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Cloud Computing

Definition

Cloud computing is a technology that allows users to access computing resources, such as servers, storage, and applications, over the Internet, without the need for on-site hardware or infrastructure.

That enables users to scale their computing resources up or down as needed and pay only for their use. It also allows for greater flexibility, mobility, and collaboration. In addition, users can access their data and applications anywhere with an Internet connection.

Cloud computing is used by businesses, individuals, and organizations of all sizes and across all industries to increase agility, improve efficiency and reduce costs.

Service Models

Explained

Cloud services models refer to how cloud computing services are delivered to users. The three main cloud services models are:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS):

Users access virtualized computing, networking, and storage resources as services, which are owned, managed, and maintained by the cloud provider. Users have complete control over the configuration and management of the virtualized resources.

Platform as a Service (PaaS):

Developers access a complete development and deployment environment in the cloud, including application development frameworks, databases, middleware, and other tools needed to build, test, and deploy applications.

Software as a Service (SaaS):

Users access software applications over the internet without the need for installation or maintenance. The application is hosted on the cloud provider’s servers and delivered to users via a web browser or mobile app.

Each cloud services model offers different levels of control and flexibility, allowing organizations to choose the model that best suits their needs and requirements.

Service Model - SaaS

SaaS (Software as a Service) is a cloud computing model that allows users to access software applications over the internet without the need for installation or maintenance. With SaaS, users can log in to a web-based application and access all the necessary features and functionality without the hassle of managing complex software and hardware infrastructure.

SaaS applications are typically hosted on the cloud provider’s servers and delivered to users via a web browser or mobile app. This allows organizations to quickly and easily deploy software solutions without costly hardware and IT support. SaaS applications are also highly scalable, allowing users to add or remove features as needed and pay only for what they use.

Overall, SaaS is a cost-effective and flexible solution for organizations of all sizes, providing easy access to powerful software applications without complex installation, maintenance, or support.

Service Model - PaaS

PaaS (Platform as a Service) is a cloud computing model that provides developers with a complete development and deployment environment in the cloud. PaaS offers a range of resources and tools that enable developers to create and deliver a wide range of applications, from simple cloud-based applications to complex, enterprise-level applications.

With PaaS, developers can access various services, including application development frameworks, databases, middleware, and other tools needed to build, test, and deploy applications. PaaS also provides a scalable and flexible infrastructure that can easily accommodate changes in application demand without additional hardware or IT support.

PaaS benefits organizations with limited IT resources, allowing developers to focus on application development without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. In addition, PaaS enables developers to collaborate more efficiently, as they can work on the same codebase and share resources in real-time.

PaaS is a powerful and flexible application development and deployment solution, providing developers with the resources and tools they need to create and deliver applications quickly and efficiently.

Service Model - IaaS

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) is a cloud computing model that provides users with virtualized computing, networking, and storage resources that can be accessed and configured according to their needs. IaaS is typically offered by a cloud vendor, who provides the underlying infrastructure and manages the hardware.

At the same time, users have complete control over the configuration and management of the virtualized resources. With IaaS, users can quickly and easily provision computing resources, such as virtual machines, storage, and networking, without expensive hardware or IT support. In addition, IaaS is highly scalable, allowing users to add or remove resources as needed and pay only for what they use.

IaaS is particularly useful for organizations that need to scale their infrastructure to quickly accommodate changes in demand or those that require a flexible and customizable infrastructure to support their unique business needs. IaaS enables users to focus on their core business rather than worrying about managing hardware and infrastructure.

Deployment Models

Explained

Public Cloud

Public Cloud is a cloud computing model where the service provider owns, manages, and maintains the physical infrastructure, such as data centers, servers, networking equipment, and storage. Users access virtualized computing, networking, and storage resources as services, which can be quickly and easily provisioned and scaled as needed.

Public Cloud is accessible over the internet and is typically offered on a pay-per-use basis. It allows organizations to avoid the costs and complexities of managing their hardware and infrastructure and instead focus on their core business needs.

Private Cloud

Private Cloud is a cloud computing model where the cloud infrastructure is provisioned for exclusive use by a single organization. The infrastructure can be on-premises or on a public cloud, such as a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), and is owned, managed, and operated by the organization or the cloud provider.

Private Cloud provides organizations greater control and security over their data and infrastructure and can be customized to meet their business needs.

Hybrid Cloud

Hybrid Cloud is a cloud computing model in which an organization’s on-premises private and third-party public cloud are connected as a single, flexible infrastructure. This allows organizations to leverage both Public and Private clouds’ features and benefits and move workloads between them as needed.

As a result, the Hybrid cloud provides organizations with greater flexibility, scalability, and cost-efficiency while allowing them to maintain control over their data and infrastructure.

Scenarios

Generic IaaS Use Cases

Lift & Shift

One speaks of Lift & Shift when moving existing, traditional workloads into an IaaS cloud as unaltered as possible is unavoidable. Management Tools for IT Operations are, as far as possible, supported by the existing Data Center Operation taken over and implemented. Cloud-native functions have little or no application.

Improve & Move

One speaks of Improve & Move if you adapt and modify IT processes in this approach to take advantage of cloud-native functions at least partially. You should use the migration process to achieve a more substantial standardization, a higher degree of automation, and free existing processes from legacy burdens.

Design & Build

One speaks of Design & Build if you redefine all or all new business and IT processes. Further, you use agile, cloud-native methods in your developments wherever possible. Tools used are cloud-native and DevOps-oriented throughout the application life cycle, focusing strongly on Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and automation.

