"}],"slug":"bonnier-news-chose-elastx-to-create-their-new-digital-platform","url":"/en/news/bonnier-news-chose-elastx-to-create-their-new-digital-platform","lang":"en","filename":"bonnier-news-valde-elastx-för-att-bygga-sin-nya-digitala-plattform-1","image":"/assets/uploads/case-study-elastx-bonnier-news-hashicorp.jpg"},"building-a-portable-scalable-reusable-deployment-pipeline-for-an-arbitrarily-complex-environment-part-1":{"date":"2015-12-18","title":"Building a portable, scalable, reusable Deployment Pipeline for an arbitrarily complex environment (Part 1)","case_slug":"Building a portable, scalable, reusable Deployment Pipeline for an arbitrarily complex environment","tags":["pipeline"],"body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"Back in May I did a presentation about [“The search for the Holy Grail”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I7zyaQ3Dak) at a DevOps meetup in Stockholm. The alternative name for the presentation could have been the title in this blog post, but that wouldn’t have allowed me to make gratuitous monty python references.\n\n**Lets sort through the buzzwords and really clarifiy exactly what we’re talking about:**\n\n* Portable: meaning portable between cloud providers (AWS and Elastx’s Openstack platform for example)\n* Scalable: meaning that adding more people/teams/components to the system should have no worse than a linear relationship between the mean time to commit/push and deploy to production\n* Reusable: meaning the software architectue to build the Deployment Pipeline should be achieved in such a way to make code generic and adaptable to other systems with minimal modification.\n\nIt’s a fair question to ask is it really possible or even worthwhile to build such a Deployment Pipeline?\n\nObviously my answer to that is a resounding, “yes”! And the explanation is simple, really. Since I’ve been working with Continuous Delivery and DevOps for almost 4 years, the basic problems that need solving are essentially the same every time in the following order of importance:\n\n1. Fix branching and merging so there is clear and simple model with a clean master and features branches with only a single path to merge changes to master\n2. Setup CI and code reviews as a gateway through which all branches must pass before merging to master\n3. Introduce tools for configuration management and automated deployment as a means to reproduce the system\n4. Continue to hammer points 1, 2, and 3 into everyone’s heads while improving automated testing and configuration management until you can rebuild the system from scratch\n\nSo if it’s basically the same thing every time then why not simplify the whole process and build a pipeline with interchangable parts that will save you a whole load of work down the line?\n\nThat’s what I thought.\n\nThis is going to be a tools and workflow-focussed post, so I want begin with an overview of the tools available to us to build our pipeline. At the end of the article I’ll explain about how to look out for some of the anti-patterns I’ve encountered concerning these types of discussions.\n\nProbably one of the most complex things in the DevOps space is keeping track of the explosion of tooling in the last few years. An interesting overview of this is portrayed in [Xebialabs periodic table of devops tools](https://xebialabs.com/periodic-table-of-devops-tools/).\n\nElements in a periodic table, where everything sits in a neat little box, paints an overly simplistic picture however, because the reality is that tools in the DevOps landscape requires a [venn-diagram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venn_diagram) something more like this…"},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/deployment-pipeline-blog-pt1.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"Unfortunately this diagram is only for illustrative purposes. I do think that it would be a worthy exercise to invest the time to properly classify the categories and the overlap between them (at the very least you’d probably be on the front page of hacker news for a couple of days).\n\nBut that will have to wait for another day.\n\nLet’s go through what I think are the critical elements of Deployment Pipeline:\n\n1. Source Control (including code review)\n2. Orchestration (of cloud resources and service discovery)\n3. Configuration Management (for consistent and reproducible environments)\n4. Continuous Integration (including automated testing)\n5. Artifact repository (for storing and fetching build artifacts)\n6. Workflow Visualisation (a dashboard where “done” means released to production)\n7. Monitoring and metrics (to ensure both speed and quality are improving)\n\nThat is a big list of stuff to cover so we’re going to have to sharpen our knife and fork before we [eat this elephant](http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/how-to-eat-an-elephant/).\n\nBefore we get into specific tooling, I want to take a moment to note how others are tackling this problem. There are many degrees of freedom so in case you don’t find my approach useful, hopefully one of these other methods might be more suitable for your use case.\n\n(I have no affiliations to any of the companies or services listed below.)\n\n1. The first project requiring mention is [software-factory](https://github.com/redhat-cip/software-factory). It is based on very sophisticated tooling used in the [Openstack](http://www.openstack.org/software/) project where a lot of my ideas and inspiration come from (Elastx runs Openstack). Software Factory gets full marks for scalability, however it is not portable because it’s tied to Openstack. It is packaged in such a way to make it reusable, but the tools are tightly integrated, so if you want to swap one of them for something in your existing toolchain, you’re going to have some work to do.\n2. [Codeship](https://codeship.com/features) have created a company around supplying “Deployment Pipelines as a Service”, which I think is a pretty good business model - it clearly demonstrates that there is a lot of similarities between one deployment pipeline and another. They also have a great technical blog with lots of good tips focussed on CI/CD and automation. They definitely earns points for flexibility and reusability as you can , but they are not very portable because you’re tied to AWS (or Heroku, which also runs on AWS).\n3. [Distelli](https://www.distelli.com/features) are a competitor to Codeship with another “DPaaS” that appear more flexible in your options around [endpoint portability](https://www.distelli.com/deployment). They look like they have a fairly flexible “plug and play” architecture, but I don’t know how scalable their solution is for building complex environments.\n4. I always find myself especially attracted to [Travis-ci](http://docs.travis-ci.com/user/getting-started/) and [Github](https://github.com/features) because of their sweet integration with lots of flexibility and it’s free for open-source projects. However if you have a complex application you’re going to run into problems.\n\nThat’s just a few alternative approaches to solving this problem and one of those might be more suitable depending on your situation.\n\nIf your business is primarily focussed on a [CMS](http://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/article/cms-comparison-drupal-joomla-and-wordpress) to run a website and you don’t really have to worry about more complexity than [scaling](http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/blogs/lowe/news/scale-up-vs-scale-out-the-key-differences-333.html) and pushing content to a caching layer or [CDN](http://www.cdnreviews.com/cdn-comparison/), then your usecase may fit better into one of the options listed above. That is unless you’re doing something really crazy like orchestrating [Docker containers with Kubernetes on Apache Mesos](http://kubernetes.io/v1.1/docs/getting-started-guides/mesos.html) and running some Big Data business analytics on your [Hadoop-Elasticsearch backend](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/hadoop/current/arch.html). And if that’s your usecase then that is totally badass, but it would be pretty weird if you didn’t already have a deployment pipeline working pretty smoothly if you’re at that scale already.\n\nAnother way to phrase the above, is if you’re building your services on a PaaS and you’re living in a happy place then there’s probably no reason to make trouble for yourself. However if you have to worry about IaaS, network segmentation, patching operating systems, a mixed environment with fixed hardware and virtualised services, data protection or legal compliance like [PCI-DSS](https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/security_standards/), [EFPIA](http://www.efpia.eu/), or [HIPAA](http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/index.html), then you should continue reading.\n\nIn Part 2 we’ll get into tool selection with pros and cons…"}],"intro":"This is the first of three posts about building an advanced deployment pipeline.","slug":"building-a-portable-scalable-reusable-deployment-pipeline-for-an-arbitrarily-complex-environment","url":"/en/news/building-a-portable-scalable-reusable-deployment-pipeline-for-an-arbitrarily-complex-environment","lang":"en","filename":"building-a-portable-scalable-reusable-deployment-pipeline-for-an-arbitrarily-complex-environment-part-1","image":"/assets/uploads/8442_without_stripes.png"},"building-a-portable-scalable-reusable-deployment-pipeline-for-an-arbitrarily-complex-environment-part-2":{"date":"2015-12-23","tags":["pipeline"],"title":"Building a portable, scalable, reusable Deployment Pipeline for an arbitrarily complex environment (part 2)","case_slug":"Building a portable, scalable, reusable Deployment Pipeline for an arbitrarily complex environment 2","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"Choose your tools wisely:\n\nWhatever tools you have in place now, or whatever tools you choose to switch, the same rules apply:\n\n* [Grok](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=grok) your tools\n* Use your tools the way they were intended to be used first, before you start experiementing\n* Avoid building from scratch. Most problems are already solved and someone has probably open sourced some code to solve exactly the problem you’re stuck on (or at least 90% of it).\n* Always choose open source before proprietary\n* Always check that open source software you want to use has healthy and active community around them\n* Be wary of moth-balled open source projects, unless you’re ready to start supporting it yourself\n* If you choose to switch, make sure the new tool will solve your problem with the old tool\n\n**Source Control:**\n\nEnsuring control over changes in your VCS is pretty much the crux of the issue in Continuous Delivery. The most important axiom of CD is to keep your master branch releasable at all times. The [wikipedia page about Continuous Delivery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_delivery) is actually the best at describing this. Out of that singular focus everything else will flow.\n\nThe converse is also true. If you are frequently breaking master, or your master branch is in an unknown state, then you have no hope of doing continuous delivery until you [fix that problem](http://failblog.cheezburger.com/thereifixedit).\n\nWhat this means in practice, is that you want as much as possible of your verification to happen on the feature branch before merging to master. This means any type of building, compiling or packaging, deploying the application, automated testing and even manual testing if necessary. Code review should also be a part of any change before merging to master is allowed.\n\nLastly, you need to ensure that developers are actually integrating their new changes with the latest on master (i.e. the “integration” part of continuous integration).\n\nIf you’re using git and your branching look like [this](http://aht.github.io/whatisgit/wide-gitk.gif), the point is to get it looking more like [this](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Yh5iOYTth3A/U6fhWafzqRI/AAAAAAAABs0/xujlkjiYFjQ/s1600/gitk19.png) (the way Linus intended).\n\nIf your situation is this bad, then my preferred means of doing this with git is to use a [fork/pull-request model](https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/comparing-workflows/forking-workflow) and force [fast-forward only merging](http://aaronbonner.io/post/78444674979/only-allow-git-fast-forward-merges-to-avoid-ugly) to master. What this means is that everyone must [rebase](http://nathanleclaire.com/blog/2014/09/14/dont-be-scared-of-git-rebase/) their branches every time something is merged to master and if something gets messed up, it’s isolated to the fork. Furthermore, by rebasing, it ensures that everyone is actually doing the “integration” part of Continuous Integration, reducing the state of entropy on the HEAD of master, and gets you that much closer toward your goal of Continuous Delivery. The beauty is that this system will take care of itself and you can get back to work to fix anything else that needs attention.\n\nHowever, be prepared that this is a pretty drastic measure to take, and there will defeinitely be some developers who kick and scream that you’re [killing ther mojo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEuw2mgLRuQ). Don’t let them win! Enforce it and set the bar to make sure everyone lives by the same rules.\n\n* [Git](https://git-scm.com/): Even though Linus has reportedy [soured on it](http://typicalprogrammer.com/linus-torvalds-goes-off-on-linux-and-git/) himself, I rank git as the gold standard of source control. It’s mature and there are lots of people familiar with it. Branching and merging is simple and fast (but unfortunately easy to make a mess of as explained above). The ability to rewrite history with rebase is incredibly powerful. But git is a complex tool and if you’re not comfortable on the command line you might struggle.\n* [Mercurial](https://www.mercurial-scm.org/): Another fine distributed version control system, which at first appearance is similar to git in many ways, but with some [notable differences](https://jhw.dreamwidth.org/1868.html) in terms of how it handles branching and merging. It is arguably easier to learn than git, but you will still need to grok it to use it properly (just as any tool). Branching and merging work seemlessy and mercurial will work just fine with this workflow.\n* [Subversion](https://subversion.apache.org/): If you have [nightmares about branching](http://blog.codinghorror.com/software-branching-and-parallel-universes/) in subversion then you should probably switch to git or mercurial. [Centralised VCSs are kind of an old and outdated idea](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yQlKEq-Ueg), if you’re looking at Continuous Delivery, even though they are still heavily in use. However, if you’re happy with it and have all the kinks worked out in a clean way that allows isolating changes so they can be tested before merging, then it should be workable.\n\n**A note on code reviews:**\n\nThe importance of an integrated solution with code review and source control cannot be understated. Popular services such as github and bitbucket have contributed significantly to making this a part of Best Practice. If your code review tool is a separate piece of infrastructure tacked onto a VCS such as ReviewBoard or Crucible, leaving it possible for changes to circumvent the requirements for review and testing then this is a good reason to switch to something with tighter controls.\n\n**Orchestration:**\n\nBy orchestration I mean creating cloud resources (Virtual Machines, containers, etc), configuring cloud services (DNS, Networking, Load Balancing, etc), and preferrably also service discovery or communication between those resources when they are created or destroyed.\n\nOrchestration in cloud computing is a confusing topic because [there isn’t really a consistent definition ](https://www.flexiant.com/2012/09/18/what-is-cloud-orchestration/)of what “orchestration” actually means. The situation become even more complicated when you start looking at the plethora of tools out there that might at first seem like alternatives to each other, but the reality is it’s very much a venn diagram of overlapping functionality that you just won’t actually realise until you try them out. With that in mind, here is a list of tools that I do see as alternatives to one another.\n\n* [Cloudformation](https://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/): this is a declarative, full-featured framework for managing cloud resource on AWS. It’s a powerful and flexible tool but it can get complicated pretty quickly as your usage of AWS expands (which is even more reason to use it). Some caution is required however, because even if you think you are a wiz at pushing buttons in the AWS console, [cloudformation knows more about how to deploy AWS services than you do](http://harish11g.blogspot.dk/2014/08/amazon-cloudformation-templates-automation-Amazon-CFT-AWS-top-best-practices-tips.html), and you will surprised if you make the wrong assumption. If you’re using EC2 then you should probably be using cloudformation, and sooner, rather than later, because it is not possible to add existing resources (such as an ec2-instance) into a cloudformation-managed stack.\n* [Heat](http://docs.openstack.org/developer/heat/): is OpenStack’s equivalent of Cloudformation. For the most-part, Heat is compatible with the Cloudformation syntax, so if you’re familiar with one, it’s pretty straight forward to learn the other. One of the benefits of Heat is that it has a bit more flexibility managing resources with operations such as abandon-stack that will allow you delete a stack without removing all the created resources, and later you can adopt-stack once you have fixed whatever you needed to. This is a pretty nice feature to help you through the learning curve of learning Heat templates because it can shorten the feedback loop, but you’re doing something wrong if that’s a function you need to use in production.\n* [Terraform](https://terraform.io/docs/index.html): is another declarative orchestration framework with the major benefit that it’s platform agnostic. So if you are in a hybrid cloud scenario, for example you have a private OpenStack cloud, but also run on AWS, then Terraform is probably something to look into. If you’re looking to avoid vendor lock-in then Terraform might be the way to go.\n* [Docker-compose](https://docs.docker.com/compose/): is Docker’s declarative resource orchestration framework and is definitely worth a look if you’re interested in running containers. Compose has a [layered aproach to handling different envrionments](https://docs.docker.com/compose/extends/#different-environments), whereby you start with a base configuration that all your environments start with and then you override certain values to turn it into dev/ci/stage/prod. That’s a really nice way to help maintain consistency between envrionments.\n\nI chose all the above because I’m a big fan of the [declarative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declarative_programming)-style system definitions (as opposed to [imperative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperative_programming)). I think that is the right way to think about systems and build systems. But there are also other methodologies and lots of options for you to choose from (for example PaaS is a wholly different type of orchestration, which technically fits into my definition above)\n\n**Configuration Management:**\n\nThis is something often mixed in with “orchestration”. In some ways that is understandable, because a declarative orchestration template such as what is used in all of the tools listed above is essentially just a yaml or json file. Once that file is stored in version control it becomes a part of your Definitive Media Library (to use an ITIL term). This turns it into an essential part of the configuration definition of your environment required to reproduce it.\n\nAlthough we can view Configuration Management and Orchestration as a single topic, doing so makes the landscape of tools more confusing to understand. We’re better off dividing the two areas so that we can discuss them separately, which means we need an appropriate definition of Configuration Management to complement our understanding of Orchestration.\n\nSo when I talk about Configuration Management, I’m really referring to internal configuration of a compute resource, such as a virtual machine or container. This means software such as programming languages and frameworks, components such as apache and nginx, databases if they are running on the compute instances (as opposed to some *aaS like [DynamoDB](https://aws.amazon.com/documentation/dynamodb/) or [Trove](https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Trove), in which case it falls more under “orchestration”), all the way down to files, folders and permissions.\n\n* [Docker](https://www.docker.com/sites/default/files/WP-%20Definitive%20Guide%20To%20Containers.pdf): by now Docker is many things, but the technology at it’s core is really a method of shipping containers from one host OS to another host OS. What’s inside the container remains the same regardless of the host Operating System, meaning that it solves the Configuration Management problem of how your application runs in different environments. [Containers are not a new idea](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coFIEH3vXPw) at all but it was only with Docker that their real potential has finally been unlocked by bringing conscensus in the industry that this is now [without question the future of virtualization](https://www.opencontainers.org/). If you have not started containerizing your application yet and you’re still fumbling around with Virtual Machines, then you better put it on your road map, or be prepared to let the competition run you over.\n* [Ansible](http://www.ansible.com/how-ansible-works): is probably the simplest Configuration Management tool out there for managing Virtual Machines. It’s extremely lightweight ([the tar.gz is less that 1MB!](https://github.com/ansible/ansible/releases)), and works simply by ssh or winrm/powershell in the case of Windows when in push mode, or alternatively run it in pull-mode if you want to do things like auto-scaling. It’s written in python and is “batteries included” meaning that it has a load of inbuilt modules that work of the box. Ansible is [idempotent (or trivial to make idempotent), but it is not convergent](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/ansible-project/WpRblldA2PQ/lYDpFjBXDlsJ). Ansible Tower is their paid-for version which includes a centralised control and monitoring server that can be a real benefit in Production. The downsides of Ansible is that is can be slow compared to the alternatives, and you can occasionally run into cryptic errors that are difficult to deciper.\n* [Chef](https://www.chef.io/)/[Puppet](https://puppetlabs.com/): are the opposites of Ansible in many ways considering they do the same job. From [the point since they initially diverged 8 or so years ago](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=911391), they basically spent the next 6 years copying each other’s features, to the point today where they are [stretching to differentiate themselves](https://www.scriptrock.com/articles/puppet-vs.-chef-revisited) once more. They’re both complicated, big, and bloated, but powerful (which is not necessarily a good thing as that power tends to be abused rather than limited to what it was intended to do). Their server-agent architecture is possible to run without the server, however you need to replace it with something else, which, in all the cases I’ve seen ends up being Ansible. Both the chef-server and puppet-master are almost 500MB which gets you no where without the rest of the software you need. If you’re already using puppet or chef then that’s fine, however if you’re new to virtualisation then choose Ansible.\n* [Saltstack](http://saltstack.com/): Where Chef and Puppet played the game of competitively diverging and converging over time, in many ways the same goes for Ansible and Saltstack. To begin with, Salt was a similar server-agent architecture to Chef and Puppet, but [salt-ssh](https://blog.logentries.com/2015/04/salt-ssh-for-remote-execution-of-states-and-modules/) is obviously mimmicking the agentless architecture of Ansible. In the server-agent mode, Saltstack is faster than Ansible, and in all modes simpler to use and learn than Chef and Puppet, without suffering from the bloat.\n\nTo summarise the points above, the primary decision to make regarding Configuration Management is whether you’re at a stage where you’re [ready to make the leap to containerize](https://labs.ctl.io/how-to-migrate-legacy-applications-into-docker-containers/) your applications or not. So how on earth do you make that decision?\n\n1. First of all you need to want to be on the bleeding edge of technology, because you feel you can handle the risk.\n2. Secondly, your organisation also needs to be mature enough from a team work and culture perspective as well as having some senior technical people who know enough about things like microservices, SOA and REST architectures.\n3. Lastly, you should not be spending the majority of your time firefighting or struggling with technical debt.\n\nIf you meet those 3 criteria then you’re in a good place to begin containerizing your applications. If you only fit 1 or 2 then you’re on the margins and maybe you want to wait another 6-12 months so that you can fix some of your issues and wait for the other tools in the space to mature. If you don’t fit any of those areas then forget it, you have way bigger problems to solve.\n\nIf you are not ready to containerize but you want still want to virtualize in VMs then you will still need a tool like Ansible or Saltstack. I recommend against Chef or Puppet, unless you already have people who know these tools and know how to build systems with them without making a bigger mess. Even in that case, keep it in mind that we already can see the end of the road of the Virtual Machine. And yes I really mean that. [The only reason why we ended up with Virtual Machines as the dominant virtualisation technology is because of Windows](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coFIEH3vXPw), and now even [Microsoft has seen the light](http://venturebeat.com/2015/11/19/microsoft-launches-new-windows-server-2016-preview-with-hyper-v-containers/). That means you really want to carefully consider how much time and effort you are going to spend on something that is at best, at stop-gap.\n\nWe’ll finish off this long series in Part 3"}],"intro":"This is the second of three posts about building an advanced deployment pipeline. ","slug":"building-a-portable-scalable-reusable-deployment-pipeline-for-an-arbitrarily-complex-environment-2","url":"/en/news/building-a-portable-scalable-reusable-deployment-pipeline-for-an-arbitrarily-complex-environment-2","lang":"en","filename":"building-a-portable-scalable-reusable-deployment-pipeline-for-an-arbitrarily-complex-environment-part-2","image":"/assets/uploads/8442_without_stripes.png"},"building-a-portable-scalable-reusable-deployment-pipeline-for-an-arbitrarily-complex-environment-part-3":{"title":"Building a portable, scalable, reusable Deployment Pipeline for an arbitrarily complex environment (part 3)","case_slug":"Building a portable, scalable, reusable Deployment Pipeline for an arbitrarily complex environment 3","intro":"This is the last of three posts about building an advanced deployment pipeline.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"CI servers themselves aren’t really much more than glorified remote script runners and just because you might have a CI server setup with some automated tests does not mean you are doing continuous integration. As I mentioned in part 2, the “integration” part of continuous integration actually occurs as the source-control level whereby developers are [merging/rebasing their changes with the latest from the master branch](https://www.thoughtworks.com/continuous-integration). That integration should occur at least once per day, and then automated tests should be run to see if anything has broken. Only if every developer is doing this regularly can you say that you are actually doing continuous integration.\n\n* [Jenkins](https://jenkins-ci.org/): is still the most mature and wide spread CI server around today. It has an active community with [over 1000 available plugins](https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Plugins#Plugins-Pluginsbytopic) giving it unrivalled flexiblility and functionality. This is really great, because most problems are not new, so it’s likely that whatever your case maybe, there is likely already a plugin to help you. It’s written in java and fully open source. If you have a complex system, it’s almost a certainty that jenkins will be able to handle it. On the downside, jenkins can be a pretty complicated beast to configure, and the user interface is pretty clunky and ugly. A few of the key pieces of sowftware and plugins I always use with jenkins to build deployment pipelines are [swarm plugin](https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Swarm%20Plugin), [jenkins job builder](http://docs.openstack.org/infra/jenkins-job-builder/) and [cloudbees flow plugin](https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Build%20Flow%20Plugin).\n* [Thoughtworks Go](https://www.go.cd/): I think it’s a bit surprising that not many people seem to have heard of Go, considering the guys who wrote the book on [Continuous Delivery](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321601912?tag=contindelive-20), [Jez Humble](https://www.thoughtworks.com/profiles/jez-humble) and [Martin Fowler](http://www.martinfowler.com/) both work for Thoughtworks. No surprises that Go is designed “out of the box” to be suitable for Continuous Delivery and building Deployment Pipelines. Since they [open sourced the product in 2014](https://www.thoughtworks.com/news/go-continuous-delivery-now-available-as-free-open-source), you can see how healthy the [community is on github](https://github.com/gocd/gocd). It has probably one of the nicest interfaces for any CI tool out there, however the rate of issues being created versus resolved is something to keep an eye on.\n* [Team City](https://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/): If you have used one of [Jetbrains IDEs](https://www.jetbrains.com/products.html#type=ide), then you’re probably are also familiar with Team City. They produce good tools that are popular with many developers. It’s no surprise that Team City is a solid CI server as well, which of course integrates seamlessly with your IDE. You can create dependencies via build chaining between individual jobs to set up a deployment pipeline. Team City is a capable tool and free for a small number of build and agents, however it is closed source and if you’re expecing to run at large scale it’s going to become pretty [expensive](https://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/buy/).\n\n**Artifact Repository:**\n\nProbably one of the least exciting topics is the storing and retrieving of build artifacts, however it is important, especially for compiled languages. If releasing to production means pulling the latest changes and then compiling, I’m sorry but you’re just doing it wrong. [Each time you compile your source, you’re more likely to end up with a different binary ](http://superuser.com/questions/639351/does-recompiling-a-program-produce-a-bit-for-bit-identical-binary)than not, even if the source has not changed. That means it is possible for the runtime execution of your program to be different, and thus any [testing and verification can really only be garanteed for a certain binary](http://blog.arungupta.me/build-binaries-only-once-continuous-deployment/), and not the source commit.\n\nIf you’re using something like php then this is potentially less of an issue, however since [Facebook started turning PHP into Java](http://hhvm.com/), then even that is probably not true in all cases.\n\n* [Artifactory](https://www.jfrog.com/open-source/#os-arti): is a flexible repository that in it’s free version can store java packages such as jar, war and ear, but in it’s paid-for version can also mirror node npm, python pypi and ruby gems as well as OS packages such as rpm and deb! It also integrates with CI servers such as Jenkins and Team City and Go. It’s open source, which is nice, but to get all the goodies, you will need to [fork over the cash](https://www.jfrog.com/artifactory/buy-now/).\n* [Nexus](http://www.sonatype.com/nexus/solution-overview/nexus-repository): will do pretty much all the same things that Artifactory will do, however the additional language support for other package types come in the open source version. It will also integrate with all the major Ci servers and is actually a bit cheaper then Artifactory.\n* [rpm](https://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/CreateLocalMirror)/[deb](http://www.aptly.info/) mirrors (and other OS packages): I mention this separately, because just like controlling your application dependencies is important, so are controlling your OS dependencies. We’ve probably all been in the situation where the depenency we were downloading somewhere off the internet went missing, or when we got an update that unexpectedly broke the build or brought down production (because we didn’t test it - oops!).\n\n**Workflow Visualisation:**\n\nPerhaps workflow tools might seem like an afterthought in the context of a Deployment Pipeline, but unfortuantely this is not so. When the topic comes up about how to manage releases, what is the definition of “done”? These tools are a necessary link in the chain.\n\n* [Jira](https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira): Atlassian Jira is a popular and powerful issue management and workflow visualisation tool. It is highly configurable which means it’s great for handling all sorts of agile and ITIL-style processes to fit your organisation, but that is also often [where it also goes wrong](https://jira.atlassian.com/secure/attachment/67504/Workflow%20with%20labels.png), resulting in a configuration nightmare. Jira’s power is also it’s curse, however when used correctly it is a fine and effective tool with a lot of in-built features and reports. It supports both scrum and kanban, but is unfortunately opinionated in these areas so if you are using some kind of blended “scrumban” then you might run into trouble. Jira can be integrated with quite a few different tools, but of course works best if you stick to the Atlassian suite.\n* [Trello](https://trello.com/): is a lightweight cloud service for Kanban-style worfklow management. If you don’t want the hassle of complex workflows and just want to get stuff done then Trello could be a good fit for you, if you can live without customizations. Through other services such as [Zapier](https://zapier.com/), you can integrate different services with Trello so that you can get a high level overview of progress. You can also upgrade the service to business class to get access to [power-ups](https://trello.com/power-ups).\n* [Kanban vs Scrum and DevOps](https://www.scriptrock.com/blog/devops-kanban-match-heaven): I feel that its worth making a note that in my experience, Scrum is not ideal for doing Continuous Delivery and DevOps. Things like time-boxed sprints, backlog grooming, sprint planning, and stakeholder demos all start to feel quite restrictive in their format and routine, especially when you want the flexibility of releasing every day. [Kanban is better suited for Continuous Delivery](http://www.swiftkanban.com/kanban/kanban-for-devops-continuous-delivery/), and I’d go out on a limb to say that I think the DevOps community as a whole is moving towards support of Kanban over Scrum.\n\n**Monitoring and metrics:**\n\nThere are basically two forms of monitoring and metrics that are important. You have read-time monitoring that you need to react to incidents from from production events, and then you have metrics for analytical and statistical purposes (aka [Business Intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_intelligence)) that can come from either (or both) log files or database reports .\n\n* [Prometheus](http://prometheus.io/): is an open source monitoring tool built by Soundcloud. I first learned about Prometheus from my friend [Matthias Grüter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0LlilNpX1U&feature=youtu.be) about it at a Stockholm DevOps meetup and thought it looked quite impressive. It seemed like it actually offered something new and better things than a lot of the other monitoring tools which had been around for a while like [Nagios](https://www.nagios.org/) and [Graphite](http://graphite.wikidot.com/start). It has instrumentation for lots of different languages, support for different frontends and backends and is easy to setup. Maybe it won’t do everything you want but it certainly should be a good start.