Atlantic.net Unveils FreeBSD for Cloud VPS Hosting Plans

Atlantic.net, a solid state drive (SSD) cloud virtual private server (VPS) hosting solutions provider, has added FreeBSD to its catalog of offerings. The operating system has been rolled out in its VPS offerings in its Orlando, Dallas and Toronto data centers.

The open source operating system joins Atlantic.Net's other operating system offerings, which include Windows Server 2012R and various versions of Linux. According to the company, customers who take advantage of being able to deploy virtual servers running FreeBSD will get "the best stability, performance and flexibility."

Atlantic.net also hinted at a trend within the industry for operating systems that are regular substitutes of Linux, referring to itself as "the first of a new generation of hosting solutions providers to offer a reliable, yet regularly requested substitute for Linux." Particularly, the FreeBSD offering is targeted at startups and indie developers—mostly because of the low $0.005 per hour price tag. Usage is calculated on a per-second basis.

"FreeBSD by design is open source, and is optimized for freedom and flexibility," said Marty Puranik, president and CEO of Atlantic.net, in a prepared statement. "With this new addition, we can pass these benefits onto our customers to deliver a robust BSD-based OS. FreeBSD will help push startup innovation and assist entrepreneurs in launching the next great idea."

Additionally, Atlantic.net released a resize feature that was developed in collaboration with FreeBSD. The new feature is different from other companies' resize features, the solutions provider noted, in that it enables customers to enlarge the disk, RAM and processor rather than just the RAM and processor.