Hosting firm taps software-based net tool to add granular cloud controls

Carpathia Hosting Inc., a provider of managed hosting services, recently added support for Vyatta software network appliances in its cloud service. The Vyatta net tools introduce an interesting new dimension to cloud computing because they can be evoked at will, where and when needed, something that is impossible with hardware, says Carpathia CTO Jon Greaves. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix caught up with Greaves via phone to find out how the combination of these technologies is changing the game.

Before we dig in on how you're using the Vyatta tools, give us a thumbnail on your company.

Carpathia started off in 2003 in what used to be generically called the hosting space. Today, we have two specialties: complex hosting solutions and compliant hosting solutions. On the complex side, there is a metric used by analysts depicting the number of servers per customer. For most hosting firms, this falls in the 2-4 server range, while our average is north of 20. The second focus is on compliance, particularly in the public sector, which counts for roughly 45% of our revenue.

Carpathia Hosting Inc., a provider of managed hosting services, recently added support for Vyatta software network appliances in its cloud service. The Vyatta net tools introduce an interesting new dimension to cloud computing because they can be evoked at will, where and when needed, something that is impossible with hardware, says Carpathia CTO Jon Greaves. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix caught up with Greaves via phone to find out how the combination of these technologies is changing the game.

Before we dig in on how you're using the Vyatta tools, give us a thumbnail on your company.

Carpathia started off in 2003 in what used to be generically called the hosting space. Today, we have two specialties: complex hosting solutions and compliant hosting solutions. On the complex side, there is a metric used by analysts depicting the number of servers per customer. For most hosting firms, this falls in the 2-4 server range, while our average is north of 20. The second focus is on compliance, particularly in the public sector, which counts for roughly 45% of our revenue.

Our portfolio of services is actually pretty straightforward. It consists of three key product sets: co-location -- available in 13 data centers around the world; managed services, where we provide the infrastructure (server, router and network assets) and the care and feeding of those resources; and the most recent service, a very robust cloud service portfolio. And we can wrap all of those with compliance.

Our cloud services can be used in a few different ways. There is the pure infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) model, the kind of hands-off Amazon-like solution where we give the customer the platform and they do whatever they want. But we see a lot of demand for a more highly-managed cloud, where customers want certain virtual machines that are deemed valuable to fall under the rigor of our ITIL-based operating process and procedures and get an extra level of support.

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OK. How are you using Vyatta's software appliances?

One of the things we have been looking at on the cloud front is making complex hosting more enterprise-friendly from a network point of view. When you look at most cloud platforms -- let's pick on Amazon, for example -- you really have a flat network. You have a VM that has a public IP space and there is probably some degree of isolation between your VM and other VMs, but it's pretty minimal.

And what we've heard from customers is, that's great if you have a nice green field application you're designing for the cloud and you can build in extra controls, but in reality there are a lot of legacy applications going to the cloud. These applications require a degree of segregation between either the tiers of applications -- say, the database and app tier -- or different functional areas. This is especially true in federal computing. So we've been building a very unique set of network capabilities into our cloud platform. I'll run through them quick and then plug in how Vyatta fits in.