\n* [ELK](https://www.elastic.co/products): meaning [Elasticsearch](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/getting-started.html), [Logstash](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/logstash/current/introduction.html) and [Kibana](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/kibana/current/introduction.html), which is a powerful set of tools to perform logfile analysis. ELK is gaining wide acceptance because they work well and are open source with a vibrant community. Logstash will handle almost any log you can ship to it, such as web logs, database logs, syslogs and windows event logs which can then be stored, and parsed by elastic search and finally displayed by Kibana. Even though it’s 3 separate components, they are all designed to integrate seemlessly with each other. Compare this to a paid, closed source service like Splunk, it’s hard to imagine that they will survive too much longer without doing something drastic.\n* [Pentaho](http://www.pentaho.com/): Is an open source BI platform that offer a [free community edition](http://community.pentaho.com/) as well as an enterprise product with [lots of heavy stuff](http://www.pentaho.com/product/product-overview). If your needs aren’t met by the free version, then at least you’ll get to try and feel the product to see if you need all the power that’s offered in the paid version. I’m not sure what their pricing and licensing is like but there aren’t too many companies in this space that offer products that look as good as this, are open source, with free community editions.\n\nIf you made it this far, I hope it has been a worthwhile read. At some point in the near future I hope to be able to open source some code to show how all these pieces can be assembled, but we’ll see how that goes. Obviously the amount of work involved to get the basics up and running is not really something that you can whip up in just a weekend.\n\nAnyways, if there are certain areas where you wished to have more information and option about tooling, maybe [this list will help you](https://github.com/kahun/awesome-sysadmin). Otherwise if you have questions or comments you can shoot me an email."}],"tags":["pipeline"],"slug":"building-a-portable-scalable-reusable-deployment-pipeline-for-an-arbitrarily-complex-environment-3","url":"/en/news/building-a-portable-scalable-reusable-deployment-pipeline-for-an-arbitrarily-complex-environment-3","lang":"en","filename":"building-a-portable-scalable-reusable-deployment-pipeline-for-an-arbitrarily-complex-environment-part-3","date":"2015-12-23","image":"/assets/uploads/8442_without_stripes.png"},"can-you-keep-a-single-security-strategy-in-a-multi-cloud-environment":{"date":"2018-12-07","title":"Can you keep a single security strategy in a multi-cloud environment?","case_slug":"Can you keep a single security strategy a multi-cloud environment","intro":"A guest blogpost by James Tucker, Director of System Engineering at Baffin Bay Networks","tags":["security"],"body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"### Did you know that about 96% of all enterprises are using the cloud in some way? \n\nIt seems shocking until you start thinking about how many cloud services you use in the course of a day. The average office worker might start thinking about Gmail or Office365 for mail, file sharing on Dropbox, tracking customers in Salesforce, and so on. Meanwhile the IT staff is thinking of all the infrastructure they have moved to the cloud, and perhaps thinking about what to do with all the extra rack space in the server room in the basement. Regardless of your perspective, it’s clear that the cloud is here to stay. But it gets even more complex.\n\nAs cloud computing becomes more of a commodity, it makes sense to shop around and put your assets into the cloud which provides the best cost to benefit ratio for that particular asset or application. You may have an infrastructure project with high bandwidth usage, so it would make sense to find the most cost efficient solution for that project. On the other hand, the marketing department may be running their own sites, and would prefer something that was as easy as possible to use.\n\nWith all the options out there, it’s no surprise that 81% of businesses have a multi-cloud strategy, according to this report from [RightScale](https://www.rightscale.com/lp/state-of-the-cloud). There are benefits to a single cloud strategy. It makes it easier for IT Staff to know where an asset might be, it simplifies compliance and IT Governance. That being said, the advantages of multiple cloud providers often quickly outweigh the drawbacks, particularly if the organization can ensure a few key processes are in place.\n\nFirst, there needs to be a process to track and inventory all assets across your environment. This includes the servers in your datacenters, cloud assets, as well as ‘sites around town’. Sites around town are those one time use sites, say ELASTX has a Movember campaign and creates elastxmovember2018.se. This might be created by non-technical staff or a third party agency, and put in a web host outside the typical business processes. In a year, this site will be forgotten, unmaintained and a potential security risk. In a perfect world, these sites are shut down soon after the event, but in practice they are often forgotten.\n\nTo put it bluntly, you can’t protect what you don’t know about. While the legal responsibility for a breach might not be yours, there is a potential for data leakage and loss of reputation due to forgotten assets.\n\nSecond, the wider your assets are spread, the harder security becomes. Many IaaS vendors provide very basic security services for assets you have with them. If you are running two or more cloud vendors, this becomes a challenge to know what level of security each provides. What ends up happening far too often is you end up with a mix of different security levels, disjointed information, and are left confused during an incident. At Baffin Bay Networks, we advise our customers to avoid having multiple different security regimes for assets in the cloud. Instead, you should establish a high baseline for the minimum security requirement and add additional protections where needed. Ideally all assets, regardless of where they are deployed should share the same security.\n\nFinally, remember that proper security is based on policies and procedures. Having a coherent security policy and detailed plans on how to implement them is the single best way you can spend your security budget. Not only will this reduce the overall number of security incidents you see in a year, it will reduce the time to resolution across the board. Following on that, these policies should be communicated via a strong IT Governance organization to ensure that your cloud strategy and security strategy are aligned with the goals of the business at large. After all whole purpose of a cloud strategy is to enable the business to do more, faster. Just make sure you do it securely!\n\n//James Tucker, Director of System Engineering at Baffin Bay Networks\n\nBaffin Bay Networks is a Swedish tech startup based in Stockholm, founded in 2016, poised to disrupt the cloud-based cyber security market. Their team consist of gifted cyber security experts, passionate about building a world-class Threat Protection Platform that helps their customers to mitigate both network based and application level cyber threats.\n\n[Click here to read more about Baffin Bay Networks!](https://www.baffinbaynetworks.com/)"},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/old-man-yells-at-cloud-34970211.png","alt":"Cartoon with an angry man that yells at cloud"}],"slug":"can-you-keep-a-single-security-strategy-a-multi-cloud-environment","url":"/en/news/can-you-keep-a-single-security-strategy-a-multi-cloud-environment","lang":"en","filename":"can-you-keep-a-single-security-strategy-in-a-multi-cloud-environment","image":"/assets/uploads/rack_rails.jpeg"},"capi-en-kärlekshistoria-om-automatisering-och-open-source":{"date":"2024-10-29","title":"CAPI – A love story of automation and open source","case_slug":"CAPI A love story of automation and open source","image_alt":"AI generated image of a tree and a cloud with a heart in it","tags":["elastx","kubernetes"],"intro":"The fall of 2024 marked a significant milestone for Elastx with the production deployment of Cluster API (CAPI). By replacing Kubespray, CAPI has become the central tool for managing Kubernetes clusters. With CAPI, we can offer an even more efficient, automated, and reliable solution that not only simplifies the work for our technicians but also enhances the experience for our customers.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"### CAPI and efficient cluster management\nCAPI (Cluster API) is a tool for managing Kubernetes clusters. It allows for the creation, updating, and scaling of clusters via an API, which in turn makes it easier and more efficient to utilize Kubernetes' built-in functionalities.\n\nAll clusters are managed with what is called a management cluster. By writing a manifest with the specifications for the cluster you want to create and submitting it to the management cluster, all management happens automatically. The management cluster is responsible for the entire lifecycle—from creation to upgrades, changes, and eventually, removal. For example, when the cluster needs to be updated, you simply adjust the manifest, and the management cluster takes care of implementing the changes.\n\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Advantages of CAPI\nCAPI automates and streamlines the process in a way that saves both time and resources. For example, an upgrade that used to take hours can now be done much faster, more reliably, and with less risk of disruptions. The vision behind this approach to managing clusters was that customers could eventually perform these operations themselves, which—combined with automated scaling and automated healing—provides an experience that can be almost entirely controlled by the user or their own automation.\n\nAn Elastx CaaS cluster typically consists of at least three control plane nodes and three worker nodes (one per availability zone). Larger clusters may have significantly more worker nodes. With our previous solution, when upgrading clusters, an old node was removed before a new one became available for load in the cluster. This meant that the customer temporarily lost a node, and the load on that node had to be moved, which could cause issues—especially in clusters with high utilization or loads configured with insufficient redundancy specificity. In the worst-case scenario, this could lead to brief outages for the customer. It’s important to note that with the configurations recommended by Elastx, it is technically possible to perform a completely disruption-free upgrade of a Kubernetes cluster without affecting the cluster’s capacity or operation. By using CAPI, upgrades become more secure.\n\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### An automated workflow\nWith CAPI, a single command is all it takes, and everything is handled in the background. For each new version of Kubernetes, new images are built. When it’s time for an upgrade, a new node with the latest version is created first. Once the node is fully built, it’s integrated into the existing cluster, the load is drained from the old node, and it is finally removed from the cluster. This process is repeated until the entire cluster is upgraded.\n\nIt is quick to create a node and make it available to the cluster. Once a node is added and receives load, it is considered upgraded and complete.\n\nThis method enhances both the stability and security of the cluster, as the number of active nodes never decreases during the upgrade. This is particularly beneficial for clusters with high workloads.\n\n### The benefits of automation\n- Significantly shorter upgrade times\n- Reduced risk of human error\n- Lower risk of customer downtime\n- Improved workflow for employees\n- Future potential for customers to manage their own Kubernetes clusters\n\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### A brief overview of Cluster API\nCluster API is an open source project initiated by Google. It aims to introduce declarative, Kubernetes-like APIs for creating, configuring, and managing clusters. The API is compatible across multiple cloud providers, enabling hybrid Kubernetes deployment solutions, including Google Cloud.\n\nElastx contributes to the project by developing Floating IP functionality for CAPI in the context of OpenStack. To communicate with OpenStack, another API is used—CAPO.\n\nCluster API for OpenStack, abbreviated as CAPO, is a tool that simplifies operations for those using OpenStack as their hardware provider. It benefits both our internal development and the broader community, as we build tools that others can also use and benefit from.\n\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Elastx and the future of development – Our cloud strategy\nElastx is a leading cloud platform for business-critical services and sensitive data. We are passionate about open source and automation, sustainability, and digital sovereignty.\n\nWe are a provider with big ambitions, and to continue delivering high-quality products and services in competition with larger players, we need to be innovative and automate repetitive tasks. Cluster API is a key component in realizing our goals, as it helps us offer stable solutions while avoiding time-consuming tasks and manual errors. Automation provides better customer experiences while also making things easier for our employees.\n\nElastx continues to drive forward-leaning creativity and contribute to the open source community, all with a focus on delivering added value to our customers and society.\n\n"},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":false,"cta_text":"Interested in enhancing your cloud strategy? Let’s find the right solution together!","cta_label":"Email us","cta_link":"mailto:hello@elastx.se"}],"slug":"capi-a-love-story-of-automation-and-open-source","url":"/en/news/capi-a-love-story-of-automation-and-open-source","lang":"en","filename":"capi-en-kärlekshistoria-om-automatisering-och-open-source","image":"/assets/uploads/ai_cloud_love2.png"},"checklista-för-trygg-drift-i-en-molnplattform":{"date":"2023-10-23","title":"Checklist for Safe Cloud Platform Operations","case_slug":"Checklist for Safe Cloud Platform Operations","image_alt":"Image of server with a QR-code that leads to https://elastx.se/en/openstack","tags":["elastx"],"intro":"Using cloud services has many advantages over traditional management or maintaining on-site infrastructure. However, the cloud environment can be challenging to navigate. To aid your decision-making, we've crafted this guide outlining important considerations when selecting a cloud platform.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"\nLet's dive right in! We'll start off by listing some of the key benefits a cloud platform brings to the table:\n\n* **Instantly available**: All services are ready for immediate use.\n* **Scalability**: You have continuous access to the resources you need.\n* **Enhanced predictability**: Automated testing and provisioning ensure that services consistently perform as expected in terms of function and capacity.\n* **Financial flexibility**: You only pay for the resources you use, without lengthy commitments or upfront investments.\n* **No lock-In**: You're free to end services when they're no longer needed.\n* **Cost-efficiency**: Get robust infrastructure at an affordable cost.\n* **Focus on core business**: Using standard services allows you to invest more time and effort into your primary business activities."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Your responsibility\n\nImagine a cloud platform as a well-stocked workshop filled with an array of top-notch tools and materials, all designed to help you bring your projects to life. As the customer, it's your responsibility to wield these resources effectively, ensuring that your end product aligns precisely with the needs of your clientele.\n\n\nThe beauty of a cloud platform lies in its adaptability. It can be configured in countless ways, free from the constraints of a one-size-fits-all model. Consequently, customers often grapple with the challenge of determining the optimal structure for their data and applications to meet their unique requirements.\n\n### Availability zones\n\nEvery cloud platform operates within specific regions, defined as the physical areas where their services are hosted. The number of Availability Zones (AZ) and their separation methods can significantly vary between different providers. Many local providers offer only one AZ per region, but Elastx stands out by offering three AZs per region, a standard matching major hyperscalers like AWS and Azure."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/datacenters_az.png","alt":"Illustration of three data centers at a disaster-safe distance of 20km."},{"type":"body_text","text":"It's important to understand that even when multiple AZs are available, they can be either geographically close or physically separated. Elastx, AWS, and Azure maintain distinct data centers in separate locations, ensuring physical separation. In contrast, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) follows varying practices, which can make it difficult to find clear information about them..\n\nNotably, **Elastx currently stands as the sole European cloud platform that provides three availability zones**, housed within physically distinct data centers, strategically positioned at a disaster-safe distance of 20 kilometers.\n\nWhen constructing clusters with persistent data, another critical consideration is ensuring an odd number of nodes (more than one). This approach mitigates the \"split brain\" problem, which can be notoriously challenging to recover from. Consequently, three becomes the magic number in terms of the quantity of availability zones.\n\nFor those with high demands for both high availability and disaster recovery, seeking a provider that offers three geographically separated Availability Zones (AZ) is crucial."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Data storage\nData storage is a realm characterized by its multitude of variations, making it a critical area where careful considerations are key for ensuring robust data protection.\n\nWithin a cloud platform, you'll typically come across a variety of storage types, each offering different levels of built-in redundancy and data protection. Let's break them down into four primary categories:\n\n* **Ephemeral Storage**: This is block storage directly linked to an instance, often without redundancy.\n* **Block Storage**: Block storage is accessible through volumes and comes in various redundancy levels, including disk, enclosure, Availability Zone (AZ), and Region.\n* **File Storage**: This category handles network-shared file systems and offers redundancy options such as disk, enclosure, AZ, and Region.\n* **Object Storage**: Objects, typically static files, are stored through an API, with redundancy options such as disk, enclosure, AZ, and Region.\n\nTo add a twist, these diverse storage types can all be powered by a single underlying storage system. The hitch here is presuming robust data protection solely because you've backed up your primary data stored on block storage by replicating it to object storage. If issues crop up within that underlying storage system, both the primary and backup data could be at risk.\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Secure your backups\n\nEven with redundancy in place, like the safety net of Availability Zones (AZ), you won’t be protected from logical errors. These include unintentional data deletions, unwanted changes brought about by bugs, human errors, or malicious tampering.\n\nTo ensure effective data recovery, you must establish your Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO). These metrics determine how quickly data needs to be recoverable and how much data you can afford to lose. With this info in hand, you can make informed choices about the right storage setup, including redundancy levels, and build a solid data protection strategy.\n\nTraditionally, creating backup copies involves duplicating all data to a secondary storage location that can serve as a recovery resource when needed. However, this process may become time-consuming when dealing with substantial data volumes. In such cases, using replication alongside snapshots or similar tools can significantly speed up the restoration of large datasets.\n\nWe recommend that you only back up data that requires it. For certain components, like boot disks, it might be more efficient to recreate them automatically using infrastructure as code. Moreover, aligning data protection as closely as possible with the application tends to be beneficial. This can involve making use of built-in functions for replication and backup within your database system, ensuring a more streamlined and efficient approach to data security.\n\nKey considerations:\n\n* Configuration responsibility: While data protection tools exist within a cloud platform, it is up to you to properly configure and consistently monitor them.\n* Redundancy assessment: Assess the level of redundancy in your chosen storage solution.\n* Snapshot limitations: Note that snapshots are typically stored on the same system, safeguarding against logical errors but not physical ones, such as an availability zone or region outage.\n* Geographical backup: Ensure your backups are stored in a geographically separated location from your primary data to enhance data security.\n* Recovery testing: Always test the recovery process to confirm its functionality and understand the time it takes.\n* Encryption verification: Check if the storage is encrypted, and if not, enable this protective feature."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Storage options at Elastx\nAt Elastx, we offer the following storage options:\n\n* **Ephemeral Storage**: This consists of local SSD NVMe storage, delivering speed and cost-efficiency, although it lacks redundancy. The storage size is associated with your chosen instance type, and there's a backup feature available for storing data in object storage.\n\n* **Block Storage**: Our SSD-based block storage is fully redundant within each Availability Zone (AZ). Volumes can be easily scaled to meet your requirements and offer flexible performance. Snapshot functions provide protection against logical errors, while backup options store data in object storage.\n\n* **Object Storage**: Our object storage stands out for its exceptional scalability and robustness. It preserves all objects in triplicate, with one copy in each Availability Zone.\n\nAll storage at Elastx is encrypted by default; no special steps are required to activate this protection.\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Availability\n\nIn systems that have multiple availability zones, it's your responsibility to make the most of this valuable opportunity. When opting for managed services, like databases, you'll encounter various levels of redundancy, spanning from single nodes to multiple nodes dispersed across availability zones within a cluster. If you operate your own services within instances, you have the option to distribute them across several availability zones, integrating redundancy and disaster protection seamlessly.\n\nBuilding your services with infrastructure as code is a good idea, simplifying the monitoring of running processes, tracking changes, and enabling swift rebuilds when necessary.\n\nKeep in mind that the resilience of your system hinges on its weakest element. This underscores the significance of choosing the right tier for compute, storage, and other critical services that align with your requirements.\n\nAt Elastx, we offer the choice of running fully redundant operations across our three availability zones, whether you're utilizing our [IaaS](https://elastx.se/en/openstack), our [DBaaS](https://elastx.se/en/database/), or our [CaaS](https://elastx.se/en/kubernetes)."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Security\n\nThe majority of security breaches occur through known vulnerabilities or leaked login credentials. As a user, the responsibility lies with you to safeguard your configuration, services, and the data you handle, including the operating system of the instances you employ. This requires setting up a strong process that regularly updates systems and adds the right protections to guard against known weaknesses. It is equally important that you also monitor your environment so that any anomalies can be detected in time."},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":false,"cta_text":"Need more information or help finding the appropriate level of accessibility and data protection?","cta_label":"Contact us","cta_link":"mailto:hello@elastx.se"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Support\n\nIf you need further guidance or personal support for the right level of availability and data protection, don't hesitate to reach out to our 24/7 support – always included in our services. We look forward to hearing from you!"}],"slug":"checklist-for-safe-cloud-platform-operations","url":"/en/news/checklist-for-safe-cloud-platform-operations","lang":"en","filename":"checklista-för-trygg-drift-i-en-molnplattform","image":"/assets/uploads/follow_qr_to_openstack.jpg"},"cloud-act-time-to-bring-our-data-storage-home":{"date":"2018-05-07","title":"Cloud Act - time to bring our data storage home","case_slug":"Cloud Act time to bring our data storage home","tags":["cloud-act"],"intro":"As some of you already heard or read, a new law has emerged in the United States, where US cloud suppliers and IT companies are now forced to disclose data to US authorities, they have chosen to name it Cloud Act.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"Cloud Act became effective on March 23 this year. The law came in to discussion in 2013, and now it has officially been implemented. All the data that we have chosen to store at US-based cloud vendors are now visible and available to US authorities. This has of course cought the eye of swedish companies whom are now highly interrested in bringing their data back home for storage.\n\nWe can actually be pretty grateful that GDPR has been implemented and ISO certifications are being followed quite strictly here in Sweden. We follow the opposite stream here when it comes to Cloud Act. Not only in Sweden but also in large parts of Europe. We demand responsibility and privacy when it comes to data and personal information. We have put a lot of focus on adapting to GDPR and focusing on customer needs and integrity.\n\n### In a way, the timing couldn’t be better\n\n**Just when data management is at it’s “worst” in the US, companies now have the opportunity to move storage to a safer place.** \n\nThis is the time for Swedish IT providers to show their full strength domestically and deliver quality in swedish IT operations. Something that ELASTX are definitely are focusing on. Great and exciting times are ahead.\n\n### What does ELASTX do?\n\n[IT Operation](/services/)\n\nWe have two public cloud-based platforms, covering most client needs. But we can also tailor a private solution for customers wanting even more control over their system.\n\nThrough our Professional services, we help automate your development process: from platform selection, including pre-study, to migration of systems to a fully automated platform.\n\nWant to know more about ELASTX services? [Click here!](/services/)"}],"slug":"cloud-act-time-to-bring-our-data-storage-home","url":"/en/news/cloud-act-time-to-bring-our-data-storage-home","lang":"en","filename":"cloud-act-time-to-bring-our-data-storage-home","image":"/assets/uploads/andreas-bergmann-qKGvDT0lOjw-unsplash.jpg"},"cloud-support-for-ukraine":{"title":"Cloud support for Ukraine","case_slug":"cloud support for ukraine ","intro":"We believe that the best way we can support Ukraine is with the services we provide and the knowledge we have. Thereby we will support Ukrainian companies with a number of services for free or to highly discounted prices. We do not have unlimited resources but we will help as many as we can.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"\\- Free object storage for backups and primary data.\n\n\\- Compute and network resources (for free or highly discounted)."},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":true,"cta_text":"If you represent an Ukrainian company that currently hosts services in Ukraine and want to move them to a secure location, please contact us and we will explain how we can help.","cta_label":"Get in touch! ","cta_link":"mailto:hej@elastx.se"},{"type":"body_text","text":"Our ambition is to offer this at least as long as there is an active war in Ukraine. We will notify all Ukrainian customers at least 6 months before we make any changes to this offer."}],"slug":"cloud-support-for-ukraine-","url":"/en/news/cloud-support-for-ukraine-","lang":"en","filename":"cloud-support-for-ukraine","date":"2022-04-19","image":"/assets/uploads/some-post-linkedin-2-1-.jpg"},"cutting-edge-nätverk-vi-uppgraderar-till-ludicrous-speed":{"date":"2023-01-25","title":"Cutting edge network: we're upgrading to Ludicrous Speed!","case_slug":"cutting edge network were upgrading to ludicrous speed","tags":["elastx","network"],"intro":"As you may be aware, we have three Availability Zones (AZ) in our platform. Each zone is a fully separate data center located 20km apart from each other. This design serves to ensure that you can deliver business-critical services with maximum uptime. In the unlikely event of an issue impacting one data center, your services will remain available through the other two.","image_alt":"team members looking happy in front of balloons","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"We are delighted that our customers are taking full advantage of the redundancy provided by our three Availability Zones. That is why we do not charge for traffic between them.\n\nWe are thrilled to announce that we have recently upgraded our network between data centers to Ludicrous Speed! This upgrade guarantees robust and rapid communication between our data centers, both now and in the future. To achieve this, we have invested in the latest 400Gb Ethernet standard for our data center interconnects (DCI) and are now operating at 1600Gb from each AZ, ensuring a long-term, high-capacity network."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Increased security\nTo ensure top-notch availability and performance, we have always utilized dedicated fiber connections between our AZs. While the possibility may be low, it is important to note that fiber connections can be compromised, and unencrypted traffic can potentially be viewed by unauthorized parties.\nAs a precaution, we have taken steps to encrypt all data transmitted between our AZs, similar to how we already encrypt our storage. Our new DCIs now include MACsec encryption as a standard across the connections linking our AZs.\n\nOur ultimate goal is to offer our clients the most advanced and secure tools for running their applications. With this enhanced security measure in place, we are proud to offer an even higher level of protection."}],"slug":"cutting-edge-network-were-upgrading-to-ludicrous-speed","url":"/en/news/cutting-edge-network-were-upgrading-to-ludicrous-speed","lang":"en","filename":"cutting-edge-nätverk-vi-uppgraderar-till-ludicrous-speed","image":"/assets/uploads/smiling_team_in_front_of_balloons.jpg"},"ddos-skydd-nu-inkluderat":{"date":"2024-02-01","title":"DDoS protection now included","case_slug":"DDoS protection now included","tags":["elastx"],"intro":"Organized crime groups, driven by profit and power, have recognized the immense potential of cybercrime. By leveraging their resources, expertise, and global reach, these groups have turned to DDoS attacks as one of the strategic tools to achieve their objectives. A single DDoS attack can cripple a website or network, rendering it inaccessible to legitimate users. Businesses lose revenue, customer confidence plummets, and reputations are tarnished, all at the hands of malicious actors operating in the shadows.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"In today's cyber-threat climate, DDoS protection is not a luxury but a necessity. By investing in robust DDoS mitigation services, organizations can fortify their digital defenses, protect their assets, and safeguard their reputations. \n\nDDoS protection is not merely a reactive measure; it plays an active role in combating organized crime's cyber activities. By effectively mitigating attacks, organizations can disrupt the lucrative operations of these groups, making their attacks less profitable and less attractive. Additionally, organizations can contribute to the overall cybersecurity landscape by sharing data with law enforcement agencies, helping to track and prosecute cybercriminals.\n\nElastx are happy to announce that we are now adding our DDoS protection to all Elastx Cloud Platform (ECP) customers for free. This is one additional step forward in the mission to provide the best platform for business critical services with sensitive data. All services running on ECP will now be protected from L3/L4 volumetric DDoS attacks by our powerful inline protection.\n\nIf you are an existing Elastx customer you do not need to do anything, the DDoS protection service will be enabled automatically. If you are currently subscribing to our DDoS protection service you will just continue to get the protection without any extra charge."},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":true,"cta_text":"Experience outstanding performance, sustainability, and 24/7 support with Elastx. Contact us to access reliable, redundant, and cost-effective cloud solutions.","cta_label":"Get in touch","cta_link":"mailto:hello@elastx.se"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### The Obvious Choice for a Reliable, Durable, and Cost-Effective Cloud Platform\n\n\n\nWith a focus on performance, sustainability, legal compliance, and dedicated support, Elastx ensures its customers receive the best possible experience and the flexibility to tailor their data needs according to their requirements. As a Swedish CSP, Elastx adheres to the protection of Swedish and European law, providing extra security for companies with strict requirements for data protection and legal compliance."}],"slug":"ddos-protection-now-included","url":"/en/news/ddos-protection-now-included","lang":"en","filename":"ddos-skydd-nu-inkluderat","image":"/assets/uploads/glowing_400g_switch.jpeg"},"det-svenska-molnet":{"date":"2023-02-07","title":"The Swedish cloud provider ","case_slug":"the swedish cloud provider","tags":["elastx"],"intro":"Today, Elastx is a highly sought-after alternative for companies that deliver business-critical services with sensitive data. But how did it all start?","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"A decade ago, the founders, Henrik Grankvist and Joakim Öhman, saw a gap in the market for reliable cloud services, as the options available were limited to a few large international companies. They saw an opportunity to meet the growing demand for secure IT services in their home country, and thus Elastx was born.\n\n### A Swedish cloud is created\nThe year was 2012. It became increasingly clear to the Swedish public that digitization was not just a trend, but a necessary evolution. Traditional methods such as stamp cards, physical filing systems, internal mail and service desks were being replaced with more efficient digital systems. This shift also meant that both archives and government services would now be accessible through the internet.\n\n---\n\nOkay, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration. While the concept of digitization had already begun to gain momentum ten years ago, many people were still uncertain about the practicality and security of cloud storage. \nPeople were unsure about how cloud storage worked in practice, whether it was safe enough and the risks of entrusting international companies with sensitive information.\nDue to a lack of Swedish alternatives on the market, Henrik Grankvist and Joakim Öhman saw an opportunity to create a superior, locally rooted, and sustainable service that met the needs of their home country. Their vision was to provide a service under Swedish legislation, with exceptional customer support and flexibility, without being tied to lengthy, complicated agreements. \nAlthough they had not known each other for long, their shared goal of creating something that positively impacted society, combined with Henrik's business acumen and Joakim's technical expertise, made them a perfect match to bring their vision to life.\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Sustainable all the way\n\nStarting a company in the relatively new field of cloud services and Open Source was a bold move, but Henrik Grankvist and Joakim Öhman were determined to make it work. Despite the challenges in convincing investors and mortgaging their own homes to finance the startup, they were confident in their concept, which emphasized not just profit, but also a socially responsible and sustainable approach. This included using renewable energy in data centers, serving socially beneficial customers, and fostering a sustainable work culture. \nWith a focus on top-notch support and service, they launched Elastx in February 2013, and their efforts paid off as they secured two large prestigious companies as their first customers, who remain with them to this day, a full decade later."