Outages aside, there's no doubt that the rise of web scale computing platforms, like Amazon's EC2 and S3 services, have lowered the barrier of entry for Internet startups. Going completely serverless would have been unheard of during the late-90s dot com boom, but new cloud computing platforms have made it possible for small companies to scale quickly, easily, efficiently, and cost effectively. However, even if services like Amazon's have made hosting and scaling a web app more simple, there is still a good deal of server management involved. Enter Mosso, a Rackspace-backed company that merges the idea of cloud computing with the familiarity of a managed, shared environment.
In September of 2006, Richard MacManus theorized that "in the future [...] the big Internet companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon, will operate 'server farms' that become too cost efficient for other companies not to utilize."
So far only Amazon of the big web companies have opened their hosting architecture up to outsiders, but a number of smaller players have tapped into the growing market for cloud based hosting solutions. Mosso's platform seeks to match the scaling power of a compute cloud with the ease and simplicity of a shared hosting environment.
Unlike competitors such as Joyent or Amazon, Mosso's system does not offer customers root level access to their servers. Instead, servers are preconfigured with a range of software options and are fully managed similar to a shared hosting environment. Keeping their hosting platform standardized is what allows them to easily monitor and scale the service as needed. For example, last week Mosso experienced a significant spike in load on its PHP cluster and added 10 servers without customers noticing, company executives told me.
Today, Mosso is announcing a new payment scheme that they feel is an industry first for a cloud computing platform. According to Mosso, scaling on Amazon or other compute cloud options means adding more instances, which means you're still paying on a server by server basis. Mosso's new pay structure is based 100% on requests, which they feel is more accurate in terms of charging you only for the resources you use.
Mosso's pay structure starts with a base fee of $100 per month, with a rate of $0.25 per gigabyte of bandwidth, and $0.50 per gigabyte of storage. They also charge $0.03 per 1000 requests with 3 million included. Being charged per gig on bandwidth and storage is a familiar pricing structure for anyone on shared hosting or a managed server.
The company is also announcing an updated control panel and will soon roll out a MySQL backup utility that will take automatic snapshots of databases down to the table level. That sort of utility wouldn't be possible on EC2, according to Mosso, because every instance is configured differently.
Note: Due to a miscommunication on our part we briefly ran this story yesterday on our web site when in fact the new Mosso pricing plan was not going live until today (February 19). We apologize for any confusion this caused.
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Well, your article from Yesterday prompted me to study Mosso, talk to their representatives, read other reviews and I ORDERED my package from them today morning. I think the verdict from many people is that -- Mosso have improved a lot and their service keep improving.
Posted by: Brajeshwar | February 19, 2008 7:09 AMPopularo is picking Mosso.
We wrote the other day on our blog how we were building some of popularo using Amazon’s Web Services, and how we were concerned about it after the outage the other day.
Well, after some internal discussion and research, it looks like we are going to use Mosso’s Cloud Computing Service when we launch.
I like the fact that MySQL is clustered at Mosso, unlike MediaTemple (who we also like), and it’s REAL MySQL, not the wacky SimpleDB “not a database” thing that Amazon offers. As TC points out, pricing is higher than AWS , but this really does seem like a case of you get what you pay for.
Posted by: Scott from popularo | February 19, 2008 8:33 AMThis service seems to be everywhere at the moment. I think im just going to sit back and see if it works out, before i jump in and use it.
Posted by: Steven Finch | February 19, 2008 10:22 AMI had a look at their offering a few weeks back, and it seems to be very unclear on what level of performance they will guarantee for web applications of any kind. While their main metric for billing seems to be http requests (speak hits)/month, I'm not convinced that applications requiring a bit more complex SQL queries or php/ruby processing will get the response time they need. Even accessing their site just a few minutes ago from this article took a bit longer than I'd be comfortable with, meaning in the realm of a count of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 - instead of quick and snappy, such as 1, 2.
Their offering is also lightweight on tech details and seems to be much more about hosting and reselling of 'simple' websites by small web site developers, with emphasis on resale and customer facing client billing and support. That doesn't really define what I expect under the terms 'Cloud Computing' and certainly has little if anything to do with the services that Amazon is providing with EC2 and S3.
This seems to be just a marketing pitch on top of a catchy buzz word. Anyone have any experience to share?
