Micronode Instances - Launching Black Friday

Micronode

What on earth is a Micronode Instance?

The Micronode instance range is a way for you to create virtual private servers in any of our locations at any specification you like.

What are the costs?

MicroNode instances work on a pre-paid credit based system. Credits are valid for 1 year regardless of the amount of resource used.

Credits cost £10 per year each however we will be offering 50% off on the Black Friday launch.

What does one credit give me?

Once credit = 512MB RAM and 20GB Disk

What happens when I've used all of my resources?

You can simply purchase more credits or delete some instances to free up resource.

What about CPU cores?

Instances can only ever be single core.

How many instances does 1 credit get me?

The Minimum requirements to provision an instance is 64MB RAM and 3GB disk. You can provision up to 6 instances with 3GB Disk and 85MB RAM or less higher spec'd instances.

But you only have 3 locations

As more locations are added to our NatVPS range they will also become available to Micronode instances. We aim to add a minimum of 4 locations per year.

What happens if a location is out of stock?

We will aim to add more stock as soon as possible. We will ensure that at least 1 location has available resources to create instances. You will not be entitled to a refund unless no locations are available.

Is this fully supported?

No. Instances come with no support unless a location is down. If your instance is down the recommendation is to delete it and create a new one.

Can I re-install the OS on an instance?

No. Instances cannot be re-provisioned, they must be deleted and re-created.

If I delete an instance can I get the IP address(es) back?

No

Can I migrate an instance to another location?

No. You can however delete your instance and re-create it in another location.

Can I change the specifications of an instance?

No. You can however delete your instance and re-create it with your required specifications.

TLDR: Micronode instances are a way for you to create virtual private servers in any of our locations at any specification you like. The price is £10 per year for 512MB RAM and 20GB Disk.

These will launch on Black Friday along with a brand new location, these will be reduced to 50% off for Black Friday only!

These are NAT only and IPv6 may be tunneled in some locations. Don't like tunneled IPv6? Pretend there is no IPv6 connectivity and use IPv4!

Please let us know if anyone has any questions or feedback, this is a new market for us and we're trying to answer everyone's questions before launch.

Micronode

@FrankZ @Mason Apologizes for adding this to LES Exclusive - I got a little trigger happy and posted before I'd picked the category! Could this be moved to discussions or news?

FrankZ

@natvps_uk said:
@FrankZ Mason Apologizes for adding this to LES Exclusive - I got a little trigger happy and posted before I'd picked the category! Could this be moved to discussions or news?

Moved to News as requested.

Jab

Now 75% off for LET Exclusive as punishment!
Joking ofc.

Good luck with sale!

dosai

No mention about bandwidth?

Micronode

@dosai said:
No mention about bandwidth?

Unlimited

ehab

its exciting to see such possibility. Look forward for launch.

dosai

@natvps_uk said:

@dosai said:
No mention about bandwidth?

Unlimited

Great, hoping to see APAC region in the future.

legendary

This deal could look fragrant if:

1. Proper, clickable URL provided to order page;
2. Less irrelevant text. WoT with FAQ. Tafak?
3. Less cumbersome billing. Credits? What else, manual service provisioning?

Overall: improve your advertisement and be more simple. Here folks are with refined taste and WoT is definitely not on the pallet.

Jab

@natvps_uk said: IPv6 may be tunneled in some locations. Don't like tunneled IPv6? Pretend there is no IPv6 connectivity and use IPv4!

cc @yoursunny trigger PTSD

Micronode

@legendary said:
This deal could look fragrant if:

1. Proper, clickable URL provided to order page;
2. Less irrelevant text. WoT with FAQ. Tafak?
3. Less cumbersome billing. Credits? What else, manual service provisioning?

Overall: improve your advertisement and be more simple. Here folks are with refined taste and WoT is definitely not on the pallet.

Just to be clear, this is not a deal - this is an announcement of a deal that will be available on Black Friday.

The Q&A style is to answer everyone’s questions before launch. The purpose of this thread is to allow people to ask any questions prior to the launch.

The credit system is clearly explained above, it’s not clumbersome at all. It’s essentially a way to provide a bundle where people can change their locations.