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Elastic deliveries\n\nThe key to Elastx's success is its ability to adapt and provide services that meet the evolving needs of its customers. To achieve this, they strive to be flexible and elastic. As for the \"X\" in the name, it is a nod to the Open Source community, which often favors unique naming conventions. Elastx represents the combination of being elastic in delivering IT services and being based on Open Source technology."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### A cloud provider to count on\n\nAs Elastx has grown over the years, it has remained true to its core values. Today, the company employs close to 30 individuals, organized into specialized teams. The founders have adhered to the principle of hiring individuals who are more skilled and competent than themselves, resulting in a highly skilled and knowledgeable workforce. Additionally, the company culture is marked by a sense of camaraderie and a light-hearted approach. Despite the diversity of personalities among the team, they are united by a shared passion for technology and infrastructure.\n\n**\\- What are you most proud of so far?**\nJoakim replied immediately, \"The remarkable resilience everyone showed in tough times, the selfless spirit of service since day one, and the robustness of our cloud platform.\" Henrik concurred, \"I'm proud of the trust-based company we've built, where everyone is motivated to create something great. I always say that a company is only as strong as its employees and what they collectively achieve.\""},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":true,"cta_text":"Continuously improving and developing its platforms and services, Elastx strives to continue to be one of Sweden's leading cloud service providers.","cta_label":"Let us tell you more!","cta_link":"mailto:hej@elastx.se"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### More relevant than ever\n\nThe pandemic accelerated the shift towards digitization in various industries, particularly in fintech and e-health. For these types of services, stability and security are of paramount importance, as well as the handling and storage of sensitive data in compliance with current legislation. \nAs more companies rely on business-critical online services, many find it challenging to navigate the complex and rapidly evolving field of IT, with its abundance of jargon and acronyms, new laws and regulations, and increasing concerns about cyber attacks. \nOutsourcing IT functions as a ready-made service can be a cost-effective and efficient solution, allowing companies to focus on their core business. Elastx offers a range of comprehensive solutions that cater to both large and small businesses."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### The Swedish cloud\n\nAs Elastx has established its position in the market, the necessity of cloud services based in Sweden is no longer in question. Although the market is still dominated by international companies, Elastx provides a secure, ethical, and sustainable alternative for customers who prioritize keeping their operations and data storage within Sweden's borders. \nWith a commitment to integrity, cutting-edge solutions, and exceptional support, Elastx is the clear choice for businesses looking for a reliable and responsible cloud service provider."}],"image_alt":"The founders of Elastx sits in chairs looking happy","slug":"the-swedish-cloud-provider","url":"/en/news/the-swedish-cloud-provider","lang":"en","filename":"det-svenska-molnet","image":"/assets/uploads/joakim-and-henrik-talking-and-smiling.jpg"},"digitalist-valde-elastx-som-hostingleverantör":{"date":"2017-07-08","tags":["elastx","customer"],"title":"Digitalist - 50% Reduction in Build Times and Blazingly Fast!","case_slug":"Digitalist 50 Reduction in Build Times and Blazingly Fast","intro":"Digital services firm Digitalist made the switch to Elastx Virtuozzo (formerly Jelastic) PaaS and experienced some very positive improvements.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"Digitalist Sweden’s (previous Wunderkraut) mission is to improve the business of their customers with digital tools, providing end-to-end digital services from developing strategy, providing consultancy and training to service design, development and support. They have 150 staff across 9 countries serving some of Europe’s best-known brands and forward-thinking governments, and their solid processes, business focus and great communications are as important as their technical knowledge in making these projects a success.\n\nSome of the best available digital tools they use include Agile business development methods, agile project management and open source software. What makes them different though is their consultative, collaborative approach. They use their experience to help their clients define the right questions before starting work on the answers, building a clear strategy with them. They work in long term, highly collaborative relationships with their customers, forming ‘one team’ that operates in a borderless way across the organisations. Their agile approach means that they meet the deadlines, stay within the budget and reach the goals of a project — three things that are sadly rare in digital projects. Their customer testimonials show our repeated success at this.\n\n### What is Digitalist?\n\nDigitalist is a leading European web agency focusing on bringing value to online investments through agile development and open source technologies.\n\nWe help companies with the 4 stages of a website lifecycle.\n\nSimplified: Motivate, Prepare, Develop & Improve your site.\n\nTo do this with a high amount of quality and a fast time to market we offer hosting for our clients.\n\n### Why Drupal?\n\nDrupal is a very mature, secure and flexible framework for building and continually improving online businesses. Drupal is Open Source which means that its free to use and to change.\n\n### Who are the people behind the project?\n\nWunderkraut is an entrepreneurial driven company and all owners also work as employees in the company. We have a strong focus on Agile methodologies and we also have a strong belief in Open Source software.\n\n### Who were you previously hosted with and what was the challenge?\n\nWe have worked with most types of vendors like local ISP´s, Larger IT infrastructure vendors, Inhouse IT Departments and Cloud solutions like Amazon and Linode.\n\nThe main challenge is always the lack of understanding of the process behind taking care of a site. Therefore we have moved most of our stuff to the cloud before we found Elastx.\n\nThe worst case is always the internal IT departments where people think that they are saving money since they already have the hardware and the resources. It always ends up in costly and complicated processes and results in expensive workarounds. That often leads to bad performance and low levels of security.\n\n### Elastx Virtuozzo (formerly Jelastic) PaaS are now powering many of Digitalist’s client sites. What notable improvements have you seen?\n\nThe key benefits for us:\n\n* Flexibility\n* Performance\n* Real and competent people behind the product\n* Stability\n\n### Can you share a typical environment set-up with us?\n\nWe have a LAMP stack adopted to Drupal with:\n\n* Nginx (proxy cache and load balancer)\n* Apache\n* MySQL\n* Memcache\n\nWe are also working on a Jetty container to support horizontal scaling of Apache Solr (today we use a reserved instance).\n\n### How many hours/resources have you saved each day since adopting the platform?\n\nWe have seen a 50% reduction of build times on our development server, since it scales its resources when they are needed. We get the performance when we need it!\n\nWe can also limit the number of build environments since one environment can scale when it’s needed. Before, we had to have a lot of instances just to distribute the load on peak hours. That meant more costs in terms of instances, but it also meant that we had to spend more time on managing the environments.\n\n### How has the support been compared to previous providers?\n\nThe simple answer: A lot better! Elastx are really dedicated and you really get attention when you need it. They also have been able to provide us with knowledge on a deeper level that we haven’t found in any other company we worked with.\n\n### Why does Drupal perform so well when it’s powered by Elastx Virtuozzo PaaS?\n\nDrupal is built on PHP. That means that under a heavy load and when your caches are cold you are really dependent on CPU. There are many ways to cache things in Drupal and therefore you work with several components to support this. (Opcode caches, Memcache, Database caches etc)\n\nDrupal’s flexibility and every sites’ unique set of requirement means that every site has their own kind of characteristics in terms of resource usage. The standard solution so far has been to throw enough resources on a “box” and hope that it works. With Elastx you don’t have to worry about this, it will scale where and when its needed. Of course, you will have to watch out for components that use a lot of resources (since it costs more), but its a lot better to do that than trying to solve a problem while your site is down.\n\n### Any plans to move other Digitalist clients to the platform?\n\nYes, we plan to move as many sites as possible to Elastx cloud platform. We still have to improve some things in our platform to really support all clients. It’s easier and more fun to maintain and all our clients using it are so happy over the increased performance!\n\n### Lastly, what new features would you like to see on our platform?\n\nA performance shared file system solution. It would also be nice to control the local firewalls (to support communication between our management servers and our instances).\n\nRead more at [digitalist.se](https://digitalist.se)"}],"slug":"digitalist-50-reduction-in-build-times-and-blazingly-fast","url":"/en/news/digitalist-50-reduction-in-build-times-and-blazingly-fast","lang":"en","filename":"digitalist-valde-elastx-som-hostingleverantör","image":"/assets/uploads/article-hero-18.jpg"},"därför-behöver-finansbranschen-redundans":{"title":"Why the financial industry needs redundancy","case_slug":"why the financial industry needs redundancy","intro":"It is clear that relying on a single data center is not sufficient. If the data center experiences downtime or a complete failure, it will significantly impact your business operations. \n\nHaving two data centers may seem like a more secure solution, but there is still a risk of a single point of failure if one center has to take over for the other.\n","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"The financial industry deals with a significant amount of critical data, so it is important to choose a partner that has at least three data centers. This allows for continued operation even if one center goes down. \n\n\n\nThere are several other benefits to having three data centers. For one, your data will be stored in geographically dispersed locations, reducing vulnerability to external disruptions. Within the financial industry, there are often specific guidelines regarding the physical distance between data centers. Additionally, having access to three centers can improve performance by allowing each center to handle different processes and reduce lag."},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":true,"cta_text":"Is your application in need of redundancy?\nLet us tell you more about how we can secure your data using our three data centers.\n","cta_label":"Email us!","cta_link":"mailto:hej@elastx.se"},{"type":"body_text","text":"These are some of the reasons why many people choose Elastx services. Our services are delivered through three data centers located at least 20 kilometers apart, providing disaster-safe redundancy. Each data center is fully redundant and has at least four internet connections. Elastx is certified according to ISO 27001, ISO 27017, and ISO 27018 standards, and all of our employees are Swedish citizens. \n\nOur data centers are staffed around the clock by trained personnel and have multiple layers of physical security. In addition to robust redundancy and physical security, Elastx also offers internet-based protections such as Threat Protection, DDoS protection, a Web Application Firewall, and a Hardware Security Module. \n\nAt Elastx, we take the protection of the Swedish financial industry's data seriously."}],"tags":["fintech"],"slug":"why-the-financial-industry-needs-redundancy","url":"/en/news/why-the-financial-industry-needs-redundancy","lang":"en","filename":"därför-behöver-finansbranschen-redundans","date":"2022-11-04","image":"/assets/uploads/server_detail.jpg"},"därför-väljer-finanssektorn-svenska-moln":{"title":"Why financial institutions are turning to Swedish cloud providers","case_slug":"why financial institutions are turning to Swedish cloud providers","tags":["fintech"],"intro":"The past few years have been marked by numerous significant events, including a severe global pandemic, war in Europe, and disruptions to production and logistics chains that have led to inflation. Amidst all of these events, there have also been numerous new regulations, including EU directives with demanding requirements for change to ensure regulatory compliance.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"As a result of these events, many people have begun to examine their reliance on external entities, particularly in the financial sector. This has often involved more thorough examination of the location and potential implications of data storage. It is clear that anything can happen in these uncertain times, and it is important to be prepared for the unexpected.\n\nIn light of these circumstances, numerous banks and financial institutions are now opting to move their cloud operations to Sweden. While the global presence and assurances of the major cloud providers may have initially been appealing, the risks have ultimately proved to be too great. What would happen to your business if the connection to your data, stored outside of Sweden, were to be disrupted? Or if a foreign intelligence agency requested data about your customers from a global cloud provider?\n\nWhile it may seem like a scenario from a science fiction novel, this type of incident occurs regularly around the world. Not only is it inappropriate and unfortunate for customer data to be accessed by unauthorized parties, it is also illegal. There are now strict regulations governing the storage and access of data to protect the privacy and security of individuals."},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":true,"cta_text":"There are compelling reasons to choose a Swedish cloud platform. We keep your data safe within Sweden's borders.","cta_label":"Tell me more!","cta_link":"mailto:hello@elastx.se"},{"type":"body_text","text":"It makes sense to choose a Swedish provider for your cloud operations. By doing so, you can keep your data safely within the country's borders, governed by its laws, and handled in a responsible manner."}],"slug":"why-financial-institutions-are-turning-to-swedish-cloud-providers","url":"/en/news/why-financial-institutions-are-turning-to-swedish-cloud-providers","lang":"en","filename":"därför-väljer-finanssektorn-svenska-moln","date":"2022-12-16","image":"/assets/uploads/storage_systems.jpeg"},"easy-high-availability":{"date":"2013-12-16","tags":["wordpress"],"title":"Easy High Availability","case_slug":"Easy High Availability","intro":"If you application is business critical and you think high availability and disaster protection is too complex and expensive then this is for you. We will show you how to setup two sites and use a couple of SaaS services for site fail-over and monitoring. These powerful tools will cost you the massive amount of about $10 per month.","body":[{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/easy-high-availability-1.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"\n\nSo this is how it will work. By using a CDN (Content Delivery Network) and a monitoring system that will tell the CDN where to send the traffic we will get a powerful and easy to use solution.\n\n1. Create sites\n\nYou will create two sites preferably at two different vendors or regions to make sure both sites never will be down at the same time. A good example would be two Virtuozzo (formerly Jelastic) sites, Elastx in Sweden and one of the other 14 sites available around the world. Deploy you application on both sites and set up data replication between the sites.\n\nYou can choose to have an Active/Active site or Active/Passive.\n\nI will not cover database replication now but I will get back with a new blog post discussing some options and recommendations. Please contact us if you want to discuss options on data synchronization as it depends a lot on the application and database you use.\n\nIn this example we created two sites with the following URL and IP.\n\n[http://site1.jelastic.elastx.net](http://site1.jelastic.elastx.net/) 88.80.172.123\n\n[http://site2.jelastic.elastx.net](http://site2.jelastic.elastx.net/) 88.80.172.124\n\nAnd the main site address we will use is [http://jelastic.se](http://jelastic.se/)\n\n1. Configure CDN\n\nWe need an external service to redirect traffic to the sites that are available. By using CDN you will at the same time also get better response times from other geographic regions. In this example we are using Cloudflare. They have a free plan and also a very nice price model for their other plans. They also have good geographic coverage with a local site here in Sweden .\n\n1. Register an account at \n2. Sign in and follow the the instruction on how you transfer your domain to Cloudflare, it will take up to 24h. You have to transfer you domain to give Cloudflare control of your records and also to protect it from dns attacks.\n3. Save the account the API key for later use, you will find it under “Account”."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/easy-high-availability-2.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"We are using public IP addresses in this example but you can use shared IP and add CNAME records instead of A records.\n\n\\- If you want to configure an Active/Active solution add two A records with the same name.\n\n\\- If you want a Active/Passive solution you will add a single A record.\n\nYou can add a CNAME for www or other."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/easy-high-availability-3.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"Now you need to get the ID for your DNS entries using the Cloudflare API. Here is how you do it using Curl which available for every OS. Replace tkn with your API key and also email and z which is the domain name.\n\n`curl https://www.cloudflare.com/api_json.html -d \"a=rec_load_all\" -d \"tkn=1f2eedac1c9bd7071f459effd8ad313bb38da\" -d \"email=joakim.ohman@elastx.se\" -d \"z=jelastic.se\"`\n\nYou can pipe the result to “python -mjson.tool” to get a pretty output.\n\nFind the “rec_id” for the domain record(s).\n\n1. Configure Monitoring\n\nYou want to monitor your sites and we also need a way to take action when a site goes down. In this example we are using site24x7 which is the only SaaS monitoring service I have found where you can configure custom URL alert actions and is a good and stable service.\n\n1. Register an account at \n\nYou need to use at least a Professional account to have custom alerts. You can start with the free 30 day trial.\n\n1. Configure Custom alert actions that will modify the DNS entries at Cloudflare to make traffic only to be directed to available sites.\n\nSelect the “Alerts” tab and then “Add Action”.\n\nFor an A/A solution create 4 actions with the following configuration.\n\nConfigure all actions with: URL: \n\nForm Submission Method: POST"},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/easy-high-availability-4.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"For an A/A solution create 2 actions with the following configuration."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/easy-high-availability-5.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"You can also try this using curl just to make sure it works before we try the hole solution. Here is one example.\n\n`curl http://javaenv.jelastic.elastx.net/api_json.html -d \"a=rec_edit\" -d \"tkn=1f2eedac1c9bd7071f459effd8ad313bb38da\" -d \"id=101849947\" -d \"email=joakim.ohman@elastx.se\" -d \"z=jelastic.se\" -d \"type=A\" -d \"name=failed\" -d \"content=88.80.172.123\" -d \"service_mode=1\" -d \"ttl=1\"`\n\nThen check the Cloudflare records and make sure it was updated as expected.\n\n1. Create monitoring for both sites.\n\nSelect the “Home” tab, “New Monitor” and then “Website”.\n\nFor an A/A solution create 2 actions with the following configuration."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/easy-high-availability-6.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"\n\n1. Now test it.\n\nTake down site 1, wait for the alert and check Cloudflare that the DNS record was updated as expected.\n\nBring the site 1 up and check the DNS record again.\n\nIf everything worked as planned then you are done!\n\nNow you have High Availability and Disaster Protection!\n\nJoakim Öhman"}],"slug":"easy-high-availability","url":"/en/news/easy-high-availability","lang":"en","filename":"easy-high-availability","image":"/assets/uploads/article-hero-13.jpg"},"elastx-and-hashicorp-become-technology-partners":{"date":"2018-03-07","title":"Elastx and HashiCorp become Technology Partners","case_slug":"Elastx and HashiCorp become Technology Partners","tags":["hashicop","publiccloud","elastx"],"intro":"It is of high importance for us at Elastx to be given the freedom to work in open source based cloud environments with no lock-in solutions. We believe that this is the core to gaining constant new knowledge in the field as well as to give a larger freedom for the developer. And it is as important to be able to give our customers the same opportunities.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"To have an automated underlying infrastructure gives the developers the time to focus on other critical parts in the application environment. HashiCorp products such as Terraform, Nomad and Vault enable us to build the automated infrastructures for our customers and help us deliver the cloud based IT solutions that we strive for.\n\n> “ELASTX believes the best way we can help companies is with sustainable, automated IT. We focus on codified infrastructure for our IaaS, PaaS, and bare metal solutions. The codified infrastructure is the foundation of automation for our customers. Terraform and the other HashiCorp products enable us to build this infrastructure stack.” - Henrik Grankvist, COO, ELASTX\n\nThanks to the HashiCorp products, we are able to provide consistent workflows regardless of the underlying technology. This includes infrastructure provisioning, security, service discovery, and application deployment.\n\nBonnier News, one of our customers, chose ELASTX as their hosting provider and also use complements from HashiCorp to help gain control of their infrastructure. You can read more about this in our [case study.](https://elastx.se/en/use-case/bonnier-news-chose-elastx-to-create-their-new-digital-platform/)"}],"slug":"elastx-and-hashicorp-become-technology-partners","url":"/en/news/elastx-and-hashicorp-become-technology-partners","lang":"en","filename":"elastx-and-hashicorp-become-technology-partners","image":"/assets/uploads/microservers.jpeg"},"elastx-dbaas-det-svenska-molnets-senaste-tillskott":{"date":"2024-04-16","title":"Swedish Elastx continues to expand its service offerings - Now offering Database as a Service","case_slug":"Swedish Elastx Now offering Database as a Service","image_alt":"view over slussen","tags":["elastx","dbaas","publiccloud"],"intro":"Managing databases no longer needs to be a complex and time-consuming task requiring special skills and resources. In November 2023, we launched our DBaaS in tech-preview and subsequently added a number of updates and functions. It has been a successful tech-preview and as of 2024-04-10, DBaaS went over to being generally available to everyone. We are proud to offer DBaaS, a service that simplifies your database management. Here, we'll show you how Elastx DBaaS streamlines your database management tasks while ensuring reliability, security, and scalability.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"### Simplify database management with Elastx DBaaS\n\nOur Database as a Service is designed to simplify your company's database management. Now, you can focus on your core business without expending valuable resources on intricate database management processes. With features like automatic provisioning, guaranteed high availability, security, and full regulatory compliance, you can have peace of mind.\n\n\nWhether you choose [MariaDB](https://elastx.se/en/mariadb-dbaas), [MySQL](https://elastx.se/en/mysql-dbaas), [PostgreSQL](https://elastx.se/en/postgresql-dbaas), or [Redis](https://elastx.se/en/redis-dbaas), Elastx DBaaS is tailored to meet your specific needs and facilitate a smooth and efficient database management journey."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Here's how we make your everyday life easier\n\n1. **Automated Database Provisioning:** We handle the complex process of managing databases for you. You don't have to worry about configuring servers or managing infrastructure. With our DBaaS, your databases are created automatically, saving you both time and resources.\n2. **High Availability and Disaster Protection:** We understand the value of your data. Therefore, Elastx DBaaS offers easy configuration of clusters, replication, and backups to ensure that your data is always available and protected against various potential disaster scenarios. With multiple database nodes distributed across geographically separated availability zones, we provide high availability and disaster protection.\n3. **Data Security:** Your data is securely stored in Sweden. We are certified according to ISO 27001 and 14001. All our employees are Swedish citizens who have undergone background checks. Data is stored and encrypted both at rest and during transmission between our three availability zones, ensuring your sensitive information is secure and compliant with GDPR."},{"type":"body_cta","cta_text":"See our DBaaS introduction video (in Swedish) where you will get an overview of the functions and features.\n\nIt is also a great guide to get your database up and running quickly!","targetBlank":true,"cta_link":"https://youtu.be/WDg-CMlO0Lw?si=LYqmkMrMAraBUgIh","cta_label":"Watch demo video on Youtube"},{"type":"body_text","text":"**Database Provisioning:**\nImagine you need to create a new database for your e-health platform. With our DBaaS, this is easily done! Through our web-based user interface or IaC, you can select your preferred database type, such as MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, or Redis. Then, you can specify size and configuration, and let DBaaS handle the rest by creating the database instance and necessary resources.\n\n**High Accessibility:**\nEnsuring your database is always available is crucial. With Elastx DBaaS, you can easily configure clusters, replication, and backups through our user-friendly UI. For instance, you can create a database cluster for MariaDB with a primary database node and multiple secondary nodes. If the primary node goes down, a secondary node will take over, minimizing downtime.\n\n**Security and Compliance:**\nData security is our top priority. We've implemented secure multi-factor authentication via our identity provider in the user interface to ensure that only authorized users gain access. Our operations and platform comply with ISO certifications and GDPR requirements, providing confidence in data protection and security.\n\n**Monitoring Performance and Scaling:**\nOur web-based UI offers real-time performance metrics for your databases and nodes. You can conveniently monitor key metrics to effectively manage capacity and performance. If you need to scale your database cluster, it's a straightforward process. You can easily add, remove, or adjust nodes and storage to accommodate changing workloads. Our support is also available 24x7 if you would need any help."},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":true,"cta_link":"https://calendly.com/elastx-team","cta_label":"Schedule a meeting","cta_text":"Would you like to know more about how our Database as a Service can fit your needs?"}],"slug":"swedish-elastx-now-offering-database-as-a-service","url":"/en/news/swedish-elastx-now-offering-database-as-a-service","lang":"en","filename":"elastx-dbaas-det-svenska-molnets-senaste-tillskott","image":"/assets/uploads/data_over_slussen.jpg"},"elastx-dbaas-är-här":{"date":"2023-11-03","title":"Elastx presents: Database as a Service","case_slug":"elastx presents database as a service","tags":["elastx","publiccloud","dbaas"],"intro":"Managing databases no longer needs to be a complex and time-consuming task requiring special skills and resources. We are proud to offer DBaaS, a service that simplifies your database management. Here, we'll show you how Elastx DBaaS streamlines your database management tasks while ensuring reliability, security, and scalability.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"### Simplify database management with Elastx DBaaS\n\nOur [Database as a Service](https://elastx.se/en/database) is designed to simplify your company's database management. Now, you can focus on your core business without expending valuable resources on intricate database management processes. With features like automatic provisioning, guaranteed high availability, security, and full regulatory compliance, you can have peace of mind.\n\nWhether you choose [MariaDB](https://elastx.se/en/mariadb-dbaas), [MySQL](https://elastx.se/en/mysql-dbaas), [PostgreSQL](https://elastx.se/en/postgresql-dbaas), or [Redis](https://elastx.se/en/redis-dbaas), Elastx DBaaS is tailored to meet your specific needs and facilitate a smooth and efficient database management journey.\n\n### Here's how we make your everyday life easier\n\n**1. Automated Database Provisioning:** We handle the complex process of managing databases for you. You don't have to worry about configuring servers or managing infrastructure. With our DBaaS, your databases are created automatically, saving you both time and resources.\n\n**2. High Availability and Disaster Protection:** We understand the value of your data. Therefore, Elastx DBaaS offers easy configuration of clusters, replication, and backups to ensure that your data is always available and protected against various potential disaster scenarios. With multiple database nodes distributed across geographically separated availability zones, we guarantee high availability and disaster protection.\n\n**3. Data Security:** Your data is securely stored in Sweden. We are certified according to ISO 27001, 27017, 27018, and 14001. All our employees are Swedish citizens who have undergone background checks. Data is stored and encrypted both at rest and during transmission between our three availability zones, ensuring your sensitive information is secure and compliant with GDPR."},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":true,"cta_text":"Is your organization in need of smooth database management? Please don't hesitate to contact us so that we can provide you with more information about Elastx DBaaS!","cta_label":"Tell me more","cta_link":"mailto:hello@elastx.se"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### DBaaS in practice\n\n\n\n**Database Provisioning**\nImagine you need to create a new database for your e-health platform. With our DBaaS, this is easily done! Through our web-based user interface or IaC, you can select your preferred database type, such as MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, or Redis. Then, you can specify size and configuration, and let DBaaS handle the rest by creating the database instance and necessary resources.\n\n**High Accessibility**\nEnsuring your database is always available is crucial. With Elastx DBaaS, you can easily configure clusters, replication, and backups through our user-friendly UI. For instance, you can create a database cluster for MariaDB with three primary database nodes. If one node goes down, the remaining two take over, minimizing downtime.\n\n**Security and Compliance**\nData security is our top priority. We've implemented straightforward multi-factor authentication via our identity provider in the user interface to ensure that only authorized users gain access. Our operations and platform comply with ISO certifications and GDPR requirements, providing confidence in data protection and security.\n\n**Monitoring Performance and Scaling**\nOur web-based UI offers real-time performance metrics for your databases and nodes. You can conveniently monitor key metrics to effectively manage capacity and performance. If you need to scale your database cluster, it's a straightforward process. You can easily add, remove, or adjust nodes and storage to accommodate changing workloads."}],"slug":"elastx-presents-database-as-a-service","url":"/en/news/elastx-presents-database-as-a-service","lang":"en","filename":"elastx-dbaas-är-här","image":"/assets/uploads/photographing_cables.jpg"},"elastx-is-now-a-member-of-manrs-1":{"title":"Elastx is now a member of MANRS","case_slug":"Elastx now a member of MANRS","tags":["network"],"intro":"We are happy to inform you that Elastx is now a member of MANRS (Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security).","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"**We are happy to inform you that Elastx is now a member of MANRS (Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security).**\n\nWhat is [MANRS](https://www.manrs.org/)?\n\n[This short video helps explain what MANRS is](https://youtu.be/nJINk5p-HEE).\n\nRouting Incidents are Increasing\n\nIn 2017 alone, 14,000 routing outages or attacks - such as hijacking, leaks, and spoofing - led to a range of problems including stolen data, lost revenue, repetitional damage, and more.\n\nAbout 40% of all network incidents are attacks, with the mean duration per incident lasting 19 hours.\n\nIncidents are global in scale, with one operator’s routing problems cascading to impact others.\n\nWe at Elastx always strive to deliver a product of quality to our customers and partners. This includes delivering good and strong routing security. And thanks to the membership at MANRS, we can now ensure everyone of the high importance and quality routing security has at Elastx.\n\nWith MANRS, we can introduce a safer routing ecosystem in Sweden and become an example to other IT companies striving for the best experience possible online. Most importantly for us at Elastx, we can keep delivering bleeding edge safety to all our customers and partners."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/cropped-manrs_icon.png","alt":"MANRS logotype"}],"slug":"elastx-now-a-member-of-manrs","url":"/en/news/elastx-now-a-member-of-manrs","lang":"en","filename":"elastx-is-now-a-member-of-manrs-1","date":"2018-12-02","image":"/assets/uploads/yellow_cables.jpeg"},"elastx-is-now-integrated-with-backup-ninja-to-automate-your-opensource-database-backups-easily":{"date":"2021-01-04","title":"Elastx is now integrated with Backup Ninja to automate your opensource database backups easily","case_slug":"Elastx is now integrated with Backup Ninja to automate your opensource database backups easily","intro":"Backup management includes the activities of creating, deleting, storing, restoring, and monitoring of the backup process. It is an essential component of any disaster recovery strategy. Although it is vital to have backup management, it can be a tedious, time-consuming, and expensive process.\n\nHaving to take daily backups with constant monitoring (to ensure the backups are in a usable state) often requires a dedicated technical resource to manage it effectively. Without periodic checks, backups may be obsolete or invalid, which will slow down the recovery process if disaster strikes. Backup and recovery at the database level is even more challenging, as it requires complex scripts to handle the backup of the individual storage engine. \n\nAutomated backup management services offer a wide range of features to automate the backup and restoration task for databases, files, and directories and effortlessly store them securely either locally or on the cloud. Automated backup management is ideal for resolving the setbacks of manual backup management.","tags":["backup"],"body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"### Backup Ninja - A Reliable Automated Backup Service\n\n[Backup Ninja](https://backup.ninja/) is a simple and reliable backup service to backup and restore databases, files and folders using a simple and easy to use web interface. Install Backup Ninja agent on your server and schedule automated and scriptless backups for leading open source databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Percona, and TimescaleDB in just a few clicks. \n\nForget manual backups scripts and periodical schedules to take backups; [Backup Ninja](https://backup.ninja/) has pre configured parameters on backup tool selection, storage, compression and encryption configuration. These settings make scheduling and storing automated partial, incremental and full backups for both databases and files on a combination of storage; local or in the cloud a breeze.