We are launching Windows Cloud Servers, Looking for beta testers ??

Cloudcone

Hi guys,

Hope you all are staying safe!

We've been working on implementing Windows servers to our platform in the past few weeks for our clients. I'm excited to announce that it's finally here.

We are looking for beta testers who are willing to provide us with feedback and suggestions for our Windows offerings.

I have put down a few tips, so we can be on the same page in terms of what we're looking for in the beta test.

• Deployment process of servers.
• RDP Usability
• CPU Usage
• Backup processes (CloudCone's Automated Backups)
• I would not recommend hosting sensitive data on these servers as we might destroy or suspend any server at any given time (when the beta test is over)
• There is a feedback icon on the management page, your feedback is highly appreciated.

WINDOWS-BETA-2

3 vCPU Cores
2048 MB RAM
40 GB RAID Enabled SSD
1 x IPv4 and 3 x IPv6
3 TB Bandwidth
$0.00/MO (for limited Free Beta Test)

Steps to deploy

1. Create an account at https://app.cloudcone.com/signup
2. Order: https://app.cloudcone.com/compute/1206/create-windows?token=windows-beta-a.1r.1&src=les-win-beta

Note: - The latest version of Google Chrome is automatically downloaded to the desktop for faster install

Only 40 beta testing slots available

Looking forward

Thanks,
CloudCone LLC
Since 2012

royed

Cool! btw the registration mail via mxroute is not received. Gmail works tho. --> Got it now, it took 30+ minutes to deliver, Gmail was instant. Dunno why.

codelock

Sign up email went to spam in Gmail and outlook might want to try something like mxroute to improve that

furkey

I got my instance. Thanks for that one. Do you want any kind of reporting or test for use cases? I will be happy to give any info that's important to you.

TheDP

Cloudcone

@thedp said:

Hi,

This plan is not out of stock yet - https://app.cloudcone.com/compute/1206/create-windows?token=windows-beta-a.1r.1&src=les-win-beta

Cloudcone

@furkey said:
I got my instance. Thanks for that one. Do you want any kind of reporting or test for use cases? I will be happy to give any info that's important to you.

Thank you, please fill in this survey - http://clco.cc/jUglz
If there are any other issues with the server, please let us know

yoursunny

Registration email is in Gmail spam. You may need DKIM signature.

Deploying queue is more than an hour, but there's this:

I've never used a Windows Server 2019 and I'd see how it works.

sanvit

Although

sanvit

Anyway, it would be better without the select button, if there's only 2016 and 2019 (one more click required)

Ganonk

wow congrats for your launching ?

Cloudcone

@sanvit said:

Hi,

I believe that your server was in the queue and it should be deployed now.

atomi

I got an email saying that my server is installed, but panel shows there was quite many tasks still running. If you can tweak it to fire later when server is actually fully ready, then I would do that

valkyrie

Kongrats on your launching my guy! Also thanks for the instance

Cloudcone

There were some reported network issues which has been fixed, it was a routing issue.

I see certain VMs doing a lot of CPUs than others, it's a beta test after all, so looks ok

Cloudcone

All slots are full, the deployment links will say it's out of stock now.

Hoping to let it run for a day or two!

valkyrie

Hmmmmm, it's just weird that if I enable IPv6 then remove every IPs, it should something like "IPv6 disabled" and not this.
There's no way to enable back the IPv6 now

valkyrie

IPv6 does work though, but there's no IP assigned to it

vyas

congratulations on the email hosting launch @Cloudcone

royed

Best way to give feedback is the ticket system?

Cloudcone

Thanks to everyone who participated on the beta test! We see a lot of stress on the CPUs which is what we were looking for.

Your involvement in this beta test was extremely helpful for us to test the stability and usability of the service on your end and on ours.

