk / Windows etc... if you were going to have lots of accounts all requiring the same software etc... what is stopping you having one massive VM as opposed to lots of little ones?

For example..... if you were going to host 100 accounts - couldn't you host them all under one big VM rather than hosting 25 on 4 separate VMs (and therefore incurring 4x the license fees)?

There are pro & cons to both approaches. Depends on how you structure things for your business, price things out, keep all eggs in one basket, or the way the wind is blowing...

[DPS Computing]

There are pro & cons to both approaches. Depends on how you structure things for your business, price things out, keep all eggs in one basket, or the way the wind is blowing...

Good points, fair enough .

[eUKhost.com]

Thanks guys for your feedback. Much appreciated.

I should say thank you to you.

We had all the documentation, Architecture and content ready with us from last 2 months, but we could not put that on the website due to the excessive work load we had after launch of eNlight.

You will see the updated content, eNlight Architecture and user manual on our website in few days. I'll get back to you once we upload everything on the website.

[DPS Computing]

I should say thank you to you.

We had all the documentation, Architecture and content ready with us from last 2 months, but we could not put that on the website due to the excessive work load we had after launch of eNlight.

You will see the updated content, eNlight Architecture and user manual on our website in few days. I'll get back to you once we upload everything on the website.

Sounds good - I look forward to having a read of it. I'm sure I will understand eNlight even better then .