Commercial questions
What is the difference between public and private cloud?
OVH offers both a Public Cloud and a Private Cloud solution.
Public Cloud provides you with a full range of cloud resources (computing, storage, network) and orchestration tools for containers. Public Cloud is a shared infrastructure based on OpenStack which means it is highly scalability. The solution is billed according to your actual usage in a clear way that simplifies budget management.
Private Cloud is a dedicated cloud solution which provides an additional level of isolation: the servers that you use to deploy your solution are entirely your own, and no-one else has access. All resources are virtualised with VMware software. This gives you control over the infrastructure, as the cluster administrator.
How can I get started with Public Cloud?
You can order via the OVH Control Panel. You just need to create a Public Cloud project, then launch a resource from the services available in the left-hand menu. You get a monthly invoice using the payment method selected when you created the project.
How do I deploy a Public Cloud project?
A Public Cloud project is a collection of cloud resources that are part of the same group. You can create different projects in order to separate the different activities you are working on, or to separate your test and production environments. Each project is also administered separately, with its own user management and dedicated billing.
Which payment methods do you accept?
OVH offers you various means of payment: credit card, direct debit, PayPal and bank transfer. You will be prompted to select and save one of them when you first activate your Public Cloud project.
How does Public Cloud billing work?
Between the first and the 5th of the month you will get an invoice for any resources used during the previous month. With monthly billing, you are invoiced for the coming month, along with any extra charges from the previous month (e.g. instances, object storage). If you decide to shift to monthly billing for any resource, you get an immediate prorate bill for the current month.
You will be billed for instances until you delete them in the OVH Control Panel.
You can track your usage with projections based on your usage history. You also have the option of choosing a separate billing method for each Public Cloud project within your organisation.
Does Public Cloud charge for incoming and outgoing traffic from instances?
Inbound public traffic, as well as inbound and outbound private traffic (i.e. the vRack), are unlimited and free across all our Public Cloud regions.
Outbound public traffic is also free and unlimited, with the exception of the Singapore (SGP) and Sydney (SYD) regions, where 1.024 GB/month per project, per datacentre is available. Each additional GB will be charged for (see the "Prices" page).
How can I use cloud credit?
Cloud credit is available for users who want to simplify and consolidate their project bills. It is ideal for projects with a predictable lifespan, or for organisations that want to pay in advance for their cloud resources.
As with instances, a cloud credit purchase results in an invoice. Once each project is credited, all related invoices will be paid for with the available cloud credit amount.
SLA questions
What SLAs do you offer for Public Cloud instances?
OVH is committed to the following service levels:
-
Guaranteed Resource instances (CPU, RAM, General Purpose): monthly availability rate of 99.999%
- Sandbox instances: 99.95% monthly availability rate
- GPU instances: monthly availability rate of 99.999%
In the event of our Support Team experiencing a loss of connectivity (excluding scheduled maintenance), 0.5% per minute of downtime will be reimbursed for up to 50% of your instance-related usage for the month concerned.
For more information, please see general Terms & Conditions.
What SLAs do you offer for Object Storage?
OVH is committed to the following service levels:
- Object Storage containers: 99.9% monthly availability
- 100% monthly data resilience rate
In the event of our Support Team experiencing a loss of connectivity (excluding scheduled maintenance), a 0.5% compensation per minute of downtime is earned for up to 100% of your usage related to Object Storage containers.
If the data resilience rate is not met, 100% of your usage related to Object Storage containers will be compensated.
For more information, please consult the general Terms & Conditions.
Technical product questions
Which version of OpenStack do you use for Public Cloud?
The details of each OpenStack item available, as well as its version:
| OpenStack Version | SBG1 | SBG3 | SBG5 | GRA1 | GRA3 | GRA5 | BHS1 | BHS3 | BHS5 | DE1 | WAW1! | UK1 | SGP1 | SYD1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Global | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N |
| Keystone | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | O |
| Horizon | P | P | P | P | P | P | P | P | P | P | P | P | P | P |
| 2012 - Swift | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N |
| Nova | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N |
| Neutron | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N |
| Cinder | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N |
| Glance | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N |
| Heat | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | O | O |
| Mistral | R | R | R | R | R | R | R | R | R | R | R | R | R | R |
N Newton
B Ocata
P Pike
M: Rocky
What bandwidth do you offer on the public network?
OVH guarantees 250 Mbps of bandwidth for most instances with guaranteed resources of up to four vCores, then 500 Mbps for instances above that. Sandbox instances have bandwidth of up to 100 Mbps.
What disk performance do you offer?
OVH guarantees up to 500 IOPS for Sandbox instances, and up to 1000 IOPS for other instances. Additional disks have a performance level of up to 250 IOPS for Classic disks and up to 3,000 IOPS for High Speed disks.
How do I add or remove instances?