Specific IaaS Use Cases

Test Cloud

Problem: Since every failure of the online betting portal brings an enormous loss of earnings, NoName Inc. wants to build a more stable web presence with reduced or no downtime. Simultaneously, the web portal enables many browsers to reach additional markets. Before releasing new web portal products to customers, all changes need testing in various browsers (Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, …) to increase the overall stability. New development standards should provide prompt feedback whenever a developer makes a change. This way, detecting problems is possible before releasing new products. Parallel execution of individual test scenarios enables quicker feedback to the developer but requires approximately 1200 servers temporarily for each test run.

Solution: Exoscale has several interfaces (REST API, Tool Integrations, e.g., Terraform), allowing a flexible and automatic deployment. Creating new servers is achieved within a few minutes. Execution and the afterward decommission of used test-serves are done in no time.

Advantages: The high degree of automation provided by Exoscale makes such a modern and performance test scenario possible. This solution eliminates the expensive acquisition of servers and complex internal procurement. With the Pay-Per-Use principle, the second charges the customer for used server resources.

Productivity

Problem: The young software company NoName Ltd wants to simplify joint digital team collaboration utilizing video chat. With little effort, the platform should offer teams a high-performance, straightforward solution to discuss open topics daily. The newly developed and patented streaming algorithm led to massive performance improvement. Integrations to task management, CRM, and knowledge base systems facilitate team collaboration during a digital meeting. The platform uses a separate server for each session, and the server is needed in the timeframe when the meeting takes place. Depending on the requests, a strongly varying number of servers may be necessary.

Solution: Due to the excellent integration of tools that allow the creation, configuration, and control of the infrastructure, Exoscale offers an ideal foundation to meet flexible requirements. Thus, NoName Ltd can provide infrastructure fast and automated.

Advantages: Due to the need for a flexible number of servers, NoName Ltd would have to purchase a large pool of servers. Exoscale flexibility contributes to risk minimization and resource management by providing components in a Pay-Per-Use model billed by the second. Creating more servers for digital meetings is easy if more customers decide to use the platform.

Image Analysis

Problem: A new and modern image analysis algorithm developed by NoName LLC should ensure the high weekly production volume’s product quality. However, a considerable amount of high-performance computing resources is required to ensure the algorithm’s quality and timely completion of the machine learning training phase. NoName LLC wants to offload the complexity associated with this task and does not wish to operate or purchase any servers.

Solution: Exoscale provides modern GPU instances optimized for advanced computational tasks like machine learning, artificial intelligence, and high-performance computing.

Advantages: Outsourcing the complexity of the needed infrastructure configuration and using the high-cost hardware equipment in a Pay-Per-Use model delivers many operational advantages simultaneously. For example, the GPUs architecture has simpler calculation units but performs more calculations per time to optimize, e.g., ideal for machine learning tasks.

Exoscale

History

Why Exoscale?

Exoscale is a European cloud provider focusing on scalability, simplicity and security. When running mission critical production workloads in the cloud, a partner you can rely on makes all the difference.

SKS - Managed Kubernetes!

A strong reason to choose Exoscale.

Unique Selling Points

USPs

Performance

Larger bar is better

• Single Score - CPU Performance
• Multi Score - System Performance (transparent bars)

source: cloud-mercato.com

European

Affordable

 * ... all instances are located in European zones, on-demand, PAYG
** ... price information taken from respective websites in April 2023

Transparent

Compliant

• Your data processing and storing with Exoscale is fully GDPR-compliant.

• Exoscale is not effected by the US Cloud Act.

• GDPR non-compliance fines up to € 20.000.000 or 4 % of global turnover.

Compliance

GDPR vs. CLOUD Act

GDPR: protect personal data, valid for all companies operating in the EU, fines at non-compliance

CLOUD Act: hand over personal data to the US government, valid for all US-owned companies, fines or prison at non-compliance

Exoscale’s Compliance - Frameworks / Web / Center

Exoscale’s Compliance Web

Full compliance to global and local security frameworks, certified by world’s most stringent auditors, to enable a smooth and safe adoption of our cloud platform by SaaS providers and enterprises in every sector.

exoscale.com/compliance/

Exoscale’s Compliance Center

Exoscale is committed to helping our customers achieve and maintain compliance with industry and government regulations. In our Compliance Center, you will find all the information you need to know about our compliance posture.

This includes information about our security controls, policies and procedures, as well as certificates, attestations and compliance reports. We will continue to update this center as our compliance posture evolves. If you have any questions about our compliance posture or would like more information, please contact:

support@exoscale.com

Benefits

Cloud Automation

Start a virtual computer in seconds, and integrate current on-premises or hybrid-cloud deployments using standard DevOps tooling.

Ansible, Terraform, Kubernetes, or the like.

The cloud computing service model of Exoscale is called Infrastructure as a Service.

Community

Documentation

Learn how to use Exoscale’s cloud services in our community section.

community.exoscale.com/documentation

• Quick Start Guides

• How To’s

• Tools

• Organization Setup

Integrations

Available for Exoscale

DevOps and Automation Tools we use and support.

Container Orchestration

Cloud native tools are embracing containers as a great way to build, ship, and run applications.

Kubernetes: One of the most active open-source projects, Kubernetes or k8s for short, offers container cluster management with powerful yet simple concepts. Exoscale provides a managed Kubernetes offering.

Cloud Controller Manager: The Kubernetes Cloud Controller Manager (CCM) implementation for Exoscale. This component enables a tighter integration of Kubernetes clusters with the Exoscale Compute platform.

NGINX Ingress Controller: The official way of deploying the NGINX Ingress Controller on Exoscale.

Automation and Configuration Management

As DevOps ourselves, we use automation and configuration management tools every day. On our platform you will be able to use the best tools available.

Terraform: Written in GO, Terraform enables you to configure the full spectrum of your infrastructure from compute instances to their DNS entries. It takes your infrastructure and makes it converge towards its desired configuration state.

Packer: The Exoscale Packer builder plugin can be used to build Exoscale instance templates.

