Anyone who wants to purchase any of those products and t take advantage of the discount shall use coupon “mounthosting2010″ during the order process. This promotion will be valid until March 31st, 2010.

Among the featured security applications are Avast Antivirus, PC Tools Internet Security, Prevx 3.0 - the anti-phishing software, and much more.

Anyway. Most people who use Shared Hosting account never need too many disc space and data transfer. They never receive a large number of visitors on their websites, which means that they never reach the limits, set by their web hosting providers. And this is allows overselling web hosts to calim that they provide something they don’t.

This is in Shared Hosting. Now, let’s us say a few words about VPS Hosting market. Some web hosts that have limited experience in the Shared Hosting market only, think that they can implement the same policies when they start offering Virtual Private Services to their customer. In the overseller’s mind 500 GB monthly data transfer quota is just very little compared to “unlimited”. They think that it is not reasonable to offer $5 shared plan with “Unlimited” disc sapce and data trasnfer in section of the website, and 500 GB data transfer per month / 20 GB disc space as a part of any VPS offering in another.

So they trying to impress customers and to explain something that can not be explained, oversellers promise to provide unrealistic quotas with the VPS Hosting plans they offer.

However VPS Hosting market is not an industry out of limits. Any Virtual Private Server, regardless of the virtualization technology used, comes with certain limitations. Even when web hosts use OS virtualization technologies to produce and provide VPS Hosting overselling is not acceptable.

It is very easy for owners of a Virtual Private Server to understand when the physical machine that powers their VPS is oversold. And they can switch to another hosting provider. But switching from one VPS host to another is not a solution to find a good service in an unstable and risky hosting service market. As any other market web hosting industry can not work without trust. it is much easier to bridge the credibility gap in Shared Hosting, a market that serves start-ups, than in VPS Hosting, an industry that works for advanced dot-com businesses and projects.

So if you are web host, think about that and don’t try to destroy the consumer confidence in the VPS Hosting market by offering “Unlimited”, “Unmetered”, or even unrealistic features that you can not provide. Making money is important, but the web hosting market is not a short-scheme business.

Microsoft has recently been put under pressure from customers who demand to run Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) smoothly on their Windows servers and desktops.

The Microsoft’s virtualization General manager Mike Neil publicly announced that Microsoft and Red Hat signed agreements to test and validate their server OS running on each other’s hypervisors. The hypervisor, also known as Virtual Machine manager is a technology which allows multiple OS to share a single host.

Mr Neil claims that Microsoft’s virtualization solution Hyper-V has better returns compared with VMware.

The Linux software producer Red Hat joined Microsoft’s Server Virtualization validation program while Microsoft became partner for virtualization interoperability and support of Red Hat. the Windows producer said that very soon it will be on Red Hat’s hardware certification list.

What People Say?

“There has been a time when Microsoft aimed to replace Unix and thus was fighting Linux like its worst enemy. But that time passed. Microsoft was the first to realize they are not going to wipe Unix out in the mid-term so they just make themselves comfortable with the idea of having to interoperate, more or less”, comments user of OSnews with nick name TBPrince .

“To keep it short, a Windows license in a Unix environment is license more they will sell. The same way a Novell SUSE installation in a Windows-only shop is more than nothing. And could start a trend. I’m amazed that while Microsoft decided that it cannot win that war and major Unix players agreed (Sun, Novell, now Red Hat, all of them have agreement with MS), middle-sized and small companies are still fighting that war.”, adds “TBPrinc”.

• Cloud Type 1: The Google cloud. Truly massive, huge data centers, heavily hardware dependent, unmatched in many senses.
• Cloud Type 2: The Microsoft cloud. Also massive, less hardware dependent, more user-fueled at its heart.
• Cloud Type 3: Other super-size large clouds, among the largest being IBM and Apple, but also including EMC, HP, Amazon, Facebook, Adobe etc.
• Cloud Type 4: Channel clouds of service providers, telcos, ISPs, SaaS ISV, web hosters etc
• Cloud Type 5: In-house clouds of large companies, serving subsidiaries, departments, affiliates and sometimes employees and partners.

—

* Cloud (Cloud computing) is a networking model of development and use of the computer technologies. It is used for creation and development of dynamic, scalable and virtualized IT products, that vendors provide as service over the Internet.

WMware has also been honoured as “Best Overall Cloud Product” and “Best Cloud Platform” at the SYS-CON Event’s - Cloud Computing Conference & Expo Show Awards. The delegates of the expo voted for the best cloud computing solution in 5 categories all having “Best” upfront: Overall Cloud Product, Cloud Platform, Cloud Storage Solution, Cloud Management Solution, and Cloud Application.

The company’s vice president said that it was an honor his company to be recognized by IT professionals for the innovation it was bringing to virtualization that helped facilitate and advance cloud computing. He also added that the award is an endorsement of his company’s efforts in cloud computing.

VMware Infrastructure 3 is widely deployed virtualization solution used by more than 130,000 customers worldwide. According to the virtualization technology producer all companies in Fortune’s Top 100 use VMware.