\n\n[Backup Ninja](https://backup.ninja/) lets you monitor your backups and gain insights into the success, cost, and size of your backups with its advanced monitoring features. You get a timely email notification on any backup events, allowing you to take timely corrective actions when required.\n\nBackup data security is an important part of any backup management system; [Backup Ninja](https://backup.ninja/) uses advanced encryption for both in transit and at-rest data. Backup Ninja never stores any security key information and is never able to see your unencrypted data. \n\n[Backup Ninja](https://backup.ninja/) allows you to export, migrate your backups to any preferred platform without any hidden cost, you just need to pay-as-you-go for the number of servers provisioned with an agent for a flat monthly rate.\n\n### Elastx Object Storage for Database Backups\n\n[Backup Ninja](https://backup.ninja/) integrates seamlessly with the Elastx object storage. To start scheduling the server needs a Backup Ninja agent installed. The agent will interact with the server to schedule the backup services. Simply configure the Elastx cloud credentials allowing Backup Ninja to store backups on its object storage.\n\n### Setting up Elastx on Backup Ninja\n\nStep 1: Select Elastx as a cloud provider."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/ninja-1.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"Step 2: Enter the Elastx cloud credential settings. The bucket name can be any name of your preference."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/ninja-2.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"Step 3: Give a name for your cloud storage configuration. This will be used when you schedule a backup."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/ninja-3.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"Step 4: ELASTX cloud is configured on Backup Ninja"},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/ninja-4.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Schedule Backup on Elastx Using Backup Ninja\n\nOnce Elastx cloud credentials are created, the [Backup Ninja](https://backup.ninja/) agent service can schedule partial, incremental, or full backups of databases and files to Elastx accordingly.\n\nStep 1: Enter the details for the backup schedule."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/ninja-5.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"Step 2: Select the Elastx cloud credentials created earlier from the dropdown. The retention period has defaulted to 7 days, you may change it accordingly."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/ninja-6.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"Step 3: Enter the backup name in the given format. Enable compression and encryption if required."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/ninja-7.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"Step 4: Select the given option to state when the backup should be scheduled."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/ninja-8.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"Step 5: View the configured schedule on the dashboard."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/ninja-9.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"## Conclusion\n\nBackup Ninja is the perfect automated backup management solution to have as part of your backup and recovery strategy. As an ELASTX user, you just need to follow a few instructions to schedule database, files or directories backups and store them securely on ELASTX storage; without any advanced technical skills."}],"slug":"elastx-is-now-integrated-with-backup-ninja-to-automate-your-opensource-database-backups-easily","url":"/en/news/elastx-is-now-integrated-with-backup-ninja-to-automate-your-opensource-database-backups-easily","lang":"en","filename":"elastx-is-now-integrated-with-backup-ninja-to-automate-your-opensource-database-backups-easily","image":"/assets/uploads/0163_without_stripes.jpg"},"elastx-keeps-offering-industry-leading-ddos-protection":{"date":"2018-03-07","title":"Elastx keeps offering industry leading DDoS protection","case_slug":"elastx keeps offering industry leading ddos protection","intro":"We have chosen to work with Baffin Bay Networks to protect our Cloud Infrastructure and our customers by using their DDoS Protection and Threat Intelligence platform.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"### Baffin Bay Networks\n\nFounded in 2017 by leading industry experts, Baffin Bay Networks is a Swedish tech start-up poised to disrupt the cloud-based cybersecurity market. Their globally distributed Threat Protection Centers protect customers from the most advanced Distributed Denial of Service and Web Application attacks, and discovers and protects against known and unknown malware and exploits.\n\n*“As a cloud services platform provider, we need to offer the best solutions possible also from a security perspective. Baffin Bay Networks allow us to do just that.”* - Henrik Grankvist, COO, Elastx.\n\n*“We were very happy when we found Baffin Bay Networks as their services are a perfect match to our needs. They understand our business model and provide the tools so we can offer enterprise class security services in an agile and automated way”* - Joakim Öhman, CEO, Elastx\n\n### Threat Protection, DDoS Protection, and Web Application Protection\n\nWe will be able to offer Threat Protection, DDoS Protection, and Web Application Protection to our customers as well as for our own Cloud infrastructure. Baffin Bay Networks offers a unique combination of technical expertise and exceptional capacity and technology to ensure that the customers always maintain safe and efficient online functionality.\n\n*“No company or organization should be defenseless against advanced cyber threats. Our mission is to build the world’s best Threat Protection Platform: one that is easy to use for any company or service provider to protect their key assets and services. We’re a team of gifted cyber security experts, passionate about building a world-beating Threat Protection Platform that helps our customers to mitigate all cyber threats.”* - Baffin Bay Networks mission\n\nThey will be providing protection from more than 250 different types of DDoS attacks. All with measures that are easy to implement and deliver results from day one.\n\n*“Companies and organizations use web applications such as banking, e-commerce and trading platforms to enhance the scope and functionality of their businesses. Some of those applications may be developed in-house and some are purchased externally. Organizations’ IT security functions also face the challenge of keeping pace with a rapidly evolving threat landscape, as new vulnerabilities are disclosed. We prevent attackers from exploiting these vulnerabilities, and provide real-time logging, reporting, and statistics on attempted attacks.”* - Baffin Bay Networks about their Web Application Protection.\n\n**Available now:** The Elastx cloud platform including the increased security capabilities from Baffin Bay Networks.\n\nRead more about Baffin Bay Networks [here](https://www.baffinbaynetworks.com/#about).\n\nRead the press release [here](http://www.mynewsdesk.com/bbn/pressreleases/elastx-selects-baffin-bay-networks-as-their-ddos-protection-and-threat-intelligence-platform-2380436).\n\nRead more about Elastx [here](/en/about-elastx)."}],"slug":"elastx-keeps-offering-industry-leading-ddos-protection","url":"/en/news/elastx-keeps-offering-industry-leading-ddos-protection","lang":"en","filename":"elastx-keeps-offering-industry-leading-ddos-protection","image":"/assets/uploads/empty_switch_amber.jpeg"},"elastx-sätter-standarden-som-grön-molnleverantör":{"title":"Elastx sets the standard for green cloud providers","case_slug":"Elastx sets the standard for green cloud providers","intro":"Carbon emissions may not be the first thing that comes to mind when using the internet, but the fact remains that the internet is a major contributor to global CO2 emissions. The infrastructure that supports our digital landscape requires a significant amount of energy to function. As we spend more time online, it is important to consider the environmental impact of our actions. By utilizing renewable energy sources, such as solar or wind power, to power data centers, we can work towards reducing carbon emissions.\n","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"### The Green Web Foundation\n\nThe Green Web Foundation, a Dutch initiative, aims to create a fossil-free internet by 2030. Over the past decade, the organization has developed an open infrastructure to measure and support the transition to a fossil-free internet. This includes managing an open data set to confirm the use of renewable energy by websites. The Green Web Foundation also registers and labels websites and providers as \"green\" based on their use of renewable energy sources for their services.\n\n### How to become a Green provider\n\nIn order to be registered as a Green Provider by the Green Web Foundation, companies must meet [certain criteria](https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/what-you-need-to-register/). For cloud providers like Elastx, this means that both infrastructure and services are powered by renewable energy. For individual companies, simply having the distinction is sufficient. This means that any company using Elastx to host or operate their services automatically meets the criteria for labeling their web services as green. Isn’t that great?"},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":true,"cta_text":"Let us tell you more about Elastx, the sustainable, green and Swedish cloud provider! ","cta_label":"Tell me more! ","cta_link":"mailto:hello@elastx.se"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Sustainable from the start\n\n\"Being recognized as one of the first companies in Sweden to receive this distinction is a great feeling,\" says Joakim Öhman, CEO of Elastx. \"Our goal has always been to create a service that is environmentally friendly and sustainable,\" he adds with a smile. \n\n**Currently, only a [dozen Swedish companies](https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/directory/) have passed the Green Web Check. Elastx is honored to be among them.**"}],"slug":"elastx-sets-the-standard-for-green-cloud-providers","url":"/en/news/elastx-sets-the-standard-for-green-cloud-providers","lang":"en","filename":"elastx-sätter-standarden-som-grön-molnleverantör","date":"2023-01-24","image":"/assets/uploads/elastx-300-4.jpg"},"elastx-tekniska-lösning-som-baseras-på-kubernetes-möter-våra-höga-krav-på-säkerhet-och-tillgänglighet":{"date":"2020-02-21","title":"Elastx provides a Kubernetes-based solution that meets our standards concerning safety and availability","case_slug":"Elastx provides a Kubernetes based solution that meets our standards","intro":"Security, uptime, and a guarantee that data never leave the EU were some of the requirements that Vilja, a Swedish fintech company, had in their search for a new private cloud supplier. The company needed a more agile platform to continue to be a leader in the industry.\n\n– We wanted a company committed to develop and grow together with us. Already within a month after our first meeting we started our journey to create an even more scalable and secure platform, says Erik Nyfelt, VP Operations at Vilja.","tags":["customer","elastx"],"body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"### Who are Vilja?\n\n– Vilja is a privately-owned company with headquarters in Stockholm. The company was founded in 2007 and is a leading provider of cloud-based core banking solutions. Our platform with extensive self-service capabilities, open APIs and the quickest time to market allows our customers to create and launch new revenue streams. I am a co-founder and my responsibility is to secure our clients’ production systems. My mission is to ensure that our clients feel completely safe with our solutions.\n\n### What did your previous solution and challenges look like?\n\n– We have always been a market-leader through our technical platform. We have transformed from a monolithic system to an MSA-based system (Micro Services Architecture). Our company has expanded alongside our clients, and we realized that we needed to increase scalability and availability. We chose to proceed with a Kubernetes-based platform and needed a new private cloud provider. We required a partner that could meet our demands for ISO-certification, up-time, security, and scalability.\n\n### Why did you choose Elastx as your private cloud provider?\n\n– Elastx's solution meets all our requirements and I got a very good impression of Henrik Grankvist, COO at Elastx. We share the same values concerning security, automation and operations. In addition, they offered a great customer experience and granted us access to a Kubernetes-cluster to immediately evaluate our products on the platform.\n\n\"We provide cutting-edge solutions through our implementation of Kubernetes\"\n\n### What are the significant improvements?\n\n– The digital transformation in the society makes our customers more demanding. With Kubernetes' technology, we have the capacity to meet our clients' requirements and provide a system with minimal disruption. This enables us to develop a more manageable and secure platform. This is crucial since many of our clients' solutions consist of public pages that require 100% uptime. In addition, with an easier and more manageable system, we have more time to work proactively.\n\n### What are the main advantages with Kubernetes?\n\n– The core benefits of using a technically superior and licensed platform are rapid scaling and high availability. With Kubernetes we can meet our clients' requirements without having a 20-30% overcapacity in our servers to ensure high levels of demands. Our current solution ensures that we can optimize our resources and eliminate manual processes.\n\n### How do you manage security and how does Elastx contribute?\n\n– Together, we have developed an explicit framework to attain the highest level of security. Besides secure processes, continuous analyses are made through an external security company to ensure that we deliver according to our promise.\n\n\"The partnership with Elastx is characterized by high competence and shared values\"\n\n### How do you value the partnership with Elastx?\n\n– To change a private cloud provider is a major move, but we feel very confident with our decision. Elastx is an agile company that delivers highest levels of engagement, competence, and efficiency."}],"slug":"elastx-provides-a-kubernetes-based-solution-that-meets-our-standards","url":"/en/news/elastx-provides-a-kubernetes-based-solution-that-meets-our-standards","lang":"en","filename":"elastx-tekniska-lösning-som-baseras-på-kubernetes-möter-våra-höga-krav-på-säkerhet-och-tillgänglighet","image":"/assets/uploads/elastx-leandex-kubernetes-1-.jpg"},"get-drupal-8-up-and-running-within-5-minutes":{"date":"2015-06-15","title":"Get Drupal 8 up and running within 5 minutes","case_slug":"Get Drupal 8 up and running within 5 minutes","tags":["drupal"],"intro":"Drupal 8 is about to reach its first release candidate. We are very excited and would like to celebrate it, therefore we have created a one click installer so you can test Drupal 8 in our Virtuozzo (formerly Jelastic) platform!","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"Please [log in](https://app.jelastic.elastx.net/) or [sign-up](https://app.jelastic.elastx.net/?signup=true) to Virtuozzo (formerly Jelastic) and find the ELASTX Wordpress install in the marketplace, search for ELASTX and you will find it. If you don't have an account already you will get instructions how to apply for a free Development account. Just tell us that you would like to try Drupal 8 and we will get you started. You can upgrade to a full version of our Virtuozzo PaaS at any given time and pay with your credit card. Enjoy."}],"slug":"get-drupal-8-up-and-running-within-5-minutes","url":"/en/news/get-drupal-8-up-and-running-within-5-minutes","lang":"en","filename":"get-drupal-8-up-and-running-within-5-minutes","image":"/assets/uploads/article-hero-10.jpg"},"getting-started-with-application-backups-to-swift":{"title":"Getting started with application backups to Swift","case_slug":"Getting started with application backups to Swift","intro":"Swift cloud object storage is ideal for storing your application backups. Here are 3 ways to move your backups to the cloud.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"**Swift cloud object storage is ideal for storing your application backups. Here are 3 ways to move your backups to the cloud.**\n\nSwift is part of the OpenStack software platform. Objects are written to multiple disk drives spread throughout storage nodes in the cluster. All of this logic is managed by OpenStack so you as a user don’t have to think about how data is stored physically. Our (Elastx) Swift cluster span over more than one datacenter, which means all data stored is georedundant.\n\nIn the examples we will upload a PostgreSQL database dump to Swift, but it can be any type of file you want to back up. You can use Swift for other purposes other than backup, you can even serve static websites directly from Swift, but that is out of the scope for this post.\n\nSwift can automatically delete an object after a specified amount of seconds passed. This means we don’t even need to manage objects due to expire in our code. Examples are shown with both permanent storage (default behaviour) and automatic expiration.\n\nIf you haven’t already, start by sourcing your openrc.sh to set up the environment in your shell. You can download your own openrc file by navigating to the “API Access” tab located in “Compute/Access & Security” when logged on to the OpenStack dashboard.\n\n`source ~/openrc.sh`\n\n## python-swiftclient\n\npython-swiftclient can be installed through most package managers and runs on any OS with Python >=2.6 support. Consult https://www.swiftstack.com/docs/integration/python-swiftclient.html for more information how to install.\n\nFirst we create a container in Swift to hold all our backups:\n\n`swift post pg_backup`\n\nThen we upload our database dump to the newly created container:\n\n`swift upload pg_backup mydb.sql`\n\nIf we want Swift to automatically expire a file we pass the header ‘X-Delete-After’ during the upload:\n\n`swift upload --header ‘X-Delete-After: 3600’ pg_backup mydb.sql`\n\nThis will delete the object after 3600 seconds (1h).\n\nWe can list all objects in the container using \\`swift list pg_backup\\`. To read object metadata (size, modified, expiration, etc) we use:\n\n`swift stat pg_backup mydb.sql`\n\n## cURL\n\nSwift API is RESTful which means you can use cURL to upload and download objects in storage using HTTP protocol. cURL is available in all popular package managers. We also use jq to process the return json, so make sure you install that as well.\n\nWe need to authenticate first and save the X-Auth-Token header data and Swift URL we receive in order to use all subsequent commands. Syntax is different between API versions. Example is made for v3.\n\n```\nOS_AUTH_URL=https://ops.elastx.cloud:5000/v3/auth/tokens\ntmpheader=$(mktemp)\ntmpjson=$(mktemp)\ncurl -sf -D $tmpheader -o $tmpjson -H \"Content-Type: application/json\" -d '{ \"auth\": {\n \"identity\": {\n \"methods\": [\"password\"],\n \"password\": {\n \"user\": {\n \"name\": \"'\"${OS_USERNAME}\"'\",\n \"domain\": { \"id\": \"default\" },\n \"password\": \"'\"${OS_PASSWORD}\"'\"\n }\n }\n },\n \"scope\": {\n \"project\": {\n \"name\": \"'\"${OS_TENANT_NAME}\"'\",\n \"domain\": { \"id\": \"default\" }\n }\n }\n }\n}' $OS_AUTH_URL\nOS_TOKEN=$(grep 'X-Subject-Token' $tmpheader | awk '{printf $2}' | tr -d \"\\r\")\nSWIFT_URL=$(cat $tmpjson | jq '.token.catalog[] | select(.name == \"swift\") | .endpoints[] | select(.interface == \"public\" ) | .url' | tr -d '\"' )\nrm $tmpheader\nrm $tmpjson\n```\n\nYou can add code above to the bottom of your openrc file so you auth directly when sourcing it.\n\nCreate container in Swift to hold backups:\n\n`curl -sf -H \"X-Auth-Token: $OS_TOKEN\" -X PUT $SWIFT_URL/pg_backup`\n\nUpload database dump to a Swift container:\n\n`curl -sf -H \"X-Auth-Token: $OS_TOKEN\" -H \"Content-Type: application/x-sql\" --data-binary \"@mydb.sql\" -X PUT $SWIFT_URL/pg_backup/mydb.sql`\nUpload database dump with 3600 seconds (1h) automatic expiration to a Swift container:\n\n`curl -sf -H \"X-Auth-Token: $OS_TOKEN\" -H \"X-Delete-After: 3600\" -H \"Content-Type: application/x-sql\" --data-binary \"@mydb.sql\" -X PUT $SWIFT_URL/pg_backup/mydb.sql`\n\nWhen done communicating we want to revoke the token as we don’t need it any longer:\n\n`curl -H \"X-Auth-Token: $OS_TOKEN\" -H \"X-Subject-Token: $OS_TOKEN\" -X DELETE $OS_AUTH_URL`\n\n## Rclone\n\n\nRclone is built in Go and comes as a single binary file. Syntax is very much alike rsync. It supports many different types of cloud storage which makes data migration simple. You can download it at .\n\nCreate a file called rclone.conf with following content:\n\n```\n[swift-remote]\ntype = swift\nuser = $OS_USERNAME\nkey = $OS_PASSWORD\nauth = $OS_AUTH_URL\ndomain = default\ntenant = $OS_TENANT_NAME\n```\n\n\nWhen we want to refer to Swift we will now use 'swift-remote:' and rclone will handle auth for us (assuming openrc has been sourced first).\n\nCreate a container in Swift:\n\n`rclone --config rclone.conf mkdir swift-remote:pg_backup`\n\n\nUpload db dump to pg_backup container:\n\n`rclone --config rclone.conf copy mydb.sql swift-remote:pg_backup`\n\n\nDefault behaviour is to copy entire directory contents unless source is a file.\n\n~~At the time of writing (2017-04-07) the current version of rclone (v1.36) does not support expiration header for Swift. It's scheduled for v1.37 ([Github issue #59](https://github.com/ncw/rclone/issues/59)) or later. Meanwhile you can delete old files with:~~\n\n`rclone --config rclone.config --min-age 1h delete swift-remote:pg_backup/`\n\nUpdate 2020-11-16: Since [v1.52](https://rclone.org/changelog/#v1-52-0-2020-05-27) rclone support sending additonal headers, so you can now set expiration date on file uploads:\n\n`rclone --config rclone.conf --header-upload \"X-Delete-After: 3600\" copy mydb.sql swift-remote:pg_backup`\n\n\n## Summary\n\n\nThat's it! My personal recommendation is to use python-swiftclient or OpenStack CLI client (not shown in examples) where available. Both are maintained by the OpenStack community and are the most supported software out there.\n\nRclone can be useful if you use more than one cloud storage platform, or at least want the possibility to be able to. Rclone is the cloud equivalent to rsync, a software known to be excellent when it comes to copy large amounts of data and files.\n\ncURL can be run almost anywhere (it even works on AmigaOS, DOS and OS/2!) but require more knowledge of Swift REST API.\n\nIf you have any questions or want to know more about how OpenStack can help your company contact me or a colleague and we'll be in touch!\n \n\nAndreas Holmsten"}],"tags":["elastx","swift","backup","openstack"],"slug":"getting-started-with-application-backups-to-swift","url":"/en/news/getting-started-with-application-backups-to-swift","lang":"en","filename":"getting-started-with-application-backups-to-swift","date":"2017-04-07","image":"/assets/uploads/follow_qr_to_openstack.jpg"},"halloweenhälsningar-från-elastx":{"date":"2023-10-30","title":"Halloween Greetings from Elastx","case_slug":"Halloween Greetings from Elastx","tags":["elastx"],"intro":"Autumn is an intense time for many. Projects must be completed before the end of the year, and plans for the upcoming business year must be meticulously detailed, all while the days grow shorter. Halloween may not be the most prominent holiday in the North, but we believe it presents an excellent opportunity to take a well-deserved break from the autumn rush.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"Behind the scenes of delivering Sweden's best cloud services, there's dedication and hard work. However, we also recognize the importance of balance. That's why we're taking a pause from coding and server management to let our creativity flow through the season's finest vegetable: the pumpkin. Who says tech enthusiasts can't be artistic?"},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/elastx_halloween.jpg","alt":"A pumpkin with a grinning face behind a pumpkin with the Elastx logo"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### A Creative Endeavor\n\nPumpkin carving, much like the process of developing and launching new products, is a creative journey that demands both skill and patience. Creating something unique takes time. First, you must select the right pumpkin, sketch a pattern, gather the appropriate tools, and then embark on the actual carving.\n\nThe same principles apply when developing a new product. It involves a series of steps to transform an idea from concept into reality. This includes devising a project plan, selecting the right hardware, installing and configuring it, and finally, creating a launch strategy.\n\nThe satisfaction you experience when you light a candle within your finished pumpkin lantern is nearly as rewarding as the moment you can finally unveil your new product or service. It's a moment filled with pride and triumph, perhaps even a few tears of joy.\n"},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/evil_pumpkin.jpg","alt":"En pumpa med ett grinande ansikte"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Investment in Innovation\n\nThis post isn't just about pumpkins and candy; it's a reminder that we're working on exciting projects here at Elastx. Soon, we'll be launching highly anticipated products and updates that will brighten up the autumn darkness.\n"},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":false,"cta_link":"mailto:hello@elastx.se","cta_text":"Curious about our services? Get in touch and we'll gladly tell you more!","cta_label":"Contact us!"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Take a Halloween Break\n\nAt Elastx, we understand that maintaining a balance between work and pleasure is key to success. We take pride in our commitment to delivering high-quality cloud services and innovative solutions to our customers. However, we also recognize the importance of savoring life's small joys.\n\nSo, whether you're a developer crafting the most advanced applications or an IT professional responsible for safeguarding your organization in the digital realm, take a moment to enjoy Halloween. Carve a pumpkin, dress up, and savor your favorite treats, or simply pause, light a candle, and unwind for a while.\n\nRegardless of your choice, we wish you a splendid break.\n\n**Happy Halloween from Elastx!**"}],"slug":"halloween-greetings-from-elastx","url":"/en/news/halloween-greetings-from-elastx","lang":"en","filename":"halloweenhälsningar-från-elastx","image":"/assets/uploads/elastx_pumpkin.jpg"},"ledande-ddos-skydd-för-våra-kunder":{"date":"2019-01-08","case_slug":"Leading DDoS protection for our clients","title":"Leading DDoS protection for our clients","intro":"We are happy to announce our partnership with DDoS security experts Baffin Bay Networks. They will be protecting our Cloud Infrastructure and our customers by using their DDoS Protection and Threat Intelligence platform.","tags":["elastx"],"body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"### Who are Baffin Bay Networks?\n\nWe're a Swedish tech startup based in Stockholm, founded in 2016, poised to disrupt the cloud-based cyber security market. Our team consist of gifted cyber security experts, passionate about building a world-class Threat Protection Platform that helps our customers to mitigate both network based and application level cyber threats."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Why was Baffin Bay Networks created?\n\nOur founder spent several years commuting from Stockholm to Silicon Valley, working for some of the largest U.S. corporations in the industry. During this time (flying over Baffin Bay, in Canada) an idea began to evolve. To create a new and innovative cloud-based security solution, to provide cleaner traffic, faster mitigation - and built in Sweden. It was time to leverage the competence and engineering art in the home country, and to create something unique and groundbreaking. So in a sense, Baffin Bay Networks was created to put Sweden on the map as a cyber security nation. Hopefully we can inspire and lead the way for more Swedish Cyber Security companies to come.\n\n*\"Also, companies should keep in mind that DDoS attacks are often used as smoke screens for other cyber crime ...\"*\n\n### What challenges do companies face who take lightly on DDoS security?\n\nEveryone knows the risks of a large scale DDoS-attack, sites are unaccessible, customers are angry. Sometimes these attacks result in negative headlines and brand reputation suffers. Often, companies are aware of this threat, but have not taken the time to do a risk assessment and determine the impact of an attack. Also, companies should keep in mind that DDoS attacks are often used as smoke screens for other cyber crime, that potentially could be far more serious, especially in times of GDPR and privacy; data breaches, intel theft etc. If you’re hit by a DDoS attack, that’s most likely not even your worst problem that day.\n\n*\"As a cloud services platform provider, we need to offer the best solutions possible also from a security perspective. Baffin Bay Networks allow us to do just that.\" - Henrik Grankvist, COO, Elastx*\n\n*\"We were very happy when we found Baffin Bay Networks as their services are a perfect match to our needs. They understand our business model and provide the tools so we can offer enterprise class security services in an agile and automated way.\" - Joakim Öhman, CEO, Elastx*\n\n### What are the largest challenges for a DDoS security company?\n\nA lot of companies don’t realise the risks before actually being hit by a DDoS-attack. Although we’re happy to help them in time of crisis, too, we’d much rather be there before damage is. Since most DDoS mitigation services are solely focused on large, volumetric attacks, we have to be very clear in elaborating that Riverview does much more than just DDoS mitigation, and prove the value of our solution for all those days where the customer doesn’t have a DDoS attack.\n\n*\"We built our solution to offer our customers direct insight into what is happening in their online environment.\"*\n\n### Why should someone choose Baffin Bay Networks?\n\nWe are more than just a DDoS protection service, our multi vector threat mitigation platform stops not only DDoS-attacks but also web application attacks, malware and exploit attempts. We built our solution to offer our customers direct insight into what is happening in their online environment. With Riverview our customers get access to traffic patterns and overview of threats and attempted attacks. They can easily integrate with existing solutions, and even feed the system with own threat intelligence. Moreover, we provide expert help around the clock and are very flexible when it comes to meeting customer specific needs - our customers are at the heart of everything we do.\n\n### What are you hoping to gain together with Elastx?\n\nBesides a great reference customer, with an impressive customer base of its own, Elastx is a very technically competent friend in business and technology. They provide valuable feedback on what works well, and the areas we need to improve. It is this sort of open and honest feedback that will challenge us and help us grow and become even better.\n\nAvailable now: The Elastx cloud platform including the increased security capabilities from Baffin Bay Networks.\n\nRead more about Baffin Bay Networks [here](https://www.baffinbaynetworks.com/about#about)\n\nRead the press release [here](http://www.mynewsdesk.com/bbn/pressreleases/elastx-selects-baffin-bay-networks-as-their-ddos-protection-and-threat-intelligence-platform-2380436)"}],"slug":"leading-ddos-protection-for-our-clients","url":"/en/news/leading-ddos-protection-for-our-clients","lang":"en","filename":"ledande-ddos-skydd-för-våra-kunder","image":"/assets/uploads/article-hero-16.jpg"},"leveraging-privacy-security-and-responsible-ai-to-create-competitive-advantage":{"date":"2024-04-23","tags":["ai","partner"],"title":"Leveraging privacy, security and responsible AI to create competitive advantage","case_slug":"Leveraging privacy security and responsible AI to create competitive advantage","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"We recognize the growing challenges associated with data governance, particularly in the face of recent regulations like GDPR and the AI act with stricter requirements for AI applications around privacy, data security, fairness, and explainability. In a series of posts, we have covered topics like Explainable AI, Federated machine learning, Data infrastructure and how to reduce the environmental impact of large language models to further the understanding on how to build a sound approach to AI. \n\nToday, we explore how we, together with Elastx, empower businesses to navigate this complex environment. By leveraging Elastx secure and compliant cloud platform, we can build and deploy responsible AI models while allowing our clients to maintain complete ownership and control over their data and AI models, and to optimize their resource consumption in a sustainable way – all while leveraging AI to drive impact and innovation. \n\n### **Balancing innovation and data privacy**\n\nThe growth of AI applications hinges on access to data. Data fuels the development of AI models. However, this presents a significant challenge: balancing the need for innovation with the fundamental right to data privacy and information security.\n\nBusinesses and consumers are increasingly wary about how their data is collected, used, and stored. Privacy breaches and data leaks have eroded trust, making transparency and control over data, especially personal information, crucial. Traditional cloud solutions, while offering scalability and convenience, often raise concerns about data location and access. Companies may struggle to maintain complete control over their data, hindering compliance with regulations like GDPR and the AI Act. Furthermore, traditional cloud environments can limit explainability, a critical aspect of responsible AI. Without understanding how AI models arrive at decisions, it's difficult to ensure fairness, mitigate bias, and address potential security vulnerabilities.\n\nFor a more in-depth review of how AI impacts your cloud strategy, you can explore this article: [Navigating data fragmentation: Challenges and strategies in world of borders](https://www.algorithma.se/our-latest-thinking/navigating-data-fragmentation-challenges-and-strategies-in-a-border-restricted-world)\n\n### **One part of the solution: A cloud platform to empowering responsible AI**\n\nThe challenges outlined above highlight the need for a robust solution that fosters responsible AI development while ensuring data privacy and control. Enter Algorithma’s and Elastx AI platform. Elastx provides top-tier cloud services with a focus on performance, compliance, and dedicated support. As a Swedish CSP, it offers additional security under Swedish and European law, ensuring legal compliance and data protection for its customers. Combined with Algorithma's expertise in developing and deploying responsible AI solutions, businesses can leverage a Swedish cloud infrastructure to unlock the full potential of AI while ensuring responsible and transparent practices. \n\nOur joint approach empowers our clients to:\n\n* **Maintain complete data ownership and control:** Data remains with complete control over location, access, and usage. This facilitates compliance with data privacy regulations like GDPR and, where applicable, the AI Act.\n* **Enhanced security:** A cloud platform with greater control over security measures, allowing our clients to tailor them to their specific needs and data sensitivity levels. This mitigates risks of data breaches and unauthorized access.\n\nWe think of Elastx cloud platform and our AI development capabilities as an “AI platform” that offers a range of features that cater to the unique needs of AI workloads, including:\n\n* A platform that scales to accommodate growing data volumes and processing demands associated with AI development and deployment.\n* A platform provides access to high-performance GPU computing resources, ensuring efficient training and execution of complex AI models.\n* A platform prioritizes security with robust data encryption, access controls, and intrusion detection systems to safeguard sensitive data.