Slicehost

Adding to last week's announcement, we are happy to introduce a 32-bit image for CentOS 5.4 that is now available in the SliceManager.

This image was created in the same manner as the previous 32-bit images and for this reason, will carry the beta label as well.

I want to thank Major from the RackspaceCloud Operations team in addition to Seth Vidal from the Fedora Project, for working together to make this image available.

If you have any questions or concerns, please visit with us in SliceChat at any time.

Following requests for 32-bit images I am pleased to be able to offer 32-bit images for Ubuntu Hardy, Jaunty and Karmic as well as Debian 5.0 (Lenny).

We had a discussion on our forums surrounding the images and we have labelled them as 'beta'.

The reason for the beta label is we have created a 64-bit Slice and kernel with a 32-bit userland. This means that if you installed apache with an 'aptitude install apache2', the 32-bit version will be pulled from the relevant repository and installed on your Slice. In addition, it also means you are able to natively run 64-bit executables.

Unfortunately, 64-bit versions of RPM-based distributions such as CentOS and Fedora do not have 32-bit ELF support in /sbin/init, so we are unable to offer similar images of these distributions at this time.

To add a 32-bit Slice, head to the Slicemanager and click 'Add a Slice' and select your preferred distro from the image dropdown.

As always, we are available 24/7 in our chatroom should you have any questions.

Cheers, Paul

Edit: I clarified the sentence regarding 32-bit ELF support as it was possibly causing some confusion

A few weeks ago, we received an email from Stephen Spector of Citrix. He’s the Community Manager for Xen.org and wanted a site for the Xen blog. He knew we were proponents of Xen and after a brief chat the blog was up and running. We’re honored to have the site at Slicehost and grateful for the work that goes into the Xen.org project. If you’re looking for updates and news on the virtualization software that powers your slice, blog.xen.org is the place to go.

Data Center Knowledge links to a couple of interesting articles on rising NOC costs. Increased power requirements for equipment and cooling are driving space costs through the roof. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly bigger companies explore virtual computing alternatives. If you’re interested in discussing Slice clusters for your company, please let us know.

Scott from hosting-fu compares a VPS to a dedicated server. Several excellent points, our 1024slice was pitted against an entry level dedicated box. A must read for anyone weighing the pros and cons of a VPS or dedicated machine.

We’ve had a few customers inquire about bulk Slice purchases for various reasons including: classroom use, virtual infrastructure, load balancing and more. These are all great ideas. For businesses, considering a cluster of Slices for server consolidation makes even more sense. Check out this stat:

We estimate conservatively that for every workload moved from a physical to virtual environment, customers can save about $290 in electricity costs, and about $360 a year in cooling costs. The more important thing is that these savings accrue year after year.

Wow! Let us know if you’re interested in a bulk purchase and we can put something together for you. With skyrocketing cooling and data center costs, there’s never been a better time to consider virtual server consolidation.