Vault: The Vault plugin enables a secret’s backend for Exoscale. This plugin generates Exoscale IAM API keys which can be restricted to specific operations according to predefined roles.

Pulumi: Pulumi, an open source IaC tool, helps you to build, deploying and managing cloud applications and infrastructure. It allows easier collaboration and reduces cloud complexity.

Crossplane: Crossplane is a cloud native control plane framework to easily build control planes without needing to write code. The integration is provided by VSHN on the Marketplace.

Clients and Libraries

We support some of the best clients out there. Follow the link and find out how to integrate them your workflow with the Exoscale cloud platform.

Traefik: Traefik is a modern HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer that easily integrates with your existing infrastructure components and runs smoothly on Exoscale.

CLI: Easy to use CLI interface written in Golang that lets you browse and control all Exoscale resources.

Egoscale: The official Go wrapper for the Exoscale public cloud API. Egoscale powers our CLI and many other libraries and integrations based on Go, like Kubernetes External DNS or Docker Machine.

Python: The official Python wrapper for the Exoscale API.

Lego: Lego is an ACME library and standalone application written in Go, enabling you to automate ACME challenges and certificates deployments on Exoscale, eventually using our DNS service.

Third party platforms integration

Discover how to integrate our cloud services with some great third-party platforms.

GuruSquad: GS RichCopy 360 Enterprise provides enterprise-class unstructured data backup, data migration, and data replication. Whether the data is being migrated from another cloud provider or on-premise, GuruSquad can simplify all the data migration and backup jobs from a single pane of glass.

Nuvla.io: Nuvla.io, by technology partner Sixsq, is an edge-to-cloud application deployment platform. Real edge and multi-cloud solution built on open source software, Nuvla.io can deploy simple to complex containerized applications repeatedly with orchestration.

Extend Simple Object Storage

Using these set of certified tools with SOS, you can browse, backup or map object storage from various OS and environments.

Cyberduck: This free software provides a versatile GUI for S3 compatible transfers as well as Duck, a CLI tool for power users. Both are available on Windows, Linux and macOS platforms.

Flexify.IO Flexify.IO is a great way to migrate data to and from on-premises or other cloud storage to Exoscale Object Storage. Flexify.IO does the magic - and optimizes traffic and bandwidth on the way.

CloudBerry: CloudBerry provides an extensive palette of tools for integrating Object Storage with Windows. You can browse storage, map a drive like a simple share or even backup your complete OS and application.

References

Overview

CERN - powered by Exoscale

scientific computing at scale

• Helix Nebula Science Cloud (HNSciCloud) initiative
• Exoscale provided 10,000 CPU cores
• An environment for 1.7 million scientists
• Storing, sharing, analyzing, and reusing research data

whalebone - powered by Exoscale

keep the malware out

• Malware Defense
• Elasticsearch Cluster & Log Processing
• Backups and Data Storage
• Servers are dynamically started on demand

SchoolFox - powered by Exoscale

safe and compliant school communication

• communication between teachers and parents
• Re-platformed to Exoscale
• GDPR was a critical factor in the move
• PaaS to IaaS move

Partner

Cases

wintercloud - powered by Exoscale

Exoscale scores with an open-source approach

The German company wintercloud accompanies its customers to the cloud and shows them what cloud-native means. Furthermore, wintercloud demonstrates how the cloud computing architecture’s unique features can be used to their customer’s advantage. For example, the Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI / CD) method automatically enables new software development and delivery approaches that allow customers to release new versions weekly, daily, or even several times a day.

VSHN - powered by Exoscale

Exoscale for the container platform APPUiO

VSHN AG is the leading Swiss partner for DevOps, Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift, and 24/7 Cloud Operations. Since 2014 VSHN has supported more than 200 different partners with more than 900 servers in the cloud. Based on the DevOps concept, VSHN’s systems engineers work with developers to create scalable, easy-to-deploy web applications. In addition, VSHN operates its web applications focusing on security, availability, and automation of development processes on various clouds in Switzerland and worldwide.

embedded data - powered by Exoscale

Exoscale convinces with services and support

The embedded data GmbH, based in Saarlouis, is a software company accompanying its customers on their way into Industry 4.0 and building up the Internet of Things (IoT). With the software framework da³vid, developed by embedded data, companies can collect and evaluate machine and process data, visualize it in real time, and control devices. The goal is to increase transparency, reduce downtime through predictive maintenance, and thus increase efficiency.

Overview

IaaS+

Infrastructure as a Service is the cloud service model we support with the Exoscale platform and a bit more, hence, IaaS+.

Platform

A state-of-the-art IaaS platform providing the building blocks for your application infrastructure.

The following questions arise if you think about the breadth of the cloud offerings in the market today:

• Why IaaS?
• Who uses IaaS?
• Why Exoscale?

Why IaaS?

It is the cloud computing model to extend or replace your data center.

Let’s look at the trends of the worldwide IT infrastructure market.

The IDC figures show clearly that the infrastructure game is changing. Even though there are still markets where cloud adoption is low and slow, there is a clear trend that the public cloud will be a significant part of IT infrastructure.

By 2028:

• private cloud (cloud & dedicated) share will grow from 15.7% to 16.9%
• public cloud (cloud & shared) part will be up from 49.0% to 58.1%
• on-premises part (non-cloud & dedicated) will be down from 35.3% to 25.0%

Who uses IaaS?

IaaS users, in general, are looking for TWO significant benefits:

• MORE DYNAMIC, servers can be started and stopped as needed without the up-front cost.
• REDUCED COMPLEXITY, of buying, repairing, or dealing with physical hardware.

IaaS Exoscale Users

Which audiences apply IaaS functions to solve their IT tasks?

Why Exoscale?

