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Crosspeer Cloud General FAQs
What is Cloud Hosting?
The term 'Cloud' refers to on-demand, virtualized servers accessible over the Internet.
How do Cloud Servers differ from Dedicated Servers?
When buying a dedicated server, you essentially are renting phyical hardware dedicated for your use alone. Typically you pay an initial set-up fee and commit to a contract for a year or more at a higher price point than a cloud server. There is usually a lead time on the hardware, and it is difficult to change the server specification as your needs evolve, forcing you to buy something large enough for your application to grow into. You pay for the server 24 hours a day, not just when you want it up and running. Crosspeer Cloud servers on the other hand, can be deployed immediately from our easy-to-use web control panel. There is no set-up fee, a low minimum price point & no commitment to a contract. As your requirements change, you can instantly scale up & down the resources you use, and can even pay-as-you-go for just the hours your servers are running.
How do Cloud servers differ from traditional VPS (Virtual Private Servers)?
Traditional VPS providers slice up large dedicated servers to share them between customers. Typically, VPS providers use a container technology such as Virtuozzo to isolate multiple users on a single server from one another while running a shared instance of the operating system. By contrast, our KVM technology enables every user to run their own isolated copy of an operating of their choice, providing higher performance, deeper configurability, stronger isolation and security guarantees.
How does Cloud Hosting differ from Shared Hosting?
Shared hosting providers usually only give you limited access to your server through a Web control panel where you can manage a number of websites hosted on that server. With our Cloud Servers, you get full administrator control over your server and the ability to install any software you like and configure it exactly how you wish.
How does Cloud Hosting differ from a Content Delivery Network (CDN)?
A CDN is used to distribute copies of static media content such as images and videos to the edge of the network, nearer to your customers. This enables them to download these files with lower latency and less change of bandwidth contention. It only works for static media content, and cannot be used for dynamic content of more general computing applications in the same way as cloud servers.
What type of service is offered by Crosspeer?
We offer a self-serve, self-managed public cloud computing service. As one of our customers, you have full administrator access to your virtual servers and are responsible for the configuration and management of the operating system and applications that you wish to run on them.
Getting Started
What does the Free Trial Include?
The 5-day trial gives you full access to our system and includes 2000-core MHz CPU, 1024 MB RAM, 20GB disk space and 5GB data transfer, which is enough capacity to run a medium sized server or several small servers.
Are there any Restrictions on Trials?
During the trial, we block outbound connections to SMTP, FTP, SSH and Telnet Servers - Ports FTP (TCP 21), SSH (TCP 22), Telnet (TCP 23), SMTP (TCP 25), POP3 (TCP 110), IMAP (TCP 143), SIP (UDP 5060), VNC (TCP 5900-2) and Runescape (TCP 43594-5) to prevent abuse of our trials for sending spam or conducting dictionary attacks against other Internet hosts. We ask trial customers not to run Minecraft or other game servers. Game servers may be powered off without warning.
How do I run Windows during my Trial?
There are 3 options for setting up a Windows server during your trial.
1) Purchase a license for that month on the subscriptions page of your account and then use one of our pre-installed images. We can't offer pre-installed images for Windows for free as part of the trial since Microsoft charges for licensing fees.
2) Select 'self-install from CD' rather than 'Pre-installed images' and then install from the Windows Server 2008 Trial CD yourself.
3) Upload your own install CD using our Cloud Computing upload tool or FTP to ftp <zone> with your account UUID and Secret API key as shown on your account profile page.
What Support do you offer?
We support the virtualization infrastructure, but our customers self-manage their server operating system configuration & applications. We offer telephone and email support Monday-Friday. Many common technical questions & answers are published in the Support section on our website. We also have a Tutorial series on the website that provides step-by-step instructions to accomplish many adminstrative tasks.
Do you provide Consulting Services?
