Cloud Cost Guide Part 2: Step 1 - Beginning Cloud Cost Reduction with OVH.com

The Start of Effective Infrastructure Automation

Welcome back to our blog series on reducing cloud costs through a DevOps-Enabled, Automated IT Infrastructure. After discussing the four-stage process in the previous posts, we're now moving on to the specific steps you need to take to create a fully automated IT infrastructure. Today, we're looking at the very first step: signing up for an account at OVH.com.

OVH is a Dedicated Managed Server hosting company that offers a broad spectrum of services. Their 'Bare Metal' offering enables you to rent out 'Bare Metal Servers’ on a monthly basis at competitive prices. They offer an expansive array of bare metal hardware, including modern CPUs such as Intel Xeon Gold and AMD Epycs. OVH's machinery is self-designed and consistently features the latest-generation CPUs. These machines can be provisioned in minutes as they come pre-racked and networked.

OVH boasts over 1.6 million customers worldwide and has been in business for more than two decades. They operate 37 data centers globally with one of the fastest and most convenient network architectures. Additionally, they provide built-in Anti-DDOS protection and offer the option to rent servers in different regions, which can be interconnected with a simple button click.

One of the main advantages of choosing OVH is that it allows you to construct your data center without the overhead of physical construction and operation. This approach offers financial flexibility, enabling swift operation without large upfront capital expenditure. For taxation and accounting, this would fall under operational expenditure (OPEX) instead of capital expenditure (CAPEX), resulting in predictable monthly costs.

While basic support is offered with all bare metal machines, 'Business Support' is recommended for production-level services. If services require a critical level SLA time, special requirements, or custom services, 'Enterprise Support' should be considered.

By signing up for an account at OVH.com, you're taking the first step towards building an efficient, cost-effective, and automated IT infrastructure. In our next blog post, we'll move on to Step 2 – the installation of a Virtualization Hypervisor on every rented machine.

Stay tuned as we continue our step-by-step journey towards efficient cloud cost management. Remember, every step you take brings you closer to a more streamlined, cost-effective, and efficient IT infrastructure. Let's keep moving forward!