• Trusted by engineers across Europe and beyond - A reliable partner is key for mission-critical cloud workloads. Our customer success engineers have supported hundreds of European clients in migrating, running, and scaling cloud-native applications.
• Data security, GDPR compliance & data privacy laws - We prioritize security. Exoscale ensures compliance with strict Swiss data privacy laws. Workloads started in Austria or Germany remain there, guaranteeing GDPR compliance.
• Not your typical Swiss cloud hosting company - Though primarily known as a Swiss cloud provider, we’ve expanded our data centers to Austria, Germany, and Bulgaria.
• More than Swiss, Austrian, and German data centers - We’ve assisted numerous European customers in seamlessly migrating and scaling workloads across Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and beyond. With ISO27001, Cloud Security Alliance, and ISO27018 certifications, we simplify due diligence and focus on delivering top-tier infrastructure for your applications.

Exoscale for public and private cloud

Exoscale provides building blocks for deployment/delivery models with classic cloud computing instances (VMs virtual machines) or dedicated cloud servers in a VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) format, depending on your computing and compliance needs.

Our Data Centers

A data center near you in Europe featuring:

• Multi-homed locations
• Several peering connections​
• Internal 400 Gbps backbone
• GDPR-compliant

Exoscale Interfaces

Our simple and intuitive interfaces make powerful concepts easy to use for teams of any size. Easily use anti-affinity groups and spawn virtual servers in different data centers to ensure high availability. Securely configure firewall rules across any number of instances using security groups. Manage team members and control access to your infrastructure with organization, keypairs, and multi-factor authentication.

Powerful concepts. Simple interfaces. Built for teams.

Exoscale Web UI

All the platform components/features are automatable via various methods, such as the Exoscale CLI, Terraform plugins, the OpenAPI, and IAM-Key configurations. Support for creating and using custom templates is available to reuse more complex machine configurations regularly.

Exoscale CLI

Compute

Details

Exoscale offers a range of products related to cloud servers, also known as virtual machines or Compute Instances. These products allow users to easily manage virtual machines, create instance pools, and ensure fault tolerance through anti-affinity groups. SKS and Block Storage options provide scalability, increased computational power, and storage flexibility. IAM and organization management tools allow for secure access control and user management. With various networking products available, users can configure workloads to meet their specific requirements, including secure private networking, firewall management, Network Load Balancer, Elastic IP addresses, and IPv6 support.

Exoscale’s cloud infrastructure is simple, fast-performing, and can scale with businesses’ needs. Overall, Exoscale offers a comprehensive and flexible cloud computing platform suitable for organizations of all sizes and industries.

NOTE! Here, you can find all the details in the online documentation for COMPUTE.

Instances

For better requirement matching, various instance types are available to use:

• Standard: Provide a balanced mix of CPU cores, RAM, and SSD local storage to cover a variety of use cases and allow you to implement your architecture.
• CPU Optimized: These are optimized for CPU-intensive applications, offering a higher CPU-to-memory ratio. They offer a more significant computational advantage for workloads like batch processing, media decoding and encoding, network appliances, or high-performance web servers.
• Memory Optimized: These are the best performance-to-cost ratio for memory-intensive workloads and are ideal for RAM-intensive applications. They double the memory per core with a price reduction of up to almost 25 % compared to Standard Instances.
• Storage Optimized: These are the same mix of CPU and RAM as our Standard Instances but use larger drives, greatly expanding the overall data capacity. Consequently, they lower the cost per GB by more than 60 %.
• GPU1: Provides up to 4 dedicated NVIDIA Tesla P100 graphic cards to perform deep learning, high-performance computing, or other types of intensive computation. Save up to 75% compared to the competition, and no long-term commitment.
• GPU2: Based on Tesla V100, offers nearly double single-precision and double-precision teraflops compared to GPU1, as well as 640 dedicated Tensor Cores to train AI models that would consume weeks of computing resources in a few days.
• GPU3: Is the all-rounder for AR, VR, Simulations, Rendering, AI, and more. Combining the latest Ampere RT Cores, Tensor Cores, and CUDA Cores with 48 GB of graphics memory allows the A40 to deliver a unique set for visual computing workloads.

Instance Pools

Exoscale Instance Pools are a service to automatically provision groups of identical Compute instances. You can define several instances in the pool, and the service will keep the required number up and running for you to achieve.

• High Availability: Using an Instance Pool ensures that the target quantity of instances is running.
• Elasticity: Instance Pools can be scaled up and down dynamically. Hence, the number of instances matches the actual load for better cost efficiency.

NOTE! Here, you can find more details on Instance Pools.

SKS (Scalable Kubernetes Service)

Exoscale’s SKS is a managed Kubernetes offering, which consists of:

• Managed Kubernetes control planes
• Dynamic Nodepool attachment
• Control Plane access management facilities
• Full API support

Exoscale’s Scalable Kubernetes Service (SKS) provides a powerful and efficient way to deploy and manage your applications quickly. With this fully managed K8s service, you can quickly scale up and down your worker nodes and have complete control over the entire life cycle of your cluster.

Exoscale provides various integration options, including CLI, API, portal, Terraform support, and deep NLB integration.

NOTE! Here, you can find more details on SKS.

Block Storage

Exoscale’s Block Storage offers a robust and distributed block device solution for Exoscale Compute instances, known for its redundancy and reliability. A Volume, a singular storage unit, can be partitioned and formatted to accommodate directories and files. One of the critical features of Block Storage is the Snapshot, which captures the state of a volume at a specific moment, allowing users to create new volumes based on that state.

NOTE! Here, you can find more details on Block Storage.