\n* A platform that enables [explainable AI ](https://www.algorithma.se/our-latest-thinking/explainable-ai-emerging-practices-to-ensure-responsible-transparency)and algorithmic transparency that enables organizations to build and deploy AI models with a focus on explainability. Through greater control over the AI infrastructure and data, our clients can gain deeper insights into how AI models arrive at decisions, fostering trust and mitigating bias."},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":true,"cta_link":"https://elastx.confetti.events/affrsnyttan-och-hur-du-implementerar-ai-p-riktigt","cta_text":"Join Elastx Cloud-fika on May 29 to listen to Jens Ekberg (Algorithma CEO) and Michael Asplund (Elastx Operations Manager) when they discuss how to kickstart your AI journey and unlock AI in a quick, safe and fun way.","cta_label":"Read more! "},{"type":"body_text","text":"## **Elastx capability**\n\n**AI infrastructure design:** Elastx helps design a secure and scalable cloud infrastructure tailored to the specific needs of AI development and deployment. This includes hardware selection, network configuration, and security architecture.\n\n**AI infrastructure operations:** Elastx manages the day-to-day operations of the cloud infrastructure. This includes tasks like provisioning resources, monitoring performance, and ensuring system uptime and availability.\n\n**AI infrastructure maintenance:** Elastx proactively maintains the cloud infrastructure, applying updates, performing security patches, and ensuring optimal performance for running AI workloads.\n\n## **Algorithma capability**\n\n**AI strategy:** Algorithma helps organizations define their AI goals and develop a roadmap for achieving them. This includes identifying use cases, evaluating risks and benefits, and aligning AI initiatives with overall business strategy.\n\n**AI development:** Algorithma provides expertise in building and implementing AI solutions. This includes data exploration, model selection, training, and integration with existing systems.\n\n**Maintenance of AI models and solutions:** Algorithma offers ongoing support for deployed AI models. This includes monitoring performance, identifying and addressing potential issues, and retraining models as needed to ensure continued effectiveness.\n\n**Explainable AI and algorithmic transparency:** Algorithma helps organizations understand how their AI models arrive at decisions. This fosters trust, mitigates bias, and ensures compliance with regulations."},{"type":"body_text","text":"## **Quick, safe (and fun) exploration of AI**\n\nThrough our partnership with Elastx we are able to accelerate the adoption of AI. We are working closely together with our joint clients to explore how we can drive valuable impact from AI in a quick, safe – and in our view – fun way. \n\nThrough our partnership, businesses gain a comprehensive solution for responsible AI development and deployment:\n\n* **A secure and reliable foundation:** Expertise in AI infrastructure design, operations, and maintenance ensures a robust platform for building and running AI solutions.\n* **A guide in your AI journey:** Strategic guidance, development expertise, and ongoing maintenance for AI models, ensuring responsible and effective AI practices.\n\n\n\n**The combination enables you to:**\n\n* Maintain complete control over your data and AI models.\n* Ensure data security and compliance with regulations.\n* Develop and deploy trustworthy and explainable AI solutions.\n* Achieve a competitive advantage through responsible innovation.\n\nDo not hesitate to get in touch! Join Elastx Cloud-fika on May 29 to listen to me and Michael Asplund when we discuss how to kickstart your AI journey and unlock AI in a quick, safe and fun way."}],"intro":"The responsible use of data, technology and artificial intelligence in business is key for customers, stakeholders, employees and regulatory bodies. As businesses leverage AI for innovation and growth, it is imperative with a robust approach to data privacy, security, and sustainability and to safeguard the ownership, integrity and security of key AI models that form your business’ competitive advantage. At Algorithma, together with our partners, we are committed to developing and deploying AI solutions that are not only effective but also responsible, secure and transparent.","englishVersionOnly":false,"image_alt":"Jens Ekberg, CEO at Algortihma","slug":"leveraging-privacy-security-and-responsible-ai-to-create-competitive-advantage","url":"/en/news/leveraging-privacy-security-and-responsible-ai-to-create-competitive-advantage","lang":"en","filename":"leveraging-privacy-security-and-responsible-ai-to-create-competitive-advantage","image":"/assets/uploads/jens-1.png"},"marknadsledande-lagring":{"date":"2024-05-15","case_slug":"New Swedish cloud storage beats the competition faster and cheaper","title":"New Swedish cloud storage beats the competition – faster and cheaper","image_alt":"A data center in a pine forest and a flagpole with the Swedish flag","tags":["ai","elastx","openstack"],"body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"I have been working in data center environments since the mid 90's which is a scary long time and is a reminder that I am older than I feel. There are two components in a platform that are the foundation of everything, if these don't work as they should, nothing else will either. When I've seen platforms that have recurring problems with stability or experience major disruptions, the problem has been here, persistent storage or network.\n\nThere are of course a lot of potential sources of error in a platform as it is a complex environment with an extremely large number of components that must work, but if you don't build the network and storage correctly, it can be a big challenge to get things in order when the solution used does not hold up to the pressure any longer. \n\nWhen we started Elastx Cloud Platform (ECP) more than 11 years ago, we built a storage solution that at the time was groundbreaking in being completely SSD based and having a scale-out architecture. Then we could proudly state that we were the market leader in terms of price, performance and, in the end, incredible stability after running this storage solution for 11 years without a single interruption, neither planned or unplanned. Development has moved on and we could no longer be as competitive in price and performance as we wanted so it was time to build something new.\n\nAt the end of 2023, we launched our next generation block storage service, v2 volumes. Our good experience from the first generation meant that we ended up with a solution that is in many ways very similar to the first. A fully SSD based solution with scale-out architecture but now NVMe based from compute and all the way to disk. This generational change has made it possible for us to once again become the market leader.\n\nIn this article we primarily compare performance and price where we can show that our v2 volumes have leading performance and the most competitive price on the market for storage in this class. In addition to this, the platform also has a design for high availability with fully redundant storage clusters in several geographically separated data centers, high security with ISO27001 certification, encryption at rest and full compliance under Swedish and EU legislation. All our services also include 24x7 support, DDoS protection and Threat Protection and a good feeling in the stomach as Elastx works sustainably, both environmentally and from a community perspective.\n\nDespite tough competition with global hyperscalers (AWS, Azure and GCP) and other European options that are a bit behind unfortunately, we at Elastx has succeeded in building a world-leading storage service.\n\n[Contact](https://elastx.se/se/contact-us) us if you want to know with or register an account [here](https://elastx.se/se/signup).\n\nBelow table contains the latest generation of cost effective high performance storage."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Performance\n\nWhen we talk about performance, there are three different parameters we measure that are of different importance depending on the workload you have.\n\n* Latency is how long a single write or read operation (IO) takes. If you have an application that has a dependency on getting quick responses from individual IOs or serial ones then this is important. An IO can be of different sizes, latency is often measured with an IO size of 4KB.\n* IOPS, the number of write or read operations (IO) Per Second. This is often relevant for databases as an example that must be able to do many operations at the same time. The more IOPS, the more you will be able to run in parallel without negatively affecting performance. The size of the IO also affects here, a disk can handle more small IO than large IO operations. To measure what a disk can handle at most in IOPS, a size of 4KB is usually used.\n* Bandwidth (Throughput), is how much data can be read or written from a disk. This is relevant if you have a workload that must read out large, often sequential data sets, for example backup, recovery or large data transfers. Then a larger IO size is used, 64KB or larger. There are many who only perform bandwidth tests, but bandwidth is rarely the most relevant factor.\n* In general for all three parameters above, it can differ in performance between read and write IO and whether it is sequential IO or random IO."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Pricing model\n\nIt can be difficult to compare prices between different suppliers as most have different price models. There are from best effort models where you pay per GB without the provider promising anything specific in terms of performance to models where you buy capacity, IOPS and bandwidth separately completely as needed and get an SLA based on actual need. What can also make it difficult are limitations in a certain type of storage, which can become troublesome when you need more performance and are forced to change storage storage solution or perhaps even platform."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Comparison\n\nThis comparison is for block storage that has redundancy and can be consumed dynamically in size and performance and often goes by the name of volumes. Other common storage types that Elastx also has are ephemeral storage which is locally attached disk and object storage but these are for other needs and not included in this comparison.\n\nWe have compared our ECP v2 storage with the cloud platforms that are most common here in Sweden. Only AWS, Azure and GCP have the equivalent redundancy with multiple Availability Zones (AZ) and clear SLAs on performance that Elastx has. The Swedish and EU based Cloud Service Providers that we have looked at often have a best effort model as far as we can see as they do not promise anything in terms of performance and do not have a QoS model where you can buy the performance that is needed. It is therefore difficult to compare as performance can vary greatly.\n\nWe have compiled the publicly available information regarding performance and price and have also produced a number of examples so that it will be easier to compare as everyone has different price models.\n\nThe pricing model we have used ourselves is a flat cost for the storage capacity and then you pay for the performance needed for each individual volume. If you need more performance, you can change the volume type to a faster one, which can be done on the existing volume, no data migration is required.\n\nThe comparison below shows the specifications and prices that are shared publicly. Where information is missing, there is normally also a lack of guarantees about performance linked to the SLA.\n\nAll prices are in SEK excluding VAT. Where prices are not available in SEK, the following rates have been used that were current in April 2024 (USD 10.90 SEK, EUR 11.70 SEK)."},{"type":"body_text","text":"| | ECP | AWS | Azure | GCP |\n| ----------------------- | ---------------- | ----------------- | ----------------- | ------------------ |\n| Type | v2 volume | gp3 | SSD v2 | Hyperdisk Balanced |\n| Cost per GB | 0.78 SEK | 0.91 SEK | 0.824 SEK | 0.96 SEK |\n| Latency 4KB ms | 0.2 | <10 | <1 | ? |\n| Bandwidth cost | Included in IOPS | 0.4578 SEK | 0.425 SEK | 0.4796 SEK |\n| Cost IOPS | 0.06 SEK | 0.05668 SEK | 0.0541 SEK | 0.0654 SEK |\n| Max IOPS | 128000 | 16000 | 80000 | 160000 |\n| Max Throughput | 2048 | 1000 | 1200 | 2400 |\n| Max volume size TB | 256 | 16 | 64\\* | 64 |\n| Encryption at rest | Yes, AES-256 | Optional, AES-256 | Optional, AES-256 | Yes, AES-256 |\n| Snapshots | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |\n| 500GB 1k IOPS, 64MB/s | 390 SEK | 456 SEK | 412 SEK | 480 SEK |\n| 500GB 16k IOPS, 384MB/s | 1290 SEK | 1311 SEK | 1219 SEK | 1447 SEK |\n| 1TB 64k IOPS, 1 GB/s | 4560 SEK | N/A | 4506 SEK | 5373 SEK |\n| 5TB 8k IOPS, 256 MB/s | 4320 SEK | 5063 SEK | 4446 SEK | 5179 SEK |\n| 5TB 64k IOPS, 1 GB/s | 7680 SEK | N/A | 7802 SEK | 9209 SEK |\n\n\\* The disk cannot be extended online"},{"type":"body_text","text":"Elastx and the most common hyperscale cloud service providers in Sweden have corresponding redundancy with multiple availability zones (AZ) as well as well-developed functions for data protection and security with encryption. AWS gp3 is more limited in performance, while ECP v2, Azure SSD v2 and GCP Hyperdisk Balanced have good numbers on IOPS and throughput. In terms of price and performance, ECP v2 and Azure SSD v2 are leading and are very close to each other. Azure has a somewhat annoying limitation that you cannot expand the disk online. ECP v2 stands out in terms of performance against all the others with a latency that is many times better."},{"type":"body_text","text":"Extreme performance storage\n\n| | ECP | AWS | Azure | GCP |\n| ----------------------- | ---------------- | ----------------------------------------------- | ----------------- | ------------------- |\n| Type | v2 volume | io2 | Ultra Disk\\*\\*\\* | Hyperdisk Extreme\\* |\n| Cost per GB | 0.78 SEK | 1.43 SEK | 1.31624 SEK | 1.50 SEK |\n| Latency 4KB ms | 0.2 | <1 | low <1 | ? |\n| Bandwidth cost | Included in IOPS | 0 SEK | 3.84924 SEK | 0 SEK |\n| Cost IOPS | 0.06 SEK | 0-32k 0.75 SEK 32k-64k 0.52 SEK 64k- 0.37 SEK | 0.54334 SEK | 0.38 SEK |\n| Max IOPS | 128000 | 256000 | 160000 | 350000 |\n| Max Throughput | 2048 | 4000 | 4000 | 4800 |\n| Max volume size TB | 256 | 16 | 64\\*\\* | 64 |\n| Encryption at rest | Yes, AES-256 | Optional, AES-256 | Optional, AES-256 | Yes, AES-256 |\n| Snapshots | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |\n| 500GB 1k IOPS, 64MB/s | 390 SEK | 1460 SEK | 1448 SEK | 1134 SEK |\n| 500GB 16k IOPS, 384MB/s | 1290 SEK | 12643 SEK | 10830 SEK | 6856 SEK |\n| 1TB 64k IOPS, 1 GB/s | 4560 SEK | 41927 SEK | 40032 SEK | 25920 SEK |\n| 5TB 8k IOPS, 256 MB/s | 4320 SEK | 13109 SEK | 11913 SEK | 10573 SEK |\n| 5TB 64k IOPS, 1 GB/s | 7680 SEK | 47643 SEK | 45297 SEK | 31937 SEK |\n\n\\* Requires specific machine types with at least 64 vcpu\n\\*\\* The disk cannot be extended online\n\\*\\** Cannot be used as a boot disk"},{"type":"body_text","text":"AWS, Azure and GCP all offer a storage type for very demanding workloads but the price tag is also extreme with a cost that is over 9x more expensive in some cases compared to ECP v2. The only reason to use this type of storage is systems that could justify this cost with savings on licenses or where it is not possible to scale out.\n\nEuropean CSP\n\n| | ECP | OVH | Upcloud | Cleura |\n| ----------------------- | ---------------- | --------------- | -------------------------- | ------------- |\n| Type | v2 volume | High Speed Gen2 | MaxIOPS | Block storage |\n| Cost per GB | 0.78 SEK | 1.04 SEK | 2.57 SEK | 1.17 SEK |\n| Latency 4KB ms | 0.2 SEK | ? | ? | ? |\n| Bandwidth cost | Included in IOPS | 0 SEK | 0 SEK | 0 SEK |\n| Cost IOPS | 0.06 SEK | 0 SEK | 0 SEK | 0 SEK |\n| Max IOPS | 128000 | 16000 | Read 100000 Write 30000 | 8000\\*\\* |\n| Max Throughput | 2048 | 320 | Write 205* Read 342* | ? |\n| Max volume size TB | 256 | 4 | 4 | ? |\n| Encryption at rest | Yes, AES-256 | No | No | No |\n| Snapshots | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |\n| 500GB 1k IOPS, 64MB/s | 390 SEK | 518 SEK | 1287 SEK | 585 SEK |\n| 500GB 16k IOPS, 384MB/s | 1290 SEK | N/A | 1287 SEK | N/A |\n| 1TB 64k IOPS, 1 GB/s | 4560 SEK | N/A | N/A | N/A |\n| 5TB 8k IOPS, 256 MB/s | 4320 SEK | N/A | N/A | 5850 SEK |\n| 5TB 64k IOPS, 1 GB/s | 7680 SEK | N/A | N/A | N/A |\n\n\\* No specification available, this value is from a performance test performed by UpCloud\n\\** No specification exists, the value comes from an audience [performance report](https://projector.cloud-mercato.com/projects/state-of-the-art-of-european-iaas-q3-2021/block-iops/graph)\n\nThe European offer is somewhat more limited and it is also difficult to find information about the performance that the services guarantee. In addition to ECP v2, it is difficult to find any provider that offers encrypted storage."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Performance test\n\nIf you want to test the performance of your disk, we recommend that you use fio which is a competent tool available for most operating systems. When you run the tests below with fio, you will also see latency.\n\n#### Test read IOPS\n\n`sudo fio --name=read_iops --directory=$TEST_DIR --size=10G`\\\n`--time_based --runtime=1m --ramp_time=2s --ioengine=libaio --direct=1`\\\n`--verify=0 --bs=4K --iodepth=256 --rw=randread --group_reporting=1`\\\n`--iodepth_batch_submit=256 --iodepth_batch_complete_max=256`\n\n#### Test write IOPS\n\n`sudo fio --name=write_iops --directory=$TEST_DIR --size=10G`\\\n`--time_based --runtime=1m --ramp_time=2s --ioengine=libaio --direct=1`\\\n`--verify=0 --bs=4K --iodepth=256 --rw=randwrite --group_reporting=1`\\\n`--iodepth_batch_submit=256 --iodepth_batch_complete_max=256`\n\n#### Test write throughput\n\n`sudo fio --name=write_throughput --directory=$TEST_DIR --numjobs=16`\\\n`--size=10G --time_based --runtime=1m --ramp_time=2s --ioengine=libaio`\\\n`--direct=1 --verify=0 --bs=1M --iodepth=64 --rw=write`\\\n`--group_reporting=1 --iodepth_batch_submit=64`\\\n`--iodepth_batch_complete_max=64`\n\n#### Test read throughput\n\n`sudo fio --name=read_throughput --directory=$TEST_DIR --numjobs=16 `\\\n`--size=10G --time_based --runtime=1m --ramp_time=2s --ioengine=libaio `\\\n`--direct=1 --verify=0 --bs=1M --iodepth=64 --rw=read `\\\n`--group_reporting=1 `\\\n`--iodepth_batch_submit=64 --iodepth_batch_complete_max=64`"},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":false,"cta_label":"Email us","cta_text":"Contact us for more information","cta_link":"mailto:hello@elastx.se"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Summation\n\nWe are very proud to be able to offer a Swedish market-leading storage with ECP v2 volumes despite strong competition. V2 volumes are currently available in ECP [Openstack IaaS](https://elastx.se/en/openstack), [Kubernetes CaaS](https://elastx.se/en/kubernetes) and [DBaaS](https://elastx.se/en/database).\n\nIn addition to price and performance, we also have a committed 24x7 support that is always there if you need help and a service with leading sustainability both environmentally and from a community perspective.\n\nHigh availability and security are especially important to us as Elastx Cloud Platform is the Swedish cloud platform for business-critical applications and sensitive data. With a combination of cost efficiency, scalability and security, we can help our customers deliver better services faster and more securely.\n\n[Contact](https://elastx.se/se/contact-us) us if you want to know with or register an account [here](https://elastx.se/en/signup).\n\nJoakim Öhman,\nFounder and CEO"}],"intro":"We are very proud to provide a Swedish market-leading storage with ECP v2 volumes, and this despite fierce competition. V2 volumes are currently available in ECP Openstack IaaS, Kubernetes CaaS and DBaaS.\nIn addition to price and performance, we are leading in sustainability, environmentally as well as from a community perspective.We also have a committed 24x7 support that is always available if you need our support.\n","slug":"new-swedish-cloud-storage-beats-the-competition-faster-and-cheaper","url":"/en/news/new-swedish-cloud-storage-beats-the-competition-faster-and-cheaper","lang":"en","filename":"marknadsledande-lagring","image":"/assets/uploads/market-leading-storage-swedish-cloud.png"},"möt-ronny-roos-elastx-styrelseordförande":{"date":"2023-02-27","title":"Meet Ronny Roos, Chairman of the Board at Elastx","case_slug":"meet ronny roos chairman of the board at elastx","tags":["elastx"],"intro":"On a sunny afternoon before a board meeting, we had the pleasure of meeting Ronny Roos and asking him some questions. Ronny greeted us with a warm smile and a box of chocolates to mark the occasion. This thoughtful gesture speaks volumes about Ronny's background and the values he upholds in his crucial role of supporting entrepreneur-driven companies on their growth journey with empathy and a wealth of experience.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"Over coffee and delectable chocolates, Ronny Roos shares his insights on what it takes to inspire individuals to stay and perform at their best. \"Leadership and strong teams are crucial,\" Ronny asserts. \"Civil society has long recognized the value of diverse perspectives and embracing differences. It's often a winning combination.\" For Ronny, it's essential to feel a sense of purpose and strive to make a positive impact on society. \"It's important to stand for something and work towards creating a better world,\" he adds.\n\nRonny Roos has a diverse educational background, having studied both law and economics. However, he admits to never having pursued a career in law. Ronny's early experience was in the sports industry, where he played a key role in the development of the Malmö-based club Olympic, taking the team from division five to division one. \"Creating a high-performing team based on trust, support, and accountability was a pivotal experience for me,\" Ronny recalls. \"It shaped who I am today.\"\n\nRonny also credits his time at WM-data (now CGI, the largest IT company in the Nordics) as a significant influence on his leadership philosophy. \"I was fortunate to work at a company that was ahead of its time, emphasizing soft values and leadership as far back as the 1980s,\" he notes."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### The increasing importance of value-based companies\n\nRonny Roos was immediately drawn to Elastx's founders, Henrik Grankvist and Joakim Öhman, due to their holistic approach to individuals' roles in society and the workplace. Ronny was introduced to Elastx through Sobro, an investment company founded by the Söderberg brothers, Ragnar and Per-Olof. With a strong focus on value-driven leadership and extensive experience in business development, Ronny was a natural fit as the board chairman for the new partnership.\n\nFor Ronny, creating sustainable conditions for individuals and society is just as important as generating profits. He believes that companies should prioritize taking care of their employees and setting standards for value-driven work environments. \"More and more people are choosing to work in companies where employees trust and support one another, standing up for each other and bringing their whole selves to work,\" Ronny emphasizes."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/ronny_smiles_web_1500px.jpg","alt":"Ronny Roos smiling in front of a mirrored view of Stockholm"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Diversity of perspectives - a success factor\n\nThe need for new and diverse perspectives has proven to be a key factor for success. According to Catalyst, companies with diverse leadership teams earned 38% more over a 3-year period compared to those with less diverse management teams in terms of gender, age, background, and ethnicity. \nSimilarly, McKinsey's [Diversity Wins report](https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters) highlights that organizations with diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds in management have increased performance by 36%. Additionally, management teams with equal gender distribution generate better-than-average profitability in 25% of cases.\n\nRonny Roos believes that the IT industry, predominantly male, has a tendency to take itself too seriously and prioritize maintaining power rather than building successful organizations. \"Hierarchical management, where the manager makes all the decisions and employees only help the manager, is not how you build successful organizations,\" Ronny emphasizes.\n\nToday, active diversity and inclusion work has become a hygiene factor for companies. It's crucial to be aware of the skills and perspectives that may be missing and to open doors for individuals beyond those we meet in our immediate vicinity.\n\n### Anonymized applications ensures competence-based assessment\n\nOne simple tool that Ronny recommends is anonymized recruitment processes. By not revealing the applicant's name, gender, or appearance during the first selection, the assessment can be based purely on competence rather than familiarity. \n\nRonny emphasizes the importance of making biases visible to combat the tendency to favor those who resemble us. He suggests questioning why a particular candidate was chosen over another. Was the decision based on logical reasoning or gut feeling? Choosing based on gut feeling increases the likelihood of selecting someone similar to oneself.\n\nAt Elastx, we take pride in our inclusive value foundation, which serves as the basis for our cloud platform. This includes anonymized applications, ensuring that candidates are evaluated purely on competence. We also set operational goals based on an intersectional analysis, preventing us from missing out on important perspectives and markets.\n\nAs we wrap up our conversation with Ronny, we feel the warmth of the sun and the contentment of having such an esteemed chairman of the board. Our company's success is rooted in a combination of advanced technical skills, innovative platform solutions, and a solid value foundation."},{"type":"body_text","text":"## Quick facts \n\n**Residence:** I live on a horse farm located in the outskirts of Skurup, a town situated in the Skåne region.\n\n**Interests:** I have always been fond of sports, particularly ball sports. Nowadays, however, I mostly enjoy playing golf.\n\n**Culinary Preferences:** I am a fan of home-cooked meals, and I relish dishes of all varieties. Pork pancake and meatballs with mashed potatoes are two of my all-time favorites.\n\n**Top TV Show:** I thoroughly enjoyed watching a series called \"Couplings,\" and I also have a penchant for classics like \"Fawlty Towers.\""}],"image_alt":"","slug":"meet-ronny-roos-chairman-of-the-board-at-elastx","url":"/en/news/meet-ronny-roos-chairman-of-the-board-at-elastx","lang":"en","filename":"möt-ronny-roos-elastx-styrelseordförande","image":"/assets/uploads/henrik_ronny_and_joakim.jpg"},"now-in-sweden-true-autoscaling-and-volume-discounts":{"date":"2013-03-18","title":"Now in Sweden - True autoscaling and volume discounts","case_slug":"Now in Sweden True autoscaling and volume discounts","intro":"“With these changes Virtuozzo (formerly Jelastic) gets even further ahead of its competition and becomes extremely cost effective for small and large-scale production deployments alike.” - Ruslan Synytsky, COO, Virtuozzo","tags":["wordpress"],"body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"“Fair pricing is vital to make any business sustainable yet cost-effective for customers,” says Ruslan Synytsky, COO, Virtuozzo (formerly Jelastic), “Last year we became the first PaaS to launch vertical scaling of servers and true utility-based pricing. With our latest release, we are adding ability to set both minimal and maximal scaling limits, get volume discounts, and immediately see the projected costs the moment you create or change Virtuozzo environments.\n\nThe new model contrasts sharply with conventional industry pricing practices. Developers will find it more attractive than existing models for a number of reasons:\n\n**Free is never free**: Many supposedly competitive cloud hosting vendors attract developers by making it easy to run new apps for free. But as apps start growing, they need more and more resources. And those additional resources are far from free. In fact, at that point the formerly “free” pricing usually becomes very expensive as pricing is rarely adapted to large scale production use.\n\n**With Virtuozzo, automatic volume discounts provide make scaling cheaper**: Virtuozzo can give automatic discounts for usage depending on the amount of resources that the application consumes. So unlike with the “free to start, expensive to scale” platforms, higher-volume usage is automatically cheaper. Larger applications with higher resource consumption and commitment levels automatically get a lower price, making Virtuozzo perfect for large-scale production use.\n\n**Per-machine pricing is bad for customers**: The computer-based (per-machine) pricing model commonly used in the industry today means that customers often have to overpay, choosing bigger machines than they actually need because they have no other option.\n\n**With Virtuozzo, the only true consumption-based PaaS, customers only pay for the resources they need:** Virtuozzo is the only Platform-as-a-Service on the market today that has built-in automated vertical scaling. This means customers do not have to guess the machine size they need. Unlike with per-machine or other models, they can let Virtuozzo add memory, CPU and disk space on the fly. And they pay only for their actual hourly consumption.\n\n**Virtuozzo customers can now set Lower and upper limits, to get the best price for their usage patterns**: Beginning with Version 1.9, Virtuozzo lets customers specify the lower and higher scaling limits for all the servers they use within the platform. The higher customers set their minimum resource-use level, the bigger discount they get. At the same time, the maximum level still allows for overage in case the application needs to scale up to serve increased usage. This lets customers set limits that optimize price and operational efficiency.\n\n**Virtuozzo provides cost projections each time the customer creates a new environment or makes changes**: Any time a customer changes its configurations, Virtuozzo immediately displays both the minimum and the maximum expected monthly bill. This makes the pricing both fair and predictable.\n\nBelow is our new volume discount pricemodel;"},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/pricemodel-jelastic.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"## Other features with the new Virtuozzo version 1.9 platform;\n\n**Easier access to application files with FTP/FTPS**: The new version of our platform offers support for the FTP/FTPS protocol. This provides a fast, easy, and reliable way of file sharing and data transfer to and from your servers in Virtuozzo environments.\n\n**Higher performance through file caching**: Virtuozzo 1.9 supports caching in NGINX (for both NGINX-balancer and NGINX PHP server). This improves performance by reducing the access time to the resource and increasing the resource building speed.\n\n**More enterprise-ready servers with built-in TomEE**: We’ve added Apache TomEE, the enterprise edition of Apache Tomcat, to meet demand for a more enterprise-ready server. This provides you with the best technology stack that can be deployed to a simple Java EE container. TomEE is a full-blown app server, but retains the simplicity of Tomcat and avoids architectural overhead.\n\n**More databases with MariaDB 10.0**: Virtuozzo 1.9 is the first PaaS offering MariaDB 10.0, the most advanced database in the SQL world. This database offers developers the advantages of multi-source replication, dynamic columns and MariaDB Galera Cluster. It is even faster and more fault tolerant, and has more flexible database replication, than previous MariaDB versions.\n\nAs you see we always consider our customers’ opinion and try to satisfy all their needs. Thanks to our users we are getting better!\n\nTry our free tier of our platform - Sign up [now](https://app.jelastic.elastx.net/?signup=true)."}],"slug":"now-in-sweden-true-autoscaling-and-volume-discounts","url":"/en/news/now-in-sweden-true-autoscaling-and-volume-discounts","lang":"en","filename":"now-in-sweden-true-autoscaling-and-volume-discounts","image":"/assets/uploads/switch_exhaust.jpeg"},"nu-finns-elastisys-kubernetes-platform-as-a-service-tillgänglig-hos-elastx":{"date":"2022-05-24","title":"Elastisys Kubernetes Platform as a Service is now available at Elastx","case_slug":"elastisys kubernetes platform as a service is now available at elastx","intro":"We are excited to announce that the Elastisys Kubernetes Platform as a Service (KPaaS) is now available on Elastx infrastructure! This means that users of our infrastructure can now benefit from a fully managed and secure Kubernetes environment, where platform operation, security, support, and rolling updates are included as part of the service.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"One of the benefits of using microservices and Kubernetes is the ability to focus on developing your application without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. KPaaS offers a convenient, pre-packaged solution that allows you to easily deploy and manage your applications on Elastx's secure and reliable infrastructure. This can be particularly useful for organizations with strict security and compliance requirements. By choosing KPaaS, you can take advantage of the latest technology and ensure that your applications run smoothly and efficiently.\n\nKPaaS is an ideal solution for companies seeking data sovereignty without the hassle or expense."},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":true,"cta_text":"Email us today to discuss how this service could match your particular needs.","cta_label":"Tell me more!","cta_link":"mailto:hello@elastx.se"},{"type":"body_text","text":"**[Kubernetes](https://kubernetes.io/): Brilliant, but not inherently safe**\n\nKubernetes is an excellent tool for deploying and managing software in the cloud, providing automation and ease of use for developers. However, its focus on automation and portability has unfortunately resulted in a lack of emphasis on security and operational aspects, leading to a high incidence of security incidents. In fact, 92% of companies using Kubernetes on their own have experienced an incident in the past year, with 59% of these incidents being caused by misconfigurations.\n\nKPaaS offers a solution to this problem by providing a secure, reliable platform for developing and operating applications on Kubernetes. With Elastx's state-of-the-art infrastructure and expertise in managing Kubernetes, businesses can focus on their core competencies without worrying about the complexities of operating the platform. This allows for the full benefits of Kubernetes to be realized without sacrificing security or reliability.\n\nSince 2018, Elastisys has provided security hardened Kubernetes solutions, including the Compliant Kubernetes distribution. This makes it an ideal choice for businesses with strict security requirements, such as those in regulated industries like medtech and fintech. KPaaS is a fully managed platform service that is well-suited for companies that need to meet high security standards in order to do business with the public sector."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/skärmavbild-2022-05-24-kl.-09.32.03.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"**Benefits of Elastisys Kubernetes Platform as a Service at Elastx**\n\n* Fully managed platform: Kubernetes, Linux and cloud infrastructure are managed entirely by Elastisys with Elastx as a subcontractor\n* ISO 27001-certified suppliers\n* Completely Swedish service providers\n* Geo-redundant service with three data centers in Sweden\n* Guaranteed 99.95% uptime SLA for premium customers\n\n**Elastx 💛 Elastisys**\n\nJoakim Öhman, CEO of Elastx, and Johan Tordsson, CEO of Elastisys, both agree that the companies have a lot in common. \"We have similar values, corporate culture, and a shared commitment to open source and cloud native technologies,\" says Öhman. \"Elastisys' expertise in providing added value for customers with business-critical services that involve sensitive data is a perfect match for Elastx's focus on security and robustness for cloud services produced in Sweden.\"\n\nTordsson adds, \"We're excited to be partnering with Elastx. Their infrastructure with three interconnected data centers will give Elastisys the ability to deliver cloud services with unparalleled availability to the Swedish and European market.\""}],"slug":"elastisys-kubernetes-platform-as-a-service-is-now-available-at-elastx","url":"/en/news/elastisys-kubernetes-platform-as-a-service-is-now-available-at-elastx","lang":"en","filename":"nu-finns-elastisys-kubernetes-platform-as-a-service-tillgänglig-hos-elastx","image":"/assets/uploads/elastxelastisys-partnership-campaign-presentation.jpg"},"praktik-på-elastx-tankar-reflektioner-från-en-blivande-utvecklare":{"date":"2023-01-11","title":"Internship at Elastx: reflections from an aspiring developer","case_slug":"Internship at Elastx reflections from an aspiring developer","image_alt":"intern reaching for server among brightly colored cables","tags":["elastx"],"intro":"Fredrika Carlsén, an intern in the development team at Elastx, shares her thoughts on LIA.