review of #CloudMTS service

Many are now engaged in current affairs remotely, without the usual hardware. In these conditions, it is especially important to organize a comfortable workplace. It is not always possible to take your favorite chair with you, but you can definitely use the optimal virtual infrastructure.

I am a system administrator studying building complex fault-tolerant infrastructures. In this article, I’ll show you how developers and IT companies can use the resources of the #CloudMTS cloud to solve simple work tasks in individual and group projects.

Registration and service selection

#CloudMTS offers a self-service service. For access, you need to register on the site through the button “Personal Account”.

Access is organized as simply as possible – just enter a phone number.

After registration, we get into the personal account.

All #CloudMTS services are represented here – more than 25 products and services. I will note only the main ones that may be of interest to developers.

Virtual Infrastructure is the public cloud itself, which we are now interested in. Here we will rent and change dedicated virtual server resources.

Virtual Infrastructure does not differ in functionality from the physical IT infrastructure (servers, storage systems, routers, firewalls, software), but has greater flexibility and ease of management.

Containerum Kubernetes is a managed service for working with Kubernetes.

CDN is a caching server.

network – network configuration.

In addition, there is a separate section of the Marketplace, which presents virtual machine templates (for example, it is possible to install Debian and Astra Linux).

​​​​​​​ Back to Virtual Infrastructure. The provider offers three availability zones:

• Moscow;

• Novosibirsk;

• Vladivostok.

The service is available in all regions of Russia, but you can choose the zone that is geographically closer to you.

I met the regions of Vladivostok and Novosibirsk for the first time. Although, of course, I did not look at the resources of all cloud providers.

The current question is “What about access to resources from other countries?”. #CloudMTS has data centers in the CIS countries. Therefore, if you need to place your systems in a cloud with a guaranteed level of availability somewhere in another country, this task can be discussed directly with the provider.

Selection of virtual servers of the required configuration

Perhaps you are used to (I had such an experience) to select the characteristics of each virtual machine with the buttons. A different approach has been implemented on the #CloudMTS site: capacities are selected immediately for the entire pool.

For example, for a task we need to get 4 virtual machines 16 vCPU / 24 GB RAM / 500 GB.

We sum it all up and get 64 vCPU / 96 GB RAM / 2000 GB.

Accordingly, now our resources look like this:

In the screenshot above, you can also see the “Segment” of resources. The provider offers different segments of virtualization, which differ in the used processors and the amount of RAM.

Standard and Bronze

General purpose resources for hosting any system that does not require high frequency processors or large amounts of memory. Standard offers resources at sites in St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk and Vladivostok. Bronze – in Moscow.

Silver (Moscow)

VM with a large amount of RAM – for example, to host databases.

Gold (Moscow)

VM with high-frequency CPUs for hosting databases and 1C.

Silver 2.0 (Moscow, Vladivostok, Novosibirsk)

General purpose resources for hosting any information systems.

Gold 2.0 (Moscow, Vladivostok, Novosibirsk)

VM with high-frequency CPUs and a large amount of RAM for hosting databases and SAP, 1C solutions.

Gold 3.0 (Moscow)

General-purpose resources with high-frequency CPUs and a large amount of RAM to accommodate any information systems.

The provider also allocates a Linx site in St. Petersburg, built on the basis of Huawei equipment, to a separate segment.

If you take a virtual infrastructure for a test (free for 14 days), then you will have access to a 100-Mbps channel, 8 vCPUs and 8 GB of RAM. After testing, you can request an increase in resources through technical support.

Having dealt with the configuration, we create the necessary virtual machines, forward ports, install the OS, and get resources. Everything is done in self-made mode. You are in full control of the customization of the virtual infrastructure. Of course, if at some stage questions arise, you can always contact technical support.

In my opinion, there is not a single difficult point here, everything is intuitively clear. I quickly received all the resources I needed.

Setting up a virtual data center

By selecting the desired configuration, we get access to the tools for managing your organization’s virtual infrastructure. In this case, the organization is a virtual data center, which can include an arbitrary number of users and groups.

After successful authorization (login and password will be sent to your mail), we get access to the web panel, which displays information on the allocated capacities:

• how many resources are available and used;

• how many VMs are running and in use;

• settings of virtual infrastructure objects.

We can create, configure, clone and manage virtual machines with an intuitive interface. You can understand the management on your own or by contacting the knowledge base for help.

Let’s consider further the key sections of the web panel that will help us in our work.