Templates

Exoscale provides various Compute instance templates from which to choose. However, you can customize templates to suit your needs further. In addition to using a Cloud-Init configuration via an instance’s user data or a configuration management tool such as Puppet, Ansible, or Terraform, you can also create customized templates. You can use custom templates to launch a custom operating system or custom template configuration on Exoscale, which allows you to deploy ready-to-go instances with minimal startup configuration.

NOTE! Here, you can find more details on Custom Templates.

Security Groups

Exoscale Security Groups provide a modular way to define and compose firewall rules. The rules are managed at the hypervisor level to restrict incoming and outgoing network traffic.

NOTE! Here, you can find more details on Security Groups.

Elastic IP

All Exoscale instances include a native IPv4 address leased from a global pool. This address is strongly coupled to the Compute instance itself. When you destroy the instance, you release the IP address to the global pool without guarantee that you will ever get the same IP address again. However, there are various cases where you may want an IP address to persist. By creating an Elastic IP, you can have a specific IP address for your organization. You can then attach it to one or several instances besides their native IP address.

The simplest use case for this feature is to use an Elastic IP as a persistent IP address you can move between instances. This allows you to circumvent the IP address change when destroying an instance. You can always switch the underlying instance and point traffic to the same address with an Elastic IP.

NOTE! Here, you can find more details on Elastic IPs.

Load Balancers

A Network Load Balancer (or NLB) is a Layer 4 (TCP/UDP) load balancer that distributes incoming traffic to Compute instances managed by an Instance Pool. An NLB comprises several services, each bound to an Instance Pool in the same zone as the NLB. Services will efficiently forward connections reaching the NLB’s IP address to the member instances of the Instance Pool.

While the instances remain individually accessible through their public IP, the NLB will expose a single IP address for all services and distribute the incoming traffic across the members of the Instance Pool following the service’s rules. NLB services will update automatically when the Instance Pool scales up or down, distributing traffic across all reachable member instances of the pool and excluding unreachable ones using an integrated health check functionality.

NLB acts only on incoming traffic, so all return traffic from the backend to the client that originated the request goes out directly from the pool member instance.

NOTE! Here, you can find more details on Network Load Balancer.

Private Networks

The Private Network is a classic layer 2 segment: it is as if your instances were attached to a dedicated switch. This means:

• You can use any ethernet-compatible protocol (IPv4, IPv6, NetBIOS).
• Security group rules do not apply to traffic inside private networks.
• Multicast and broadcast are authorized.
• Only your instances are attached to the segment.
• No encryption is performed, but your packets do not leave our data center.
• Private Networks can be managed.
• Private Networks do not span across several zones.

Each instance may provision one or more additional unmanaged and managed network interfaces. This interface is bound to a private network segment shared only with your other instances.

NOTE! Here, you can find more details on Private Networks.

SSH Keypairs

SSH keypairs can authenticate to your Compute instances running Linux without a password, leveraging SSH Public-Key authentication’s added security. Public-key authentication is both:

• Secure: Breaking an SSH key requires so much time and computational power that these attacks are impractical in the real world. SSH keys are much more secure than even very strong passwords.
• Convenient: Instead of managing per-instance passwords or sharing them across your organization, every person who needs access to your servers gives you their public key. You can then set up granular access control by adding those keys only to the relevant instances. Suppose you need to revoke someone’s access. In that case, simply revoking their key prevents them from logging in without affecting other people’s workflow.

NOTE! Here, you can find more details on SSH Keypairs.

Anti-Affinity

Anti-Affinity groups let you specify which instances should run on separate hosts. For example, in an HA (high availability) cluster, you could keep your instances on distinct hypervisors to ensure more reliable fault tolerance.

NOTE! Here, you can find more details on Anti-Affinity Groups.

Storage

Object Storage

Exoscale’s Simple Object Storage (SOS) is a scalable and cost-effective solution for storing and managing large amounts of data. It offers highly available multi-redundancy storage, ensuring data safety and accessibility. You can store various files and objects, such as assets, backups, and media files. Your data remains in the exact location you store it, and Exoscale replicates it in at least three physical copies for maximum safety.

Features Overview:

• S3 compatible
• Direct HTTP/S access
• Metadata support
• ACL and CORS support
• For any data
• Pay for what you use
• Free inbound traffic

The S3-compatible API allows for easy integration with existing workflows and applications. SOS provides low latency, high bandwidth, and secure HTTP(s) access, allowing fast and secure data management from any location. You can enhance this with Exoscale’s CDN integration.

NOTE! Here, you can find all the details in the online documentation for STORAGE.

CDN

Exoscale’s CDN service, developed with Ducksify, makes distributing your assets globally with Akamai’s delivery network simple. It improves performance and user experience by caching assets in multiple locations. You can easily integrate it with our SOS service to make content available through the CDN endpoint.

Features Overview:

• Modern protocol support
• World-class delivery availability
• Improved download completion rates
• Leveraging the Akamai Intelligent Platform
• QUIC (Quick UDP Internet Connections) support
• Enable on your SOS bucket
• Volume-based pricing
• Powered by Ducksify

The CDN offers predictable pricing and is a reliable solution for enhancing your application’s performance.

NOTE! Here, you can find all the details in the online documentation for CDN.

DBaaS

Details

Exoscale’s end-to-end encrypted database as a service (DBaaS) offering is a powerful solution for businesses to host their data and databases in the cloud securely. With this service, users can start within minutes, making it easy to quickly deploy and manage their databases without any delays or downtime. In addition, Exoscale’s DBaaS offering is entirely GDPR-compliant, ensuring businesses can meet regulatory requirements and keep their data safe and secure. Furthermore, as a fully managed service, Exoscale takes care of all the maintenance and management of the databases, allowing users to focus on their core business activities.