We will be revoking ownership of the servers from your accounts in 12 hours from now, and continue the testing on our end. Any honest feedback you have, can be shared with us anonymously on the official form: http://clco.cc/jUglz

There were 250 total slots available, and we are proud to say that every slot was filled and you were a part of it

You can have the testing scripts or any tools which you may have used running on the server, and also don't forget to delete any personal/sensitive data stored on these servers (if any)

@codelock said:
Sign up email went to spam in Gmail and outlook might want to try something like mxroute to improve that

There was a problem with DKIM, maybe the reason it went to SPAM

@atomi said:
I got an email saying that my server is installed, but panel shows there was quite many tasks still running. If you can tweak it to fire later when server is actually fully ready, then I would do that

The first email you recieve is the confirmation email. Windows do take a long time to deploy, usually non busy system took 3 - 4 minutes. During testing we noticed as the systems gets busier, the provisioning took 15 minutes. Thanks for the feedback!

@vyas said:
congratulations on the email hosting launch @Cloudcone

Sorry about that. It was not intentional

@royed said:
Best way to give feedback is the ticket system?

Ticket is also fine, you may also use the form: http://clco.cc/jUglz

yoursunny

It's my first time playing with Windows Server 2019.
Running a desktop in 2GB memory isn't working well. I'd recommend offering a "Windows Server Core" installation template that only have a PowerShell by default.

I can't find any Windows benchmark script so I installed Ubuntu 18.04 in WSL container, and ran a benchmark there.

-------------------------------------------------
 nench.sh v2019.07.20 -- https://git.io/nench.sh
 benchmark timestamp:    2020-10-15 15:40:21 UTC
-------------------------------------------------

Processor:    Intel Core Processor (Haswell, no TSX, IBRS)
CPU cores:    3
Frequency:    2600.000 MHz
RAM:          2.0G
Swap:         -
Kernel:       Linux 4.4.0-17763-Microsoft x86_64

Disks:
lsblk: failed to access sysfs directory: /sys/dev/block: No such file or directory
Filesystem     Type   Size Inodes

CPU: SHA256-hashing 500 MB
    18.139 seconds
CPU: bzip2-compressing 500 MB
    55.080 seconds
CPU: AES-encrypting 500 MB
    14.979 seconds

ioping: seek rate
    min/avg/max/mdev = 3.90 us / 44.9 us / 69.3 ms / 491.4 us
ioping: sequential read speed
    generated 8.98 k requests in 5.00 s, 2.19 GiB, 1.79 k iops, 448.6 MiB/s

dd: sequential write speed
    1st run:    48.16 MiB/s
    2nd run:    85.35 MiB/s
    3rd run:    73.62 MiB/s
    average:    69.05 MiB/s

IPv4 speedtests
    your IPv4:    134.195.208.xxxx

    Cachefly CDN:         2.15 MiB/s
    Leaseweb (NL):        1.08 MiB/s
    Softlayer DAL (US):   6.92 MiB/s
    Online.net (FR):      1.34 MiB/s
    OVH BHS (CA):         3.70 MiB/s

No IPv6 connectivity detected
-------------------------------------------------

Network speed seems low. I don't think it's caused by WSL, as I'm seeing similar speeds in Task Manager when I'm downloading the WSL installer in PowerShell.

sureiam

Windows servers without the very basic firewall change (set it to drop ALL incoming and disable all rules) will get rocked pretty quick. Additionally open to the world RDP is a horrible horrible idea.. I wouldn't want to be provider offering this to just any novice user. Especially because a lot of users specifically pick windows because they are uncomfortable hardening+managing a Linux server.

FridayNightGamer

@sureiam said:
Windows servers without the very basic firewall change (set it to drop ALL incoming and disable all rules) will get rocked pretty quick. Additionally open to the world RDP is a horrible horrible idea.. I wouldn't want to be provider offering this to just any novice user. Especially because a lot of users specifically pick windows because they are uncomfortable hardening+managing a Linux server.

From what I have seen, for a novice managing a Linux server is harder. Atleast, by default firewall rules in windows are set to reject all incoming. Even RDP. And yes, RDP has its challenges but it has come a long way. Just set a good password and a timeout period of 45 minutes and you are good to go.

yoursunny

@sureiam said:
a lot of users specifically pick windows because they are uncomfortable hardening+managing a Linux server.

Windows offering should default to Windows Core. All you get is a PowerShell. No desktop.
Bonus point: disable RDP and allow access to that PowerShell over SSH.

The RDP in Los Angeles is slower than SSH in Singapore, from East Coast USA.