Cloud Computing FAQ’s - Netmagic Solutions

What are Netmagic Cloud Services?

Netmagic SimpliCloud is an industry-leading IaaS Cloud Computing Platform that features instant online provisioning of virtual machines and virtual appliances. It also features 'Elastic' plans where customers can pay for their Cloud infrastructure by the hour, thereby availing of true 'Pay-as-you-use', 'On-demand' infrastructure. Creating, scaling and managing your online infrastructure has never been this easy.

What can I do with SimpliCloud?

Netmagic Cloud Services is a world-class 'Compute-within-the-Cloud' offering. With it you can login via a secure web interface and Register yourself as a customer, create your Virtual Instances, and manage them on the fly. SimpliCloud allows you complete online control of your Virtual Instances in real-time – you can now create, start, stop, edit, and shutdown your Virtual Servers (or 'Instances') using a simple and secure Web interface.

You can also pay for your Virtual Instances by the hour if that's what suits your requirements, thus enabling TRUE On-demand or Utility Computing.

What platforms are supported on SimpliCloud?

SimpliCloud supports both Windows and Linux in multiple flavours. For a detailed list of Operating systems, App Servers, Web servers and Databases supported please login to the Provisioning Portal and download the Cloud Services Specsheet from the 'Resources' section of the Provisioning Portal.

Note: If you need an OS that is not mentioned in our list of Supported Operating systems in the specsheet, please contact us at support@netmagicsolutions.com

How do I get started?

To sign up for Netmagic's C2.0 services, go to »this page and follow the link to the Registration process. Follow the registration process to sign up as a customer. Once the Registration process is completed and you've clicked on the Validation link we've sent to the email address you've provided during the registration process, login using your credentials and start creating your servers. Before you can activate the Virtual Instances you've created, however, you'll need to add funds to your account.

Why do I need to provide a valid email address during Registration?

Make sure you provide a valid email address as you'll be sent a confirmation link to the address that you've listed. After you fill in your registration details and click 'Submit', check your Inbox. Open the email you've received from Netmagic confirming your Registration and click on the link provided to complete the Registration process. This email address will also be used by the Netmagic Helpdesk team to contact you in the future. We DO NOT share our customer email addresses with any other third party.

How quickly will my instances be activated once I create them?

For NEW customers who are registering themselves for the first time and creating new servers, the Netmagic Validation Team validates each customer registration and this process takes between 15 minutes and four hours (during business hours only). Customers will only be able to create and activate servers once the validation check is complete.

For EXISTING customers, once you configure an instance it is created almost immediately after a minimal time lapse for the server resources (CPU, Memory, and Disk) to be allocated and for the Operating system to be configured. This process currently takes anywhere between fifteen and twenty five minutes, and soon additional tools and utilities will be put in place to bring this down even further.

What kind of Service Level Agreement (SLA) is offered? What is the committed uptime on Netmagic's Cloud 2.0?

Netmagic offers an industry leading committed uptime of 99.95%, but unlike other providers who base this on a trailing yearly period, Netmagic's commitment of 99.95% is based on a trailing monthly period.

What does this mean? This means that in a trailing yearly period our competititor's Cloud service could be offline for more than four hours and twenty minutes at a stretch and you still wouldn't be eligible for any service credits. With Netmagic's 99.95% commitment on a monthly trailing period, however, if our service is unavailable for more than only twenty-two minutes at a stretch, service credits will apply.

How is Netmagic's Grid protected?

Netmagic's SimpliCompute Grid is protected for unauthorized access by Hardware Firewalls. Also, Operating Systems on the parent hardware are installed only with core components. This provides the smallest attack surface and reduces the number of patches, updates, and greatly mitigates restarts required for maintenance.

Additionally, all Virtual Machines are patched with the latest security updates, and Netmagic uses Authorization Manager & Role Based access within the virtualization layer to provide greatly improved Security. Resources for each VM are also isolated from each other and the system does not allow VMs to impact each other unless specifically allowed for a particular customer with multiple VMs. Finally, no Shared Memory is mapped between Virtual machines.

