ProxmoxVE Hosting Provider for the US

J

JustaGuy

Renowned Member
Jan 1, 2010
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I found PVE when I was starting a business venture back in 2010, which ultimately failed, and lately I have no use for it anymore with the passing of my company. Which is a pity, since the last I worked with PVE was back just before the new interface, and new clustering, and I wish I could be up to speed with all the new exciting functionality.

I'm currently shopping for a hosted desktop, and have been considering to rent a bare metal server I could install PVE on so I could simply install a Windows iso I have of my own, as if it were my own box at home. So this got me looking into the PVE hosting partners' sites, but neither are in english, so I'm lost.

This got me thinking, if I were to ever start another business venture, I might be happy to provide PVE instances to US customers.

So I just wanted to put a feeler post out there to see how the community felt about such an idea. I wonder if it might be worth looking for a group of investors, some IT people to get in on it.

Are there people here in the community who would want to rent a PVE instance from a US based provider?
 
Not really sure about this. I don't want to rain on your parade here, but colocation is really cheap in the US and you really want to compete with the likes of Rackspace, Amazon and now DELL in this market? They'd be able to eat you alive in pricing for this. If I needed a PVE server, I'd just spend $100 and colocate a box. I have also found dedicated server providers that will be happy to let you send them a CD, give you a KVM to the server, and you can install it yourself. Again, under $100 a month.

This is a relatively mature market and you'd be going into it with corporations that could eat you for breakfast.

Myles
 
Amazon and even CrashSpace have their own issues...

We provide this service and I think it works quite well.
Where we excel is in the side of service for the most part - we provide services at a cost that they could only DREAM of having with one of those other providers.
I know there is a market - Pepsi wants Coke, Coke Wants Pepsi - heck they even create their own competition in their own brands ...

There is room - if your willing to put in the work, the hours and wait for the pay off.
My suggestion - Find a NICHE that the others are not servicing.

We do that under a few different brands - and it has paid off very well.
 
For many folks they need to stay on this side of the border... OVH is up to the north in Canada - am I correct?
Not really on US Soil.

Sadly - for those of us working with State and Federal contracts - this makes OVH a non-starter sadly
Great Company otherwise !

tom said:
check the offerings of OVH in US, see http://www.ovh.com/us/index.xml
Click to expand...
 
typo3usa said:
For many folks they need to stay on this side of the border... OVH is up to the north in Canada - am I correct?
Not really on US Soil.

Sadly - for those of us working with State and Federal contracts - this makes OVH a non-starter sadly
Great Company otherwise !
Click to expand...

I thought it would be good to take OVH for a drive - considering it would be nice to have another server outside of our datacenter to add to a CDN pool.
I placed an order (29313) and was promised 1 hour delivery.

Fast forward 40+ hours and I am given every excuse in the book - BUT NO SERVER.

So yeah - I would say the market is ripe here in the US.

Delivery of the server ordered on Thursday at 3PM happened after 9AM on Friday.
A bit slower than expected but things can happen...


Ripe indeed.
 
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I've been working on getting a PaaS startup off the ground for awhile now.
At first we were planning to use Proxmox for our underlying infrastructure (we need the ability to spin up new VMs instantly and openvz templates along with Proxmox 2.X API was a perfect fit)
The issue is the capitol investment for all the servers is simply too high for a new startup with a tight budget so were were relegated to using Rackspace cloud, Amazon EC2, etc.

If someone could raise the capitol to build a few hundred nodes of robust Proxmox cluster goodness(to get started), with some advertising I am sure you could find customers.
I'd rather use Proxmox than anything built on OpenStack, VMWare or some other proprietary tech.
There is a market here.

The issue is, getting investors interested in something with such high startup costs in a market that already has mega players is very difficult.
If I only had a few million myself.....
 