Features Overview:

• Full lifecycle management
• Termination protection
• Automatic backup policy
• Available in all zones
• Dedicated instances

Finally, Exoscale’s DBaaS offering supports a wide range of open-source databases, allowing users to choose the best database and providing a robust and secure solution for businesses that host their data and databases in the cloud.

DBaaS Overview

Managed PostgreSQL Service often referred to as Postgres is an advanced, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Renowned for its robustness, performance, and extensive feature set, it supports complex queries, transactions, and advanced data types. PostgreSQL is highly extensible and standards-compliant with SQL. Due to its reliability, data integrity, and concurrency features, it is widely used in various environments, from small-scale applications to large-scale enterprise systems. Additionally, it supports numerous programming languages and can handle massive amounts of data efficiently.

Managed MySQL Service is a widely used, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) known for its speed, reliability, and ease of use. MySQL, developed by Oracle Corporation, supports standard SQL and provides a powerful, flexible, scalable database management solution. It is commonly used for web applications, often in conjunction with PHP, due to its integration with various platforms and ability to handle large volumes of data efficiently. MySQL offers strong support for transactional processing, data replication, and security, making it a popular choice for developers and enterprises seeking robust database performance.

Managed Kafka Service is an open-source stream-processing platform developed by the Apache Software Foundation. It is designed to build real-time data pipelines and streaming applications. Kafka efficiently handles high-throughput, low-latency data transfer and can process millions of messages per second. It operates as a distributed system that ensures fault tolerance and scalability. Kafka’s core components—producers, consumers, brokers, topics, and partitions—enable the reliable streaming and storage of data across various systems. It is widely used for log aggregation, event sourcing, real-time analytics, and integrating disparate systems.

Managed OpenSearch Service is an open-source search and analytics engine derived initially from Elasticsearch and maintained by the OpenSearch community and Amazon Web Services (AWS). It provides capabilities for indexing, searching, and analyzing large volumes of data in real-time. OpenSearch is designed to be scalable, highly available, and secure, supporting full-text search, structured search, and complex data analysis. It includes OpenSearch Dashboards for data visualization, enabling users to create interactive charts, graphs, and dashboards. OpenSearch is widely used in log and event data analysis, monitoring, and business intelligence applications.

Managed Caching Service (Redis compatible - Remote Dictionary Server) is an open-source, in-memory data structure store used as a database, cache, and message broker. Known for its high performance, Redis supports various data structures such as strings, lists, sets, hashes, and more. It offers sub-millisecond latency, making it ideal for real-time applications like caching, session management, and analytics. Exoscale for Caching includes features like replication, persistence, and clustering to ensure reliability and scalability. Its versatility and efficiency make it popular for developers aiming to improve application speed and responsiveness.

Managed Grafana Service is an open-source analytics and monitoring platform that allows users to visualize, analyze, and alert on data from multiple sources. Known for its customizable and interactive dashboards, Grafana supports a wide range of data sources, including Prometheus, Graphite, InfluxDB, and Elasticsearch. It provides powerful query capabilities, real-time alerting, and flexible visualization options like graphs, heatmaps, and histograms. Commonly used for monitoring system performance, application metrics, and business KPIs, Grafana helps teams make data-driven decisions by providing clear, comprehensive insights into their data.

NOTE! Here, you can find all the details in the online documentation for DBAAS.

DNS

Details

Exoscale’s cloud-native DNS provides a powerful solution for businesses looking to take complete control of their DNS and automate deployments. With Exoscale’s DNS, users can easily manage new records and zones, giving them complete control over their infrastructure. Exoscale’s DNS is also built on an anycast network, providing low-latency resolution for users worldwide. This ensures users can access their applications quickly and easily without delays or interruptions.

Features Overview:

• All common records available
• GEO replication
• Easy redirects
• ALIAS support
• Anycast DNS
• Per zone pricing
• Powered by DNSimple
• Easily integrate with Let’s Encrypt

Exoscale’s DNS also offers geo-replicated redundancy, providing optimal uptime and ensuring that users’ applications are always available, even in a failure. Overall, Exoscale’s cloud-native DNS is a robust and reliable solution for businesses looking to manage their DNS and ensure the availability of their applications.

NOTE! Here, you can find all the details in the online documentation for DNS.

IAM

Details

Exoscale provides various interaction methods with its platform, including programmatic access via the command line, your preferred programming language, integrations with third-party tools, and a user-friendly web portal. Regardless of the method, Identity and Access Management (IAM) will define permissions and actions for individuals and services on your platform.

IAM is composed of 2 primary building blocks:

• Roles act as a container for a single policy and add some options.
• Policies are rules describing what can and cannot be done.

Exoscale IAM, or Identity and Access Management, is a system that manages access to resources within the Exoscale cloud environment. Exoscale is a cloud service provider that offers various services, including computing, storage, and network solutions.

Exoscale IAM enables administrators to control who has access to specific resources, manage user permissions, and enforce security policies. Here are some key features and functions of Exoscale IAM:

• User Management
• Roles and Policies
• Access Control
• Security and Compliance
• API Access

Using Exoscale IAM, organizations can effectively safeguard their cloud resources, comply with regulatory requirements, and streamline user access management, ultimately enhancing the security and efficiency of their cloud operations.

IAM Users

So far, IAM has allowed you to create keys that could be restricted and fine-tuned according to their permissions. While practical and powerful, IAM Keys have always been intended for programmatic usage, while users could not be limited in scope beyond the predefined roles:

• Owner
• Tech
• Billing (former Admin)

Now, we are enhancing the IAM functionality, bringing the same powerful features to organizations’ users, offering you more control and flexibility. This means you can now limit a user’s scope of action in the web portal like you would for an IAM Key, with precise and fine-grained IAM Roles.

Typical use cases include:

• give a user read-only access
• generally, fine-tune what a user can see or do in the web portal

It is important to note that:

• All new organizations will immediately start with IAM users
• All existing organizations will be migrated

NOTE! Here, you can find all the details in the online documentation for IAM.