How secure is Netmagic's online payment system?

Extremely secure. We use SSL certificates and an extremely secure Payment Gateway that is verified both by Visa as well as Mastercard. It is also VeriSign Secured and PCI compliant, ensuring that your online transactions are always safe, secure, and private.

What kind of Hardware will my VM run on? How is one 'Core' defined?

Netmagic's Grid comprises highly modular x86 nodes, creating an architecture that is extremely scalable and highly redundant. Unlike other providers who don't give you a clear idea of what kind of processor speeds you can expect, Netmagic uses the latest generations of Intel Xeon processors with multi-threading technology. Each 'Core' or Compute Unit is currently rated at a minimum of 2.0GHz. In keeping with our commitments to being completely transparent and providing the highest level of service to our customers, we will continuously upgrade our grid to keep pace with the latest technology, so Core speeds will always be based on the newer generations of processors for maximum performance.

What types of plans are available? How do I choose a plan that suits me best? What is the difference between a 'Fixed' and an 'Elastic' plan?

Netmagic Cloud Services are split into 'Fixed' plans and 'Elastic' plans. You can configure your VMs as either Fixed or Elastic plans, or have a combination of them if you need multiple instances.

FIXED PLANS: Fixed plans are ideal for customers who's requirements are more stable than elastic. Fixed Plans provide stable monthly billing at a flat fee. Simply choose from a base plan, modify it (in terms of Cores, RAM, or Disk) if needed, and you pay a flat fee for this 'always-on' Instance. Once activated, your plan is metered at a flat fee. Upgrades are activated at the next billing cycle.

ELASTIC PLANS: Elastic Plans are Usage-based plans that are ideal for customers who may not need continuous 24x7, 'always-on' instances. The Elastic Plans offer maximum flexibility through an hourly charge for the duration that your instances are 'On'. Choose an hourly plan and you can start and stop your instances using the Web Interface– billing will only occur when your instances are 'On'. You can also contract additional CPU cores and Memory on an hourly basis.

What is the 'Baseline' charge in an Elastic plan?

Elastic Plans are Instances for which you pay by the hour with no minimum commitment on usage-based billing. There is, however, a nominal 'Baseline' charge for Elastic plans regardless of usage. The 'Baseline' charge is for ensuring persistent storage – so your data remains even when your Elastic Instance is stopped, as does your VM 'Image' . Baseline charges are debited from your account on a monthly basis, and you can see what the baseline charge for each Elastic Plan is when you're configuration your instances. If you were to 'Shut Down' an Elastic Instance, then the Baseline charges for that particular VM cease immediately.

Baseline charges do NOT apply to Fixed plans.

Is my data persistent? What happens to my data when I stop an instance?

Instances that you configure as Fixed Plans are persistent by default.

If you configure an instance as an Elastic plan, the data is persistent as well unless you 'Shut down' the instance using the control panel. Even if you 'Stop' an Elastic Instance, your data is retained for when you want to 'Start' that particular Instance up again. (See also Baseline charges).

What is the minimum term for a Fixed Instance? What happens if I shut down a Fixed Instance midway through its service term?

The minimum term for a Fixed plan Instance is one month from the date of activation. If you choose and activate a Fixed plan, one month's Billing for that particular configuration is debited from your account.

If you shutdown a Fixed plan midway through the service term you had chosen, you will not get a service credit for the remainder of a service term. For example, if you chose a 1-month service term for a particular server and you shut down the instance after 20 days, you will not get a service credit for the remaining unused 10 days of the service term.

What is the minimum service term for an Elastic Instance?

There is no minimum term for an Elastic Instance, since you pay by the hour for the resources that you use for each Elastic Instance that you configure. However, there is a nominal monthly Baseline charge linked to the Elastic plans for persistent storage.

How many Instances can I create?

As many as you like. The only condition is that you need to have sufficient funds in your account to run those Instances as 'live' servers.

How is an 'Instance-hour' defined in an Elastic plan?

