Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2003 11:23:41 +0200 From: Uwe Doering <gemini@geminix.org> To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD Virtual Server Message-ID: <3F093C1D.6030601@geminix.org> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.53.0307062249230.10377@olmec> References: <20030705163119.4709fe81.redbrick1@terra.com.br> <Pine.BSF.4.53.0307062233090.10377@olmec> <20030706234642.F53667@hub.org> <Pine.BSF.4.53.0307062249230.10377@olmec>
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Darren Henderson wrote: > On Sun, 6 Jul 2003, The Hermit Hacker wrote: >>On Sun, 6 Jul 2003, Darren Henderson wrote: >>>On Sat, 5 Jul 2003, redbrick wrote: >>>>I have been browsing for web hosting and I found some firms (one of them >>>>is <http://www.hub.org>) offering 'virtual server hosting using >>>>FreeBSD'. They say that virtual server is different from virtual host, >>>>for the first is a completely separated enviroment, like a standalone >>>>server. >>> >>>Always read the small print. All of it. >>> >>>There is at least one outfit that actually tries to sell this >>>kind of thing, shared hosting using jails, as a collocated UNIX server. >> >>We don't ... we advertise it purely as a virtual server / machine ... full >>root is provided to the VM so that clients can operate it as if it was its >>own machine, but we very clearly spell it out as *virtual* ... > > I wasn't refering to www.hub.org - I have no knowledge of it. Didn't mean > to imply that companies marketing virtual hosting - and stating that > it is virtual hosting - are doing anything even remotely improper. > > Companies that are marketing virtual hosting and are claiming that it is > something else would make me nervous. Merely a cautionary "buyer beware", I'm not sure whether you mean us (EscapeBox). We don't call our solution a "virtual server", for a good reason, however. Around fall last year, a couple of outfits here in Germany tried to make virtual server hosting a mass market, at rock-bottom prices. Of course they ended up with inferior "Mickey Mouse" implementations that can hardly be used for any serious Internet hosting. Consequently, the relevant newsgroups and discussion forums are full of complaints by customers who feel ripped off, and the reputation of "virtual servers" is basically ruined in the public opinion. So if you are a company doing business in this area, have a working solution and try to sell to customers with serious projects, including business customers, you better don't call your product a virtual server in Germany. This is why we coined a new product class for what we offer: "on-demand servers". We think this is justified since the built-in "managed service" feature differentiates us from the rest of the pack anyway. On the other hand, we clearly state already on our index page that it is "a full-blown UNIX server box, several of which coexist on a powerful common platform, completely isolated from each other". We believe that with this wording there can be no doubt what's under the hood. We are certainly not happy about having to engage in this kind of marketing BS. We'd rather prefer to work on further improving our product since we are technicians at heart. Unfortunately we had to act to escape said collective virtual server bashing. Just wanted to shed some light on what marketing nonsense even well-meaning companies (which I think we are) sometimes have to deal with in order to make a living. Uwe -- Uwe Doering | EscapeBox - Managed On-Demand UNIX Servers gemini@geminix.org | http://www.escapebox.net
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