All instances can be upscaled to more powerful instances from the same range. It is also possible to downscale an instance to a less powerful model, if it was launched with the flex option. This imposes a 50 GB disk size for all models and lets you scale up and down.
In both cases, this will involve rebooting.
Are Public Cloud instances compatible with cloud-init?
Yes. Cloud images provided by OVH include cloud-init scripts that allow you to customise instances when you launch them. The infrastructure provides instance customisation information via a metadata server, which cloud-init contacts directly.
Which regions is Public Cloud available in?
In France, our datacentres in Strasbourg and Gravelines are ready to host your Public Cloud services. Our datacentres in London (United Kingdom), Frankfurt (Germany) and Warsaw (Poland) also offer Public Cloud. Our datacentre in Beauharnois, Canada, is ideal for your Public Cloud services in North America. Finally, our datacentres in Sydney (Australia) and Singapore cover the Asia-Pacific region.
Can I back up my Public Cloud servers?
You can create Backup instances of your servers at any time, with no limitations. These backups are stored and invoiced as images in the Private Image Catalog. You can download them from the OVH infrastructure, or from other projects, using the OpenStack APIs.
Can I use Windows licenses on Public Cloud instances?
Yes. You can choose to launch a Windows instance via the OVH Control Panel, or install the Windows image of your choice via your Horizon interface.
In order to keep the pricing for Windows instances simple and easy to read, the price differences between them and our Linux instances are shown on our product pages. Just click on the "Make your choice" button.
Technical usage questions
Can you scale your instance up or down while it is running?
No. To change the flavour of an instance, you have to restart the server.
Can you add a local SSD volume to an instance?
No. The additional volumes must be external Ceph volumes.
Can you mount an additional volume on several servers at the same time?
No, although this feature is currently being developed on OpenStack. It will be available in future releases.
Can you resize a volume dynamically, while continuing to write on the disk?
No. You must detach a volume before resizing it.
Do volumes have a global IOPS limit, or is there a specific limit for each volume?
Each volume has its own IOPS limit. There is also a global limit for instance models, which varies depending on their size.
How many additional volumes can I attach to each instance?
You can attach up to 25 additional volumes per instance.
How are my servers secured?
The entire OVH infrastructure is protected by our industry-leading anti-DDoS solution. In addition, you can add the OpenStack security groups. This firewall equivalent is managed directly through the OpenStack infrastructure, above your instances.
These protections, combined with others that you can launch on your servers, will help you maximise the reliability of your solutions.
How can I create a private network between my servers?
The OVH Public Cloud includes a software-defined network (SDN) solution. This allows you to dynamically create private networks and connect them to your instances, which can be done via the OVH Control Panel or the API.
These private networks are created with OVH's vRack technology, which is also compatible with our other solutions, such as Private Cloud or dedicated servers. It enables isolated, secure connections between the different elements of your infrastructure and OVH’s datacentres.
Asia-Pacific (Singapore and Sydney)
How is the traffic for instances hosted in Sydney or Singapore billed?
Each Public Cloud project includes 1 TB (1.024 GB) of monthly outgoing traffic per datacentre. Additional outbound traffic is charged at €0.069 ex VAT/GB.
Note: all OVH datacentres in Europe and North America offer unlimited traffic at no extra charge.
How can I track traffic usage for my instances hosted in Sydney and Singapore?
In the OVH Control Panel, go to the "Cloud" section and select your project. Click on "Administrative management", and then on "Consumption". You can then view your traffic consumption by cloud project and datacentre.
Please note that the information displayed may take up to three hours to update, and reflect your actual usage.
Will I get an alert if the traffic threshold for my instances in Sydney and Singapore is about to be exceeded?
No. There is no alert system for your traffic consumption.
How is my traffic quota calculated when I use instances in Sydney or Singapore on an hourly basis?
There is no difference in the traffic quota, whether an instance is invoiced on an hourly or monthly basis. This is always based on total outbound traffic, per cloud project and per datacentre.
Is my traffic quota for Sydney and Singapore based on public and private traffic, or just public traffic?
Private traffic is free and unlimited. However, OVH monitors over-consumption (over 75% of the network capacity over 72 minutes in the last 24 hours) on private networks, suspending the instance in question if this threshold is exceeded.
Is my traffic quota for Sydney and Singapore based on inbound or outbound traffic?
Billing is calculated based on any outbound public traffic that exceeds the included traffic quota. Inbound traffic is not charged for.
Is there an API that allows me to track my data consumption?
This solution is currently being developed at OVH.
If I don't use my full traffic quota, will it be carried forward to the next month?
No. Each month, the included traffic quota is reset to 1 TB per datacentre, regardless of the previous month's consumption.
Can I transfer my included traffic to Sydney and Singapore between accounts, between Public Cloud projects or between datacentres from the same project?
No. The traffic quotas for Sydney and Singapore cannot be transferred or carried over from one month to the next.