Instance-hours are defined as the duration (in hours) that your instances are in a 'running' state after you have 'Started' them. The moment you 'Stop' a particular Elastic Instance, the hourly charges for that particular instance stop. If you were to 'shut down' the Elastic Instance, then the Baseline charges for that instance immediately cease as well.

How can I scale my VM resources (like CPU, Disk, and Memory)?

Unlike other providers, Netmagic's Cloud 2.0 allows you to scale your instances up and down by adding extra CPU and Memory, and then removing those elements when you don't need them. You can also expand your Disk capacity and upgrade Operating Systems when you're creating your Instances.

FIXED PLAN: Your Fixed Plan comes with certain pre-configured CPU, Disk, and Memory resources (as well as bundled Internet Bandwidth or Data Transfer). If you choose a 'Gold' plan, for instance, that Instance would have 2 cores, 2 GB of RAM, and 20 GB of disk. You can, however, choose to add more cores, memory, and disk to your Fixed instance, in which case these resources would be added to your 'always-on' Instance perpetually. You can do this by clicking the 'Reconfigure' button in the Control Panel in the web interface. Any additional resources you add to the Fixed plan are billed for a minimum of one month. If you remove these additional resources, the reduction in your charges will reflect from the next month's billing.

ELASTIC PLAN: Your Elastic Plan comes with certain pre-configured CPU, Disk, and Memory resources based on which plan you've chosen. In an Elastic plan, you can use the 'Reconfigure' button to add additional resources like CPU and, Memory to an existing Instance and pay for them by the hour. When you no longer need them, click on the 'Reconfigure' button again to scale the instance down to its stock configuration, and charges for those additional resources are immediately stopped (from the next billing hour).

Are the resources for my VM Shared or Committed?

Cores, RAM, and Disk that is allocated to your live Instances will never be shared with another VM.

How do I control my instances? How do I start / stop / edit / shut down my Instances?

Controlling your instances is extremely simple. Once you log in to your VPDC (Virtual Private Data Centre) using your login credentials you'll see icons of all your Virtual Machines on the home screen. To control any of them, either right-click on the Instance in question and click on any of the options in the Context Menu that opens.

OR, you could highlight (single-left-click) on an Instance and use the buttons on the right hand side of the Control Panel to Start, Stop, Shut Down, Refresh, Save or Reconfigure an Instance.

How many IP addresses can I have per instance?

Each Instance comes with one IP address by default. More IP addresses can be provisioned but these have to be provisioned at the time of creating the VM.

What is the difference between 'Managed by Self' and 'Managed by Netmagic'?

As of now, you can choose to have your VM's Managed by Netmagic through our 'InfraManage' range of services. Currently, we offer 'InfraManage OS', which comprises 24x7 OS Management and Administration for your Virtual Server to maximize availability, security, and performance of your Virtual Server. InfraManage OS also includes administration and management of the Webserver, but not the application itself that you may have installed on the Virtual Machine. InfraManage OS is only available for Fixed Plans.

What Managed Services are available?

As of now, you can choose to have your VM's Managed by Netmagic through our 'InfraManage' range of services. Currently, we offer 'InfraManage OS', which comprises 24x7 OS Management and Administration for your Virtual Server to maximize availability, security, and performance of your Virtual Server. InfraManage OS also includes administration and management of the Webserver and Appserver, but not the application itself that you may have installed on the Virtual Machine. InfraManage OS is only available for Fixed Plans.

SimpliCloud also offers other services like a Virtual Firewall Appliance (VFA) and Virtual Load Balancer (VLB), Cloud Storage, etc.

What Database options can I get for my VMs?

The current platform only supports Windows Virtual Instances, so you can install Microsoft SQL Server Database or any other Database that can be technically installed on a Microsoft Virtual Machine.

As we add functionality for the Linux platform, a greater range of databases will become available. If you wish to have MS SQL configured on your Virtual Instance, please contact us at support@netmagicsolutions.com

Can I deploy PHP websites on Windows?

Yes, absolutely. The Microsoft Web platform supports PHP.

Am I charged for data transfer between my instances?

No, absolutely not. Data Transfer between your Instances is completely free.

