Ubiquity Targets Amazon

U.S. hosting specialist Ubiquity Servers Solutions has launched a new high-performance public cloud service built on the OnApp Limited‘s cloud platform, and targeted directly at users of Amazon’s cloud.

Ubiquity’s cloud service is one of the first to use OnApp Storage, the integrated SAN included with OnApp cloud v3.0. Ubiquity used OnApp’s new storage system to create an SSD-based cloud hosting service with performance and resilience, but without the high cost associated with clouds built on legacy storage technologies.

Performance was a factor in Ubiquity’s decision to build a new service on the OnApp platform, particularly the VM-aware technology in OnApp Storage, which ensures a copy of a VM’s data exists on the same physical server that hosts that VM. This optimizes I/O for Ubiquity’s customers, and ensures their hosted applications get up to 95% of the raw performance of the drives that store their data. Ubiquity Servers was a participant in OnApp’s beta program for the new technology, and in tests saw sustained R/W speeds of 1,500MB/s and 1,200MB/s with six SSDs, compared with 400-500MB/s using a traditional SAN array.

"We’ve tested and used many virtualization systems as our services have evolved," says Clint Chapman, CTO of Ubiquity Servers. "The one thing always lacking has been an effective storage system, one that would help us build a real industry-leading cloud service. With the integrated SAN built into OnApp Cloud, we’ve finally found the answer. With our cloud built on OnApp, we’re now able to target the Amazon cloud directly, and offer more features, better performance and better support at half the cost."

Ubiquity also valued the storage scalability and flexibility provided by the OnApp cloud platform. OnApp Storage enables cloud providers to create distributed SANs across SSD, SATA or SAS drives in their hypervisor servers: scaling storage is as simple as adding more drives, and/or more hypervisors. This is significant for public cloud providers, since their storage can scale in step with their cloud as they grow. The OnApp platform also supports traditional storage alongside its own integrated SAN, helping Ubiquity to migrate customer apps hosted on servers with mechanical disks, over to its new SSD-based servers.

"We built our previous generation of cloud services around a proprietary SAN from a well-known vendor," continues Clint. "It was a lot of work to manage and maintain, locked us down to proprietary hardware, and was expensive to build and scale out. This made it very difficult for us to get to the price point we want for our services. OnApp’s storage platform solves each of these problems, giving us enterprise storage for our cloud at a fraction of the cost of a traditional SAN."

"Finding a way to do cloud storage that scales and delivers high performance, without having to turn to a proprietary SAN array, was really the last barrier hosting companies had to remove to level the playing field with larger providers," said OnApp CEO Ditlev Bredahl. "It’s companies like Ubiquity that are really taking the fight to Amazon, by offering what the big guys still can’t give to end users hosting apps in ‘the cloud’: proper SLAs, proper support and affordable prices, without compromising on quality."

Ubiquity’s new cloud service is hosted at launch in a SAS70 (type II) data center in New York, with Los Angeles, Chicago, and Amsterdam clouds coming online in the near future.