The company also dais that its Infrastructure unifies discrete hardware resources to create a shared dynamic platform, while delivering built–in availability, security and scalability to applications.

“Microsoft touts Hyper-V as a lower-priced virtualization option than VMware’s ESXi, but for straight server consolidation, it’s unclear whether Hyper-V is that much cheaper than VMware because of Hyper-V’s system requirements and lower consolidation ratios”, writes Bridget Botelho.
It is true that VMware has higher consolidation ratios than Hyper-V. Another benefit of WMware is taht their ESXi runs on older CPU models. At the same time Hyper-V requires consumers and businesses to buy latest hardware, which means the most expensive one. Hyper-V also requires more RAM per Virtual Machine than VMware’s solution.

The Tech Target author’s explains that decision makers in IT departments have to be careful when they calculate their costs and return of investment when they need to use virtualization for server consolidation. The technology media says that the any comparison chart of the cost per Virtual Machine between Microsoft’s Hyper-V and VMware’s ESXi is not “entirely straightforward”, and “there are several factors to consider”.

Cost Comparison

According to the cost comparison made by the Tech Target, both Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware ESXi 3.5 boast a $0 price tag and provide a certain amount of functionality out of the box, at least on paper.

VMware’s has a free version of ESXi and its users get a fully featured hypervisor with no limitations on CPU, memory, storage or networking.

Microsoft offers a free download of Hyper-V. Its users however need to upgrade to the full Windows Server 2008 edition, and to purchase System Center, which is the full version of the virtualization software to have access to get all management features.

VMware advertisers ESXi Server 3.5 as a solution which can be installed on servers with up to 32 processors and each the server processors may contain up to six cores. This means that a single server can supports up to 256 GB of RAM, and up to128 Virtual Machines are supposed to run on the host server.

Microsoft says that Hyper-V supports up to 24 processors on a server,  and the user can host up to 192 VMs on ther server.

However as it always happens in real life (We all have experience with car dealers ) the support numbers set by producers have less to do with the reality.
A realistic consolidation ratio for VMware’s ESX is 1 - 3 VMs per processor. This means that a 2-socket, Dual-Core server could support between 4 and 12 Virtual Machines, depending of the workload and the type of server.

Pricing out Hyper-V and ESX Servers

The Tеch Target’s makes a comparison by taking a real-world workload and price it out for both Hyper-V and WmWware’s ESX. The media compares the cost of 30 virtual machines on three dual-processor hosts.

In VMware this means to buy the Infrastructure 3 Foundation Acceleration Kit, that supports up to 6 processors and offers management via vCenter Server Foundation. The list price without support is $2,995. If we need to add the lowest level of support for 1 year (Gold license ), this increases the price to $3,624.

Microsoft offers free download for Hyper-V as a standalone virtualization solution. According to system engineers and administrators however Microsoft’s licensing requirements make very hard the direct comparison of Hyper-V with ESX.

Although users can run Hyper-V without Windows Server 2008 is, the Microsoft’s hypervisor is integrated with Windows. This means that any Hyper-V users has to run Windows OS or SuSe (Microsoft only supports Windows and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 as guest Operating Systems). So if someone wants to use Hyper-V with Windows, they still need to install 64-bit version of the Windows Server 2008 OS. This brings the costs up.

When users use Hyper-V on Windows, they need licenses for the windows OS installed on Virtual Machines. The Tech Target quotes Rajiv Arunkundram, the Senior Product Manager of Windows Server Marketing at Microsoft who says that “It should be noted that any virtualization platform acessing Windows, Including VMware, requires CALs”. CAL refers to “Client Access Licenses”, Microsoft’s name for the licenses issued for users and devices that have to access a any edition of Windows Server. This requirement increases the cost of Hyper-V’s use.

If Windows users want to run 30 Virtual Machines on 3 Dual-Processor servers they have to spend on CALs. This means 30 CAL licenses. Microsoft sells through their own website Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition, Hyper-V, technical support and 10 CALs for $1,999.

So if we have 3 servers 2xCPU each, and if they run 30 VMs, this will cost $3,624 with VMware ESXi with the Foundation Acceleration Kit is $3,624, or $4,620 with Foundation Edition licenses (support included). If we are about to use Hyper-V, the cost would be $1,999.

These numbers show Hyper-V / Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition as less expensive solution that than VMware’s basic options. But there are other cost that apply. Virtual Machines require memory, CPU upgrades, so the payments for virtualization technology licensing is only the beginning.

Vmware says that ESX offers better memory utilization and this gives it an advantage over Hyper-V.

It is true that Hyper-V based Virtual Machines use more RAM than those based on VMware ESX. VMware’s recommendation to system administrators is to allocate 1GB - 2 GB of RAM for each Virtual Machine, depending on the workload. Microsoft recommends more than 2 GB of RAM to be allocated for each Hyper-V based VM.

With Microsoft’s Hyper-V users need 2 GB of locked RAM for each Virtual Machine. VMware however has a RAM management technology which enables its ESX to reclaim any physical memory, that is not in use and makes possible other VMs to use it.