What happens if I exceed my Plan's quota of allocated data transfer?

If you exceed the allotted data transfer in a particular Fixed plan, then you will be charged for the variable bandwidth consumed and it will debit your account via an online invoice that is generated. You will can monitor your bandwidth usage for a particular Instance through your MyNetmagic portal at any time.

What kind of Firewall services can I get in the Cloud?

Netmagic's SimpliNet Firewall Services are an optional component within Netmagic's Cloud. Customers can add multiple network layer extensions to their Cloud infrastructure to enhance availability, security, and performance. The Virtual Firewall appliance is one such network layer extension.

What is the Virtual Firewall Appliance (VFA) Service?

Netmagic's Virtual Firewall Appliance (VFA) is a ready-to-deploy Input Gateway that provides a Firewalled entry point into a virtual server. The Firewall is provisioned online via the same provisioning portal that customers use to provision their Virtual Servers and other cloud-related services. Protocols supported by the VFA are TCP and UDP.

How many VMs can I have behind a VFA?

There is no limit on the number of Virtual Machines (Virtual Servers) that a customer can place behind a VFA. However, the size of the VFA Instance determines the maximum network throughput to the virtual machines. Customers will need to choose a VFA Instance size based on the maximum throughput desired in conjunction with other feature requirements such as High-Availability and IPSec VPN.

Are VFA / VLB virtual appliances available as an Elastic Instance?

VFA and VLB appliances are only available in 'Fixed' mode, and not in 'Elastic' mode. I.e, VFA /VLB Instances are always on and billed at a flat monthly fee. There is no provision for hourly billing on a VFA / VLB Instance.

How do I provision my Virtual Firewall Appliance (VFA)?

For a detailed step-by-step guide please login to the Provisioning Portal and download the Cloud Virtual Firewall Appliance (VFA) Specsheet from the 'Resources' section of the Provisioning Portal.

How do I manage my Virtual Firewall Appliance (VFA) or my Virtual Load Balancer (VLB)?

Once your VFA / VLB is created, you can manage it from the 'Home' screen of the Provisioning Portal. VFA and VLB appliances are self-managed. To edit/configure/manage your VFA/VLB, right click on the VFA icon in your grid and click on 'Manage'. For detailed instructions on the configuration and management options of each virtual appliance, please login to the Provisioning Portal and download the Cloud Virtual Firewall Appliance (VFA) Specsheet / Cloud Virtual Load Balancer (VLB) Specsheet from the 'Resources' section of the Provisioning Portal.

What about Virtual Firewall Appliance (VFA) IPSEC VPN?

The customers who subscribe to the VFA Large Instance can avail of the VPN functionality of the virtual appliance, which offers:

Site-to-site VPN
Dialup VPN

The site-to-site VPN provides end-to-end IPsec encryption, with the following encryption levels supported:

3 DES
AES 128 Bits
AES 256 Bits

IPSEC VPN functionality is NOT available on Small and Medium Size VFA instances. The VFA Large instance supports 5 Site -to -Site Tunnels. For more details please login to the Provisioning Portal and download the Cloud Virtual Firewall Appliance (VFA) Specsheet from the 'Resources' section of the Provisioning Portal.

What kind of High Availability does the VFA / VLB offer?

Customers who subscribe to either Medium or Large Size VFAs / VLBs can contract HA (High Availability) services to ensure maximum redundancy. These customers will not only attain resiliency at the device level, but also a secondary level of resilience via a Second Network Uplink. The HA option provides an additional layer of redundancy for the customer's Cloud infrastructure and ensures continued uptime in case of a site-specific Cloud failure. The HA works on a failover mode and in the event that the primary VFA instance is unavailable, the secondary instance will take over immediately and resume protection of the customer's Cloud infrastructure without any service disruption.

For detailed instructions on the High Availability options of each virtual appliance, please login to the Provisioning Portal and download the Cloud Virtual Firewall Appliance (VFA) Specsheet / Cloud Virtual Load Balancer (VLB) Specsheet from the 'Resources' section of the Provisioning Portal.

