Category: News & Updates

It might be obvious, but server processors pull a lot of weight when it comes to compute-intensive tasks in the cloud. AI, machine learning, data analytics – you name it.

For this exact reason, LayerStack is equipping our infrastructure with the latest AMD 3rd Generation EPYC CPU – following its debut earlier in March – and offering the performance standards that our users expect, while retaining our core services, global availability and competitive pricing that you know and love.

Our coming AMD-based offerings feature EPYC™ 7003 Series server CPUs, the world’s highest performing server processer by the leading semiconductor manufacturer. Courtesy of its remarkable memory and I/O capacity, the redesigned processing core takes the speed of application performance to the next level and helps you drive business outcomes.

What is special about the AMD 3rd Gen EPYC processor?

A solid upgrade with impressive benchmarks

AMD has been producing top-quality products since its first innovation of EPYC chip back in 2017, with the first 2 generations of EPYC earning the company massive shares in the high-performance computing market. Bound to be the cornerstone in clouds, datacenters and supercomputers, AMD’s 3rd Gen EPYC x86 processors bring substantial leaps in performance and tackle workload-intensive applications across the board with more speed and economy.

Highly performant architecture

The new 7003 Series is built on AMD’s Zen 3 core architecture, and promises a 19% boost in instructions per cycle/clock (IPC) and a doubled L3 cache. Coupled with the Infinity Fabric™ Technology, the upgraded core delivers two-fold improvement in x86 performance, as well as twice the throughput for AI inference and INT8 performance over the previous generation. These improvements mean users will see lower latency in the most demanding workloads.

Enhanced cloud security

Another highlight that the new generation of processor brings is additional security. Known as the AMD Infinity Guard, the robust set of end-to-end security features creates an isolated execution environment and prepares the Zen architecture to defend against malicious hypervisor-based attacks.

To celebrate the inclusion of AMD’s EPYC™ 7003 Series in our lineup, LayerStack is bringing you promotional offers to selected plans so you can enjoy the new generation processor and what it has to offer. Stay tuned for more details and don’t miss out!

LayerStack consistently committed on improving and providing our valued customers with superior cloud computing services. We have revamped the plans and offers on LayerPanel (LayerStack New Generation Control Panel) as well as introduced a new OS, the highlights are listed below:

China Direct CN2 Route: Expanded our CN2 GIA network in Asia Pacific.  It is now available in Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo regions.

Updates in Standard Cloud Servers plans: R008-HK has been removed while new included R001-HK with the billing cycle of 3-month and 12-month.  For more details, please view our price plan.

New OS & ISO template:  Newly added AlmaLinux 8 as one of the options in OS and ISO template.  If you are interested in migrating from CentOS 8 to AlmaLinux seamlessly and painlessly, please click here.

You can check out the release notes to get up to date information about product updates, and read about updates from the previous month here. 

Follow us on Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn to get the latest updates!

If you have any idea on improving our products or want to vote on other ideas so they get prioritized, please submit your feedback on our Community platform. Feel free to pop by our community.

When Red Hat decided to “shift investment” from CentOS towards the end of last year, the tech world was not happy (Dude, seriously? Isn’t the pandemic crazy enough?!). After what felt like an eternity, AlmaLinux – a one-for-one Open-source replacement of the soon-to-be-defunct CentOS – was released in late March and, at long last, ended the anger, confusions and drama from all fuming users.

It’s a huge deal to CentOS users – and LayerStack, too. Now LayerStack officially include AlmaLinux OS as part of our operating system options and ISO template for all your cloud computing needs. Check LayerPanel (LayerStack New Generation Control Panel) and our API for this stable yet license-free operating system.

Waiting is painful, and we make sure that waiting is the only hardest part. Check out our detailed tutorial where you can find the prerequisites and step-by-step guide for migration from CentOS 8, this is to ensure you having a painless and seamless setup and migration.

Still Err?  Visit our Community platform where you can find answers to common problems or submit your feedback.

Our engineering team has been working overtime to respond to the needs of our customers and the market. We are excited to announce the upcoming launch of the LayerStack Load Balancer. What to expect? LayerStack Load Balancer autoscales across multi-regions.

LayerStack Load Balancer (LB) maximizes the capabilities of your applications by distributing traffic among multiple cloud servers regionally and globally through dedicated VLAN.  LB combines the powerful LayerPanel 2’s ease of use and affordable pricing with the high performance architecture, so you can further boost up the workloads.

Interested in using the LB?  Follow us on Facebook/ Twitter/ LinkedIn to stay engaged and get the latest product updates!

If you have an idea for improving our products or want to vote on other user ideas so they get prioritized, please submit your feedback on our Community platform. And if you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the Community.

We once thought that we couldn’t make bricks without straw. Perhaps, in fact, we can’t. But wielding the power of cloud servers, you can run businesses in this technology-forward world without having to maintain on-premises infrastructure.

The real challenge, then, comes to finding a hosting solution – among all the providers, offerings, and cost options available – that fits your need. It is a bewildering task, and hours are spent. Fortunately, independent benchmarking platforms like VPSBenchmarks look at some of the top providers around the world and give credible monthly evaluations of their services.

Last month, LayerStack’s dedicated CPU cloud servers – DC108-HK – proudly ranked 3^rd in the Best VPS category, in which VPSBenchmarks reviewed 15 similar cloud server offerings for their web performance, raw CPU power, stability and other factors.

At LayerStack, we strive to provide high-performance and reliable architecture that gives you the most bang for the buck.