Posted by: William Will | February 19, 2008 10:34 AMSo where does the "rest of us" bit come in? Why is AWS any less cloud computing for "rest of us"? I notice that all these cloud computing services fail to mention how to scale the database.
Posted by: Technology For The Masses | February 19, 2008 10:35 AM@5 - Mosso uses a real mysql cluster environment, spread across many nodes, which is pretty slick, and scales well (in theory). AFAIK, MediaTemple still requires you to run the DB on a single box, which is not so slick, and Amazon's SimpleDB just doesn't even come close to being a database, IMO.
Posted by: Scott from popularo | February 19, 2008 3:46 PMAt the time of writing this comment, their service is down for more than 5 minutes (that's why I came here to comment).
Well, I've been testing Mosso since yesterday and here are the hiccups I've faced so far (even before I transition).
* You cannot transfer domains created at mosso.com within amongst your clients. I did this for test purpose. The told me "delete that domain and create again." I laugh at that and so can you.
* Their site and the control panel was down multiple times while I was still setting up things on it.
* You've to create sub-domains pretty much like creating a new domain (which is OK-ish in a way) but that's it.
* There were lots of issue with FTP and I'm still unable to properly connect to transfer files before I point the (A) records to them. (Now, I'm not even sure if the (A) record re-direction from my DNS management will work)
* Their control panel is the slowest as compared to MediaTemple, Mediumcube (I've been with them too). However, Mosso's support tell me it is the problem with my ISP (I've all other sites running butterly smooth and swiftly fine.)
Their control panel and site is down even as I finish writing this comment. If this is what I can get with my initial testing, I'm likely to go for a refund and do the usual wait n watch. Oh! Yes, I'll blog about my experience in an elaborate detail of the shortcoming which are not negligible.
Posted by: Brajeshwar | February 19, 2008 11:04 PMHere is another;
Their support just showed me their TOS and told me that I cannot allow download on my site and *any site cannot use excessive CPU usage*. What does that mean? I've not even open up my files for download to the public!
Here is the confusing part from their TOS
"You may not use the Services in a way that consumes a disproportionate amount of system resources. For example, you may not distribute software to the public, provide a public file download Services or employ programs that consume excessive CPU capacity."
What describes a "disproportionate amount of system resources"? Is there a figure, stats or a matrix to check that?
Posted by: Brajeshwar | February 19, 2008 11:49 PMMosso definitely do not sound like a system built for the larger websites but pretty much targeted to "quantity", "volume" of small sites just like Yahoo! Small Business's unlimited disc/bandwidth gimmick.
Posted by: Brajeshwar | February 19, 2008 11:51 PMThe ability for new or inexperienced web business to access services without buying extensive (and often unneccesary software) is priceless. I have been involved in setting up a small informational website and I can tell you from experience that it is very hard to compete with the "big guys" if you don't have ancillary support.
Posted by: Johnkad | February 20, 2008 12:59 AMWe use http://www.ComputingHost.com for our website attracting about 40 to 50K hits per day. They don't have big names of the market but they know what they are doing. They will tell you how they are taking care of your requirements.
Their setup is a basic chain of clustered servers. My collegues site with about 12-15 Million hits a day (naruto gaming site) is also managed pretty well by them.
Posted by: Shree | February 21, 2008 8:43 PMIf anyone is interested in sharing the cost of Mosso with me, I'd be willing to set you up with one (or a few if needed) of the client accounts for a good price. Just need a few people to help offset my costs. I'm thinking $10 for me, plus the set fees at Mosso (for example, $5 for 100mb of MS SQL, etc). I can be flexible with price depending on what you're looking for. I'm willing to set you up with unlimited email boxes and databases, since they're free anyway!
Please contact me at MossoReseller at gmail.com if you're interested.
Posted by: Mosso Reseller | March 18, 2008 1:59 PMMosso too expensive? If anyone is interested in sharing the cost of Mosso with me, I'd be willing to set you up with one (or a few if needed) of the client accounts for a good price. Just need a few people to help offset my costs. I'm thinking $10 for me, plus the set fees at Mosso (for example, $5 for 100mb of MS SQL, etc). I can be flexible with price depending on what you're looking for. I'm willing to set you up with unlimited email boxes and databases since they're free anyway!
Please contact me at MossoReseller at gmail.com if you're interested.
Posted by: Mosso Reseller | March 18, 2008 2:40 PM