[NightShadow]

So, to compliment the release of ShadowPost (my social network software) in March, I had an idea (soon to be project if funding is secured) to start up a small cloud host with affordable prices. It will mainly host ShadowPost communities but can aim at sponsoring established open source projects.

The three locations I had in mind for servers were:

Chicago Area (Continuum DC in Lombard, IL)
Dallas (CoreXchange in Dallas, TX)
Denver (Handy Networks in Denver, CO - COMING SOON)

Here is a map of the locations also:
http://nshadowcode.net/serverloc.png

It will be a KVM/CloudStack powered cloud with a custom panel (though with Solus at the start possibly?), and price at a flat rate instead of per hour, and have fair overages if needed, such as $2.50 monthly for 10GB of space, etc.

All bandwidth would be unlimited on a shared 100Mbps line, in which the user can upgrade to 1Gbps for $25/mo. Hard drive space is RAID 5 protected with SSD caching coming soon.

Open source project sponsoring would equal free or low-price hosting for mid-to-large sized open source projects, that may have outgrown SourceForge or GitHub for example. It would all depend on what the project managers need, for example, we could offer a site for free, and a mirror for software downloads possibly for $5-20/mo.

What do you think?

[Darth-Apple]

Seems like a great concept with a good start. The flat rate is definitely very unique for a cloud host.

Also, how is your ShadowPost project going so far?

[NightShadow]

Seems like a great concept with a good start. The flat rate is definitely very unique for a cloud host.

Also, how is your ShadowPost project going so far?

It's going well, I'm still working on the code, mainly setting up my test server (a HP laptop running Debian) soon.

Also, I will offer a beta plan for the software if anyone's interested. Until July 1, 2014, testers will get:

20GB HDD
Unlimited Bandwidth
No post cap
No user cap
ShadowPost HE v1.x
Subdomain (you.nshadowcdn.com)
Chicago/Lombard server location

After that, plans will start at $12.99 a month, but you're free to discontinue using it if you don't want to pay!

[Darth-Apple]

Seems like a great concept with a good start. The flat rate is definitely very unique for a cloud host.

Also, how is your ShadowPost project going so far?

It's going well, I'm still working on the code, mainly setting up my test server (a HP laptop running Debian) soon.

Also, I will offer a beta plan for the software if anyone's interested. Until July 1, 2014, testers will get:

20GB HDD
Unlimited Bandwidth
No post cap
No user cap
ShadowPost HE v1.x
Subdomain (you.nshadowcdn.com)
Chicago/Lombard server location

After that, plans will start at $12.99 a month, but you're free to discontinue using it if you don't want to pay!

Sounds great. Looking forward to seeing how it progresses.