Just to be very clear on the Manual Service Provisioning point. All micronode services are delivered within two minutes via automated provisioning subject to a fraud check.

ralf

@natvps_uk said:
The credit system is clearly explained above, it’s not clumbersome at all. It’s essentially a way to provide a bundle where people can change their locations.

I very much disagree with this statement.

@natvps_uk said: What are the costs?
MicroNode instances work on a pre-paid credit based system. Credits are valid for 1 year regardless of the amount of resource used.

Valid for 1 year - does this mean they expire after one year or that the credit gives the use of the VPS for one year?

Credits cost £10 per year each however we will be offering 50% off on the Black Friday launch.

Is that £10 per credit or £10 for some credits?

What does one credit give me?
Once credit = 512MB RAM and 20GB Disk

Is this per month for one credit or per year?

Why do you have separate sliders if you get a fixed about of RAM and disk for a credit?

What happens when I've used all of my resources?
You can simply purchase more credits or delete some instances to free up resource.

How does the deleting an instance help? Are the credits just buying some maximal total configuration and you can reassign it at will? Is so, why not just say so?

What about CPU cores?
Instances can only ever be single core.

Why? And in any case is it a dedicated core, or a shared core, or a dedicated thread or a shared thread?

You've also not given any clue about specs? Is the CPU an Atom or a recent high-end EPYC?

What about network and bandwidth? The specs seem to indicate that IPv4 is NATted.

The fact the screenshot talks about TAP/TUN suggest that it's LXC, which is a major turn off and should be mentioned up front.

To me, if I'm understanding any of this correctly, a tenner a year gets me a 512MB RAM, 20GB disk of a shared thread on an unknown CPU, that's NATted with no information about bandwidth usage.

Micronode

@ralf said:

@natvps_uk said:
The credit system is clearly explained above, it’s not clumbersome at all. It’s essentially a way to provide a bundle where people can change their locations.

I very much disagree with this statement.

@natvps_uk said: What are the costs?
MicroNode instances work on a pre-paid credit based system. Credits are valid for 1 year regardless of the amount of resource used.

Valid for 1 year - does this mean they expire after one year or that the credit gives the use of the VPS for one year?

Credits cost £10 per year each however we will be offering 50% off on the Black Friday launch.

Is that £10 per credit or £10 for some credits?

What does one credit give me?
Once credit = 512MB RAM and 20GB Disk

Is this per month for one credit or per year?

Why do you have separate sliders if you get a fixed about of RAM and disk for a credit?

What happens when I've used all of my resources?
You can simply purchase more credits or delete some instances to free up resource.

How does the deleting an instance help? Are the credits just buying some maximal total configuration and you can reassign it at will? Is so, why not just say so?

What about CPU cores?
Instances can only ever be single core.

Why? And in any case is it a dedicated core, or a shared core, or a dedicated thread or a shared thread?

1 credit = 512Mb RAM and 20GB disk. You are free to do what you want with this resource. The credit is valid for 1 year. 1 credit is £10.

Credits are simply an amount of resource, you can reuse this resource indefinitely whilst your credit is valid. Deleting an instance frees up resource and allows you to create a new instance.

1 VM does not = 1 credit! Hence the difference in the sliders for RAM and CPU. You can create as many instances as you like within the amount of resource provided by your credits.

I hope this clears things up and apologies if it was overly confusing.

As for the single CPU core, these are real budget offerings, if you want more then our VPS deals are more fitting.

duckgo

Cool, look forward to that

yoursunny

Suppose I purchase one credit on Dec 01 and purchase another credit on Dec 11, I would have two credits until Dec 01 next year.
Now I create several VMs to use up all resources from the two credits, but each VM is smaller than the resources given by one credit.
On Dec 01 next year, one of the credits would expire.
My VMs are now exceeding the limits of my remaining one credit.
How does the system determine which VMs should be deleted?

Micronode

@yoursunny said:
Suppose I purchase one credit on Dec 01 and purchase another credit on Dec 11, I would have two credits until Dec 01 next year.
Now I create several VMs to use up all resources from the two credits, but each VM is smaller than the resources given by one credit.
On Dec 01 next year, one of the credits would expire.
My VMs are now exceeding the limits of my remaining one credit.
How does the system determine which VMs should be deleted?