To see comparison between Hyper-V and VMware read Gabe’s Virtual World blog. Original article of Tech Target “Hyper-V vs. VMware: Which is cheaper?” can be found here.

Stardothosting a Canadian, toronto base web host since 2003 said it added one free month for each Linux Virtual Private Servers to any customer who signs up an annual contract.

VPSLink, a popular provider that claims to offer cheap VPS hosting, announced it discounted its virtual private servers with 25%. The hosts founder Cameron Jones, said that his company is looking to provide services at lowered costs to companies because of the present economic downturn. VPSLink OpenVZ and Xen based hosting plans start at $7/month for 64 MB RAM, 2.5 GB disc space and 100GB data transfer per month.

Virtuozzo VPS Hosting provider Host Color now offers 10% discount on Drupal VPS Hosting. The company’s entry-level plan - VPS Start that features 192 MB RAM, 10 GB disc space and 50 GB monthly transfer now costs $22.46/mo paid month by month. The Drupal VPS Hosting plan costs $17.95 when the customer signs up on annual contract.

The web host also offers coupon codes - VPSADVANCE0209 and VPSPOWERSSL - to customers. The first one gives 1 free month to the customers of VPS Advance plan. the secound coupon code give a VPS Power plan users a free SSL certificate.

The well-know web brand Network Solutions has said that it upgraded the guaranteed RAM of one of its VPS hosting plans from 256MG to 512MB. The upgrade is free for the company’s current customers and available to all new customers.

UK2 Grouphas announced a beta trial of VPS.NET. The company’s VPS system lets customers buy a number of nodes, each providing 256MB RAM, 10GB SAN disc space, 200MHz dedicated CPU and 200GB bandwidth per month.

In his welcome keynote Mr Belousov analyzed the development of the web hosting industry and technologies that web hosts use and made a conclusion that one of the most powerful trends in web hosting until 2012 will be Cloud Computing. In his presentations he said that:

• Hosting business moving to be considered mainstream
• The conversation has been changing from hosting to software as a service to cloud computing.
• Giants, such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft, are grabbing more share.

The Parallels CEO gave his definition of  “Cloud Computing” by saying that it is a technological and business approach offered to its users from remote, highly concentrated data centers. According to Serguei Belousov more and more computing will be done this way. He has added that his company is doing its best to help its partners take advantage of this the cloud technologies.

Speaking about cloud computing and online services MR. Belousov mentioned that Google makes everything possible to to take advantage of cloud computing and cloud hosting using its own operating system and application interface. As far as of Microsoft, the Windows producer has also taken the opportunity and moved strongly into the “cloud”.

What “Cloud” Mean Now In Computing?

The first example Mr. Belousov gave was the Amazon - as computing platform, The other one - Google - is an example for an application platform. Applications like salesforce.com and a few others are also an example for “cloud computing”.

Other “clouds” are the hosted services of Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. The Parallels CEO said that it is very important It companies to offer standartized and highly automated services and solutions and to commoditze each of above areas.

Why the Cloud?

It is an efficient, low cost way to obtain computing for everyone. For independent software vendors “cloud” trend in computing means a delivery platform that can open up new markets. For those who do business as value added resellers, the new computing model is an opportunity to become a service provider as well as selling packaged products.

Seurguei Belousov told the participant of Parallels Summit that “cloud computing” should be of interest to a a broad group of people however. He also said that the advantages of cloud hosting and cloud computing should be marketed, sold, operated and, most importantly, and presented to a broad consumer groups.

Going Where Cloud Hosting Can Not Go

It is important for software vendors and we bhosting companies to offer services, office applications and line of business applications which can increase revenues in a number of ways.

The cloud model of computing changes the way partners work with the end customer and helps them to offer the broadest set of services and plans results. This is however a perspective that can be implemented even out of the cloud model and something that companies should do even outside the cloud technology trend.

This is a non-sponsored joint effort that produced a set of valuable benchmark comparisons between VMware ESX, Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V, when running Windows XP and Vista virtual machines for Terminal Services and VDI environments - Bare-Metal Platform Index v1.0, Hyper-V Platform Index v1.0, VMware Platform Performance Index v1.0, and XenServer Platform Performance Index v1.0.

Ruben and Jeroen measured the hypervisors performance by using Login Virtual Session Indexer (VSI) and performed over 150 tests. They analyzed the impact of several configuration changes for each hypervisor, and extracted data that helped them to suggest which setup is the most performing.

VMware is planning major upgrades around server virtualization and cloud computing. The company is about to launch a “major update” of server virtualization products. It will be also unveiling new management and automation products, enhancements to its desktop virtualization offerings, as well as a significant upgrade to its vCloud technology.

VMware is a company that created the virtualization market as we know it today. Its rivals Citrix, and Microsoft however have agressively entered the market and increased their influnce.

In its recent survey the research firm IDC said that VMware accounts for 78% of the x86 virtualized server market, but stressed that Hyper-V technology is welcomed by businessess.

VMware’s ESX and VMware Server products account for 44% of new x86 virtual server licenses, although Microsoft’s Virtual Server 2005 and Hyper-V technology has 23% of the market.