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"After ten weeks of hands-on practice, I can attest to the truth of the common phrase, 'you learn the most during your internship.' This is where you gain practical skills and experience working as a developer.\n\nIn October, I left Nackademin to begin my first internship as a front-end developer at Elastx.\n\nSchool provides a solid foundation for aspiring developers, covering crucial concepts and tools. However, it's during internships that this knowledge comes to life and is contextualized. I've gained valuable experience working with agile methodologies, understanding the development process from backend to frontend, and the significance of utilizing various tools and adhering to code standards. My extensive JavaScript study in my first year has proven essential to my success during the internship. It's evident that practical experience is crucial for growth, but it builds upon a strong educational foundation.\n\nHaving said that, stepping into a company with massive code bases as an intern is a daunting experience. My school projects suddenly seem like small, insignificant assignments in comparison.\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Getting to know the company's website\n\nWhen I arrived at Elastx, the company had recently completed a website refactoring. During my initial days, I worked alongside my supervisor to identify and resolve any bugs that emerged. This involved frequent screen sharing sessions and an abundance of questions. What does that function do? How are the front end and the CMS connected? Where does \"data\" come from? What happens if I accidentally break something?\n\nAt first, the sheer size of the codebase felt overwhelming. So many lines of code. How to navigate it? Where do you even begin?\n\nThe (rather obvious) answer is: you just do it.\n\nEventually, my initial nervousness faded. Although the volume of code was larger than I had encountered before, the underlying concepts remained familiar. It was a satisfying moment when I realized I did understand it. Of course, I didn't have all the answers, but enough to feel confident to begin researching what I didn't know.\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Pause for reflection\nThe journey from beginner to developer involves more than just writing code. It also requires a deep understanding of context, connections, and the ability to recognize and articulate what one doesn't understand. I was initially apprehensive about my non-technical background in the humanities and service, but I've come to realize that my knowledge gaps are manageable.\n\nEmbracing a growth mindset takes patience and humility, but I've been met with encouragement and support every time I've asked seemingly \"stupid\" questions. It's impossible to know everything, even the most senior developers don't have all the answers. This realization has allowed me to approach my journey with a more confident and relaxed mindset.\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Getting to know Elastx\nBeing an overall curious person, questions were also directed outside the dev team. What is OpenStack? Kubernetes? What does the system look like to the customer? What types of customers are there? What projects are in the pipeline? Although I only comprehended about half of the answers, I relished the opportunity to listen to people speak with passion. This also proved to be an excellent way for me to get to know the company's services and the people behind them.\n\nPeople are what truly matter. I am fortunate to have found a team of individuals who are not only highly skilled, but also kind, humorous, and delightfully nerdy.\n\nOverall, I am thrilled with my decision to join Elastx.\n"},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/img_3420-kopiera.jpg"},{"type":"body_text","text":"**Highlight:** when I got to visit one of the data centers and physically handle a server and unscrew stuff. I’m very glad no one told me the cost of the parts until afterwards.\n\n**Low point:** it took me several weeks to figure out the microwave ovens in the office."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Three quick questions\n\n1. What is expected of an intern?\n \nThat you keep up with what the team is doing, ask questions and take responsibility for your own tasks.\n\n2. What were the biggest challenges?\n\nImpostor syndrome is a thing. There is so much you want/need to learn that it is easy to get overwhelmed. It is important to take some deep breaths and do one thing at a time.\n\n3. What is it like to be a woman in a male-dominated workplace?\n\nIt feels nice to be able to weigh up topics of conversation like crypto and electric cars with girly things like nail polish and true crime.\n\n(Jokes aside - there is a warm and welcoming culture where everyone's different qualities and skills are appreciated)"}],"slug":"internship-at-elastx-reflections-from-an-aspiring-developer","url":"/en/news/internship-at-elastx-reflections-from-an-aspiring-developer","lang":"en","filename":"praktik-på-elastx-tankar-reflektioner-från-en-blivande-utvecklare","image":"/assets/uploads/img_3424_1_liten.jpg"},"prorenata-flyttar-hem-sin-it-drift":{"date":"2022-01-03","title":"Prorenata moves home","case_slug":"prorenata moves home","tags":["elastx","customer"],"intro":"Prorenata was founded to simplify healthcare documentation. Therefore it makes sense to also simplify their own IT-environment. Prorenata is growing rapidly with a leading role in Healthcare Journalling Systems. Partnership with Elastx allows Prorenata to store their data in Sweden and enables a continuous improvement of their IT-environment.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"Prorenata started with IT operations outside of Sweden. Since then, new laws such as U.S. Cloud Act and FISA 702 made it harder to comply with Swedish laws such as GDPR. A public Swedish collaboration organization called eSam said it is risky to store and process Swedish data using U.S. clouds providers.\n\n### Moving home to Sweden\n\nIn the spring of 2019, Prorenata started a project to move all IT-operations home to Sweden. Their first attempt was with a different cloud provider than Elastx. They faced complications and decided to choose Elastx instead.\n\n\"Moving to Elastx went quick.\" says Jens Alm, CEO at Prorenata. \"Once the move was done, we saw clear improvements. We used to have several incidents a week. Here at Elastx, all systems are running smoothly.\"\n\nSince the move, Elastx and Prorenata have continuously improved the IT infrastructure. Prorenata went from reactive work to collaborative development of areas like logging and redundancy.\n\n### Better than legislation\n\nElastx makes Prorenata feel safe. They now have a solution that meets and exceeds legal requirements.\n\n\"Now we can say that our data is in Sweden, with the right redundancy, spread over multiple data centers from a cloud provider that meets all security standards.\" says Jens Alm, CEO at Prorenata.\n\nSince the beginning of the collaboration, there have only been two Elastx disruptions that affected Prorenata IT operations. Prorenata has a good relationship with Elastx, where collaboration and proactivity are key factors.\n\n\"Back in the days, it took a while to get customer support from the cloud giants.\" says Jens Alm, CEO at Prorenata. \"There is a clear difference with Elastx, who are alert, accomodate needs and prove themselves to be good partners for evolving together.\"\n"},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":true,"cta_text":"Elastx would love to make you feel safe as your public cloud provider. You are welcome to get in touch with any questions or thoughts.","cta_label":"Get in touch!","cta_link":"mailto:hello@elastx.se"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Communication that feels right\n\nProrenata uses Elastx OpenStack, our Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) where companies get a full virtual center. By adding Elastx Mail Relay, Prorenata can send out emails from Swedish servers. This goes in line with handling all data using Swedish servers. A key part of the partnership is having a regular dialog between Prorenata and Elastx.\n\n\"We value the discussions with Elastx, held at just the right technical level. We can dive into technical details and feel confident that Elastx know their stuff. Elastx share our passion for technology, which makes us a great fit.\" says Jens Alm, CEO at Prorenata.\n\n\n### Developing new services together\n\nProrenata values that Elastx develops new services and offers through collaboration. When Prorenata needs a new machine with more disk storage, Elastx can create a suitable product to meet these needs.\n\n\"There is quick action for short term needs and a partnership for the long term perspective.\" says Jens Alm, CEO at Prorenata. \"There is a mutual respect in the business relationship and they [Elastx] keep their promises.\"\n\n### Life made easier\n\nProrenata values that Elastx continually improves their organization and offering. Prorenata is considering to move additional parts of their IT-environment to Elastx. They show interest in an upcoming service, Elastx Database as a Service (DBaaS), to free up resources that can focus on other business needs.\n\n\"Prorenata makes life easier for Healthcare and we are very proud to make life easier for Prorenata.\" says Joakim Öhman, CEO at Elastx. \"We look forward to a continued successful collaboration, focused on simplifying all areas for both partners.\""}],"slug":"prorenata-moves-home","url":"/en/news/prorenata-moves-home","lang":"en","filename":"prorenata-flyttar-hem-sin-it-drift","image":"/assets/uploads/some-post-linkedin-2.png"},"prorenatas-strategic-move-bringing-their-application-back-home":{"date":"2023-10-16","title":"Prorenata’s Strategic Move: Bringing Their Application Back Home","case_slug":"prorenatas strategic move bringing their application back home","image":"/assets/uploads/prorenata_pyramid-1-1024x758.png","image_alt":"An illustrated pyramid with Elastx at the bottom, Elastisys in the middle and Prorenata on top.","tags":["elastx","partner","elastisys"],"intro":"Prorenata was founded with the idea of simplifying school healthcare documentation. The rapidly growing company holds a leading position in the medtech market for developing electronic health record systems within the school sector. Through the partnership with Elastisys, a Managed Kubernetes Platform provider, and Elastx, an infrastructure provider, Prorenata can ensure that all data stays within Sweden's borders and that their service providers fall under Swedish/EU jurisdiction. They can also create the best conditions for further developing a modern cloud-native application with best-in-class security and compliance posture.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"### Moving Home to Sweden\n\n[Prorenata](https://prorenata.se/) initiated a project in the spring of 2019 to bring all operations back to Sweden. As a first step, they chose to move from a non-European cloud to Elastx as their infrastructure provider. At the same time, they also decided to start using Kubernetes, running it themselves. This seemed manageable in the beginning, but as their application and customer demands were growing, they realized managing all this on one single person was not a sustainable solution. [A production-grade Kubernetes platform](https://elastisys.io/compliantkubernetes/) requires far more software than merely Kubernetes itself, and the added burden of administering it all, especially over time, simply became too much work. Operating Kubernetes did not contribute to simplified healthcare documentation, the core business of Prorenata.\n\nBy switching to the fully-managed Elastisys Kubernetes Platform as an add-on to their infrastructure provider, Elastx, Prorenata could instead rely on a big team of engineers and certified Kubernetes experts to administer their Kubernetes platform. This gave them the opportunity to dedicate their full attention to what they do best - developing their own application and tailoring it to meet their customers' exact needs at scale."},{"type":"body_text","text":"#### \"It was a smooth and easy transition to migrate everything to Elastisys. The strong partnership between Elastx and Elastisys was a key factor in making this possible.\"\n*Jens Alm, CEO Prorenata*"},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/prorenata_pyramid-1-1024x758.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Exceeding Legal Requirements\n\nBy partnering up with Elastx and Elastisys, they now have a solution that complies with Swedish legislation concerning handling of personal data and healthcare documentation. The solution also provides high end security functionality such as intrusion detection, vulnerability scanning and a clear process and tools necessary for [disaster recovery](https://elastisys.com/operating-secure-kubernetes-platforms-disaster-recovery/), protecting Prorenatas business against major data center failures or ransomware attacks.\n\nInitially, Prorenata ran their application on a US cloud. When legal issues arose due to regulations such as the American CLOUD Act, FISA 702, and the Schrems II verdict concerning transferring data between the EU and US, the Swedish public sector questioned the legality of such transfers, especially in relation to legislation such as the GDPR and the Swedish Patient Data Law (Patientdatalagen). Additionally, clarifications from [eSamverka](https://www.esamverka.se/), the government's digital issues collaborative body, highlighted the sensitivity of having Swedish data handled by providers governed by US law. Besides these regulations, Prorenata also needed an ISO-27001-certified vendor to meet their customers’ strict information security and data protection standards."},{"type":"body_text","text":"#### \"We now have the advantageous position of being able to confidently state that our data is in Sweden and that we are using a solution with best-in-class security. Leveraging a GDPR, PDL, and ISO-27001-ready service gives us a huge advantage in this regulated market.\"\n*Jens Alm, CEO Prorenata*"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Advantages in Public Procurements\n\nJens Alm states that one of the greatest benefits from a business perspective is that this solution with Elastisys and Elastx has given them advantages in public procurement. With the help of Elastisys’ [great documentation](https://elastisys.io/compliantkubernetes/) regarding information security, data protection, and regulations, they get a strong competitive advantage and save a lot of time when participating in public procurements."},{"type":"body_text","text":"#### \"When applying for public procurements, we are assured that all necessary documentation is up-to-date and easily accessible. Knowing that we chose vendors with an ISO 27001-certification helps us simplify the process and saves us valuable time.\"\n*Jens Alm, CEO Prorenata*"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### A Close Partnership\n\nThe smooth migration to their new Kubernetes environments and the continuous successful development of the application are direct results of the tight dialogue between all parties. Prorenata highlights their appreciation of being able to have technical discussions with Elastisys and Elastx at the right level, where they can delve into details yet get the right guidance for the solution suitable for them.\n\nProrenata also emphasizes the benefits of Elastisys and Elastx’ flexibility and responsiveness in the continuous development of its organization and offerings."},{"type":"body_text","text":"#### \"When we used one of the major cloud giants, it could take a while to get support. There is a clear difference compared to our current solution with Elastx and Elastisys, who are responsive, accommodating, and great partners for mutual growth.\"\n*Jens Alm, CEO Prorenata*\n\nProrenata contributes to making life easier for the healthcare sector, and Elastisys is proud to, in collaboration with Elastx, enable them to accelerate innovation while ensuring security and regulatory compliance."},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":true,"cta_text":"Curious to know more?","cta_label":"Contact us ","cta_link":"mailto:hej@elastx.se"},{"type":"body_text","text":"This blog post is created by our partner Elastisys. It was originally posted on October 11, 2023 on [Elastisys Tech Blog.](https://elastisys.com/prorenata-brings-their-it-operations-back-home/)"}],"slug":"prorenatas-strategic-move-bringing-their-application-back-home","url":"/en/news/prorenatas-strategic-move-bringing-their-application-back-home","lang":"en","filename":"prorenatas-strategic-move-bringing-their-application-back-home"},"risks-with-cloud-it-outside-of-sweden":{"title":"Risks with Cloud-IT outside of Sweden","case_slug":"Risks Cloud-IT outside of Sweden","tags":["cloud-act"],"intro":"Today, Swedish as well as international companies have the opportunity to get their cloud-based IT operations handled by major suppliers such as AWS, Google and Azure. A service with security that is taken for granted. Something the customer always counts with is that the data stored with the supplier is always taken care of and may only be handled by the customer himself.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"However, something we need to keep in mind today is the risk of having IT operations abroad. Regulations made in other countries that, for example, do not have the same relation to the Swedish and European GDPR legislation, may be a stopper for the confidentiality of one’s data abroad. An example taken today is the US Cloud Act, which went in effect on March 23, 2018. In short, Cloud Act means in that US IT service providers need to disclose data to US authorities when needed. An appeal by a Swedish company that stores data in the United States would not be valid in this case, which unfortunately may put the company at risk, depending on the type of company that is at jeopardy.\n\n[Read more about Cloud Act at ComputerSweden here. (swedish)](https://computersweden.idg.se/2.2683/1.701858/cloud-act)\n\nIn an article written by eSam, they write about the risks that may appear with cloud services in the public sector. Swedish public companies using confidential data risk being unprotected to some extent, depending on the laws of each country where data centers are located and the data is stored.\n\n[Read the article “eSam sees risks with public sector cloud services” here. (swedish)](http://esamverka.se/nyheter/nyheter/2018-11-12-esam-ser-risker-med-molntjanster-i-offentlig-sektor.html)\n\nIt is only a matter of time before more companies in the Swedish public sector begin to see the risks of cloud services abroad. Then the question is how they will act. Will they see, for example, the Cloud Act as a clear threat to confidentiality or will you continue with the same setup.\n\nThanks to the opportunities, freedom and, above all, the cost-effectiveness of cloud-based IT operations, more companies choose to move to the cloud. Companies are now also looking for the safest cloud service. Companies that have begun to look at cloud IT options are starting to become more aware of the risks of foreign cloud services and turn the binoculars towards the Swedish suppliers.\n\n[Read more about ELASTX Cloud product range here.](https://elastx.se/en)"}],"slug":"risks-cloud-it-outside-of-sweden","url":"/en/news/risks-cloud-it-outside-of-sweden","lang":"en","filename":"risks-with-cloud-it-outside-of-sweden","date":"2018-11-20","image":"/assets/uploads/metal_case_with_pattern.jpeg"},"simple-yet-performant-wordpress-sites-on-jelastic-paas":{"date":"2015-06-23","intro":"We’ve created a simple one-click Wordpress install for Virtuozzo (formerly Jelastic) that’s prepared with some basic fine tuning both for Nginx, PHP and Wordpress itself. It comes preinstalled with w3 total cache plugin and Hannari Blue theme.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"Please [log in](https://app.jelastic.elastx.net/) or [sign-up](https://app.jelastic.elastx.net/?signup=true) to Virtuozzo (formerly Jelastic) and find the ELASTX Wordpress install in the marketplace, search for ELASTX and you will find it. If you’re a new user, there will be steps registering for our service. Don’t worry, you can try this for free by contacting our support and ask for a Development account. No strings attached.\n\nWhile the environment is created in the background, follow the [video](https://youtu.be/FxK-1H0xqyM) for the simple steps to take full advantage of the caching capabilities Wordpress have.\n\nIf you want to join the collaboration on making this one click-install of Wordpress better, don’t hesitate to checkout the code for it and contribute!\n\nCheck it out at "}],"tags":["wordpress"],"title":"Simple, yet performant Wordpress sites on Virtuozzo PaaS","case_slug":"Simple yet performant Wordpress sites on Jelastic PaaS","slug":"simple-yet-performant-wordpress-sites-on-jelastic-paas","url":"/en/news/simple-yet-performant-wordpress-sites-on-jelastic-paas","lang":"en","filename":"simple-yet-performant-wordpress-sites-on-jelastic-paas","image":"/assets/uploads/empty_switch_off.jpeg"},"skapa-framtidens-ai-med-elastx":{"date":"2024-01-18","title":"Your partner for successful AI in the cloud!","case_slug":"Your partner for successful AI in the cloud","intro":"At Elastx, we take pride in being your trusted Swedish Cloud Service Provider. Our unique strength lies in offering a sustainable platform for business-critical applications, adhering to Swedish and European legislation, and providing high-quality 24/7 support with Swedish-speaking staff.\n\nWe've launched a suite of services creating a powerful platform for AI-based applications. With OpenStack IaaS, Kubernetes CaaS, robust GPU instances, market-leading storage, and database as a service, we offer competent and cost-effective solutions.\n","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"Elastx GPU instances, based on Nvidia's latest generation Ampere, deliver outstanding performance with up to 80GB of GPU memory. To ensure flexibility and avoid lock-in, our open business model ensures maximum freedom, minimizing risk while maximizing business value.\n\nFor AI applications, generous storage and high performance are crucial. Our storage offers a unique combination - only 0,78 SEK per GB and an impressive 128,000 IOPS. Redundant storage clusters per availability zone provide unparalleled opportunities for large datasets with high availability and disaster protection.\n\nEmbark on your AI journey with our new powerful storage, GPU-based instances, and [database service](https://elastx.se/se/database). Explore the Elastx cloud platform - your gateway to innovative and successful AI projects!"},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":true,"cta_text":"Explore the Power of Elastx for AI-based Applications! Discover the unique combination of high-performance GPU instances, market-leading storage, and dedicated support that provides the freedom, scalability, and sustainability for future AI projects.","cta_label":"Tell me more! ","cta_link":"mailto:hello@elastx.se"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### **Why choose Elastx for your AI-based applications:**\n\n**Business-critical applications**\n* Over 10 years of experience managing the most demanding applications.\n* ISO 27001 certified since 2015.\n* Three geographically separated data centers for high availability and disaster protection.\n\n**Sustainability**\n* Optimized for energy efficiency and uses renewable energy.\n* Contribute to a more environmentally friendly IT infrastructure.\n* Social responsibility through tax payments, sponsorships, and ethical collaborations.\n\n**Compliance**\n* Data handled in accordance with Swedish and European legislation.\n* Ensuring compliance with GDPR and legal requirements.\n\n**Support**\n* High-quality, competent 24/7 support included in all services.\n\n**Scalability**\n* Easily adaptable solutions for changing data needs.\n\n**No lock-in**\n* Hourly payment model, open source code, and open standards for flexibility.\n\n\n\n**In summary**\nElastx offers a comprehensive solution for companies seeking a reliable and sustainable cloud platform. With a focus on performance, legal compliance, dedicated support, and freedom from lock-in, Elastx provides the best experience and flexibility to shape data needs.\n\nAs a Swedish CSP, Elastx adheres to Swedish and European legislation, providing additional security for companies with strict data protection and legal compliance requirements."}],"slug":"your-partner-for-successful-ai-in-the-cloud","url":"/en/news/your-partner-for-successful-ai-in-the-cloud","lang":"en","filename":"skapa-framtidens-ai-med-elastx","image":"/assets/uploads/detail_work.jpg"},"spin-up-coreos-on-openstack-using-vagrant":{"date":"2014-10-31","title":"Spin up CoreOS on OpenStack using Vagrant","case_slug":"Spin up CoreOS on OpenStack using Vagrant","tags":["coreos","openstack","vagrant"],"intro":"CoreOS is a new Linux distribution that has been rearchitected to provide features needed to run modern infrastructure stacks. The strategies and architectures that influence CoreOS allow companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter to run their services at scale with high resilience.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"Just this week I tried out Vagrant Openstack plugin to spin up CoreOS instances on [Elastx ops:IaaS](https://elastx.se/en/openstack/).\n\n## Findings & issues\n\n1. Don’t destroy your Vagrant created Openstack images via Openstack. If you do, all your vagrant command will say ”Instance could not be found” and there seems to be no sane remedy. (Cleaning your ~/.vagrant.d/ files works.) The same thing has happened a few times when I do vagrant destroy where the instance is removed according to Openstack but lingers in Vagrant’s metadata.\n2. Be thorough with your preparations, especially ssh configurations. If you skip key name, public and private keys they’ll be generated in Openstack that then can’t be exported.\n3. Vagrant Openstack plugin (at least the one used in this post) is not ”official” according to Openstack foundation. More info [here](https://github.com/mitchellh/packer/issues/776). Thanks Philip!\n\n## Running it\n\nWhen up and running you do:\n\n`$ vagrant up --provider=openstack`\n\ninstead of\n\n`$ vagrant up`\n\nafter that everything is as usual. In addition you have plugin specific command line additions:\n\n```\n$ vagrant openstack --help\nUsage: vagrant openstack command\nAvailable subcommands:\n image-list List available images\n flavor-list List available flavors\n network-list List private networks in project\n floatingip-list List floating IP and floating IP pools\n volume-list List existing volumes\n```\n\n## Installing the plugin\n\nThere are a few different Vagrant Openstack plugin choices like vagrant-openstack and vagrant-openstack-plugin all available to be installed. The one to use are however [vagrant-openstack-provider](https://github.com/ggiamarchi/vagrant-openstack-provider).\n\nTo install:\n\n`$ vagrant plugin install vagrant-openstack-provider`\n\nTo only run the plugin command line additions you only need a Vargantfile with Openstack connection configuration like the one below:\n\n```\nrequire 'vagrant-openstack-provider'\nVagrant.configure('2') do |config|\n config.vm.box = 'openstack'\n config.vm.provider :openstack do |os|\n os.openstack_auth_url = 'https://ops.elastx.net:5000/v2.0/tokens'\n os.username = ''\n os.password = ''\n os.tenant_name = ''\n end\nend\n```\n\n## Provisioning\n\nIn order to provision a real coreos node we need more preparations and a more complete Vagrantfile. We need:\n\n* to generate key pair to import to Openstack for use with vagrant ssh\n* username for login to image\n* figure out floating IP pool to be able to connect at all to the provisioned instance\n\nLet's go to work:\n\n1. Generate key pairs. \n\n\n```\n $ ssh-keygen -t rsa -f test.key\n $ ssh-keygen -y -f test.key > test.key.pub\n```\n\n Put your private and public key files next to your Vagrantfile.\n\n2. Import public key into Openstack. Login to Openstack and import public key under Access & Security, Key Pairs.\n3. Figuring out IP pool might actually be easier via vagrant than through the Openstack GUI.\n\n\n```\n$ vagrant openstack floatingip-list\n+-------------------+\n| Floating IP pools |\n+-------------------+\n| test-net-01 |\n+-------------------+\n```\n\n**So let’s look at a full sample Vagrantfile:**\n\n```\n# \\-_\\- mode: ruby -_-\n\n# \\# vi: set ft=ruby :\n\nrequire 'vagrant-openstack-provider'\n\nVagrant.require_version \">= 1.6.0\"\n\nVagrant.configure(\"2\") do |config|\n config.vm.box = \"doesnt_really_matter_but_is_required\"\n config.vm.box_version = \">= 308.0.1\"\n config.ssh.username = ''\n config.ssh.private_key_path = '/test.key.pub'\n\n config.vm.provider :openstack do |os|\n os.openstack_auth_url = 'https://ops.elastx.net:5000/v2.0/tokens'\n os.username = ''\n os.password = ''\n os.tenant_name = ''\n os.flavor = 'm1.small'\n os.image = 'coreos-444.4.0'\n os.floating_ip_pool = 'test-net-01>'\n os.keypair_name = 'test'\n os.public_key_path = '/test.key'\n end\n\n config.vm.define vm_name = \"coreos-vagrant-01\" do |config|\n config.vm.hostname = vm_name\n config.vm.network :private_network, ip: \"172.17.8.101\"\n end\nend\n```\n\nYou’re now good to go.\n\n```\n$ vagrant up --provider=openstack\nBringing machine 'coreos-vagrant-01' up with 'openstack' provider...\n==> coreos-vagrant-01: Finding flavor for server...\n==> coreos-vagrant-01: Finding image for server...\n==> coreos-vagrant-01: Launching a server with the following settings...\n==> coreos-vagrant-01: -- Tenant : elastx.se\n==> coreos-vagrant-01: -- Name : coreos-vagrant-01\n==> coreos-vagrant-01: -- Flavor : m1.small\n==> coreos-vagrant-01: -- FlavorRef : bff4c362-1a64-4895-bcbe-89b437815934\n==> coreos-vagrant-01: -- Image : coreos-444.4.0\n==> coreos-vagrant-01: -- ImageRef : be5c10e9-80c5-4646-80bf-c0123243a4ef\n==> coreos-vagrant-01: -- KeyPair : test\n==> coreos-vagrant-01: Waiting for the server to be built...\n==> coreos-vagrant-01: Using floating IP 88.80.174.175\n==> coreos-vagrant-01: Waiting for SSH to become available...\n/Users/gungus/.vagrant.d/gems/gems/vagrant-openstack-provider-0.4.1/lib/vagrant-openstack-provider/action/create_server.rb:340:in `initialize': Network is unreachable - connect(2) (Errno::ENETUNREACH)\n```\n\n… I ignore the error, ssh seems to work fine.\n\n```\n$ vagrant ssh coreos-vagrant-01\nCoreOS (beta)\ncore@coreos-vagrant-01 ~ $\n```\n\nThat's all for now. Feel free to send us an email at if you have any questions. If you are interested in trying our ops:IaaS please [contact support](https://support.elastx.se/). Good luck with spinning up your coreos instances. \n"}],"slug":"spin-up-coreos-on-openstack-using-vagrant","url":"/en/news/spin-up-coreos-on-openstack-using-vagrant","lang":"en","filename":"spin-up-coreos-on-openstack-using-vagrant","image":"/assets/uploads/glowing_400g_switch.jpeg"},"svarstiderna-minskades-från-250-300-till-3-millisekunder":{"date":"2017-10-08","tags":["elastx","customer"],"title":"Response times reduced from 250-300 to 3 milliseconds","case_slug":"Response times reduced from 250 300 to 3 milliseconds","intro":"Reforce International AB were in need of an IT platform with high performance which could easily scale up in capacity. Today Reforce use Elastx Virtuozzo (formerly Jelastic) PaaS as a backend.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"### Who are Reforce International AB?\n\n– We are one of the leading RaaS companies (Result as a Service). Briefly, one can say that we help companies achieve their strategies more quickly, by offering accelerated strategy and business execution. Since our launch, we have had 96% success in our projects, and it is thanks to our business strategists and our proprietary software, ReExecute.\n\n### How did your platform solution look like before and what were the challenges?\n\n– We began developing our product in 2012 and we were an early adopter of PaaS. Our first challenge was that we did not have the expertise inhouse to manage the technology. At the time, there was no Nordic alternative, so we turned to an American platform. Our second challenge was to find a partner of higher performance. With the Atlantic Ocean between us we experienced problems with stability, performance and long response times, which led to our customers perceiving our system as slow. For us, every millisecond makes a difference. Therefore, we started looking for a new partner that was closer to us geographically. In spring 2013 we came in contact with Elastx, in May the same year, we started the first test runs.\n\n– Elastx has become our partner and security, says Dan Mattsson, VP of Product Development at Reforce.\n\n### Why did you choose Elastx as partner?\n\n– It was mainly because of their platform performance. Earlier, we had encountered problems with new releases. We run new releases every week and it is expensive to do them during the night, which was the case when clients were up working late. Nowadays, we can make a painless release while customers are working. Elastx is a partner that can offer both stability and high competence."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### What noticeable improvements/differences have you seen?\n\n– Even as early as during the test runs, Elastx successfully reduce our response time from 250-300 milliseconds to 3 milliseconds, which have facilitated our work considerably. Elastx has become our partner and security. With a high level of expertise in server and infrastructure level, they can help us with the parts we do not want to deal with ourselves. The performance works flawlessly thanks to Elastx.\n\n### How much have you saved in terms of resources thanks to Elastx solution?\n\n– It is hard to measure in figures, but easier in efficiency and resources. We get value for our money in terms of competence. We do not make changes in the environment very often, but when we do, we can, thanks to Elastx, make it effective. The alternative, to have the competence inhouse would not be worth it. With traditional operation comes administration, now we can avoid that and instead focus on what we do best.\n\n*“Elastx support is magically fast and spot on.”*\n\n### How have you experienced the support and cooperation with Elastx?\n\n– It has worked very well. One thing that we really appreciate with Elastx is the quality of their support and how fast they are with responding. We often have urgent matters which require knowledge that we do not have inhouse. Now we also receive support in Swedish and the time difference is not a problem anymore. We know that Elastx put high demands on their support, and our experience of it is magically fast and spot on.\n\n### What are your thoughts of the future?\n\n– Elastx are continuously working with our development, as well as their own, and we put our full trust in them. Elastx are moving more and more to become a full service supplier, which we look favorably on. They also communicate upcoming changes at an early stage which makes it easier for us.\n\n**Thanks, Dan!**\n\nRead more at [www.reforceinternational.com](https://www.reforceinternational.com)"}],"slug":"response-times-reduced-from-250-300-to-3-milliseconds","url":"/en/news/response-times-reduced-from-250-300-to-3-milliseconds","lang":"en","filename":"svarstiderna-minskades-från-250-300-till-3-millisekunder","image":"/assets/uploads/case-study-elastx-reforce-molnplattform.jpg"},"svensk-innovationskraft-elastx-tar-molnlagring-till-en-ny-nivå":{"date":"2023-12-18","case_slug":"swedish innovation power elastx elevates cloud storage to new heights","tags":["elastx"],"title":"Swedish innovation power - Elastx elevates cloud storage to new heights!","intro":"Elastx once again establishes the benchmark for cloud storage with the launch of a storage solution that not only delivers exceptional performance but also remains affordable and resilient. Let's delve into why Elastx stands out as the ultimate choice for your business storage needs.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"### The most powerful and cost-effective [storage](https://elastx.se/en/openstack) in the market\n\nTen years ago, Elastx pioneered advancements in storage performance and pricing. Now, we're breaking new ground once more with a significant investment that facilitates cost-effective storage of substantial data volumes in a Swedish cloud designed for business-critical applications.\n\n* **Unique combination of price and performance:** With a mere 0.78 SEK per GB and capabilities reaching up to 128,000 IOPS, Elastx offers storage that caters to all your needs while significantly reducing costs compared to other cloud platforms.