Very good question!

Currently it is down to the customer to ensure that they do not go over their resource limits on credit expiry. All VMs are suspended until either X amount are deleted to free up resource or more credits are added.

Micronode

@natvps_uk said:

@yoursunny said:
Suppose I purchase one credit on Dec 01 and purchase another credit on Dec 11, I would have two credits until Dec 01 next year.
Now I create several VMs to use up all resources from the two credits, but each VM is smaller than the resources given by one credit.
On Dec 01 next year, one of the credits would expire.
My VMs are now exceeding the limits of my remaining one credit.
How does the system determine which VMs should be deleted?

Very good question!

Currently it is down to the customer to ensure that they do not go over their resource limits on credit expiry. All VMs are suspended until either X amount are deleted to free up resource or more credits are added.

Essentially the credits purchased on December 1st are no longer valid however the credits purchased on December 11th remain valid until expiry.

legendary

"simplistic credit system" this has some drama potential. I hope.

yoursunny

@natvps_uk said:

@yoursunny said:
Suppose I purchase one credit on Dec 01 and purchase another credit on Dec 11, I would have two credits until Dec 01 next year.
Now I create several VMs to use up all resources from the two credits, but each VM is smaller than the resources given by one credit.
On Dec 01 next year, one of the credits would expire.
My VMs are now exceeding the limits of my remaining one credit.
How does the system determine which VMs should be deleted?

Very good question!

Currently it is down to the customer to ensure that they do not go over their resource limits on credit expiry. All VMs are suspended until either X amount are deleted to free up resource or more credits are added.

Essentially the credits purchased on December 1st are no longer valid however the credits purchased on December 11th remain valid until expiry.

Suppose I have three VMs, each has 300MB RAM and 5GB disk.
Once my first credit expires on Dec 01, the remaining credit can still cover one VM's RAM and three VM's disk.
While it's fine to suspend them, I would expect being able to start at least one VM at a time.

You would otherwise get drama threads regarding customer being forced to delete data even if they still have unexpired credit.

Micronode

I think there is some overall confusion on how this works.

It is pretty simple in practice.

1 Credit lasts for 365 days from the date of purchase.

1 Credit gives you 512MB RAM and 20GB disk

You can create as many instances that will physically fit within that resource. If you run out of resource you can either delete a VM to free up resource or purchase another credit.

I’m not sure how to explain this anymore simply however I am open to handing out a bunch of demo accounts for people to test if that helps.

@ehab is currently on the beta and hopefully he can help answer some questions.

Micronode

@yoursunny said:

@natvps_uk said:

@yoursunny said:
Suppose I purchase one credit on Dec 01 and purchase another credit on Dec 11, I would have two credits until Dec 01 next year.
Now I create several VMs to use up all resources from the two credits, but each VM is smaller than the resources given by one credit.
On Dec 01 next year, one of the credits would expire.
My VMs are now exceeding the limits of my remaining one credit.
How does the system determine which VMs should be deleted?

Very good question!

Currently it is down to the customer to ensure that they do not go over their resource limits on credit expiry. All VMs are suspended until either X amount are deleted to free up resource or more credits are added.

Essentially the credits purchased on December 1st are no longer valid however the credits purchased on December 11th remain valid until expiry.

Suppose I have three VMs, each has 300MB RAM and 5GB disk.
Once my first credit expires on Dec 01, the remaining credit can still cover one VM's RAM and three VM's disk.
While it's fine to suspend them, I would expect being able to start at least one VM at a time.

You would otherwise get drama threads regarding customer being forced to delete data even if they still have unexpired credit.

Whilst I get where you are coming from we still have to store the data from the suspended VMs which comes at a cost to us.

We have at least a year to modify how the suspension system works and we’re open to any suggestions!

Maybe a way for the client to export their Instance and re-import it at a later date?

Edit: if the remaining VMs fit in the disk space allocated then the VMs could simply be resized to fit within the allocated memory?

We are looking to add a way to change the specifications of each instance.

