What are Shared Line servers
Shared Line cloud servers are virtual machines that allow you to select the core performance you need. The Servercore control panel’s configuration settings now offer three options: 10%, 20% or 50%. For instance, choosing 50% performance ensures the virtual machine is available at least half the time, without changing the cloud server’s CPU clock speed. When your project has no ‘neighbors’ or in case of low core utilization, vCPU performance may reach 100% without affecting your rental costs.
Like other server lines, Shared Line virtual machines can be instantly scaled with just a few clicks in the control panel. This means that you may adjust your resource consumption at any time.
Currently, Servercore offers rentals of 1 to 4 vCPUs with RAM varying from 512 MB to 8 GB. The monthly cost for 1 vCPU with 512MB RAM is KES 402.17.
Projects to benefit from Shared Line servers
Shared Line is ideal for tasks that aren’t latency-sensitive or performance-intensive, such as staging, website hosting, and monitoring. These servers will also be suitable for cost-effective testing of cloud platforms before migrating from dedicated servers.
Projects not suited for Shared Line servers
We don’t recommend using them for latency-sensitive services. Shared Line will not suit for resource-intensive services, media streaming, complex computations, analytics, or ML and AI tasks.
Can a Shared Line server replace a VDS?
Yes, it can. Shared Line offers a full-fledged virtual machine at a VDS price, with several advantages:
1. More powerful processors: Intel® Xeon® Gold and top-tier AMD EPYC™ models instead of Intel® Xeon® Silver for enhanced performance.
2. Flexible IP address management. You may assign and manage multiple IP addresses without being tied to specific servers, unlike with virtual dedicated servers (VDS).
3. Customizable network drives. You may choose the size and connect and disconnect your network drives as you need.
4. Ready-to-use tools and technologies. Access to pre-configured operating system images, load balancing, Kubernetes, and databases to streamline deployment and application management.
Shared Line use cases
1. Educational projects and testing
University X’s technology park uses numerous cloud servers for various purposes, including training, testing, programming competitions, lab work, and other tasks. The university has budget constraints, yet the number of projects continues to grow.
To cut costs, the university’s IT specialists launched a lot of affordable Shared Line virtual machines. They migrated all projects that don’t require constant high-performance resources, e.g. bash software, to these servers. If required, the technology park may easily adjust virtual machine configurations in real-time, based on its specific task.
2. Basic websites
Company Y develops websites for photographers to showcase their business cards, portfolios, and personal information. These websites have low traffic, but fast page loading is essential. The company has chosen Shared Line cloud servers for such websites, due to the low performance requirements and high importance of resource stability.
Company Y also aimed to optimize the photo session booking process. Shared Line virtual machines turned out to be perfect for this task: a chatbot to assist with bookings was hosted on cloud servers with the core performance of 50% or higher.
3. Environment testing
Company Z specializes in website development. The development team hosted their staging environment on standard virtual machines enabling the project manager to quickly review the development results before delivering the project to clients. At a certain point, the company’s management focused on optimizing their development costs and decided to use Shared Line servers for staging. The project manager and team do not see any changes — everything functions as before, but the testing budget has significantly decreased.
To try out Shared Line servers, navigate the Servercore control panel: Cloud Platform → Servers → Create server → Fixed Configuration → Shared.
