ProfitBricks Increases Size Options for Virtual Servers

Is bigger better when it comes to cloud services? Cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) provider ProfitBricks is betting on it. The company has announced what it says are the largest virtual server instance sizes available in the cloud. 

How big are we talking about? ProfitBricks now offers customers variable instance sizes from 1 CPU core to 62 CPU cores and from 1 GB of RAM to 240 GB of RAM. Customers can set their own server sizes within these parameters, the company told Talkin’ Cloud via email. Previously customers were limited to 48 CPU cores and 196GB of RAM.

ProfitBricks said its Infiniband-based core infrastructure (a switch-based, point-to-point interconnect architecture) made it possible for the company to offer such large virtual server sizes.   

“For data-intensive processes like accessing a massive MySQL database or running a Hadoop cluster with many virtual machines, you need all the RAM and compute power,” said ProfitBricks CEO Bob Rizika in a prepared statement. “With smaller instances you end up running more instances.”  And more instances, he added, would end up hurting performance and speed. 

Pricing for 62 core and 240 RAM instances cost $0.05 per CPU core and $0.015 per hour with minute-based metering. The larger server instances are available immediately.

ProfitBricks recently received a $19.5 million investment from its founders and European Internet services provider United Internet AG (UTDI.DE).