Genesis Public Cloud FAQs
Why would we choose Genesis over AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud?
Genesis provides public, private, and on premise solutions with technology consulting. We have been in the industry for over 20 years and have seen clients make every mistake possible that have can cost them significantly more than any savings they get from using a hyperscale provider, especially when audits are required. We often recommend the big 3 public cloud providers for some clients who have workloads that are suitable, but in many cases, we have shown that Genesis’ infrastructure provides a better cost/performance ratio. Genesis has a wide range of options from very low cost to very high performance.
Genesis has grown its business by catering to clients of all sizes, not by providing wholesale services, rather we provide “solutions” to problems that may or may not include using both Genesis and other public cloud services. Also, you will see that services beyond IaaS, such as AWS’ DBaaS, are typically priced at a significant premium at the big 3, whereas Genesis only charges for the infrastructure, at standard rates, to run these services.
How does Genesis' pricing compare to others?
Genesis is typically 20% less than others, and up to 60% less when considering all factors including low data transfer costs, no object storage transaction fees, and the fact that we typically have much higher performance compute, network, and storage. We invite you to test!
How do I manage OpenStack?
OpenStack includes a Web UI, CLI, REST API, and SDKs for all functions within the platform.
In addition, OpenStack includes an orchestration system called HEAT, which allows clients to launch multiple composite cloud applications based on templates in the form of text files that can be treated like code, very similar to AWS CloudFormations.
OpenStack is also compatible with Terraform.
Genesis provides a dedicated Linux machine with every account that has all of the OpenStack CLI components as well as many bash scripts to perform various common operations.
Do you charge for powered off VMs?
We do not charge for the VM itself (CPUs and Memory), but we will charge for public IPs and storage attached to the VM.
Paused VMs are not considered powered down. Only powered down VMs (in a "SHUTOFF" state) are not charged.
Can I upload my images?
Yes! OpenStack provides this as a native function. The storage for the images is metered every 30 seconds, just like all other resources.
How often do you meter resources?
We meter resources for billing every 30 seconds.
Is object storage included with a public cloud account?
Yes. Object storage is metered per-GiB every 30 seconds.
Do you support reverse DNS?
Yes - forward and reverse DNS are supported, so you can configure your public DNS records and respective reverse DNS entries in OpenStack and then point your domain's WHOIS record to our authoritative DNS servers.
Do you support jumbo frames?
Yes, we support an MTU of up to 9100, so you can easily port applications that require a standard jumbo frame size of 9000, or encapsulate traffic easily without dealing with smaller-than-normal MTU issues.
How do backups work?
OpenStack has a volume backup function that will create an inline snapshot of a volume and perform a backup against this snapshot by copying all blocks to the object storage available for your account. Backups are compressed, so the space required is minimized. For file-level backups, please see Genesis Backup.
How is Windows licensing handled?
We cover Windows licensing automatically if you deploy one of our Windows images. Windows activation is performed automatically upon deployment. Windows licensing will show up as a separate line item on your invoice, and is charged on-demand (metered every 30 seconds).
When are payments due? Upfront or In-arrears?
Our service is metered every 30 seconds and billing is performed in arrears.
Usage is computed during the first week following the service period with invoices being created shortly after. Payments are due upon receipt. Credit can be added to your account as a pre-payment if you wish to pay by check, wire, or ACH.
Can you migrate our environment to OpenStack?
Yes, but we would need to evaluate the scope of work required for the migration and provide a proposal.
Free free to contact us if you have any questions or would like to discuss options.
