My Partnership with Stratogen – a Cloud Datacenter Service Provider
I'm very excited to announce to my readers that I have a new partner. The partner is Stratogen. Those of you who do not know Stratogen as a VMware vCloud Director Service provider, read on. At first I have been offered a free account at their London datacenter. This was at the end of last year. I did not have much time to play with the vCD interface since my move to the continent. I connected once or twice for now through the web interface. Actually I went through quite difficult period where my website has been hacked – read here: How Murphy’s law affected my blog, and then the Chrismass/New Year celebrations….you know how it is… -:)
Update: The follow up on this article is here – Exploring the vCloud Director Interface – as a customer
In fact my draft article on the using the vCD interface at the Stratogen's London datacenter isn't ready to be published yet. And also, don't forget that I'm still in the preparation to pass my VCP 5 exam, If you're preparing too, you can read my post – Ressources to prepare your VCP exam – VCP 510 – I'm funding the exam cost by myself this year, so I want to make sure that I pass the first time…-:).
It gets me really excited that I will be able to learn how all this vCD works after I pass my exam, and I want to show to my readers that there is a real interest in cloud computing for the SMB – small business. IT admins working for Small shops often thinks that all this “cloud buzz” it's not for them and they don't really pay attention on how it could actually be beneficial for them and the company they work for. The dedicated private cloud that Stratogen propose, is destined for this purpose. To lower operational costs and avoid expensive hadware buy for small business.
What Stratogen has to offer? Quite a lot. Not only you have Full 7 days for Free to play with your dedicated private cloud datacenter powered by VMware vSphere 5 and vCloud Director, but also You will be able to get the necessary support if you need it to get you started.
Just a small screenshot from my private datacenter in London, where I was able to quickly log in and deploy 2 VMs from the public catalog there. But you can create your own catalog of VMs too… As I said in the beginning of my article, I do have a draft with another post, which will go live I believe at February since my schedule is quite tight at the moment.
Stratogen did expand recently to the US. Here is a quick extract from the press release which has been announced earlier this month:
VMware Hosting Provider StratoGen Expands In To US Market With New Cloud And 25% Discount.
Leading VMware hosting provider StratoGen today launched its cloud platform in the United States with a 25% discount until January 31st, 2012.
StratoGen, Europe's leading VMware hosting provider today launched its cloud platform in the United States built on the same enterprise class components that has made its European offering so successful.
“We are bringing some real innovations to shake up the cloud hosting market in the US” commented Karl Robinson, Sales Director. “Our VMware hosting platform gives you the ability to go way beyond simply hosting virtual machines – you can build and configure firewalls, create routed or internal networks, vApps and much more from a single user interface. What's more, our unique SHARPlock service provides a facility to add multiple layers of additional authentication, to ensure we are one of the most secure clouds in the industry.”
The underlying hardware of the StratoGen platform is equally impressive with storage provided on high performance NetApp SANs and compute facilities on the latest HP blades. An all Cisco network and 100% uptime service level agreement complete the picture.
David Elliott, Technical Director said “We've taken a no compromise approach to the build out of our VMware Hosting platform. Based on our extensive experience with these enterprise class components in Europe, I'm confident the performance levels and stability of the platform will exceed those of competing services in the US. As always, the StratoGen team of VMware qualified support staff will be available 24/7”
StratoGen are offering a free 7 day trial of the service and customers who sign up before the end of January 2012 can enjoy a 25% discount.
Read the follow up post about Exploring the vCloud Director Interface – as a customer
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Enjoy.. -:)
