DreamHost Update: Cloud Deals with Nicira and CloudFlare
Perhaps best known as a web-hosting outfit, DreamHost is making moves in cloud computing. Network virtualization firm Nicira announced that DreamHost will employ its Network Virtualization Platform (NVP), thus joining Rackspace and NTT in leveraging Nicira technology in OpenStack data center environments.
Just last week, DreamHost announced it is partnering with web security firm CloudFlare to make its infrastructure available to DreamHost clients.
But first, Nicira. According the the press release, network virtualization — the kind that Nicira offers — removes the “barriers common to traditional networks” and enables developers to “create and deploy web-scale apps or enterprises to create a research and development cloud,” according to the company.
“NVP decouples network services from hardware, providing unique flexibility for both DreamHost and our customers. By sidestepping the old network paradigm, DreamHost can rapidly build powerful features for our cloud,” said Carl Perry, Cloud Architect at DreamHost, in a prepared statement.
DreamHost’s deal with CloudFlare, meanwhile, means its customers will have access to CloudFlare’s infrastructure as a standard feature. CloudFlare claims to make the benefits of content delivery networks available to shared web hosting customers by “distilling the entire setup and configuration process down to a single checkbox and removing the cost entirely.” Now, according to DreamHost, anyone with a website can enjoy the “performance and security tools previously available only to Internet giants.”
“When we first met with the CloudFlare team at HostingCon 2011 we had no idea if what they were telling us was true,” said Kathy Brahm, DreamHost’s vice president of Customer Experience and Partnerships, in the release. “We’ve spent the past few weeks putting CloudFlare through its paces and running some tests of our own. Some of us nearly fainted when the first speed tests came back.”
Needless to say, DreamHost liked what it saw.
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