\n* **Optimal for AI-driven development:** In an era where AI takes center stage, storage plays a crucial role. Elastx facilitates efficient training of AI-powered applications through its potent [storage](https://elastx.se/en/openstack), GPU-based [instances](https://elastx.se/en/openstack), and [database-as-a-service.](https://elastx.se/en/database)\n\n### Sustainability in Focus\n\nElastx takes its environmental responsibility seriously. With an infrastructure optimized for energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy, Elastx contributes to a more sustainable and eco-friendly IT infrastructure. Additionally, the company embraces significant social responsibility by actively [supporting projects with substantial social benefits.](https://elastx.se/en/news/tobias-tree-sharing-knowledge-and-saving-lives)"},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":true,"cta_text":"Experience outstanding performance, sustainability, and 24/7 support with Elastx. Contact us to access reliable, redundant, and cost-effective cloud solutions.","cta_label":"Get in touch! ","cta_link":"mailto:hello@elastx.se"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Compliance with 24/7 Support\n\n* **Swedish and European legislation:** Elastx ensures that your data and information are stored and handled in compliance with Swedish and European legislation, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).\n* **World-Class support:** Elastx offers a high-quality and competent support service, available 24/7. Our team of experts is always ready to assist with questions or problems that may arise, providing continuous support throughout the year.\n\n### Scalability without Lock-In\n\n* **Customizable solution:** Elastx provides scalable solutions adaptable to your company's needs. Whether you need to expand capacity during rapid growth or reduce resources during quieter periods, Elastx is ready to help you efficiently scale your database management.\n* **Freedom from lock-in:** Elastx Cloud Platform offers flexibility and freedom by being based on open-source code and open standards. This allows for the customization of solutions according to needs and avoids dependence on a specific supplier.\n\n### The Obvious Choice for a Reliable, Durable, and Cost-Effective Cloud Platform\n\nWith a focus on performance, sustainability, legal compliance, and dedicated support, Elastx ensures its customers receive the best possible experience and the flexibility to tailor their data needs according to their requirements. As a [Swedish CSP](https://elastx.se/en/#elastx-cloud-platform), Elastx adheres to the protection of Swedish and European law, providing extra security for companies with strict requirements for data protection and legal compliance."}],"slug":"swedish-innovation-power-elastx-elevates-cloud-storage-to-new-heights","url":"/en/news/swedish-innovation-power-elastx-elevates-cloud-storage-to-new-heights","lang":"en","filename":"svensk-innovationskraft-elastx-tar-molnlagring-till-en-ny-nivå","image":"/assets/uploads/storage_systems2.jpeg"},"säkerhetsfunktioner-i-jelastic":{"date":"2022-03-28","title":"Security features in Virtuozzo","case_slug":"security features in virtuozzo","intro":"We receive many questions from our customers about various security features and how to approach security in their Virtuozzo (formerly Jelastic) environment. To provide some guidance on this topic, we would like to discuss a few key principles of security.\n\nSome fundamental principles to consider when working on security are separation of services, not putting all your resources in one place, and the principle of least privilege.\n\nIn this article, we will specifically focus on network isolation and discuss its importance in maintaining a secure environment.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"### Network isolation\n\nTypically, all environments belonging to a single user are able to reach each other's internal IP. In some cases, it may be desirable to limit access between environments. On the other hand, you might want to allow broader access, such as for a collaborative environment where multiple users can work on the same environment.\n\n### What benefits does this function provide for customers?\n\nNetwork isolation provides a simple way to prevent containers within an isolated group from being accessible via the platform's internal network. This can be useful if you need to share access to a database or application with a third party. By using network isolation, you can ensure that only authorized parties have access to your resources.\n\n### What does this mean?\n\nNetwork isolation is a feature that manages rule-based access between environments in a Virtuozzo (formerly Jelastic) array. It is designed to prevent accidental or unauthorized access between environments. When two environments are in the same isolated group, communication between them will be allowed. Otherwise, the connection will be denied.\n\nIf network isolation is enabled on the platform, it means that all accounts are isolated from each other by default and cannot communicate with each other unless explicitly allowed.\n\n### How do I activate this functionality?\n\nIn the example below, two environments are set up under the same account: env-4453222 and env-7772010."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/skärmavbild-2022-03-28-kl.-17.17.11.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"As a starting point, they can freely communicate with each other. \n\nIf, for example, it was desired that one of these environments be isolated from the rest, it can be easily achieved by creating a new \"Environment group\" and activating the \"Network Isolation\" function.\n\nFirst, click on the plus sign next to “Env Groups” as shown in the image below:"},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/skärmavbild-2022-03-28-kl.-17.18.43.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"In the box that appears, enter an optional name for the new group. Select one or more environments that should belong to the new group. Turn on network isolation by selecting \"On\" next to \"Network Isolation\", then click \"Add\" at the bottom right to create the new isolated group."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/skärmavbild-2022-03-28-kl.-17.19.48.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"After completing these steps, env-4453222 will belong to a group where network isolation is active. This means that communication between this environment and other environments in the account will no longer be possible.\n\nIf you want to allow communication between multiple environments, you can add them to the same group under \"Environments\".\n\nIn addition to network isolation, let's take the opportunity to talk a little about firewall rules.\n\n### Firewall rules\n\n**Principle of least privilege**\n\nThe principle of least privilege in information security is based on the idea that each user should only have access to the information and resources that are necessary for them to perform their tasks.\n\nWhen this principle is applied, it can lead to several benefits, including:\n\n* Increased security: the risk of potential threats is reduced if rights in a system are strictly distributed according to the absolute minimum for that user's needs.\n* Reduced vulnerability surface: By limiting access rights, you can reduce the risk of a breach through lateral movement, where an attacker tries to gain access to sensitive accounts and escalate the breach by moving to other parts of the system.\n\n**Inspect preconfigured firewall rules**\n\nAll newly created environments in Virtuozzo come with a pre-installed firewall configuration. The firewall rules can be easily accessed by clicking on “Settings” for the current environment:"},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/skärmavbild-2022-03-28-kl.-17.24.25.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"After accessing the “Settings” panel, click on “Firewall” on the left side of the panel."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/skärmavbild-2022-03-28-kl.-17.25.39.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"The Firewall overview panel contains the following:\n\n* Firewall State: A function that enables or disables the firewall\n* Inbound connections: incoming connections to the environment, for example your Wordpress database. The default policy is to deny all incoming connections that have not been specified.\n* Outbound connections: outgoing connections, if, for example, you want to block a program from being able to connect to the internet. The default policy is to allow all outgoing traffic that has not been specified."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/skärmavbild-2022-03-28-kl.-17.26.58.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"Inbound rules are used to manage incoming connections. In the example above, the first and last rule are grey-marked - these cannot be changed as these are the system's default values. According to the above example, all traffic will be blocked except for the explicitly stated rules.\n\nThis is also where you can add further restrictions, for example which IP addresses are allowed to connect to a backend service.\n\nWith that information in mind, we hope you now have a better understanding of network isolation and firewalls in the Virtuozzo platform. \n\nIf you have any suggestions for future topics you would like to see covered, please feel free to email them to hello@elastx.se. We may feature your suggestion in a future article!"}],"tags":["wordpress","security"],"slug":"security-features-in-virtuozzo","url":"/en/news/security-features-in-virtuozzo","lang":"en","filename":"säkerhetsfunktioner-i-jelastic","image":"/assets/uploads/jelastic_shield.jpg"},"säkra-din-digitala-framtid-med-en-lokal-molnleverantör":{"date":"2024-03-14","case_slug":"Secure your digital future with a local cloud provider","title":"Secure your digital future with a local cloud provider","image_alt":"Sunny view over Stockholm","tags":["elastx"],"intro":"The digital revolution has fundamentally transformed our world, and for companies like Elastx, the question of digital sovereignty is of utmost importance. We understand that choosing a cloud provider isn't just about finding the most cost-effective or technologically advanced solution; it's also about securing the future and integrity of your business in an increasingly digitized world.\n\nIn this article, we delve into why it's so crucial for companies to opt for a local cloud provider and how it can contribute to creating a safe and sustainable digital future.\n","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"### Protection against digital threats and espionage\n\nMaintaining control over your digital assets isn't merely about safeguarding company data; it's also a strategic investment in its survival and growth. For businesses and organizations, avoiding vulnerability to cyber attacks and espionage is paramount. By selecting a local cloud provider like Elastx, businesses can bolster their digital sovereignty and secure the integrity of both their data and users. Our commitment to security and integrity permeates deeply into our services, from our certified and secure platform to our experienced team of Swedish experts who continually monitor and manage any threats.\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Economic independence through local control\n\nIn today's global economy, having control over your digital infrastructure is a strategic advantage. Avoiding dependency on foreign companies is akin to protecting your economic core. By using a local cloud provider like Elastx, companies can keep the digital aspect of their economy within the country's borders and shield themselves from foreign pressures. \n\nWe understand the importance of economic self-sufficiency and continuously strive to offer cost-effective and sustainable solutions that help our clients achieve their business goals without sacrificing their sovereignty.\n\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Innovation and technical excellence through local focus\n\nAs a local cloud provider, we take pride in being a driving force behind innovation and technological development in Sweden. By fostering an environment that encourages research and development, we contribute to national growth and create new jobs in the digital sector. Our proximity to our clients enables us to understand their unique needs and challenges, allowing us to tailor solutions that are both innovative and practical.\n\n### Empowerment to make independent decisions - a necessity\n\nBeing the captain of your own digital destiny is imperative for businesses seeking to secure their interests, integrity, and rights in the digital realm. We believe in providing our clients with the tools and resources they need to make independent decisions and take control of their digital future. With our expertise and experience, we support our clients throughout the process, from planning and implementation to support and maintenance.\n"},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":false,"cta_link":"mailto:hello@elastx.se","cta_label":"Email us","cta_text":" Explore the possibilities for your digital future with Elastx, your local cloud provider. Contact us now to discuss how we can support you on the journey towards a safer and more sustainable tomorrow! "},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Elastx - Your partner in the cloud\n\nWe are here to be your partner on the journey towards a secure and sustainable digital future. By choosing Elastx as your local cloud provider, you're not just investing in a reliable and flexible infrastructure; you're also investing in your own success and sovereignty. \nWe are committed to supporting our clients and helping them achieve their goals by offering cost-effective and tailored solutions that meet their unique needs and challenges.\n"}],"slug":"secure-your-digital-future-with-a-local-cloud-provider","url":"/en/news/secure-your-digital-future-with-a-local-cloud-provider","lang":"en","filename":"säkra-din-digitala-framtid-med-en-lokal-molnleverantör","image":"/assets/uploads/stockholm_summer_view.jpg"},"så-växer-sveriges-största-återbäringssida-med-rätt-it":{"date":"2022-02-24","title":"Refunder keeps growing at Elastx","case_slug":"refunder keeps growing at elastx","tags":["partner","openstack"],"intro":"Refunder is Sweden's largest cashback service. Their members get cashback for online purchases. Refunder evolved from a start-up into a powerful scale-up of their Swedish operations. Their rapid growth requires the right infrastructure and Refunder chose Elastx as their platform.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"American giants were never an option. Refunder wanted a dedicated partner with personal contact. Elastx turned out to be the best choice.\n\nOn top of the partnership, Refunder likes the quick communication in any situation.\n\n\"Elastx is always there and calls when needed, which feels safe. Such service and support cannot be found anywhere else.\" says Mathias Naverfeldt, CTO at Refunder.\n\n### **650 000 members**\n\nRefunder needs a constantly active web portal and underlying infrastructure. Refunder wants to outsource the monitoring and maintenance of IT-infrastructure. This makes Elastx a key partner.\n\n\"We get access to expertise and support, which is very important to us. Elastx meet our needs and are very helpful by brainstorming ideas and discussing new solutions.\" says Mathias Naverfeldt, CTO at Refunder.\n\nRefunder has 650 000 members and processed 170 million SEK in cashback so far. Their company needs cloud storage, security and support that scales with their business. Using Kubernetes and OpenStack at Elastx, Refunder gets the right IT-infrastructure.\n\n\"We need the right infrastructure and good dialog with our partners.\" says Mathias Naverfeldt, CTO at Refunder. \"Elastx offers Swedish speaking support, service and safety unmatched by the big dragons.\"\n"},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":true,"cta_text":"Elastx is a cloud platform for business-critical systems. Our stable and technically advanced cloud platform allows to build better and more secure services together.","cta_label":"Get in touch!","cta_link":"mailto:hello@elastx.se"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### IT in Swedish\n\nCloseness and personal contact with Elastx is important to Refunder and supports their journey. Simple and scalable solutions with a Swedish speaking 24/7 support is a winning combination.\n\n\"Sometimes when I talk about Elastx, it almost sounds too good to be true. Elastx is incredibly available and follow up when needed. We trust that all IT-infrastructure with cloud storage and services running on Kubernetes and OpenStack will work round the clock. Elastx are proactive and suggest ways to evolve together, which builds a reliable partnership.\" says Mathias Naverfeldt, CTO at Refunder.\n\n\"We are proud to be a partner of Refunder on their journey. We are happy to grow together by providing the right solutions and support.\" says Joakim Öhman, CEO at Elastx.\n"}],"slug":"refunder-keeps-growing-at-elastx","url":"/en/news/refunder-keeps-growing-at-elastx","lang":"en","filename":"så-växer-sveriges-största-återbäringssida-med-rätt-it","image":"/assets/uploads/elastx-300-10.jpg"},"the-swedish-cloud-provider-allt-du-behöver-för-en-trygg-molndrift":{"date":"2024-02-15","case_slug":"The Swedish Cloud Provider Everything you need for secure cloud operations","title":"The Swedish Cloud Provider: Everything you need for secure cloud operations","intro":"In today's digital era, selecting a dependable cloud provider is paramount for both success and privacy. Here at Elastx, dubbed \"The Swedish Cloud Provider,\" we are steadfast in being the preferred choice for organizations seeking a trustworthy cloud partner. With a strong emphasis on performance, legal compliance, and dedicated support, Elastx has solidified its position as a leading player in the Swedish and European cloud landscape for over a decade.\n","tags":["elastx"],"body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"### Certified and secure\nAt Elastx, we take pride in our certified and secure platform. With ISO 27001 and 14001 certifications, we've not only bolstered our credibility but also opened avenues for entering into personal data processing agreements with our clients. All our staff members are Swedish citizens who have undergone thorough background checks.\n\nThis assures that we are a dependable partner when it comes to managing personal data. Our clients can rest assured that their data is handled securely and in full compliance with GDPR regulations. It's noteworthy that our services are exempt from the Cloud Act, further demonstrating our commitment to safeguarding customer privacy and security.\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Database as a Service\n\nAmong our latest innovations is [Database as a Service (DBaaS)](https://elastx.se/en/database). This service is tailored to simplify and enhance your company's database management. Offering features such as automatic provisioning, guaranteed high availability, robust security, and comprehensive regulatory compliance, businesses can now concentrate on their core operations without diverting precious resources to complex database management tasks.\n\nWhether you opt for [MariaDB](https://elastx.se/en/mariadb-dbaas), [MySQL](https://elastx.se/en/mysql-dbaas), [PostgreSQL](https://elastx.se/en/postgresql-dbaas), or [Redis](https://elastx.se/en/redis-dbaas), Elastx DBaaS is designed to adapt to your specific requirements and streamline your database management journey."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Business-critical applications and technical expertise\n\nElastx has structured its platform to cater to the needs of enterprises with mission-critical applications. With over a decade of experience in mission-critical operations and technical expertise, the Elastx Cloud Platform is engineered to handle even the most demanding applications. Spanning three geographically dispersed data centers, our platform ensures high availability and disaster recovery for company data."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Versatile compute services\n\nAt Elastx, we are continuously expanding our range of compute services to meet your evolving needs. All our services are available without any commitment period or license costs.\n\n**[OpenStack IaaS:](https://elastx.se/en/openstack)** Our OpenStack Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) serves as the fundamental infrastructure service and serves as the foundation for Kubernetes Container as a Service (CaaS) and Database as a Service (DBaaS). Here, businesses can establish virtual data centers and configure networks, instances, and storage as required, with the flexibility to scale up or down as needed.\n\n**[Kubernetes CaaS](https://elastx.se/en/kubernetes):** Kubernetes Container as a Service (CaaS) is a container management service tailored for those embracing Cloud Native approaches. Managed across three data centers, it ensures high availability for even the most demanding applications.\n\n**[Virtuozzo PaaS:](https://elastx.se/en/virtuozzo)** Virtuozzo Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a user-friendly platform with a unique billing model, where charges are based solely on actual usage. This option serves as the perfect entry-level solution for those with simpler requirements yet still seeking a robust platform."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Availability and security\n\nAt Elastx, we are committed to establishing a platform for highly available and disaster-resistant applications by leveraging three geographically separate data centers. With a recommended distance standard of 16 km for disaster protection, we position our data centers up to 20 km apart. Security remains paramount, with our platform equipped with advanced security features.\n\n### Sustainability and regulatory compliance\n\nElastx is deeply committed to sustainability and environmental stewardship. By optimizing our infrastructure for energy efficiency and employing renewable energy sources, we contribute to a more sustainable and eco-friendly IT landscape. Additionally, we fulfill our social responsibility by paying taxes in our operational regions, sponsoring socially beneficial projects, and avoiding partnerships that do not align with positive societal contributions.\n\nWhen it comes to regulatory compliance, opting for a Swedish CSP like Elastx ensures that customer data and business information are handled in strict accordance with Swedish and European legislation. This is particularly crucial given regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other mandates governing the handling of personal data."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Support and scalability\n\nOur high-quality and competent support team is available 24/7 to assist with any questions or issues that may arise. We also offer scalable solutions to adapt to your needs, whether it's increasing capacity for rapidly growing data volumes or reducing resources during quieter periods.\n\n### Freedom from technical or commercial lock-in\n\nA unique advantage of Elastx is our absence of technical or commercial lock-in. By basing our services on open-source code and open standards, we provide our customers with flexibility and freedom to tailor their solutions as needed. With the help of our comprehensive [technical documentation](https://docs.elastx.cloud/docs/), getting started is straightforward. We charge per hour for our services, thus avoiding tying our customers to specific vendors."},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":false,"cta_text":"Contact us now to learn more and embark on your journey to a reliable and sustainable cloud infrastructure with Elastx Cloud Platform","cta_label":"Get in touch","cta_link":"mailto:hello@elastx.se"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### In summary\n\nElastx delivers a comprehensive solution for businesses seeking reliable and sustainable cloud services. With our strong focus on performance, security, legal compliance, dedicated support, and lack of technical or commercial lock-in, we provide our customers with the best possible experience. As a Swedish CSP, we adhere to the protections of Swedish and European law, offering additional reassurance for businesses needing to meet stringent requirements for data protection and legal compliance. \n\nContact us at Elastx to establish a powerful and seamless infrastructure with our cloud platform."}],"image_alt":"Henrik Grankvist, COO, sitting in the Elastx office","slug":"the-swedish-cloud-provider-everything-you-need-for-secure-cloud-operations","url":"/en/news/the-swedish-cloud-provider-everything-you-need-for-secure-cloud-operations","lang":"en","filename":"the-swedish-cloud-provider-allt-du-behöver-för-en-trygg-molndrift","image":"/assets/uploads/tscp.jpg"},"tobias-tree-dela-kunskap-och-rädda-liv":{"date":"2023-03-06","case_slug":"tobias tree sharing knowledge and saving lives","title":"Tobias Tree - Sharing knowledge and saving lives","image_alt":"Henrik Grankvist and Michael Kaumann","tags":["elastx"],"body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"### Patients in need\nWhen struck by an unusual illness, time is of the essence for those who find themselves in critical condition. Despite our highly connected world, the spread of medical knowledge remains slow and uneven. Tobias Kaufmann, who had been suffering from a long-standing illness with recurring complications, found himself in a critical condition. Alongside a team of medical specialists and his family, they fought tirelessly until the very end. However, in October 2016, Tobias moved on.\n\n### How does it work today?\nThe medical knowledge of diagnostics and treatment of rare medical conditions is spread slowly and inefficiently. Case studies and scientific articles take months to get published and knowledge sharing mainly occurs at yearly held conferences. This means that there are medical specialists all over the world whose valuable insights and knowledge are out of reach when urgently needed.\n\nDoctors turn to e-mail and social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp to ask questions about their patients. However, none of these services were designed for this purpose: key information can easily get lost in the noise. There is also no way to verify the medical expertise of those who post questions and answers. Moreover, these communication methods do not meet the information security requirements for sensitive personal information."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Tobias Tree is born\nWhen Tobias suffered from spontaneous bone marrow depression, the doctors told Tobias' father, Michael Kaufmann, that they had no idea how to treat Tobias' life threatening condition.\n\n\"Why not pose the question to the medical world?\" Michael asked the doctors.\n\nIt does not work like that, replied the doctors. Then and there, the idea for Tobias Tree was born. Michael and Tobias spent many hours discussing how they could create a space where medical professionals could come together to share knowledge and potentially save lives.\n\n\"This might be worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize someday\" said Tobias to Michael when discussing the life saving possibilities with Tobias Tree.\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Tobias Tree puts down roots\nCreating an app of this kind is no simple feat - particularly for someone without a technical background. Yet the idea of Tobias Tree got deeply rooted in Michael. He became determined to turn it into reality.\n\nMichael was fortunate to find trustworthy partners, and together they managed to transform the concept from a prototype into a functional app.\n\n\"I made a promise to Tobias that I would help patients and their families. Tobias and I discussed this at length at the hospital. I am dedicated to making Tobias Tree a reality.\" says Michael.\n\n* Chorus has developed and launched the Android app and iOS app.\n* Chorus runs Tobias Tree in Elastx Cloud.\n* The apps use SecureMailbox by Secure Appbox for secure communication.\n* The service is up and running, ready to fulfill its vital purpose."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Tobias Tree attracts attention\nHospitals and medical specialists in Sweden and Europe are showing growing interest in joining and using Tobias Tree. Tobias Tree creates the possibility to share knowledge and save lives through secure communication between its members (verified medical specialists). The upcoming trials, with real users that will try to help their patients, will surely give new insights and ideas for improvements.\n\nThere are also plans to make the Tobias Tree app available to doctors in Remote Disaster and Conflict areas (RDC). This would allow non-specialists in isolated or crisis zones to submit questions to a network of medical specialists via the app. The goal is to provide a valuable resource to those who may not have access to the same medical expertise as those in more populated areas.These non-specialists will only be allowed to ask questions and read the answers to their questions.\n\nIt seems clear that Tobias Tree will use our highly connected world for something meaningful."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Tobias Tree still needs your support and funding\n\nSince January 2020, Michael works unpaid and full-time on Tobias Tree.\n\n\"The support we’ve received, and keeps receiving, means the world to me. It is hard to express my gratitude in words. Tobias Tree keeps dancing around the zero-mark financially each month. I hope to find the philanthropist who will give us financial stability and enable us to share as much knowledge and save as many lives as possible.\" says Michael.\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### How to support\n\n[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/): please share this post with your network.\n\nPlease visit the official [Tobias Tree website](https://tobiastree.org/) to learn more.\n\nIf you are a medical specialist and wish to join the network, please go to [Tobias Tree website](https://tobiastree.org/join-us/#registerform) to register.\n\nIf you are the philantropist Michael is hoping to find, please write directly to [Michael.](michael.kaufmann@tobiastree.org)"}],"intro":"It was during the summer of 2020 that Elastx first got in touch with Michael Kaufmann, the founder of Tobias Tree. \"It is our duty to use the technology we have to make the world a better place,\" says Henrik Grankvist, COO of Elastx. Today, the application is managed by Chorus and hosted on Elastx's platforms.","slug":"tobias-tree-sharing-knowledge-and-saving-lives","url":"/en/news/tobias-tree-sharing-knowledge-and-saving-lives","lang":"en","filename":"tobias-tree-dela-kunskap-och-rädda-liv","image":"/assets/uploads/henrik_and_michael_web.jpg"},"topp-3-fördelarna-med-molnet-för-emakina":{"date":"2017-10-08","title":"Key Cloud Benefits for Emakina","case_slug":"Key Cloud Benefits for Emakina","intro":"Recently Emakina, a digital marketing agency, shared with us their feedback about using Elastx Virtuozzo PaaS. Today we are glad to share our interview with Fredrik Larsson, Senior Developer from Emakina.","tags":["elastx","customer"],"body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"### What was the challenge you faced?\n\nIn our early days we had opted for going with a managed VPS at a Swedish web hosting company. This worked well for several years as it gave us what we needed at that time - a place where we easily could host our clients and our own content. When we as a company and our client base grew and the projects became more advanced we ran into problems with performance, if one application got hammered all our clients suffered. We had to do something about it.\n\n### What was the solution?\n\nWith Elastx Virtuozzo (formerly Jelastic) PaaS we found what we needed. We feel a lot safer now knowing that every application is running in it’s own container totally separated from everything else. The ability to control exactly how much base performance and how much we want it to scale if needed has allowed us to handle any spikes our applications may encounter.\n\nWe also still have what we loved from the managed VPS, a fully configured environment at our fingertips, ready to be deployed at moments notice, without having to go through the tedious setup process ourselves, but at the same time allowing us to tweak the internal settings if needed.\n\n### Why Elastx Virtuozzo PaaS?\n\nWe were looking for cloud hosting for our apps. We tried using Heroku and similar platforms, but working mostly in PHP was not appropriate for us. Elastx Virtuozzo PaaS gave us a much easier way of deploying our PHP apps while still being a PaaS. Being a Swedish host also gives us great performance and low latency since all our customers are based in the Nordics.\n\nWhat also changed was how we deploy our applications. Before we’d simply drag and drop the files in the FTP, but with the ability to tie an environment to a specific GIT-repository we quickly realised that this is it. We’re continuing to develop our processes around this way of deploying.\n\n### How have you set up your environment?\n\nA fairly standard setup for our medium applications with a small amount of reserved cloudlets to keep the cost down during periods of low traffic but with enough scaling limit to handle high loads. This particular project is a mobile targeted newsletter that goes out about once every month to about 3-400 000 users, which gives a huge spike of traffic just following the sendout. We’ve also used the VPS feature to host an instance of Elasticsearch to enable text searching."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### What was the cost difference?\n\nThe main difference for us is that we are now able to see exactly what each application cost. Before we were stuck with the same cost, no matter how many or few projects were up and running at a particular moment in time. This provides flexibility where we can simply turn everything off once a client’s campaign is over and turn it back on with a simple click during the next campaign period.\n\n### Did you see a performance increase?\n\nThe main benefit for us is that the applications are no longer sharing the same resources, one site getting hammered no longer slows down everything else. Also earlier we’d have to pay for a pretty beefy server to be able to handle the big loads, now we just go in, pull a slider to set scaling limits and don’t worry about performance.\n\n### Highlights of using the platform?\n\nThe ability to do almost whatever we want if we have to. Need an instance of some application not available as a package to run on the platform? Just throw up a VPS and configure it yourself. Hosting a simple WordPress blog? A few clicks and you got a platform running PHP and MySQL up in seconds.\n\n**Thanks, Fredrik! It cannot be said better :)**\n\nWe are glad to know that Elastx PaaS platform with its automatic scalability, container orchestration and an advanced level of workload mobility became a proven technology for a great variety of companies like Emakina.\n\nRead more [emakina.com](https://emakina.com)"}],"slug":"key-cloud-benefits-for-emakina","url":"/en/news/key-cloud-benefits-for-emakina","lang":"en","filename":"topp-3-fördelarna-med-molnet-för-emakina","image":"/assets/uploads/emakina_01.jpg"},"upplev-kraften-av-gpu-i-vår-plattform-byggd-för-affärskritiska-tjänster":{"date":"2023-07-05","case_slug":"Experience the power of GPU in our platform","title":"Experience the power of GPU in our platform, built for mission-critical services","intro":"AI has truly taken off, and we have witnessed a significant increase in demand for running workloads for Machine Learning and Deep Learning. Therefore, we are thrilled to now offer market-leading GPU capacity in the Elastx Cloud Platform. AI and data analytics are strategic investments for Elastx, and GPU is just the beginning. With the same reliability and sustainability as our other services, we can now, together with our customers, continue to build powerful and valued services.","tags":["elastx"],"image_alt":"heat sink image","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"### Boost performance with our new GPU flavors\nWe introduce GPU flavors to effectively run demanding workloads in AI, machine learning, data analysis, and HPC in the cloud. Integrate our leading GPUs based on the NVIDIA Ampere architecture into OpenStack IaaS or Kubernetes CaaS environments for improved performance, faster processing times, and efficient handling of large amounts of data.\n\n### Opportunities and benefits\nOur GPU flavors provide flexibility to customize cloud resources according to specific needs. We apply the same lock-in-free business model as for our other services, minimizing risks and maximizing business value."},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":false,"cta_link":"mailto:hej@elastx.se","cta_label":"Email us","cta_text":"Interested in powerful performance for AI, data analytics and HPC? Get in touch with us for further information!"