Is my bandwidth aggregated with the VFA/VLB?

Yes. Virtual Firewall (VFA) and Virtual Load Balancer (VLB) Appliances provides a single uplink, which means the individual bandwidth of your multiple VMs is aggregated / consolidated into a unified total and measured at the VFA uplink point. For example, if you have contracted 5 Windows VMs with 40GB data transfer each, you will get a consolidated / aggregated monthly total of 200GB per month. In this case, if a single VM uses more than it's contracted bandwidth, you will not be charged for overage as long as the monthly total doesn't exceed the aggregated / consolidated amount of data transfer.

How do I decommission my Virtual Firewall Appliance (VFA) or Virtual Load Balancer (VLB)?

To de-commission a VFA or VLB appliance, simply right-click on the appliance icon in the home Screen and click on 'Delete'. For security reasons, you will be shown a 'captcha' and asked to enter the text shown in the image before confirming deletion of the appliance.

Since a VFA / VLB allows the data transfer to be aggregated, decommissioning of these appliances will un-aggregate the data transfer, and bandwidth utilization will now be individually measured and billed from the next billing cycle. For this purpose, if a customer decommissions a VFA or VLB, the corresponding service and billing changes shall be effective only from the next billing cycle. Please note that the decommissioning of VFA and VLB appliances will involve a minor downtime (5 – 10 minutes).

For detailed instructions on decommissioning these virtual appliances, please login to the Provisioning Portal and download the Cloud Virtual Firewall Appliance (VFA) Specsheet / Cloud Virtual Load Balancer (VLB) Specsheet from the 'Resources' section of the Provisioning Portal.

What happens if I don't renew a VFA on time?

If a VFA was to expire due to non-renewal then the VFA will be shut down and the VMs behind the firewall will automatically be exposed to the entire world. The VFA configuration will exist in a dormant state for 15 days from the date of stopping the service. Within those 15 days if the firewall is renewed the customer setup will again be moved behind the Firewall and the earlier VFA rules/policies configured by the customer rules will be retained

What default Ports does the VFA allow/disallow?

As a security 'best practice' from a public cloud perspective Netmagic reserves the right to permanently block certain ports which often lead to security threats on a public cloud and not allow the customer to change / edit rules pertaining to these ports.

For more details please login to the Provisioning Portal and download the Cloud Virtual Firewall Appliance (VFA) Specsheet from the 'Resources' section of the Provisioning Portal.

What is a Virtual Load Balancer and what does it do?

Netmagic's Virtual Load Balancer Appliance (VLB) is a ready-to-deploy Input Gateway that provides a Load Balanced entry point into multiple virtual servers. The Load Balancer is provisioned online via the same provisioning portal that customers use to provision their Virtual Servers and other cloud-related services. Protocols supported by the VLB are TCP and UDP.

How many VMs can be placed behind a VLB?

There is no limit on the number of Virtual Machines (Virtual Servers) that a customer can place behind a VLB. However, the size of the VLB Instance determines the maximum number of concurrent connections that can be handled. Customers will need to choose a VLB Instance size based on the maximum number of concurrent connections they have estimated.

How do I provision my Virtual Firewall Appliance (VLB)?

For a detailed step-by-step guide please login to the Provisioning Portal and download the Cloud Virtual Load Balancer Appliance (VLB) Specsheet from the 'Resources' section of the Provisioning Portal.

What kind of Load Balancing Methods does the VLB support?

The VLB Supports the following Load Balancing methods.

Round Robin
Least Connection
Source IP

For more details on these load-balancing methods please login to the Provisioning Portal and download the Cloud Virtual Load Balancer Appliance (VLB) Specsheet from the 'Resources' section of the Provisioning Portal

How do I handle my SSL websites?

Customers who want to host SSL-based websites can use the SSL offloading support supported on Large VLB instance. Using this feature will enable the VLB to accept incoming https connections on port 443 on the VLB and forward them to the VMs as http traffic. Customers can use either self signed certificate or they can upload certificate signed by third party certificate authorities like Thawte , Versign etc.

What happens if I don't renew my VLB on time?