Virtual Machines

Virtual Machine Configurator. Here you can scale virtual resources as needed: create or disable virtual machines. This tool reduces the cost and burden on existing IT equipment and operations.

vApps

Containers for storing virtual machines. The tool allows you to combine virtual machines into a group. Example: group of nodes. Three MySQL nodes, PHP nodes, etc. In this way, you can manage entire sets of VMs: turn on, restart or turn off as needed.

Networks

We provide network connectivity. This section organizes the management of virtual networks, with which you can do almost anything your heart desires. A variety of network settings are available: NAT, DHCP, Firewall, IPsecVPN, Load balancing, etc.

You can organize a network in a virtual data center in such a way that all your projects deployed in the cloud will not “intersect” and interfere with each other. In addition, each project will receive as many resources as it needs at the moment.

If necessary, you can enable access to external networks. In this case, virtual machines can securely connect to all your company’s offices via VPN.

Edges

Firewall rules. Setting and customization.

security

Setting up network security rules.

Applications

We manage groups of virtual machines or individual virtual machines:

• create a new group;

• create a group from an ovf file, for example, a terraform role;

• create a group from an accessible directory.

Additionally, you can change the status or take a snapshot of a group of virtual machines.

Libraries

Library of templates for creating groups of virtual machines. We can add, modify or use available templates.

Administration

Access control section of the personal account:

• add users;

• issue access rights;

• change rights.

You can create users yourself or import them from the Active Directory directory service.

Monitor

Log file of all actions in the virtual infrastructure.

data protection

Backup management. It is always possible to roll back your infrastructure to a working state.

Setup DR and Migration

Migration and disaster recovery.

Availability

replication settings. Here you can create a copy of the virtual machine on another site in a few minutes.

Replication helps you extend your disaster recovery plan and bring services back online with minimal delay in the event of a primary machine failure.

Summarizing: The virtual data center web panel is a great tool for deploying custom infrastructure. It has all the necessary settings to manage all resources.

Working with virtual machines

Virtual machines can be created from scratch using an image or a template. #CloudMTS already offers to choose a ready-made image: you can connect Debian 11.3 in a few clicks or apply for one of the following licenses.

• Astra Linux CE

  A Debian GNU/Linux-based OS focused on protecting confidential information and designed for secure workstations and servers.

• CentOS 7

  A distribution based on the commercial Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

• CentOS Stream 8 / CentOS Stream 9

  A constantly updated distribution that provides early access to packages developed for a future release of RHEL.

• Debian 9 / Debian 20

• Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Server / Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Server / Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Server

  An OS that belongs to Long Term Support versions. They are released every two years and are supported for five years from the date of release.

• Ubuntu 20.04.3 Server

• RED OS 7.3

An OS based on the Linux kernel, which is a composite product built on the basis of open source solutions and in-house developments.

Thus, inside the virtual machine, you can deploy the appropriate operating system and then install the application that you are comfortable working with.

Virtual infrastructure in practice: examples

How the work in the virtual data center will be organized and what settings you will apply depends on your tasks. I picked up a few examples that I know personally.

Scenario one

You have a web studio with a large number of clients. You need a custom sandbox for each of your projects. We go and rent virtual servers for each project in a couple of clicks. The client is safe. You – easy administration.

Scenario two

You are software developers. For each release, you need different test environments. Let’s say there are three commands. We create a dedicated virtual infrastructure for each. In this case, you need to configure only one project – you will make the rest as a copy. IT companies that work with many projects will definitely appreciate this opportunity.

What is the result? Each team has their own dedicated workspace where they can do whatever they want. They do not intersect and do not interfere with each other. It is convenient to manage all resources in one place. Now you can also pay for allocated capacities in one place.

Scenario three

You are DevOps. Got a request for a failover infrastructure? No problem. You go to your personal account, create virtual machines for the organization and implement all the desires of the incoming request – up to the router settings.

Conclusion

The cloud helps to optimize the interaction of development teams, even if they are in different time zones. They do not overlap with each other, if necessary, or, conversely, use a common file storage and synchronize files for sharing.

In addition, due to virtual resources, the development time is reduced. You can allocate additional resources, as well as reduce unused ones, in a few clicks in your personal account.

System administrators get a handy tool for customizing their infrastructure.

The possibilities don’t end there. As mentioned above, #CloudMTS has a service for working with Kubernetes and other tools for developers. But this can be discussed another time.

Thank you all for your time.