CenturyLink Launches Hyperscale Server Instances

Telecommunications and cloud services provider CenturyLink has launched a new high-performance instance on its CenturyLink Cloud platform. Designed for web-scale workloads, Big Data and cloud-native applications, the Hyperscale high-performance service instances are being positioned to enterprises as a means for them to run their mission- and business-critical applications in the public cloud.

CenturyLink Cloud provides enterprise customers and developers with a variety of self-service features, and now with Hyperscale, the goal is to enable them to use the same platform to launch and manage "advanced next-generation apps."

"New applications are crucial to delivering a competitive advantage for enterprises, and Hyperscale is the ideal service for these workloads," said Jared Wray, CTO of CenturyLink Cloud at CenturyLink Technology Solutions, in a prepared statement. "CenturyLink continues to bring developers and IT together with this new capability. Developers get self-service and lightning-fast performance for popular NoSQL platforms, and IT can easily use our cloud management platform for governance and billing."

According to the company, Hyperscale combines CenturyLink Cloud's high-performance compute with 100 percent flash storage. The company claims service users will consistently experience performance at or above 15,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS) for various workloads.

That also means it's being positioned toward companies and partners that are considering Big Data workloads.

The launch of Hyperscale is only the first step in CenturyLink's big plans for 2014 public cloud expansion. The company also noted it would expand its number of data centers to 13 from nine before the end of the first half of 2014. The first new data centers scheduled to go online (in March) will be in Santa Clara, Calif., and Sterling, Va. Paris and London data centers are slate to go online during the second quarter.