If for some reason a VLB is not renewed in a timely fashion, it will be automatically deactivated. In this case any website or application behind the VLB will be rendered temporarily unavailable as the IP to which aforementioned website / application is point to will be a the decommissioned (unavailable) VLB instance. Netmagic will not be held responsible to any downtime arising from a non-renewal of a VLB instance as this is the customer's responsibility to ensure that contracted infrastructure is renewed in a timely fashion.

If a situation arises where a VLB has been deactivated, then the customer can either renew the same VLB instance within 15 days of deactivation. Netmagic will retain the configuration of the VLB instance for 15 days. If the VLB is not renewed within 15 days then the configuration of the VLB and SSL Certificates, etc will be automatically deleted. In this case the customer will have to create a new VLB instance as well as upload certificates again (if SSL offloading is needed).

What kind of Backup services can I get in the Cloud?

Users can choose to backup their data independently or via Netmagic Advanced Backup services. The latter is an advanced automated backup service performed and managed by Netmagic - backups are done to redundant high-performance SANs for maximum performance, security, and reliability and use advanced algorithms to ensure that the backup window is greatly reduced. The advanced backup service makes use of a client that is installed on the server to execute the backups on a daily basis. Advanced Backup services configured based on inputs from the customer (ie...what files and folders need to be backed up), and then executed accordingly. The service follows a schedule of 'daily incremental & weekly full', which means that incremental backups are taken once a day and a full backup / overwrite happens every seven days.

Alternately, since users have root access to their servers, they can install any backup client / software of their choice and perform remote backups to a destination of their choosing. In such a scenario, Netmagic is neither responsible for the backup nor restores (if any).

What happens to my data if I accidentally 'kill' or 'delete' one or more VMs?

Measures have been put in place to ensure that administrators do not mistakenly shut down a VM. These include asking for multiple confirmations before deleting a virtual machine or virtual appliance, including asking customers to enter text from a 'captcha'. This would make the possibility of mistakenly shutting down a VM highly unlikely.

In the unlikely event that a customer's administrator still 'deletes' a VM, the data for that VM would still be available for a restore as long as the customer had opted for 'Advanced Backup Services' and had performed regular backups on the VM in question. Please note that restore request would need to comply with the backup retention policy.

How secure is Netmagic's online payment system?

How do I make a payment and what are the payment terms?

Making a payment is made extremely simple through the SimpliCloud Web Interface. Simply log in to your account, and click on the 'Add Funds' button on the top left hand side of the control panel on the Home screen. Users in India have the option of paying using a Credit Card, Debit Card, or NetBanking. International users can pay using an international Visa or Mastercard credit card. Payments take 2-3 days to reflect in your account.

You need to ensure that you always maintain enough Credit (or 'Funds Balance') in your account to stay within the Credit Limit and ensure uninterrupted operation of your Instances.

How am I charged for usage?

In an Elastic Plan you pay only for what you use. Pricing is per instance-hour consumed for each instance type (along with a Baseline charge for persistent storage). Keep in mind that if you partially use an Instance-hours, it will be billed as a full hours. There is no Data Transfer charge between instances, regardless of whether they are Fixed or Elastic Instances.

When does Billing for a particular instance begin and end?

Billing commences when you finishing configuring and creating a new Virtual Instance (or 'Restart' an existing instance) and the boot sequence of that particular instance is initiated. Billing ends when the instance terminates, either through a 'Stop' command issued for that Instance or through a 'Shut down' command. (see also Baseline charges).

How do I contact Support?

Our Helpdesk is available around the clock and you can reach us at any time for all your Support queries at via email at support@netmagicsolutions.com or via phone at +91-22-26850123.

How do I renew my services?

Renewals for services are done Online using the Web Interface. All you need to do to 'renew' services is add more funds to your account to ensure uninterrupted operation of your Virtual Instances. Since payments for services used are debited against a 'Funds Balance' you maintain with us, as long as there are funds in your account your services will continue uninterrupted.

You'll receive monthly automated invoices for the services you've used, and payments can also be made against these invoices.