1. Open API

This is needed to automate the start-up, configuration and termination of cloud instances.  Without automation the cloud infrastructure is no use to you, a manual web page driven administration process is not going to win a provider any points with me.  As a secondary point, it’s even better if they provide tools that integrate with these API’s.  Making me write tools, is again, not going to win any points.

2. Secure IP connectivity

By this I mean the ability to secure the connection between a cloud IP subnet and private infrastructure.  If I need to create instances on demand I need to be able to securely access the subnet they are on and hide those machine from the ‘net,  only being able to access machine securely on an individual basis will not do.

3. Decent guest start-up time

By this I mean under ten minutes guaranteed.  If you only promise between 15 and 45 minutes (RackSpace) then it’s too slow.  Also as billing usually starts from the request not the availability I don’t want to be paying for time I’m not using.  The solution for this would be to move to a billing from availability model, this would motivate providers to get guests up quickly.

4. Support for new Guest versions is quickly adopted

If a new hypervisor, or a new OS version comes out I want to be able to take advantage of those features quickly, I especially don’t want my local infrastructure to be held up by interoperability problems with cloud services if they are behind the upgrade curve.  When you are waiting on a large corporation to upgrade and your business is too small to put pressure on them to make you a special case then you are going to get pretty angry pretty quickly.  There is at least on cloud provider (I’m looking at you Amazon EC2) which doesn’t support Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 and it’s nine months after RTM.

5. Hypervisor Access

I need to be able to upload my own virtual machine appliances, whether they are from a third party or one I’ve made onsite.  I also need to be able to manage the hypervisor layer with the same tools and using the same skills that I already have in house.

6. Keyboard Video Mouse console access

There is a reason that servers have KVM boards, it’s that not all problems happen after you have RDP or SSH access.  You lose a whole lot of troubleshooting information if you lose visibility of the console.

7. Hourly billing

All instances should be able to be billed hourly, I don’t mind if you have monthly charges as well, but hourly should always be available, if I need a resource permanently, I might as well host it myself.  Give us the option to try out, demo and burst into the full range of your offerings.

So have I found a provider that fits the bill?  The short answer is no.  The slightly longer answer is that I’ve found one who are really close, close enough that I’m happy to use it.  That provider is SoftLayer.

I reserve the right to change my mind at any time as providers change their offerings.