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e100 said:
I've been working on getting a PaaS startup off the ground for awhile now.
At first we were planning to use Proxmox for our underlying infrastructure (we need the ability to spin up new VMs instantly and openvz templates along with Proxmox 2.X API was a perfect fit)
The issue is the capitol investment for all the servers is simply too high for a new startup with a tight budget so were were relegated to using Rackspace cloud, Amazon EC2, etc.

If someone could raise the capitol to build a few hundred nodes of robust Proxmox cluster goodness(to get started), with some advertising I am sure you could find customers.
I'd rather use Proxmox than anything built on OpenStack, VMWare or some other proprietary tech.
There is a market here.

The issue is, getting investors interested in something with such high startup costs in a market that already has mega players is very difficult.
If I only had a few million myself.....
Click to expand...

E100 I am ready to help and start if you are... ( just drive south on 71 about 35 miles... jump on 35 and make it on over to Washington Court House - (Or I can come up North)
I am going to send you a PM - let's do lunch.

I honestly do not think it takes millions.
I have been building some infrastructure already and this is easier than most imagine - just takes some out of the box thinking...
 
I've been thinking about how it might be a good direction to consider moving PVE development in if it were to create some sort of 'Hosting Provider-Ready' interface. Added to the existing web interface somehow. If I knew how to code, I might start work on such a thing. If I were rich, and didn't want to invest in a hosting venture, I might finance development of such an interface.

I'm thinking that if the distro came out of the box with an interface with which to manage subscribers & provisioning, and for subscribers to manage their VMs, it would help PVE to gain hosting partners, and make more money on support. I guess that's what the API is for.

I, too might be willing to put in some time for equity on a hosting endeavour, if there's something I could do to help from home. However as I said, I don't know how to code yet, but I'm learning Python :)

Yes, it would be good to have money again, but I blew that stack on my last venture...
 
e100 said:
Anyone serious about this idea should come here to Central Ohio and make it happen.

Columbus, Ohio the only US city on the Intelligent Community list: https://www.intelligentcommunity.or...detail&category=Press Coverage 2013&refno=813
Being the 7th ranked Economy in the US is also a big plus: http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/news/2012/09/10/columbus-economy-ranked-7th-in-us.html

We even have TechColumbus.org which has helped me and many others in our ventures.
Click to expand...

E100 - sadly this board will not allow Private messages - but reach out to me glenn at hop off a cloud dot com
We should chat for sure.
 
JustaGuy said:
Thanks, I didn't know!
Click to expand...

You have my email from the board as well - reach out.
BTW - OVH is not in the US.

While they market to the US - they also proudly state they are in Canada due to the US and the way the US controls data under the Patriot Act.

They see America as NORTH America - but label it as US - which it is not.
 
We are just about to launch a proxmox driven platform for VPS as well as dedi. If interested send me amsg
 
JustaGuy said:
I've been thinking about how it might be a good direction to consider moving PVE development in if it were to create some sort of 'Hosting Provider-Ready' interface. Added to the existing web interface somehow. If I knew how to code, I might start work on such a thing.
Click to expand...

I've put together an initiative, in case there's anyone else who agrees with me that PVE could use an accompanying sister software to accomodate the needs of a VPS Host.

I designed it the way I'd do it if I were to build the VPS Host myself, so people may not agree with my selections, but that's okay- not everyone can be right, ;)

I created a Facebook page people can 'Like', and a FOSS Factory page people can donate to if you want to help financially. I've also created a Sourceforge page where devs can help, too.

I hope people from the forums here like the idea & comment on the Facebook page. I'd love it if I could find developers who want to work on the idea, and if it would take off it would be great!

Here's the Facebook page, where you'll find links to the FOSS Factory & Sourceforge pages as well.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Proxpass/346469045469173
 
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My money and time is tied up by my startup, so I doubt I will be able to help much but I do have some suggestions.

One thought I have, that I think will be very important, is that such an interface needs to support multiple Proxmox clusters.
If a VPS provider grew to dozens of physical nodes they would have multiple Proxmox clusters.
These should be presented to the users too, kinda link how amazon has availability zones.
 
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