RESOURCES

Capacity units used for billing :

• CU or a compute unit
• SU or a storage unit
• TU or a transaction unit
• NU or a network unit
• VCU or virtual cpu unit
• MU or memory unit
• PIU or public IP address unit
• WU or Windows unit
• FSU or Flash Storage Unit

Compute Unit (CU)

Type: Allocation

Definition: 1 VM with 4GB of memory and 2 virtual CPU’s.
CU’s are calculated per VM, per Cloudspace, per Account and per G8 towards the upper value of the memory / virtual CPU combination.
CU = max(memory in GB/ 4 , vcpus / 2)

Virtual CPU Unit (VCU)

Type : Allocation
Definition: 1 virtual cpu in a VM equals to 1 VCU

Memory Unit (MU)

Type : Allocation
Definition: 1 MU equals to 1GiB of allocated memory

Examples for CU/VCU/MU

Storage Unit (SU)

Type: Allocation
Definition: 1 TB of allocated vdisk capacity
Example: Calculate number of SUs for a VM with 1 boot disk and 1 datadisk

Transaction Unit (TU)

Type: Allocation
Definition: 400 allocated IOPS
Example: Calculate SU for a VM with 1 boot disk and 1 datadisk

Public IP Address Units (PIU)

Type: Allocation
Definition: 1 assigned public IP Address equals to 1 PIU

Windows Units (WU)

Type: Allocation
Definition: For each deployed VM with a Windows OS image it’s CU counts as WU

Next, the Microsoft SPLA usage will be billed based on the reports by the Octopus.cloud agent running mandatory on all Windows VM’s.

Network Unit (NU)

Type: Consumption
Definition: 1 TB consumed traffic from & towards the virtual firewall or external IP address on a VM

Data retention policy

The billing records are kept per Account for the last 3 months.

Flash Storage Unit (FSU)

Type: Allocation
Definition: 1 FSU is the equivalent of using 1 TB of flash memory configured on a disk attached to a running VM for a period of one month.

By default, a newly created VM has an interface that is connected to the isolated virtual network of a cloud space.

An additional external network interface can be attached to any VM to have external IP.

This happens through attaching a new NIC to your VM and reserving an external IP for you.

You can then ssh into your VM and add the reserved IP to your new NIC.

A Snapshot is a logical copy of the state of a VM including the data disks at a particular point in time.

Snapshots are used to roll back VMs to a healthy state.

Whitesky.cloud recommends that before any big update or change to a VM is done, the customer takes a snapshot of his VM.

Snapshots are not backups!

Users can take their own snapshots and see them in the user portal.

However, whitesky.cloud also takes snapshots as a safety measure.

Those cannot be seen by the user and will only be restored by whitesky.cloud admin upon request of the user.

The standard schedule is as follows :

Whitesky.cloud supports two types of disks:

• Boot disk
  A disk where the OS of the VM is running
• Data disk

By default, the VM has a boot disk that contains the OS. This is served by a resource pool that is optimised for storage re-use.
We recommend to attach additional (one or more) data disks to a VM as they are served by another resource pool that is optimised for higher performance, higher IOPs and throughput.
Max IOPs rate can be optimised per disk level.

A Virtual Machine (VM) is a virtual server in whitesky.cloud used for running applications. A VM is created inside a cloudspace, however, it can be moved between cloudspaces.

A VM is deleted if its cloudspace is deleted.

Prior to creation, the user can choose the VM parameters:

• Number of virtual CPU cores (vCPUS)
• Memory size
• Boot disk size
• Data disk size
• Image

All the parameters can be scaled on-demand after the VM creation. Port forwards and data disks can be added to the VM after creation.

Boot Disk

A VM, by default, has a Boot disk on which the OS is running. Boot disks are served by a resource pool that is optimized for storage re-use. Only one boot disk can be present on a VM. Boot Disks cannot be attached or detached. A boot disk is deleted only when its VM is deleted.

Data Disk

One or several data disks can be attached to a VM. Data disks are served by a resource pool that is optimised for high performance.
It is recommended to store application data on data disks. Data disks can be detached and attached to another VM on the same Account.
When creating a new data disk you can specify:

• Disk Size
  Note: The aggregated size of all data disks and boot disks of the cloudspace/account cannot exceed corresponding limits.
• Max IOPS
  Note: Disk IOPS cannot exceed the account limit or the cloudspace limit.

Console

Running VMs can be accessed via console on User Portal or Admin Portal.

The initial password is created on the fly when the VM is deployed the first time.

You can see the password by clicking the eye icon or paste it in the console by pressing the paste icon.

A port forward is a mapping of an external port of the VFW to an internal IP address and port of a VM on the private virtual network managed by this VFW.
Via Port Forwards the VMs can be accessed from the outside world by TCP or UDP.

A virtual firewall is a network firewall of the cloudspace private network. The type of VFW can be chosen prior to the cloudspace creation.

VFW types:

• Virtual Gateway
  All routing features are API-driven but with limited set of features.
• Bring your own
  Configure a custom firewall of your choice.

A cloudspace is a logical grouping of the cloud resources which shares the same internal virtual network subnet and break out towards the external network via the external interface of the Cloudspace virtual firewall.
Each Cloudspace is associated with only one account. Per account you can create one or more cloudspaces.

Depending on the virtual network configuration, three types of cloudspaces are supported.

• A private cloudspace is a cloudspace in which a VFW has no interface access to the external network. Such a cloudspace is isolated from the outside world
• A public cloudspace is a cloudspace in which a VFW has access to external network
• A nested cloud space is a cloudspace in which the external network interface of the VFW is a part of a virtual private network of another Cloudspace.

The picture below illustrates the networking between the Cloudspaces.

Different types of Cloudspaces enable flexibility to create custom network configurations.