I also agree that the client should be able to start one Vm at a time and that is something that we can make possible. I’ll definitely add it to the backlog - thanks for the suggestion.

yoursunny

@natvps_uk said:

@yoursunny said:
Suppose I have three VMs, each has 300MB RAM and 5GB disk.
Once my first credit expires on Dec 01, the remaining credit can still cover one VM's RAM and three VM's disk.
While it's fine to suspend them, I would expect being able to start at least one VM at a time.

You would otherwise get drama threads regarding customer being forced to delete data even if they still have unexpired credit.

Whilst I get where you are coming from we still have to store the data from the suspended VMs which comes at a cost to us.

Yes, but my remaining credit would provide 20GB disk, and my three suspended VMs only consume 15GB total.

We have at least a year to modify how the suspension system works and we’re open to any suggestions!

Maybe a way for the client to export their Instance and re-import it at a later date?

This is useful in general, not just at suspension.
This would enable more use cases:

• resize RAM, by deleting instance and creating new instance from snapshot
• resize disk (if it's LXC container)
• migrate to another location
• duplicate a VM template to multiple VMs

Storage used for instance snapshot should count towards the credit limits, possibly at a reduced rate if it's HDD vs SSD.

Micronode

@yoursunny said:

@natvps_uk said:

@yoursunny said:
Suppose I have three VMs, each has 300MB RAM and 5GB disk.
Once my first credit expires on Dec 01, the remaining credit can still cover one VM's RAM and three VM's disk.
While it's fine to suspend them, I would expect being able to start at least one VM at a time.

You would otherwise get drama threads regarding customer being forced to delete data even if they still have unexpired credit.

Whilst I get where you are coming from we still have to store the data from the suspended VMs which comes at a cost to us.

Yes, but my remaining credit would provide 20GB disk, and my three suspended VMs only consume 15GB total.

We have at least a year to modify how the suspension system works and we’re open to any suggestions!

Maybe a way for the client to export their Instance and re-import it at a later date?

This is useful in general, not just at suspension.
This would enable more use cases:

• resize RAM, by deleting instance and creating new instance from snapshot
• resize disk (if it's LXC container)
• migrate to another location
• duplicate a VM template to multiple VMs

Storage used for instance snapshot should count towards the credit limits, possibly at a reduced rate if it's HDD vs SSD.

I have a few ideas on how we could do that! I’ll look into it.

bliss

Hello @natvps_uk

my service remains suspended status because of "torrentting" since my removal of transmission-bt for weeks now, thus "actions" in the 'product details' is not operatable (only 'request cancellation' is available).

I'd like to do some management in the control panel, like OS re-installation or monitor traffic usage to avoid over-usage, which may cause another strict ban.

So please turn my service into a normal status, which will enable me to do some management work, thank you.

The original ticket went unanswered, so I have no way but resort to the forum.

GMY-834926

Micronode

@bliss said:
Hello @natvps_uk

my service remains suspended status because of "torrentting" since my removal of transmission-bt for weeks now, thus "actions" in the 'product details' is not operatable (only 'request cancellation' is available).

I'd like to do some management in the control panel, like OS re-installation or monitor traffic usage to avoid over-usage, which may cause another strict ban.

So please turn my service into a normal status, which will enable me to do some management work, thank you.

The original ticket went unanswered, so I have no way but resort to the forum.

GMY-834926

I've replied to the ticket, sorry for the delay.

ehab

i am on beta and can try to reproduce your use cases. Please add them here, if it works i will quote with PASS if not i will comment the outcome.

root

This offer is quite interesting for NAT VPS used as VPN. Basically we can choose location, and since we all love to squeeze out all resources from low-end machines, this makes it perfect for our low-end community.

There is only one thing left: DMCA - will you ignore it @natvps_uk ?

Micronode

@root said:
This offer is quite interesting for NAT VPS used as VPN. Basically we can choose location, and since we all love to squeeze out all resources from low-end machines, this makes it perfect for our low-end community.

There is only one thing left: DMCA - will you ignore it @natvps_uk ?

Thanks @root

Not in the current locations unfortunately however we may have an option soon.

atomi

@natvps_uk to support smaller instances, would it be possible to add AlpineLinux template?

kuroneko23

Basically a resource pool for NAT VPS. Will try it out on BF.

welllam

very interesting. When will the stock be replenished?