Most of our customers will be able to install and configure their systems themselves, but it you have particularly specialized requirements, we can offer consulting services for $250 per hour. We can also recommend partners who can help with more general server software installation and configuration.
How do you schedule Planned Maintenance?
Whenever possible, any planned maintenance is scheduled outside of US business hours. We will notify you of this by email at least 24 hours in advance. We will never schedule maintenance simultaneously in more than one of our sites, ensuring that they offer full redunancy to each other.
What SLA do you offer?
Our SLA is the best in the industry. We offer 100x credits for any unscheduled downtime longer than 15 minutes, up to 1 month's
credit. See our Terms of Service for more details.
Billing & Payment
What is the difference between Subscription and Burst-Use Pricing?
Monthly subscriptions are the most cost-effective option for customers intending to run their servers continuously. You pay a fixed price for that month, regardless of how long your servers are running during that period. We also offer an 'hourly burst' pricing model for users who do not run their servers all the time. You deposit a pre-pay balance with us from which money is deducted automatically as you make use of the service. The rates are twice the subscription rates, but when your servers are off, you are only charged for disk space. Please see our Pricing page for more details.
Can I purchase a combination of Subscription and Burst use?
Yes. For example, if you have a server which is only running for 30 hours per month, you can subscribe for the disk space it uses, but pay an hourly burst rate for the CPU and memory. For data transfer we recommend taking our a subscription for as much as you expect to use during the month and bursting above that level as required. We strive to provide flexibility not only with compute resources, but also with payment options to better suit your applications needs and budget.
How do I purchase Subscriptions or add Pre-pay Balance?
You can purchase a subscription on the 'Subscriptions' page. Please enter the amount of CPU, Memory, Disk and so on that you need in the 'Quantities' column and the number of months' subscription you would like alongside this in the 'Extra Months' column. You will then be prompted to complete the payment process.
Which methods of payment do you accept?
We accept payment by VISA or MasterCard, Credit or Debit. For sums of $400 or more, we accept bank transfers to our US bank account. Contact us for more information regarding bank transfers.
What is Cloud Hosting?
The term 'Cloud' refers to on-demand, virtualized servers accessible over the Internet.
How do Cloud Servers differ from Dedicated Servers?
When buying a dedicated server, you essentially are renting phyical hardware dedicated for your use alone. Typically you pay an initial set-up fee and commit to a contract for a year or more at a higher price point than a cloud server. There is usually a lead time on the hardware, and it is difficult to change the server specification as your needs evolve, forcing you to buy something large enough for your application to grow into. You pay for the server 24 hours a day, not just when you want it up and running. Crosspeer Cloud servers on the other hand, can be deployed immediately from our easy-to-use web control panel. There is no set-up fee, a low minimum price point & no commitment to a contract. As your requirements change, you can instantly scale up & down the resources you use, and can even pay-as-you-go for just the hours your servers are running.
How do Cloud servers differ from traditional VPS (Virtual Private Servers)?
Traditional VPS providers slice up large dedicated servers to share them between customers. Typically, VPS providers use a container technology such as Virtuozzo to isolate multiple users on a single server from one another while running a shared instance of the operating system. By contrast, our KVM technology enables every user to run their own isolated copy of an operating of their choice, providing higher performance, deeper configurability, stronger isolation and security guarantees.
How does Cloud Hosting differ from Shared Hosting?
Shared hosting providers usually only give you limited access to your server through a Web control panel where you can manage a number of websites hosted on that server. With our Cloud Servers, you get full administrator control over your server and the ability to install any software you like and configure it exactly how you wish.
How does Cloud Hosting differ from a Content Delivery Network (CDN)?
A CDN is used to distribute copies of static media content such as images and videos to the edge of the network, nearer to your customers. This enables them to download these files with lower latency and less change of bandwidth contention. It only works for static media content, and cannot be used for dynamic content of more general computing applications in the same way as cloud servers.
What type of service is offered by Crosspeer?