With our dedicated CPU cloud servers, you have all resources available – 100% CPU power, clock speed, storage – at your disposal. You can enjoy every ounce of benefits that our superior infrastructure brings so your system can run at peak performance and maximum stability at all times. Market-leading hardware is an integral part of our cloud solutions, including the 2nd Gen AMD EPYC™ (clock speed up to 3.3GHz) and the enterprise PCIe Gen 4 NVMe storage.

Having a dedicating server all to yourself without any CPU steal means performance is predictable and latency is low, making it perfect for workloads that require high and constant CPU processing, such as AI, machine learning, CI/CD, batch processing, and video encoding.

Interested in our other cloud server solutions? We’ve got you covered. LayerStack offers an arsenal of equally performant cloud server plan options that major benchmarking platforms and our clients continuously vouch for. Check below for details.

• High Frequency CPU Cloud Servers
• Standard Cloud Servers
• Cloud Performance Report
• Best VPS 2021 under $40 category by VPSBenchmarks
• Best VPS 2021 under $60 category by VPSBenchmarks

We hope you’ll give the new products and updates a try. If you have an idea for improving our products or want to vote on other user ideas so they get prioritized, please submit your feedback on our Community platform. And if you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the Community.

Choosing the right cloud servicer can be a grind. You need to do your homework, or let others – namely Geekbench – do the homework for you and you read their results, here.

For most demand-heavy workloads, whether a cloud service is as good as they tell you essentially boils down to two key factors – how fast the CPU is, and how powerful the memory is. With LayerStack, you get the best of both worlds.

LayerStack’s latest high-frequency, turbo-boosted CPU clocking 3.4 GHz outperforms both Intel Skylake and Intel Xeon, according to Geekbench.

In terms of memory performance, LayerStack’s cloud servers get staggeringly better Geekbench scores than Intel Xeon Gold and Intel Xeon. With low latency and lightning-fast read/write speeds, our infrastructure lets you coast through any and all memory-intensive tasks.

VPSBenchmarks did their homework too! Check here to view details.

We hope you’ll give the new products and updates a try. If you have an idea for improving our products or want to vote on other user ideas so they get prioritized, please submit your feedback on our Community platform. And if you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the Community.

LayerStack is consistently committed to improving and providing our valued customers with superior cloud computing services. We have adjusted the plans and offers on LayerPanel as well as introduced new features, the highlights are listed below:

Global Private Network:  We are excited to announce that the Global Private Network is officially launched, it is now available in Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. Users can transfer data through the private Layer 2 connection (dedicated VLAN) between cloud servers regionally and globally. Through the private data link layer networks between instances, it increases security and privacy during data transfer by end-to-end encryption.

Cloud Servers with Enterprise PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD:  High Frequency CPU and Dedicated CPU cloud servers are equipped with the ultra-fast PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD (enterprise version).  NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) SSD enhances consistency, reliability and performance while increasing the efficiency for data storage, management, and accessibility.

Updates in Memory Optimized Cloud Server Plans: The specification of HM24-HK & HM48-HK have been upgraded while HM90-HK has been removed since 09 Feb 2021. Moreover, HM64-HK & HM128-HK have been newly added. For more details, please view the price plan.

You can check out the release notes to get up to date information about product updates, and read about updates from the previous month here. 

We hope you’ll give the new products and updates a try. If you have an idea for improving our products or want to vote on other user ideas so they get prioritized, please submit your feedback on our Community platform. And if you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the Community.

We are pleased to announce that LayerStack launches the NVMe SSD (Enterprise PCLe Gen 4 NVMe SSD) for High Frequency CPU Cloud Servers and Dedicated CPU Cloud Servers. NVMe (Non-Voliatile Memory Express) is an interface protocol built especially for Solid State Drives (SSD). It works with PCI Express to connect SSDs to a server and accessing high-speed storage. NVMe takes full advantage of CPU utilization and high-performance flash memory. This increases the performance and efficiency of instances incredibly. It runs multiple I/O operations simultaneously, enabling the processing of multicore and provides the Quality of Service. 

Faster Read-Write Speed And High-Speed Storage

Compared with SAS/SATA SSD, the enterprise NVMe SSD can handle multiple streams of data at the same time.  It results in a faster storage speed. In addition, data can be written simultaneously by allowing the data division and streamline through NVMe.  This results in faster interfaces and optimized routines for writing data to the SSD.

Facts & Comparison

PCIe sockets applied by NVMe transfer 25 times data than their SATA equivalent. For Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPs), NVMe results in at least 4 time faster than traditional SSD in the market. The NVMe can deliver sustained read-write speed of 2000MB/s which is way faster than the speed limit 600MB/s of SATA SSD III.

New Deployments Get Configure Advanced SSDs

As of now, new deployments of High Frequency CPU Cloud Servers and Dedicated CPU Cloud Servers will get advanced NVMe SSD storage, the pricing of plans remain unchanged. Check out our plans and pricing HERE.
　
We very much value your feedback for future developments, please let us know your comments and suggestions on LayerStack Community.

Today, LayerStack partners with unwire HK, a well-known technology information website, to launch a joint promotion – Cloud Trial Event 2021. The program is open to all HK-based businesses, regardless of size or industry. No prepayment or credit card information is required, successful applicants can get 1-6 months free trial on cloud servers. Interested parties can click HERE to access the event page and fill in the application form, our CS team will then contact you in few days.

We must give a credit to unwire HK for the detailed introduction of LayerStack, the full article is available at https://unwire.hk/2021/01/14/layerstack-x-unwire/headline/. Please let us know your comments and suggestions on LayerStack Community.