Traditionally a major set back in the adoption and development of online applications was due to the very large Capital expenditure required to get things underway. Hardware needed to be purchased and managed with a huge amount of forethought in respect to potential future growth. Buying a server with too little resource meant you needed to invest again in the near future if business really took off, and for those who weren't so lucky, well they were stuck with a costly piece of hardware that was heavily underutilised.

ICONZ VERSA was developed to cater for a huge gap in the market in respect to a truly scalable virtual hosting solution. With the removal of large capital outlay and the worry about constantly needing to upgrade physical hardware, ICONZ VERSA allows customers to add and remove resource as they require, when they require and for as long as they require.

The ICONZ VERSA solution is built using HP hardware and housed within the ICONZ Datacentre to ensure customers benefit from the same reliable and redundant underlying infrastructure all ICONZ co-located customers receive.

This is comprised of:

• HP c-class blade chassis
• 16 HP BL460 Blade servers
• EVA 4000 SAN
• Cisco Gig switches

With a focus on redundancy and performance, ICONZ has built it's Virtual co-location platform using HP’s Enterprise grade C-7000 C-class Blade Chassis, HP BL-460 half height blades connected to an HP EVA 4400 Series SAN. This leading class hardware platform has been coupled with VMware’s Virtual Infrastructure 3 Enterprise to provide a secure and stable environment for server virtualisation.

VMware enables you as a customer to achieve more from your computer resource by transforming your IT landscape. As it removes the need to implement separate physical machines for each application, the cost savings are immense. By hosting on a Virtual co-located environment you’re guaranteed your IT purchase adds value to your business through increased efficiency, availability, flexibility and manageability.

ICONZ VERSA emulates a full machine including a hardware layer. The virtual machine simulates enough hardware to allow an unmodified "guest" OS (one designed for the same CPU) to be run in isolation. The "guest" OS environments do not share the same OS as the host system and are virtually unlimited. Applications running in a given "guest" environment operate the same as if the machine where a physical machine. Requires no modification to the guest OS. Optional drivers provide for added functionality.

Virtual Private Servers create isolated virtual partitions or environments(VE), on an existing operating system. VE's virtualize a physical server at the operating system level, enabling multiple isolated virtualized servers to run on a single physical server. The "guest" OS environments share the same OS as the host system - i.e. the same OS kernel is used to implement the "guest" environments. Applications running in a given "guest" environment view it as a stand-alone system. Requires modification to the guest OS.

With ICONZ VERSA you benefit from:

• More resource available to you as and when you require it
• Complete scalability, adjust (Memory, Processing capability and Disk space) as your needs change
• Enjoy complete freedom of choice in installing an Operating System that caters for you
• With VERSA you code it and load it, simple. We take care of the rest - monitoring, patching, configuration, security, scaling...

There's nothing else out there like it. ICONZ VERSA is an enterprise-level platform that lets you focus on what you're good at: developing in the technology you love. All the headache of server administration is our responsibility.

ICONZ VERSA offers the customer a full co-location service without the usual capital outlay associated with third party hardware and software. By providing customers with a Virtual Machine (VM), the customer can pick and choose their operating system (within reason), have full access to their system, and add and remove applications at their leisure. This provides an exact replica of the dedicated server service with a lower entry cost.

ICONZ VERSA is suitable for a wide range of uses:

• Develop and test new services, improving your time to market
• Consolidate servers and desktops
• Copy exact multi-module production environments
• Share complete environments among different development teams
• Create short term environments for development and testing cycles and simulated multi-tier applications

ICONZ VERSA is suitable for a wide range of markets. For example, Venture capitalist can benefit by being able to take an idea through to concept in the least amount of time as possible. By removing the need for Capital Outlay rapid development can take place for proof of concept. Once up and running you can choose to remain on the Virtual environment or opt to purchase a dedicated solution once you’re comfortable that your investment is going to receive maximum utilisation.

Larger web hosting companies can also benefit from ICONZ VERSA as they are able to scale their resources as and when required. Based on their needs customers have the option of scaling resources such as Processor speed, Disk space and RAM up and down or scale out by adding multiple Virtual servers which are then also scalable in respect to resource.

The uses are endless. If you are unsure if ICONZ VERSA is right for you please contact ICONZ on 0800 THE NET or submit your enquiry via email through our online form.

ICONZ VERSA has ultimate flexibility but it's not suitable for every application out there. ICONZ has a range of solutions available. From shared hosting, co-located, dedicated servers and of course ICONZ VERSA, we are here to help. If you are at all unsure of the type of service that’s right for your application or business solution please contact one of our account managers on 0800 THE NET or email sales@iconz.net to make email contact. They will be only too happy to discuss your needs.

VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 was designed from the ground up to be a stable and secure virtualization platform. Unlike shared hosting or a Virtual Private Server (VPS), Virtual Servers have their own dedicated operating system and are fully isolated from other virtual machines on the server hardware. As a result, customers no longer have to worry about having their hosted service overrun by another service on the same box. Security from then on is provided by the guest operating system, which can be combined with an ICONZ Security Suite for a full security solution.

Yes, that is one of the great benefits of an ICONZ VERSA solution; its completely flexible, enabling you to purchase what you need when you need it. You simply need to send an email through to mac@iconz.net identifying the Virtual Server you would like to change and we will take care of the rest. Profile changes take effect within 24 hours. In the near future, you will be able to logon to your own control panel and adjust Virtual Server settings ‘on the fly’ adjusting things like CPU, RAM and Disk resources as you need them.

Well yes and no! ICONZ VERSA is a solution that has been created to act as an ‘on demand’ hosting solution. This means you pay for what you use, when you use it. We offer discounts for 12 and 24 month terms. If your needs change though inside this contract term you can still alter your Virtual Server configurations.

Yes. Customers have the option of selecting a 12 or 24 month term contract. As an added benefit customers opting for a 12 month contract will receive a 5% annual discount and customers who sign up for a 24 month contract will receive a 10% annual discount. At any time during the contract term you can still change your Virtual Server configurations. Unfortunately though, if you decide to cancel a contract there is a disconnection fee that applies.

Only a small one. The set up fee for ICONZ VERSA is $200. However once you are set up there is no additional cost associated with the addition and removal of resources such as RAM, CPU and Hard Disk space.

Of course! Our Datacentres have N+1 redundancy. The ICONZ VERSA computing platform is also N+1 redundant, significantly reducing any risk of failure. In the unlikely event of failure, our network operations team monitors all Datacentre facilities 24 x 7 x 365. Our standard service level availability for data centre services is 99.999%. In real terms this provides assurance to our customers of now greater than 5.39 minutes of downtime (planned or unplanned) each year. ICONZ is not responsible for the redundancy of the applications and content that you add to your servers. If you have any questions about the levels of service we offer for application support please contact us.

The VERSA platform is N+1 redundant and as part of this we have automated backup procedures for failure past this point. We provide an FTP backup service starting from $10 for 5GB (this information is available on our calculator). Very shortly ICONZ will offer full image and offsite backup services for VERSA customers. Please contact any one of our account managers on 0800 THE NET (0800 843 638) for assistance with backup services.

Plenty! With any ICONZ VERSA plan you have the option of adding: Monitoring, FTP back up, Shared Firewall, Vulnerability Testing and ICONZ Insure. Please click on the ? next to the items listed under the Additional Services tab on the calculator for complete descriptions.