We offer a self-serve, self-managed public cloud computing service. As one of our customers, you have full administrator access to your virtual servers and are responsible for the configuration and management of the operating system and applications that you wish to run on them.
Getting Started
What does the Free Trial Include?
The 5-day trial gives you full access to our system and includes 2000-core MHz CPU, 1024 MB RAM, 20GB disk space and 5GB data transfer, which is enough capacity to run a medium sized server or several small servers.
Are there any Restrictions on Trials?
During the trial, we block outbound connections to SMTP, FTP, SSH and Telnet Servers - Ports FTP (TCP 21), SSH (TCP 22), Telnet (TCP 23), SMTP (TCP 25), POP3 (TCP 110), IMAP (TCP 143), SIP (UDP 5060), VNC (TCP 5900-2) and Runescape (TCP 43594-5) to prevent abuse of our trials for sending spam or conducting dictionary attacks against other Internet hosts. We ask trial customers not to run Minecraft or other game servers. Game servers may be powered off without warning.
How do I run Windows during my Trial?
There are 3 options for setting up a Windows server during your trial.
1) Purchase a license for that month on the subscriptions page of your account and then use one of our pre-installed images. We can't offer pre-installed images for Windows for free as part of the trial since Microsoft charges for licensing fees.
2) Select 'self-install from CD' rather than 'Pre-installed images' and then install from the Windows Server 2008 Trial CD yourself.
3) Upload your own install CD using our Cloud Computing upload tool or FTP to ftp <zone> with your account UUID and Secret API key as shown on your account profile page.
What Support do you offer?
We support the virtualization infrastructure, but our customers self-manage their server operating system configuration & applications. We offer telephone and email support Monday-Friday. Many common technical questions & answers are published in the Support section on our website. We also have a Tutorial series on the website that provides step-by-step instructions to accomplish many adminstrative tasks.
Do you provide Consulting Services?
Most of our customers will be able to install and configure their systems themselves, but it you have particularly specialized requirements, we can offer consulting services for $250 per hour. We can also recommend partners who can help with more general server software installation and configuration.
How do you schedule Planned Maintenance?
Whenever possible, any planned maintenance is scheduled outside of US business hours. We will notify you of this by email at least 24 hours in advance. We will never schedule maintenance simultaneously in more than one of our sites, ensuring that they offer full redunancy to each other.
What SLA do you offer?
Our SLA is the best in the industry. We offer 100x credits for any unscheduled downtime longer than 15 minutes, up to 1 month's
credit. See our Terms of Service for more details.
Billing & Payment
What is the difference between Subscription and Burst-Use Pricing?
Monthly subscriptions are the most cost-effective option for customers intending to run their servers continuously. You pay a fixed price for that month, regardless of how long your servers are running during that period. We also offer an 'hourly burst' pricing model for users who do not run their servers all the time. You deposit a pre-pay balance with us from which money is deducted automatically as you make use of the service. The rates are twice the subscription rates, but when your servers are off, you are only charged for disk space. Please see our Pricing page for more details.
Can I purchase a combination of Subscription and Burst use?
Yes. For example, if you have a server which is only running for 30 hours per month, you can subscribe for the disk space it uses, but pay an hourly burst rate for the CPU and memory. For data transfer we recommend taking our a subscription for as much as you expect to use during the month and bursting above that level as required. We strive to provide flexibility not only with compute resources, but also with payment options to better suit your applications needs and budget.
How do I purchase Subscriptions or add Pre-pay Balance?
You can purchase a subscription on the 'Subscriptions' page. Please enter the amount of CPU, Memory, Disk and so on that you need in the 'Quantities' column and the number of months' subscription you would like alongside this in the 'Extra Months' column. You will then be prompted to complete the payment process.
Which methods of payment do you accept?
We accept payment by VISA or MasterCard, Credit or Debit. For sums of $400 or more, we accept bank transfers to our US bank account. Contact us for more information regarding bank transfers.
