The experience of Italian hosting provider H501 Cloud
Launching “turnkey” hosting with ISPsystem ecosystem products
About the company
The Italian provider H501 Cloud entered hosting market in 2021. The company provides web- and VPS-hosting services all around Europe and works with customers from China.
Another area of H501 Cloud business is the development of SaaS and ERP products.
The company has its own data center built with renewable energy resources. It also has 100 Gb optic backbone cable for connection of customer hardware.
Project background
State-of-the-art hosting has gone far beyond website support. Nowadays leased resources can be used to build IT infrastructure for businesses of any size – from small companies to multi-faceted holdings.
The efficiency of infrastructure depends on the quality of virtual services rather than resources owned by the provider. Decent connection speed, peak load resistance, high availability of data and scalability of resources are among other services that are critical for customers.
For H501 Cloud launch, it was important to make sure that customers can get the purchased service fast – whether it is VPS, web hosting, domain or database – and to save money on implementation and product administration at the same time.
Adequate software allows meeting these conditions.
Product heterogeneity or single ecosystem?
Implementation of automatic purchasing and service provisioning in hosting area is possible both through multivendor platforms and through implementation of products from a single developer.
The use of fragmented software products to suit every type of service provided is a complex, ineffective and expensive approach in present-day developments. Monovendor ecosystem products are more efficient for this task.
Ecosystem approach ensures that all platforms are linked in a common system. There may be various combination of the components that adapt to project needs. And at the same time, the provider does not have to write additional integrations, which means that the team resources are not expended. This helps to expedite business introduction to the market and to increase operation efficiency.
Project objective
H501 Cloud required a flexible and scalable solution that would allow creating a unified platform for:
- Centralized management of sales and their automation (VPS, web hosting, domains, data bases, back-ups and Kubernetes clusters);
- Organization of corporate operational processes;
- Instant provisioning of VPS services to customers;
- IP address and domain management.
Project solution
The client uses ISPsystem ecosystem of software product to sell services. All products can be easily integrated with each other, thus covering the company’s demands in “turnkey” hosting market.
Billing system is the main product for hosting providers. It allows automating company's sales – from the ordering the required service at the website by the customer to uploading the documents to user personal account.
H501 use BILLmanager product to handle this task. This platform allows customers to:
- Automate sales of web- and VPS-hosting, domains, SSL certificates, and SaaS services.
- Automate invoicing.
- Offer customers self-service portal, where they can order a service, monitor expenses for this service, extend or terminate its validity, request technical support.
- Promote services through mailings and promotions.
- Organize customer support service using the built-in ticket system.
The provider's virtual infrastructure is deployed on the basis of their own data center capacities. VMmanager platform is instrumental for its centralized management and for automation of resource provisioning to customers.
Tasks the software can solve:
- Automatic creation of a virtual machine and its provisioning to customer;
- Automatic installation of operating system – the platform repository contains more than 60 ready-to-use images;
- Creating high-availability server virtualization cluster;
- Tariff plans for provided services;
- Data back-ups.
IPmanager panel helps H501 Cloud manage their customers’ IP addresses. The panel is integrated BILLmanager and VMmanager.
DNSmanager panel with built-in DNS server helps store addresses as well as to convert them into domain names and create resource records.
Project implementation
The provider's technical team managed to implement ISPsystem product ecosystem to production use after three months of testing. Throughout this process, ISPsystem support specialists kept in touch and helped to quickly resolve issues that emerged during implementation and testing.
Distinctive features of products used in the project
The majority of tasks can be handled using “out-of-the-box” integrations
ISPsystem products have been developed so that they can handle major tasks of hosting providers using built-in tools:
- Sales automation;
- Service provisioning to customer;
- Communication with users;
- Launch of new services with low time-to-market.
Moreover, “out-of-the-box” features help H501 Cloud handle a number of other tasks.
Marketing module implemented in BILLmanager helps provider to promote services. The client uses built-in mailing system to send advertising letters and system notifications across the customer database.
Built-in discount system also helps maintaining efficient sales. To start a promotion it is required to set a discount value, select service type and indicate conditions for cost reduction.
Backup system in VMmanager allows creating snapshots of virtual machines. In case of failures or data loss upon completion of works, the administrator can always recover the preset from the snapshot.
IP-Fabric also implemented in VMmanager is intended to distinguish network management from internal infrastructure. This contributes to increased network capacity and much simpler administration. Besides, IP-Fabric enables mounting virtual machine cluster with “white” IP addresses over “gray” local network.
High-availability and scalability support
VMmanager platform supports Ceph storages. These can be used for:
- Information storage – storage space can be adapted to the client's needs and it is almost unlimited in terms of scalability.
- Data replicas – the information is distributed between several servers, therefore any lost copy can be easily recovered from another source.
- Load balancing – Ceph is made up of multiple elements. Data are evenly distributed between these elements to become a stable system.
Besides, Ceph storages enable the client to use High Availability clusters. These clusters allow uninterrupted operation of virtual machines even if there are any failures in software or hardware. When there is emergency at one of the nodes, virtual machines are automatically distributed between other nodes.
Adaptations of products to provider's needs
All ISPsystem products have open API, which makes it possible for providers to adapt software to themselves if needed. Н501 Cloud have customized VMmanager platform – they developed integration for automatic deployment of Kubernetes cluster. Here is how the processes looks at present
- Creation of scripts in VMmanager;
- Deployment of virtual machine as required;
- Registration of nodes at Kubernetes head server;
- Setting of cluster.
Own knowledge base
Owing to technical documentation in English, the provider can easily delve into software product operation aspects and gain the required information in a clear way.
This way the client covers the majority of arising issues independently without the need for ISPsystem support team. The documentation also includes FAQs.
Solutions to more unconventional tasks are included to the knowledge base, which updates on a regular basis.
Simple implementation and administration
ISPsystem products can be easily deployed and launched thanks to detailed documentation and intuitive interface. For example, it took H501 Cloud three months and one engineer to implement the project.
With a usable web interface, the administrator can manage the entire virtual infrastructure and services in a centralized manner from a single window, whereas users can manage their ordered services independently using their personal account.
Summary
The choice of ecosystem products is based on usability vs flexibility trade-off. All products of H501 project can seamlessly integrate with each other for a smooth data exchange and hence – automation of processes. Besides, the platform are managed from a single interface, which facilitates administration of processes considerably.
Opinion
CEO of H501 Cloud