OnApp extends IaaS platform

OnApp has announced General Availability of the latest version of its Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform for hosts, telcos and MSPs. The new version of OnApp extends the scope of IaaS beyond public and private cloud to include bare metal servers and Smart Servers – a new server type that combines cloud automation with the performance of dedicated hardware. It also introduces Recipes and Blueprints, two new ways for service providers to automate the deployment and customization of servers, applications and complete application stacks.

OnApp now brings cloud, dedicated servers, VPS, a global CDN, DNS, storage, load balancers, autoscaling, templates and other IaaS capabilities together in one turnkey platform. With OnApp, service providers can make more efficient use of their infrastructure as a single pool of resource that can be provisioned at will, to suit a wide range of customer workloads.

“What we call ‘cloud’ today is really about abstracting applications away from the infrastructure, and it’s that abstraction that brings the value people look for when they move workloads to the cloud,” said OnApp CEO, Ditlev Bredahl. “That’s what enables automatic scaling, and failover, and self-service provisioning. Bringing dedicated servers into this environment, and extending cloud automation to other types of infrastructure, is the next logical step.

“With OnApp you can turn your infrastructure into dedicated servers, cloud servers, VPS, storage, CDN and more,” he said. “We’re giving service providers a unified way to automate, manage and provision the right kind of infrastructure for each customer workload – virtual or dedicated, local or global – through one control panel, one pane of glass.”

New features in the OnApp platform include:
· Smart servers, a new type of dedicated server that combines the performance and security of dedicated hardware with the automated provisioning, scaling and failover of a cloud server. Service providers (and their customers) can create Smart Servers through the OnApp control panel in just the same way they create cloud servers. Smart servers use a thin KVM virtualization layer with hardware pass-through to provide this combination of cloud automation and dedicated server performance.
· Bare metal servers, which OnApp can provision automatically, on demand. This saves manual configuration time for service providers and gives their customers more options for applications that demand 100% of the hardware available, or that don't suit virtualization.
· Recipes, a new way to automate and manage workflows for servers and apps with OnApp, making it easy for service providers to tailor services to the needs of their customers. Recipes can be used to tweak a configuration, prepare a server for a new customer, deploy custom OS/app templates without development, install apps and patches, and enable a full SaaS or PaaS environment. Recipes can be created easily using standard languages and shells such as Perl, Bash and PowerShell.
· Blueprints are a new feature for VMware virtual server management in OnApp. A blueprint is a way to deploy a complete distributed application with a single click – for example, a web server, application server and database server. Blueprints are created from VMware vApps images running on ESXi hypervisors in vCenter. By combining those core applications with operating system, network and firewall configuration settings, OnApp enables service providers to deploy and redeploy ready-to-run application stacks for their customers.
Other new features in OnApp include location groups, which allow service providers to manage CDN edge servers in multiple locations through one control panel; new failover algorithms; new tools for billing with template and bucket zones; a new HTML5-based console; and more control of overcommits with a new resource releasing system. The new version of OnApp (v3.1) is available as a free upgrade for existing customers.