Marketplace

Details

• Scale up your applications
• Access a curated collection of solution templates
• Leverage ready-to-use managed services

Web

The compplete marketplace portfolio with description can be found here: exoscale.com/marketplace

Portal

The tighly integrated marketplace products are easy to reach in the product portal: portal.exoscale.com/marketplace

NOTE! You need to be logged in to your portal account!

Organization

Overview

In this section of the Portal, you find:

• Billing
• Credit Cards
• Invoices
• Subscriptions
• Audit-Trail
• Quotas
• Legal

Billing Info

Billing Details

The organization display name is used for invoices. It must be between 4 and 225 characters, cannot be composed of only numbers, and cannot be a UUID. It is not currently possible to modify the country associated with your organization. Please contact support if you need assistance. It is not currently possible to modify your organization’s VAT number.

Credit Threshold

You will receive an email notification when your credit balance drops below the specified threshold, set by default to 15 CHF/EUR/UDS. To avoid service disruptions, top up your balance regularly according to your consumption needs.

Usage Overview & Detail

Usage Overview: outlines your consumption for a specific time frame and your current billing mode. If your billing mode is set to Post-Paid, you will receive an invoice based on your monthly consumption, and your default credit card will be charged for the due amount.

Usage Detail: provides itemized views of your consumption for the same time frame stated under Usage Overview.

Billing Mode

Post-Paid: You will receive an invoice based on your consumption every month. Your default credit card will then be charged for the due amount. To activate the Post-Paid billing mode, you need to meet the following requirements:

• Your account must be older than 90 days
• All your invoices must be paid
• You need to have a saved credit card and set it as the default

Wire-Transfer: You will receive an invoice based on your consumption every month. You have 30 days to pay your invoice by wire transfer.

NOTE! The Wire-Transfer billing mode is activated upon request after a case-by-case examination.

Redeem Coupon

If you have a promotional coupon, you can redeem it by entering the code in the Coupon Code field.

Credit Cards

It is the location for determining which credit card is associated with the organization. Our payment processing partner, Adyen, safely stores credit card details.

Invoices

You can look up all your invoices in excellent tabular form (Invoice Number, Total, Emission Date, Due Date, Status, Actions). Clicking on the table headers enables a different sorted view of the invoices.

Subscriptions

It is the location where you can view and manage your DNS Zones and Support Plans subscriptions in excellent tabular form.

Audit-Trail

You can see all the tracked security-relevant user activity and API usage here. The tool allows you to list and search for events that interact with Exoscale resources.

Quotas

Is the location where you can view and manage quotas on the following specific resources:

• Instances
• Custom Templates
• Snapshots
• GPUs
• SKS Clusters
• Elastic IPs
• Private Networks
• Network Load Balancers
• IAM Access Keys
• DBaaS Services
• Object Storage Buckets
• Block Storage Volumes
• Block Storage cumulative size (GiB)
• Max size of a Block Storage Volume (GiB)

Legal

It is structured into two Tabs:

• Terms: Here, you find the Legal Documents for your organization, including the Terms & Conditions you excepted and when, as well as the version of the Data Processing Addendum you excepted and when.
• Compliance Center: Exoscale is committed to helping our customers comply with industry and government regulations. Our Compliance Center contains all the information you need about our compliance posture, including information about our security controls, policies, procedures, certificates, attestations, and compliance reports. We will continue to update this center as our compliance posture evolves. For some of the reports, a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) is necessary, which can be done by clicking the REVIEW AND ACCEPT button.

Support

Details

In this section of the Portal, you can view and manage your support tickets by status (All, New, Waiting, Open, Closed). Exoscale’s support services are designed to cater to various customer needs, from developers and testers to enterprises running critical workloads. Here’s a breakdown of what each support plan includes:

Built-In Support

Built-In Support is included for all customers at no additional cost. It is ideal for testers, developers, and non-critical applications.

• Initial Response Time: Best-effort
• Support Hours: Office Hours
• Limited Audit Trail: 1 month of mutation events
• Limited Monthly Usage Reports: Aggregated by resource type
• Ticket Support

Starter Plan

Starter Plan is suited for startups and SMEs running production infrastructures. It includes everything in the Built-In plan plus additional features.

• Initial Response Time: 4 hours
• Support Hours: Office Hours
• Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)
• Single Sign-On (SSO)
• Limited Audit Trail: 1 month of mutation events
• Monthly Usage Reports: Reporting per resource
• Ticket Support

Price: 100.00 EUR/CHF/USD per month

Pro Plan

Pro Plan is tailored for companies running sensitive production infrastructures. It includes everything from the Starter plan plus faster response times and event tracking.

• Initial Response Time: 1 hour
• Support Hours: Extended Office Hours
• Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)
• Single Sign-On (SSO)
• Comprehensive Audit Trail: All API traffic, retention at customer discretion
• Monthly Usage Reports: Reporting per resource
• Ticket Support
• Phone Support

Price: 500.00 EUR/CHF/USD per month

Enterprise Plan

Enterprise Plan is designed for companies running critical workloads, offering the highest level of support and fastest response times.

• Initial Response Time: 30 minutes (24/7)
• Support Hours: 24/7
• Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)
• Single Sign-On (SSO)
• Comprehensive Audit Trail: All API traffic, retention at customer discretion
• Monthly Usage Reports: Reporting per resource
• Dedicated Customer Success Manager
• Custom Compliance Form
• Ticket Support
• Phone Support

Price: 5% of IaaS consumption (minimum 2,500 EUR/CHF/USD per month)

Overview: Support Features & Plans

*) 5% of IaaS consumption (minimum 2,500 EUR/CHF/USD per month)

Additional Information

• Office Hours: Mon-Fri, 8 am to 6 pm CET/CEST
• Extended Office Hours: Mon-Fri, 7 am to 8 pm CET/CEST
• PEN-Testing & Right to Audit: Available across all plans

By choosing the right support plan, you can ensure that your needs are met effectively and promptly, allowing you to focus on what matters most—growing your business.