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Security and scalability\nOur GPU flavors are available in all our availability zones. All infrastructure is owned and managed by us, Swedish citizens, in Sweden. Since many years back we have been certified according to ISO 27001, 27017, 27018, and 14001. \n\nWe recently celebrated Elastx Cloud Platform 10th anniversary. We have worked hard for an entire decade to deliver a secure and stable cloud platform. We are very proud of our stability and support.\n"}],"slug":"experience-the-power-of-gpu-in-our-platform","url":"/en/news/experience-the-power-of-gpu-in-our-platform","lang":"en","filename":"upplev-kraften-av-gpu-i-vår-plattform-byggd-för-affärskritiska-tjänster","image":"/assets/uploads/heat_sink.jpeg"},"varför-vill-du-ha-iac":{"date":"2022-09-15","title":"Why do you want IaC?","case_slug":"why do you want Iac","tags":["iac"],"intro":"When I see the automation of Infrastructure as Code work throughout the whole process I get a warm feeling in my body and when you can share this automation so that everyone can benefit from it, that’s when the magic happens.\n\nImagine the enormous feeling of well being and power when your entire Nextcloud environment is deployed in a highly available fashion, in just minutes, based on code which can be reused, modified and shared. \n\nNo more having to manually wade through service providers web GUIs, no more repetition of thousands of commands, but just one, source repository, which can be reused time and time again. \n","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"### What Is Infrastructure as Code?\n\nIaC is the label of a technique and the process of managing and provisioning data centers through machine-readable code. Also in respect to how you handle code it needs to be committed to a version control system. You should have code reviews, the code should go through testing and CI/CD tools which deploys ideally all the way to production.\n\n\n\n### Why Infrastructure as Code?\n\nThe point of IaC is to have a desired state of the infrastructure that is well defined, documented, version controlled and replicable. Add CI/CD, backups and configuration management to this and you can get the automation, verification, testing and disaster recovery.\n\nThrough automation you also remove repetitive and tedious tasks which are prone to human error.\n\n\n\n### Why not do it manually as we’ve always done.\n\nBecause it’s expensive to have someone who will be doing this day in and day out. Not to mention dead boring and very error prone. When the environment suddenly does not work, you need to spend time troubleshooting. And in the end it’s going to be pretty slow. \n\nScalability will be heavily dependent on personnel, whereas IaC setups would allow for much larger infrastructure configurations to be managed from a single point."},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":true,"cta_text":"Would you like to know more about how to get started with IaC? Let us help you! ","cta_label":"Tell me more","cta_link":"mailto:hello@elastx.se"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Advantages of IaC\n\nFast. Automated with the same result every time.\n\nWhen you have everything automated you can fail forward quickly if you are not dependent on HA. Infrastructure is a lot easier to rebuild than to repair.\n\n**Repeatability,** each execution should provide the same output. In essence this is the beauty of IaC - the element of predictability is transferred into the management of your infrastructure resources. \n\n**Traceability,** changes are tracked in version control. Results become predictable and from an audit point of view - the desired state is always recorded. Any anomalies are easily spotted, preventing resources from being forgotten or “used for other purposes” than intended"}],"slug":"why-do-you-want-iac","url":"/en/news/why-do-you-want-iac","lang":"en","filename":"varför-vill-du-ha-iac","image":"/assets/uploads/glowing_powerbutton.jpeg"},"vi-arbetar-med-den-absolut-senaste-tekniken":{"date":"2016-10-08","tags":["elastx","customer"],"title":"To make this possible we use bleeding edge Technology","case_slug":"To make this possible we use bleeding edge Technology","intro":"Imagine being able to see your healthcare records directly on your computer or smart phone and also being able to share this information with your doctor - wouldn’t that be great?","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"Chorus develops new tools to provide healthcare professionals, patients and families access to healthcare data in an entirely new way not seen before.\n\nSwedish healthcare is facing major challenges. We are getting older and healthcare costs are increasing. The healthcare sector also has a variety of different IT systems and medical record systems with direct access only. This means that the integration costs has soared and less money is left to actually develop new features to take the burden of healthcare professionals and residents. Secure solutions, where data from existing systems are available with the patients permission is therefore increasingly important.\n\n*“To make this possible we use bleeding edge Technology. High-Availability and security are also top priority. There can be no down-time. Simple as that!” - Casper Winsnes, CEO Chorus*\n\n### Chorus and ELASTX\n\nFredrik Henriques is Head of Technology at Chorus and got a recommendation to try ELASTX Virtuozzo (formerly Jelastic) PaaS in Spring 2013.\n\nSince time-to-market is a very important factor ELASTX Virtuozzo PaaS really caught our attention. The possibility to quickly create and also clone entire IT-environments is great. We work with micro-services and open-source so the tools we use works well with their platform\n\nFredrik continues. When ELASTX launched their Openstack IaaS in 2014 I was keen to try it out. Reason being that we want to stay up to date with latest technologies and with their Infrastructure-as-a-Service we can spin-up our OS of choice. Currently we are using CoreOS and Rancher. ELASTX is a great fit for us since we are very technical ourselves and when we are in need of assistance it’s highly technical problem solving. ELASTX support is outstanding.\n\nELASTX is excited to be part of Chorus important mission to ease the pain from health care.\n\n### About Chorus\n\nSince Chorus inception in 2007 they have had two commandments. First, to make the complex things easier and more understandable and second to work in areas where they believe that new ideas and ways of working is genuinely useful. Chorus has developed a number of tools to make healthcare more accessible to patients and relatives needs!\n\nLearn more at [chorus.se](https://chorus.se)"}],"slug":"to-make-this-possible-we-use-bleeding-edge-technology","url":"/en/news/to-make-this-possible-we-use-bleeding-edge-technology","lang":"en","filename":"vi-arbetar-med-den-absolut-senaste-tekniken","image":"/assets/uploads/article-hero-19.jpg"},"we-are-now-cncf-members":{"date":"2018-09-03","title":"We are now CNCF members","case_slug":"We are now CNCF members","tags":["elastx"],"intro":"We are proud to inform you that ELASTX is now a member of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"### What is CNCF?\n\nCloud Native Computing Foundation is a foundation dedicated to making cloud native universal and sustainable. The cloud native technology gives developers the opportunities and resources to build products and applications with support from a whole community that is dedicated to making sure that cloud native always keeps growing and lives on.\n\nAt the same time as we are entering the CNCF, we will also be launching our very coveted Private Kubernetes. We will be putting up a private Kubernetes cluster for our customers in our powerful OpenStack platform that runs in our availability zones here in Sweden.\n\nThanks to our newly found membership at the CNCF, we will now be able to go deeper in to the cloud native ecosystem where we can together with large actors contribute and make change. We will have opportunities to learn from each other and ELASTX will be able to continue to deliver a fantastic product to its costumers and partners.\n\n***“We are happy to become part of the CNCF eco system. This aligns well with our view of helping customers navigate the open-source landscape and build cloud agnostic solutions.”*** - Henrik Grankvist, COO ELASTX\n\n***“We want to be able to create industry standards within the cloud native landscape, and not just contribute to creating more “buzz words” which can be interpreted the wrong way. The CNCF membership will give us this opportunity.”*** - Tobias Jakobsson, CloudOps Architect ELASTX"}],"slug":"we-are-now-cncf-members","url":"/en/news/we-are-now-cncf-members","lang":"en","filename":"we-are-now-cncf-members","image":"/assets/uploads/kubecon.jpg"},"zebware-an-elastx-partner":{"date":"2020-11-20","title":"Zebware, an Elastx partner","case_slug":"Zebware an Elastx partner","tags":["elastx","partner"],"intro":"We think it is important to be loosely connected to the platforms you work with to avoid lock-in scenarios and the ability to store data with confidence. With our new partner Zebware and their product Orchesto you can achieve this.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"Orchesto is a lightweight middleware software designed to enable true multi-cloud compute and storage to secure cloud data deployments. Orchesto provides an object storage s3 API to store you data. You choose the storage providers which Orchesto will use and Elastx Openstack Swift object storage service is now a supported storage provider. Orchesto provides a number of features that can help you to secure your data and prevent lock-in.\n\n### Encryption\n\nBy using Orchesto cloud encrypt, all object content can be encrypted before it leaves the network of a data owner. This enables a centralized encryption configuration to be applied across all storage providers. You own the encryption key!"},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/zebware-1.jpeg"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Multi-cloud deployment\n\nUsing Orchesto makes it easy to store data on multiple cloud storage providers including both private and public. You just use the Orchesto s3 API and then you decide on which storage providers where the data will be stored."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/zebware-2.jpeg"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Storage provider redundancy\n\nWhen using Orchesto with its patented zIDA erasure coding, you can store your data over multiple storage providers making you non-dependent on a single provider. If there is an issue at one of the storage providers making that data inaccessible you can still access your data based on the storage providers still accessible."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/zebware-3.jpeg"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Live Data Synchronisation\n\nOrchesto gives you the possibility to change the storage provider without having to change anything on the client using Orchesto. The live data synchronisation not only enables the data synchronisation but also supports this without causing any disruptions for applications and users."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/zebware-4.jpeg"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Data Governance\n\nBy use of the Orchesto policy management tools, rules for storage, information security governance and data policy fulfilment can be adhered to programmatically."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/zebware-5.jpeg"},{"type":"body_text","text":"**Orchesto will help you to secure and manage your data and if you want more information please contact us at [hello@elastx.se](mailto:hello@elastx.se) or Zebware at [hello@zebware.com](mailto:hello@zebware.com)**"}],"slug":"zebware-an-elastx-partner","url":"/en/news/zebware-an-elastx-partner","lang":"en","filename":"zebware-an-elastx-partner","image":"/assets/uploads/storage_systems.jpeg"},"årskrönika-2023":{"date":"2024-01-02","title":"2023 In review","image_alt":"Henrik Grankvist, COO, sitting in the Elastx office","case_slug":"year in review 2023","tags":["elastx"],"intro":"As we bid farewell to 2023, Elastx reflects on a year of challenges and milestones. Join us as we revisit key events, celebrate accomplishments, and look ahead to an exciting 2024. In this post, we delve into our efforts in digital sustainability, organizational growth, and the promising roadmap that awaits.","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"### The Past Year\nThe year 2023 has proven to be eventful and challenging. We've grappled with the impact of war, escalating interest rates, economic recession, and the ever-present threat of climate change. The world around us has undergone visible transformations, marked by record-high temperatures. Additionally, gang-related violence has surged, particularly affecting the younger demographic. In response to these challenges, there has been an increased need to find connection, gather strength, and collectively strive for a better future by supporting initiatives that contribute positively to society.\n\nOn a more technical front, the rapid advancement of AI development has presented both opportunities and challenges. The EU-US Data Privacy Framework (DPF), introduced during the summer, provides a structure for personal data transfers with the US. The upcoming years will witness an intriguing process to determine the framework's legal viability.\n\nAt Elastx, our year commenced with the celebration of our 10th anniversary, setting the stage for a dynamic 2023. Throughout the year, we launched a series of eagerly anticipated services and updates. In the spring, our [database as a service](https://elastx.se/en/database) entered the beta phase, subsequently transitioning into tech preview. \n\nConcurrently, we implemented a new organizational structure to facilitate ongoing growth and enhance efficiency in our commitment to delivering a distinctive cloud platform with high availability and regulatory compliance.\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Innovation and Development\nOver the past few years, Elastx has invested in significant services, culminating in their launch in the latter half of 2023. Notable advancements include the upgrade of our hardware to efficiently handle AI workloads with GPUs and a cutting-edge storage generation (v2), recognized for its market-leading price-performance ratio. Our Kubernetes CaaS has undergone updates, now featuring autoscaling and autohealing capabilities for nodes.\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Events to remember\n\nThroughout 2023, we've had the privilege of hosting a total of five events, witnessing their growth in both participation and interest. Notable speakers, including Mattias Gotthold, shared insights on [Third country transfers to the USA and Schrems lll]((https://elastx.confetti.events/cloud-fika-tredjelandsoverfringar-till-usa-och-schrems-iii)), with a subsequent update on the [EU-US Data Privacy Framework](https://elastx.confetti.events/cloud-fika-eu-us-data-privacy-framework-vad-innebr-det-fr-personuppgiftsverfringar-till-usa). In the early spring, Christian Klein from [elastisys](https://elastisys.com/) enlightened us on [how to security harden Kubernetes](https://elastx.confetti.events/tech-fika-k8s-basic-hygiene-och-tre-tekniker-fr-att-skerhetshrda-kubernetes).\n\nAugust brought [a special event hosted by Daniel Stenberg](https://elastx.confetti.events/tech-fika-curl-fritidsprojektet-som-tog-sig-till-mars), the founder of cURL, culminating in an unforgettable after-work gathering on the rooftop terrace.\n"},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/rooftop_after_work_at_elastx.jpg","alt":"Sunset at the roof terrace with a view over Stockholm in the background"},{"type":"body_text","text":"We also live-streamed an enlightening talk with Detective Inspector Jan Olsson, who shared his expertise on [cybercrime](https://elastx.confetti.events/cloud-fika-cybersecurity-med-jan-olsson).\n\nWe express our sincere gratitude to our speakers and all participants in these events! Your involvement has been instrumental in creating forums for knowledge dissemination and networking, and without you, these events would not have been possible.\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### With a focus on digital sustainability\n\nSustainability is a core value for us – not just a trendy claim. We genuinely prioritize initiatives contributing to digital sustainability, supporting projects like [Tobias Tree](https://tobiastree.org/).\n\nBeing a Swedish company is a source of pride for us, ensuring regulatory compliance. Our three data centers, strategically located at a disaster-safe distance in Stockholm, reflect our commitment. All our employees are Swedish citizens, and we contribute to the nation by paying taxes in Sweden. Operating in a sector where our customers deliver services for societal betterment, we take pride in fostering Swedish innovation, creating jobs, and strengthening digital sovereignty.\n "},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Elastx continues to grow\nOver the past decade, Elastx has developed a robust cloud platform. In 2024, our focus is on company growth. To achieve this in a sustainable manner, we reorganized into an agile and product-focused structure this year, witnessing positive effects since the summer."},{"type":"body_text","text":"### With 2024 in the sights\nEntering 2024 with enthusiasm and confidence, we anticipate another eventful year. Our commitment is to ensure our existing and new customers benefit from the new and improved services launched in the last half of 2023. Alongside this, an exciting roadmap awaits unveiling throughout the coming year.\n\nDedicated to enhancing the user experience, we continuously refine self-service options and maintain a support system ready to assist whenever you need help.\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### In conclusion\nWishing you a prosperous 2024! For updates and insights, follow us on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/elastx/). Don't miss our upcoming events, including our exhibition at [Solutions for the Public Sector 2024](https://elastx.confetti.events/elastx-stller-ut-p-kistamssan) on January 24-25 at Kistamässan. Together, we build services for a better society.\n"}],"slug":"year-in-review-2023","url":"/en/news/year-in-review-2023","lang":"en","filename":"årskrönika-2023","image":"/assets/uploads/the_elastx_office-2-.jpg"},"“responsible-ai-by-design”-practical-sustainability-considerations-in-adopting-gen-ai":{"date":"2024-08-22","englishVersionOnly":true,"title":"“Responsible AI by Design”: Practical sustainability considerations in adopting Gen AI","case_slug":"Responsible AI by Design Practical sustainability considerations in adopting Gen AI","image_alt":"Ai generated picture of the letters \"AI\" in a forest","tags":["ai"],"intro":"AI offers significant opportunities for innovation and efficiency. However, alongside these advancements it is important to ensure AI is developed and deployed responsibly. We have all heard about “by design”-approaches, and now is the time for \"Responsible AI by design\". This approach mitigates risks, reduces long-term AI model maintenance costs, and builds trust with stakeholders. It is also key to reducing the environmental impact of AI. \n\nWritten by Jens Eriksvik & Michael Asplund","body":[{"type":"body_text","text":"\"Responsible AI by Design\" (RAID) is a comprehensive framework and methodology that systematically integrates principles of transparency, fairness, accountability, and sustainability throughout the entire lifecycle of AI development and deployment. [Responsible AI](https://www.tcs.com/what-we-do/pace-innovation/white-paper/building-trustworthy-ai-five-pillars#:~:text=These%20are%20explainability%2C%20bias%20and,the%20explanations%20offered%20in%20outcomes.) ensures that AI systems are designed to mitigate risks, build trust, and maximize positive societal impact from inception. By embedding these principles into AI strategies, organizations prioritize responsible practices while navigating the complexities of AI technologies adeptly.\n\n---\n\n"},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/Jens_eriksvik.png","alt":""},{"type":"body_text","text":"\n*“At Algorithma, we believe that the key to successful AI deployment lies in strategic planning and sustainable practices. By embedding Responsible AI by Design principles into our AI strategies, we not only mitigate risks but also enhance the overall trust and value of our AI solutions for our clients.\"* \n\n\\- Jens Eriksvik, CEO at Algorithma\n\n- - -\n\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"From a sustainability perspective it is clear that the advent of Gen AI has led to a [surge in energy consumption](https://www.morganstanley.com/ideas/ai-energy-demand-infrastructure). Morgan Stanley forecasts a 70 % YoY increase until 2027. Consequently, businesses are rushing to secure access to green/sustainable energy, e.g. as [Microsoft’s recent data center investment](https://news.microsoft.com/sv-se/2024/06/03/microsoft-tillkannager-en-investering-pa-337-miljarder-kronor-under-tva-ar-i-moln-och-ai-infrastruktur-och-ett-ai-kompetenslyft-for-en-kvarts-miljon-manniskor-i-sverige/#:~:text=Microsoft%20announces%2033.7%20billion%20SEK,resilience%20in%20the%20AI%20era.) in Sweden highlights.\n\nIn a recent article [Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bethkindig/2024/06/20/ai-power-consumption-rapidly-becoming-mission-critical/#:~:text=A%20separate%20report%20estimated%20that,million%20households%20in%20the%20US.) deep-dives into the problem of surging power consumption from Gen AI. Big Tech's investment in AI accelerators, like Nvidia's A100 and upcoming generations, is driving exponential growth in power consumption. Each new generation of GPUs increases performance but also escalates power demands significantly. With forecasts indicating a tripling of global data center power use and projections of AI-related electricity demand skyrocketing, sustainability becomes a critical concern. Businesses are increasingly adopting green electrical power and energy-efficient technologies to mitigate environmental impacts. The industry is actively addressing the power challenge through technological innovations and strategic investments in renewable energy, BUT it is estimated that “Nvidia’s 3.76 million GPU shipments (in 2023) could consume as much 14,384 GWh (14.38 TWh)”. The 14.4 TWh is equivalent to the annual power needs of more than 1.3 million households in the US - and this is only counting 2023 Nvidia deliveries ([Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bethkindig/2024/06/20/ai-power-consumption-rapidly-becoming-mission-critical/#:~:text=A%20separate%20report%20estimated%20that,million%20households%20in%20the%20US.); no AMD, no BigTech, no other stuff).\n\n\n- - -"},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/michael_asplund.png","alt":""},{"type":"body_text","text":"*“By working with renewable energy sources, monitoring and optimizing energy consumption, and building dense computing environments, we ensure that our AI operations are both cutting-edge and environmentally responsible. However, optimizing data center operations and a modern cloud platform for sustainability is not just about reducing costs; it's about working towards a sustainable future.\"*\n\n\\- Michael Asplund, Operations manager at Elastx\n\n- - -\n\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"Thus, putting the energy consumption issue aside, leveraging AI involves several other key areas of responsibility. From a regulatory standpoint, it's crucial to comply with data protection laws, intellectual property rights, and industry-specific regulations that may govern AI use. Ethically, organizations must consider the potential societal impacts of their AI systems, including issues of bias, fairness, and transparency, to ensure AI is not used for harmful or manipulative purposes. Additionally, as AI becomes more prevalent, businesses should be prepared for evolving corporate processes and business model structures. RAID also means investing in robust security measures to protect AI systems and the data they process.\n\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"- - -\n\n\n\n\n\n*“Elastx's wholehearted commitment to our staff, customers and society involves delivering sound products with excellent support, paying taxes, and contributing to the open-source community. This commitment is firmly built into our approach.\"*\n\n\\- Michael Asplund, Operations manager at Elastx\n\n- - -\n\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"With a RAID mindset, there are four key aspects that need to be considered for businesses embarking on a generative AI journey: Gen AI deployment strategy and policy, data center optimization (or procurement thereof), AI architecture and model efficiency, and AI operations and AI model management."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/raid_illustration.png","alt":"RAID four key sustainability aspects in blue boxes"},{"type":"body_text","text":"### Gen AI deployment strategy and policy\n\n* Review and strategically choose where to deploy Generative AI solutions to maximize efficiency and impact, especially see where Gen AI actually can be used to offset environmental impacts (net positive approach)\n* Evaluate whether AI deployment is necessary in every scenario, prioritizing applications with the highest value and energy efficiency.\n* Consider edge computing to process data closer to its source, reducing the need for extensive data transmission and central processing.\n* Establish policies that prioritize energy efficiency in AI operations, and set energy consumption targets and regularly review performance against these benchmarks.\n\n### AI architecture and AI model efficiency\n\n* Based on deployment strategy, architect for RAID, scope the usage of Gen AI to distinct business use-cases with clear value - review what AI tech to deploy where\n* Employ techniques such as model pruning, quantization, and knowledge distillation to reduce model size and complexity, and optimize AI algorithms to run with lower computational requirements.\n* Use of energy-efficient programming languages and frameworks.\n\n### Data center optimization \n\n* Partner with suppliers that provides energy-efficient GPUs and AI accelerators, and, where applicable, make sure that specialized AI chips designed to minimize power consumption is used. Keep it fit for purpose. \n* At end of life, make sure that the supplying partner upgrade to energy-efficient data center infrastructure, implement advanced cooling systems and other technologies to reduce power usage and consolidate workloads to minimize the number of active servers.\n* Secure access to renewable energy sources (solar, wind, hydro) for powering AI operations, and partner with green energy providers to ensure a sustainable energy supply.\n\n### AI operations and AI model management\n\n* Utilize energy monitoring tools to track and analyze power consumption in real-time, and implement AI-powered analytics to identify and address inefficiencies in energy usage.\n* Use shared cloud services with dynamic scaling to adjust resources based on demand, thereby reducing energy wastage, and implement auto-scaling to shut down unused resources during low-demand periods.\n* Optimize data management practices to reduce the volume of data processed and stored, and use synthetic data or data augmentation techniques to minimize the need for extensive data collection.\n* Use workload scheduling to run energy-intensive tasks during periods of low energy costs or high renewable energy availability.\n* Conduct life cycle assessments to understand and mitigate the environmental impact of AI systems from development to deployment, and regularly assess and update AI systems to incorporate the latest energy-efficient technologies\n\nThe above considerations are of course only one part of the RAID framework, but offers a clear start to address the sustainability issue with Generative AI. With a clear focus on the sustainability dimension, businesses can strategically adopt Gen AI and still work towards sustainability targets.\n\n---\n\n"},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/frida_holzhausen.png"},{"type":"body_text","text":"\n*\"Businesses need to view AI not just as a technological advancement but as an opportunity to lead in sustainability. By adopting energy-efficient models and optimizing data management, companies can significantly reduce their environmental impact while maintaining high performance and innovation standards.\"*\n\n\\- Frida Holzhausen, Management consultant at Algorithma\n\n---\n\n"},{"type":"body_text","text":"As [data centers switch to AI](https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/us-data-center-power-consumption/#:~:text=Data%20centers%20switch%20on%20to%20AI&text=While%20the%20hyperscalers%20typically%20need,up%20from%2017GW%20in%202022.) there will be a significant increase in energy consumption. For an average data center in Sweden, with an annual consumption of 30 GWh of energy before investment in additional GPU capabilities, the net increase of energy consumption in 2024 will be approx 20 GWh with an assumption of 70 % YoY increase. \n\nAdopting a RAID approach can lead to substantial financial and environmental benefits. Assuming an average electricity price ranging from 0,8 to 1,2 SEK per kWh, and by implementing RAID principles: energy-efficient components, modern storage solutions, optimized server utilization, a sound deployment strategy, AI architecture, model design, and continuous AI operations, a conservative estimate suggests a 25% reduction in energy consumption. This reduction on the additional 20 GWh from AI use, would result in annual energy savings of 5 GWh. At an average electricity price of 1 SEK per kWh, this translates to cost savings of approximately 5 MSEK per year (ranging from 4-6 MSEK, depending on specific electricity costs)."},{"type":"body_image","src":"/assets/uploads/illustration_savings_raid.png","alt":""},{"type":"body_text","text":"Furthermore, this energy efficiency offset not only reduces costs but also has a substantial environmental impact. Given Sweden's low carbon emission factor of 0.013 metric tons CO2 per MWh, the annual reduction in energy consumption would lead to a decrease in carbon emissions by approximately 65 metric tons of CO2 (note: in Germany this would be approx. 25-28 times bigger due to the energy mix). In the Swedish context, the offset corresponds to 500 000 people flying one-way between Stockholm and Gothenburg. These quantifiable benefits highlight the value of RAID in enhancing sustainability while maintaining high performance and operational efficiency in data centers.\n\nHowever, it is important to consider the broader energy market dynamics. The surge in demand for green energy driven by data centers and other high-energy-consuming sectors may outstrip Sweden's renewable energy supply, potentially leading to the import of less clean energy from neighboring regions. At the same time, it could reduce Sweden's energy exports to other countries, potentially causing them to rely more on non-renewable energy sources. This shift could negatively impact the overall carbon footprint of Sweden and its neighbouring countries, and counteract some of the environmental benefits achieved through energy efficiency measures.\n\nSweden is known for its reliable and sustainable energy, making it an attractive location for energy-intensive AI infrastructure which has also been highlighted e.g. through high-profile announcements. This raises important questions about energy demands and the potential need for substantial investments in nuclear power and renewable energy. Companies with significant compute needs have even indicated a willingness to [invest in small modular nuclear reactors](https://www.breakit.se/artikel/40391/microsoft-satsar-miljarder-pa-ai-i-sverige-oppnar-for-att-investera-i-karnkraft) to meet the rising energy demands. This reflects a broader strategy where investments in renewable energy goes hand in hand with expansion of data center infrastructure.\n\nBy focusing on energy optimization, data centers can align better with sustainability goals, meet regulatory requirements, and improve overall cost-effectiveness. This strategic approach supports both environmental responsibility and economic viability, making RAID a compelling framework for modern data center management. However, stakeholders must also advocate for increased investment in domestic renewable energy capacity to mitigate the risk of relying on imported dirty energy.\n\n### **Getting started with RAID sustainability**\n\nAt Algorithma, we partner with [Elastx ](https://elastx.se/en/)to enable our clients to take a measured approach to Generative AI deployments. \n\n* **Strategic approach to deployment;** jointly we work through the use-cases assuring the right tech is used for the right application\n* **Architecting for RAID;** working through the setup to keep humans in the loop, making sure the computational tasks are scoped to the business problem\n* **Model design and sizing, incl. HW selection offered as a service;** building models that are fit for purpose, avoiding general models, to ensure quality application of tech and reduce computational needs\n* **Right-sized and fit for purpose AI operations;** continuously working with our own products and with the customer to prune and optimize models in production, incl. monitoring and optimization of loads\n\nIn addition, we work to optimize the energy consumption in the data center, all located strategically in Sweden, ensuring usage of green energy for operations. Through this approach we can offer our clients an easy way to deploy Generative AI.\n\nFollow our partner [Alghorithma](https://www.algorithma.se/our-latest-thinking) for more updates on this topic as we continue to explore responsible AI by design."},{"type":"body_cta","targetBlank":false,"cta_text":"Want to learn more about sustainable AI? We would love to delve deeper into this topic with you!","cta_label":"Email us","cta_link":"mailto:hello@elastx.se"}],"slug":"responsible-ai-by-design-practical-sustainability-considerations-in-adopting-gen-ai","url":"/en/news/responsible-ai-by-design-practical-sustainability-considerations-in-adopting-gen-ai","lang":"en","filename":"“responsible-ai-by-design”-practical-sustainability-considerations-in-adopting-gen-ai","image":"/assets/uploads/ai_forest.jpg"}},"image":"/assets/uploads/datacenter-swedish-forest.jpg","siteTitle":"News","heroTitle":"News","tabLabels":{"caseStudies":"Case studies","news":"News","articleSeries":"Article series","events":"Events"},"metaTags":{"description":"Public Cloud made in Sweden. With love to open source, automation and our environment we want to offer a better alternative.","title":"News"},"footerData":{"se":{"contact":{"title":"Kontakt","address_1":"Katarinavägen 15","address_2":"116 45 Stockholm","rows":[{"row":"VAT: SE556906561701"},{"row":"Telefon: [+46 8 557 728 10](tel:+46855772810)"},{"row":"Epost: [info@elastx.se](mailto:info@elastx.se)"}]},"links":{"title":"Länkar","extra_footer_links":[{"targetBlank":true,"label":"Karriär","link":"https://career.elastx.se/"}]},"social":{"title":"Sociala kanaler","links":[{"label":"LinkedIn","url":"https://www.linkedin.com/company/elastx"},{"label":"YouTube","url":"https://www.youtube.com/@Elastx"}]},"cert_logos":{"logos":[{"logo":"/assets/uploads/iso-27001-1.png","link":"/information-security-policy"},{"logo":"/assets/uploads/iso-14001-1.png","link":"/environment-policy"}]},"external_cert_logos":{"logos":[{"logo":"/assets/uploads/green-web-foundation.png","link":"https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/green-web-check/?url=elastx.se"}]},"menulinks":[{"label":"Hem","link":"/"},{"label":"Om oss","link":"/about-elastx"},{"label":"Kontakt","link":"/contact-us"},{"label":"Tjänster","link":"/overview"},{"label":"Priser","link":"/pricing"},{"label":"Partners","link":"/partners"},{"label":"Nyheter","link":"/news"},{"label":"Events","link":"/events"}]},"en":{"contact":{"title":"Contact","rows":[{"row":"VAT: SE556906561701"},{"row":"Phone: [+46 8 557 728 10](tel:+46855772810)"},{"row":"Email: [info@elastx.se](mailto:info@elastx.se)"}],"address_1":"Katarinavägen 15","address_2":"116 45 Stockholm"},"links":{"title":"Links","extra_footer_links":[{"targetBlank":true,"label":"Career","link":"https://career.elastx.se/"}]},"social":{"title":"Social channels","links":[{"label":"LinkedIn","url":"https://www.linkedin.com/company/elastx"},{"label":"YouTube","url":"https://www.youtube.com/@Elastx"}]},"external_cert_logos":{"logos":[{"logo":"/assets/uploads/green-web-foundation.png","link":"https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/green-web-check/?url=elastx.se"}]},"cert_logos":{"logos":[{"logo":"/assets/uploads/iso-27001-1.png","link":"/information-security-policy"},{"logo":"/assets/uploads/iso-14001-1.png","link":"/environment-policy"}]},"menulinks":[{"label":"Home","link":"/"},{"label":"About us","link":"/about-elastx"},{"label":"Contact","link":"/contact-us"},{"label":"Services","link":"/overview"},{"label":"Pricing","link":"/pricing"},{"label":"Partners","link":"/partners"},{"label":"News","link":"/news"},{"label":"Events","link":"/events"}]}}}