This article originally appeared at The WHIR
London-based cloud hosting provider ElasticHosts has launched a container-based cloud infrastructure service, Springs.io, which features elastic capacity scaling and pay-per-use billing at lower prices than equivalent virtualization-based cloud services like Amazon Web Services.
Springs.io builds upon ElasticHosts’ container technology which automatically scales to provide customers capacity to match their needs at any given time. As capacity demands increase, new containers can boot up in just two seconds and they don’t have the overhead of virtualization.
The usage fees are relatively simple and based on actual loads. Processing is priced at $0.008 per MHz used per hour, and a GB of RAM is $0.011 per hour. Storage is $0.25 per month per GB of SSD used. After a free TB of initial data transfer, additional transfers are charged at $0.050 per GB. And a static public IP address is $2 per month.
Users can choose a limit to how large their applications automatically scale ranging from 500 to 20,000, and 256MB to 32GB of RAM.
While it’s not using Docker or Linux Containers (LXC), Springs.io uses similarLinux kernel containerization technologies for container isolation and control. It is also built on high-speed SSD storage to enhance performance.
The aim behind Springs.io is to provide a simple, economical, and highly scalable hosting service to meet the needs of most Linux developers, agencies, and SMBs, and that containers provide the right technology to achieve this.
“We believe this is how all cloud infrastructure will look in years to come and are proud to be leading the charge,” Springs.io founder Richard Davies said in a statement.
“We have been listening to the market and what we are hearing is that people are craving simplicity,” he said. “While some customers need greater support and configuration, many don’t, and we wanted to provide a service for users that are looking for a more simplistic offering… Businesses need a whole new service that strips away any complications, which is what Springs.io offers.”
As Computer Weekly notes, Springs.IO provides a similar proposition to what ElasticHosts offers with its Elastic Containers product, but launching Springs.IO as a separate entity seems to be a way to capitalize on recent interest in containerization technologies. But creating a new division also ensures that Springs.IO can navigate a new container-based hosting business model without carrying the baggage of a traditional hosting provider.
This first ran at http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/cloud-provider-elastichosts-launches-container-hosting-service-springs-io