NOTE! Here, you can find details on the case priority schema in the online documentation for SUPPORT.

Cloud-Native

Explained

Cloud-native refers to a software development approach that leverages cloud computing services and infrastructure to build and deploy applications. It involves designing applications as a collection of microservices that can run independently and scale dynamically, using containerization and orchestration technologies like Kubernetes.

Cloud-native applications are built to be resilient, scalable, and highly available and are often deployed using automated continuous delivery pipelines.

Why Cloud-Native?

Scalability: Cloud-native applications are designed to scale dynamically, allowing organizations to handle increased traffic and demand without downtime or performance issues.

Agility: Cloud-native applications can be developed, tested, and deployed quickly, allowing organizations to respond rapidly to changing market needs and customer feedback.

Resilience: Cloud-native applications are designed to be fault-tolerant and resilient, with built-in redundancy and failover mechanisms that minimize downtime and data loss.

Flexibility: Cloud-native applications are designed to run on multiple cloud platforms and environments, allowing organizations to choose the best option for their needs and avoid vendor lock-in.

Cost-efficiency: Cloud-native applications can be deployed and scaled automatically, reducing the need for manual intervention and minimizing operational costs.

Overall, cloud-native is essential because it enables organizations to deliver software faster, with higher quality and reliability, while reducing costs and increasing agility.

DevOps

Explained

DevOps is a software development methodology emphasizing collaboration and communication between development and operations teams to streamline the software development lifecycle. It involves automating and integrating processes across the entire software delivery pipeline, from development and testing to deployment and monitoring. DevOps aims to deliver software faster, with higher quality and reliability, by breaking down silos between teams and fostering a culture of continuous improvement and feedback.

DevOps is a powerful approach to software development that can help businesses achieve greater agility, efficiency, and quality in their software delivery process. By breaking down silos between development and operations teams, DevOps can foster greater collaboration and communication, leading to faster and more reliable software delivery. Additionally, DevOps emphasizes automation and integration across the entire software delivery pipeline, allowing businesses to streamline their development processes and reduce the risk of errors and delays.

However, some potential challenges to implementing DevOps exist, mainly when working with microservices or distributed systems. For example, managing many microservices can require additional tools and expertise. Additionally, DevOps can introduce other security risks if not properly configured and managed. Despite these challenges, DevOps is becoming increasingly popular in modern software development. It allows businesses to deliver software faster, with higher quality and reliability, while improving team collaboration and communication.

Continuous Delivery

Explained

Continuous Delivery is a software development practice where code changes are automatically built, tested, and deployed to production safely and reliably, with minimal human intervention.

It aims to deliver software updates frequently and consistently, allowing organizations to respond quickly to changing market needs and customer feedback.

Continuous Delivery is a powerful approach to software development that can help businesses achieve greater agility, efficiency, and quality in their software delivery process. By automating the build, test, and deployment process, developers can focus on writing code and delivering new features rather than spending time on manual processes. Additionally, Continuous Delivery can help to improve software quality by catching errors and bugs early in the development process before they can cause problems in production. However, there are also some potential challenges to implementing Continuous Delivery.

For example, it can require significant investment in tools, infrastructure, and training to implement effectively. Additionally, Continuous Delivery can introduce additional complexity and risk, mainly when working with microservices or distributed systems. Despite these challenges, Continuous Delivery is becoming increasingly popular in modern software development, allowing businesses to deliver software faster and more reliably while improving quality and reducing costs.

Container

Explained

Containers are lightweight, portable, and self-contained software packages that include all the necessary components to run an application, such as code, libraries, and dependencies.

Containers are isolated from the host operating system and other containers, allowing applications to run consistently across different environments and platforms. They are often used in cloud computing and DevOps environments to simplify application deployment, scaling, and management.

Containers are a popular technology for deploying microservices. They provide a lightweight and efficient way to package and deploy individual services. By encapsulating each microservice in its container, businesses can achieve greater modularity and flexibility in their application architecture. Additionally, containers can be easily scaled up or down to match changing demand, making it easier to manage resources and optimize performance.

However, there are also some potential drawbacks to using containers. For example, many containers can be complex and require additional tools and expertise. Additionally, containers can introduce security risks if not properly configured and managed. Despite these challenges, containers are becoming increasingly popular in modern software development. They provide a powerful and flexible way to deploy and manage microservices in cloud-native and DevOps environments.

Microservices

Explained

Microservice architecture is a software development approach that structures an application as a collection of small, independent, and loosely coupled services.

Each service is designed to perform a specific business function and communicates with other services through well-defined APIs. Microservices are typically deployed independently and can be scaled individually, allowing for greater flexibility and agility in software development. The microservice architecture emphasizes modularity, resilience, and fault tolerance and is often used in cloud-native and DevOps environments.

One of the main advantages of microservice architecture is that it allows for greater agility and flexibility in software development. Since each service is independent, changes can be made to one service without affecting the others, making testing and deploying new features more accessible. Additionally, microservices can be scaled independently, allowing businesses to allocate resources where they are needed most. This can result in cost savings and improved performance. However, there are also some potential drawbacks to microservice architecture. For example, managing multiple services can be complex and require high team coordination and communication. Additionally, microservices can introduce additional points of failure, making it more difficult to troubleshoot and diagnose issues. Despite these challenges, microservice architecture is becoming increasingly popular in modern software development, allowing businesses to build more flexible, scalable, and resilient applications.