HP Public Cloud Review For Running WordPress Websites

Here is Detailed HP Public Cloud Review For Running WordPress Websites With First Hand Experience and Test Results With Using Third Party Tools. HP Helion is a bigger entry and HP has lot of different flavors of cloud solutions including public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, managed private cloud and other cloud services. All are based on OpenStack like Rackspace. We are talking about HP Public Cloud which is intended to run Public Cloud Services. Hosting Websites is the most common use of HP Public Cloud. WordPress is the most commonly used web software for building websites (at the time of writing) and it is a challenge to optimize WordPress because of PHP, we took the example of Running WordPress Websites as one of the metrics for the review. This review named HP Public Cloud Review For Running WordPress Websites is not endorsed, is not paid, is not compensated, is not influenced in someway or the other by Hewlett-Packard Company. Hewlett-Packard Company was established on 1st January, 1939. HP is the symbolic founder of Silicon Valley. There is nothing new to say about Hewlett-Packard Company. Like Apple,【hp】has Unicode symbol. IBM was founded on 1911. All of these brands are quite reliable from the point of service delivery. Maturity can vary depending on the product.

HP Public Cloud Review : Comparison with Rackspace Cloud With Infrastructure Managed Level

We used Rackspace for past 04 years. Then this website and some others are shifted to HP. We have said – HP has lot of different flavors of cloud solutions. HP Public Cloud, by default has Support Chat for Infrastructure Managed Level. That has no additional monthly cost (right now). $50 is saved. The Chat, Ticket, Forum, Telephone Support is exactly like Rackspace (which is known as Fanatical Support). A biggest plus of HP Public Cloud Chat Support is that, it assigns a Case ID and becomes a Ticket itself. There is no waiting time, Rackspace sometimes become busy nowadays due to consumer grade users.

HP Public Cloud uses OpenStack, true – but HP Public Cloud is designed for the users who has basic idea about Networking tools including Router, Subnet Mask, Ingress – Egress Policies.

Unlike Rackspace, there is dazzling UI on HP Public Cloud Dashboard. It is more inclined towards work. It might not be quite suitable UI for the basic users. 1 HP Cloud Compute Unit with 1 virtual core with 1GB RAM, 10GB ephemeral disk currently costs $0.03/hr ($21.90/mo.). All Data Transfers In is free, All Intra-Region Bandwidth is free, All Data Transfers In for the First 1 GB is free, Up to 10 TB costs $0.12/per month. In other words, in comparison to Rackspace, HP Public Cloud is practically cheaper. Snapshot, Server image – all features are present but some needs a bit manual tweak, unlike Rackspace’s readymade solutions.

HP Public Cloud Review : Comparison with DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean can not be compared with HP Public Cloud for various reasons. Pricing is very lower for DigitalOcean and performance is practically same for same amount of RAM with HP, Rackspace and DigitalOacean. There are many features which are absent for DigitalOcean – you can not complain for a service which costs exactly the half that of HP Public Cloud.

HP Public Cloud Review : Comparison with Amazon

From various point, HP Public Cloud has huge resemblance with Amazon. If you are an Amazon user, it is unlikely that you’ll feel any trouble.

HP Public Cloud Review : Features

Auto Scaling, Block Storage, Cloud Storage, Content Delivery Network/Object Storage, Database as a Service, Deployment of Servers, Disaster Recovery, DNS Management, File Storage, Firewalls, Flexible Storage Services, Load Balancing, Messaging Services, Server Cloning, Snapshots and VPN Access, in short. Everything which can be expected. The IP address is floating and can be assigned any node. This has the basic advantage of changing the instances first, in case of failure of a node. You can not change IP in that way on Rackspace. There is a log available for the build. This is not present on Rackspace. Rackspace is well decorated, high priced but a kid in front of HP Public Cloud. 6 Name Servers. You can add more. HP Public Cloud is careless about the web GUI. The control panel resembles old Rackspace’s Sidebar based navigation. On the top, there is a way to navigate between the regions. The GUI will make you quite sad after using Rackspace. That is good, I personally do not want a crowd of consumer grade users. People are not easy with Networking, 6 Name Servers has around 300 users. Public IP is 100% whitelisted and possibly a set purchased at 1986, when hp.com was launched! Bad record for IP is unlikely.

Exactly like Rackspace, HP Public Cloud has many features like OpenStack Heat. To understand what HP Public Cloud has, it might take 2 months for users like us. HP Public Cloud has huge amount of stuffs, but not ready to catch an entry grade user. If you have unrelated company with software engineer, it is a heaven for you. There is a MySQL as a service, it is an OpenStack-optimized version of MySQL as a service. Cost is same like Rackspace but you can do some tricks to get the same settings on your separate database server at lesser cost.

HP has Partner Images like from Ubuntu. Nginx might have a different web root. Be careful – do not run apt-get dist-upgrade on production server. After optimization, only apt-get update && apt-get upgrade. Within East and West Regions, they have options of datacenter! Very minute points, difficult to notice!

HP Public Cloud Review : Performance

Amazing to the power infinitive after tweaks. HP Public Cloud Instances take a bit time to become faster. This is possibly due to backup on other zone. Yes, for DNS, some works still needed. We are showcasing our website’s results :

[webpagetest, random Page]
First View 3.067s
Repeat View 1.802s
First Byte 0.435s
Speed Index 2051

Request Header :

Response Header :

tools.pingdom.com can give bizarre low page loading time, its under 1.95 seconds :

[Post, random]

OK, let us see in our Lier, NSA’s Spy Google’s Page Speed Insights :

93/100 on Desktop, 90/100 on Mobile :

DNS, needs work from HP’s side :

Delegation :

Image : hpmuseum.net

HP Public Cloud Review : Conclusion

HP Public Cloud, definitely one of the best OpenStack based IaaS in the market right now, looking at the features and pricing. However, they need some improvement or may be the word can be – refinement in some segments. In 5 point scale, they can easily score 4.5/5.0.

0.5 is the penalty for :

1. No IPv6
2. No easy way for WordPress to upload to CDN. There is no plugin at current state.
3. DNS needs quite good work
4. Web GUI should look better

That is it. You can read our HP Public Cloud related Guides :

1. Router and Subnet Settings
2. sudo: unable to resolve host HP Cloud Instance Fix
3. HP Cloud FTP/SFTP Setup
4. Install WordPress on HP Cloud (Ubuntu, Nginx)
5. Hide SSH Daemon on HP Cloud (Port knocking in Ubuntu)