We know that it is not possible to project all the questions clients may ask. So, please contact us and aks your question if you are unable to find an answer below.

GENERAL QUESTIONS

1. Is Fuscan LBC Highly Available?

Yes, it is High Availability system! Services run across many nodes (servers) in a load-balanced cluster.

2. Is Fuscan a Cloud Hosting Solution?

Yes! When people use term "Cloud Hosting" they mean a web hosting service delivered from a group of servers (nodes) connected into a system. "Cloud Hosting" refers to another term - "Cluster Hosting". Fuscan LBC is a shared cluster filesystem (OS Installation). It is a redundant, multi node system which features high availability and dynamically scalable resources.

3. What Does "Cloud" mean?

Wikipedia says that "Cloud computing" or "Cloud" is a model of Internet based development and use of IT technologies. It is a computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualised resources are provided as a service over the Internet...

When it comes to "Cloud Hosting", the easiest way to explain the term is as a IT hosting service delivered from a network of servers (servers which work as a system). Cloud Hosting (Cluster Hosting) is delivered from a fully redundant, multi-server system that utilizes virtualization technologies. If you need a simple explanation to understand what Fuscan is, jsut imagine a number of web servers servers connected as a cluster, which allow your websites, data bases, and applications to use resources from all the servers part of the network.

Fuscan enables IT companies to increase processing power, to store and maintain huge data bases and to share a large amount of memory. As a part of Fuscan, the web servers (processing Nodes) can be easily added or removed. If any server is down, your websites or applications continue to work as you can see on the Fuscan LBC Demo page.

4. Is Fuscan Hardware or Software?

Fuscan is a system. Fuscan LBC is a software technology which can run on different hardware (so it is software). We can install Fuscan LBC for you on a cluster of standard rackmountable servers. However SingleOS strongly recommends clients to use advanced hardawre technologies. To fully benefit of Fuscan's technology advantages you should look at our solution as a software technology that requires a certain level of IT standards to be covered. This means that you would increase your return of investment by deploying Fuscan LBC on blade servers, and this way to minimize the power consumption and to make sure you are using a Green IT Hosting technology.

5. Do You Offer Cloud Hosting Services?

No! We are not a web hosting company. We provide web hosting providers with ability to create their own clouds. If you need to build your own cloud, you can use Fuscan LBC and EHA in your own data center or to colocate it with any IT hosting provider. Of course SingleOS recommends its clients to use the services of data centers and enterprise hosting providers that have already tested and implemented Fuscan technology. To learn more which data centers, managed and dedicated hosting providers have already been dectified (or are in process of certifying) as a Fuscan product partners please contact us.

6. Can I Use Fuscan To Maintain a Virtual Data Center?

Yes. Fuscan VDC uses KVM virtualization to create virtual instances on the cloud.

What Kind of OS Can I Run on Fuscan LBC?

Fuscan LBC utilizes Red Hat Cluster Suite and it is designed for maximum uptime. We suggest our clients to run CentOS on their Fuscan clusters, but other Linux OS can also be deployed on Fuscan.

7. How Much Time Does It Take To Deploy New Nodes On Fuscan LBC??

It takes a few minutes to add new processin nodes to the system.

8. Can I Install Windows on Fuscan?

No, on Fuscan LBC. Yes, on VDC! Fuscan Cloud is made to work with Linux based operating systems.

9. What Storage Does Fuscan Use?

Fuscan utilize a centralized storage area network (SAN) over InfiniBand.

HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS

1. What Are Fuscan LBC Hardware Requirements?

There is no specific hardware requirements that are must. However we have "Recommended Hardware". Please note that the recommended hardware list does not feature the most advanced CPU and components as fas as they should significantly increase the client's costs. The "Recommended Hardware" includes:

1.1 Dual-Xeon based diskless computing nodes and at least 8 GB RAM
1.2 Low latency Interconnect (InfiniBand or 10G Ethernet). Gigabit Ethernet would also work but it has higher latency
1.3 Power Management (APC managed PDU or similar device)
1.4 Storage configuration depends on your needs. We recommend LSI RAID Controllers, as they can be clustered for high availability. Hard drives should be attached into SAS expanders.

The diskless computing nodes boot over the network and attach the shared storage over the appropriate protocol (SRP, iSCSI, iSER). You can attach local disks for swap but it is generally not recommended as swap memory is slow.

The Fuscan LBC platform is flexible. We do not require our clients to use any specific hardware. You can use either Supermicro, Sun, Dell, IBM, HP, etc. It is up to you.

INSTALLATION AND MANAGEMENT

1. What Is The Fuscan LBC Software Update Procedure?

Fuscan is distributed in RPM package format. Updates are delivered through YUM repositories.

2. Where Does the Fuscan Installation Reside?

The installation resides on the shared storage system (SAN). You have to use more than one storage system to achieve Highly Availability.

3. Where Are Fuscan LBC Configuration Files Stored?

They reside in the shared storage system.

4. Is There An Additional Management Node?

No! When you use Fuscan there is no need of additional management node. All the nodes are manageable through Fuscan LBC interface.

5. Is it possible to implement 2 or more Fuscan LBC setups?

Fuscan LBC runs CentOS. It also can be installed on other RPM based distributions. You can have 2 different setups (different installations) in the same infrastructure. However once you have implemented such an approach, you have logically divided the system into 2 separate "Clouds".

STORAGE

1. Is storage replication part of Fuscan Cloud management suite?

Yes! it is!

2.  Is replicated storage Highly Available?

Yes! it is!

3. Can I use one storage system with more than one Fuscan LBC installations?

This functionality is part of our development plan, but is currently not available.

4. Can I share one storage system between LBC and products part of Fuscan family?

We should respond on this question shortly after the official release of Fuscan VDC.

5. Is the Fuscan storage solution scalable? Can I add additional storage to existing LBC?

Yes, the storage solution is scalable. A client can scale up the storage by adding additional hard drives and disk expanders as needed, using "Recommended Hardware".

6. Is it possible to troubleshoot storage bottlenecks? For example seeing what node is consuming what amount of storage I/O?

It is possible through the Fuscan LBC Statistics & Monitoring screen. The client can examine in the Statistics & Monitoring how much I/O does each node consume. The information is available as graphic.

SUPPORT

1. How is Fuscan Support Organized?

Fuscan LBC clients use a CRM to communicate with Single OS. All the account management operations (licensing, billing, technical support, etc) are organized in Account Management. Ticket's are organized in Statuses. Your can use phone support! Once you become a client, you'll get access to your account.

We provide 2 levels of  support: Standard and Extended.

Standard
- Initial response to non-priority, non-critical support tickets during business hours (8 am - 5 pm GMT) - up to 48 hours
- Initial response to priority, critical tickets (issues related to the software consistency, possible critical bugs & bug fixes, licensing issues, etc) up to 8 hours
- Emergency Bug Fix Escalation - Subject to additional payment
- Emergency hot-fix builds - Subject to additional payment

Extended
- Initial response to non-priority, non-critical support tickets during business hours (8 am - 5 pm GMT) - up to 4 hours
- Initial response to priority, critical tickets (issues related to the software consistency, possible critical bugs & bug fixes, licensing issues, etc) - up to 1 hour
- Initial response out of business hours -  up to 8 hours
- Remote Troubleshooting
- Performance Tuning
- Emergency hot-fix builds - Included

The Terms of "Standard" and "Extended" support are subject to change and/or customization for any particular client of Single OS LLC.

ASK YOUR QUESTION?

Help us to make the FAQ more comprehensive. Please send us your question. We will respond promptly.