Internode Virtual Private Servers provide customers with a cost-effective and scalable dedicated server solution for a defined monthly fee. This hosted virtual server service combines the high-speed bandwidth and high availability access of data centre hosting with the flexibility and security of a dedicated server.

Customers can buy a single Internode Virtual Private Server or multiple servers, each configured to meet their business needs and budget with no extra maintenance costs. Internode takes full responsibility for all physical requirements, including computer hardware, power supply and network connectivity.

Even before the Internode Virtual Private Servers were formally announced, Internode had sold several servers and had received one enterprise inquiry to host as many as 72 servers.

Internode product manager Phil Dempster said this level of interest demonstrated the pent-up demand in the market for Virtual Private Servers. "Our original budget was to sell a few of these a month, but we’ve sold three in the past week, even before it was announced," he said.

"That customer saw a prototype Virtual Private Server in action and was so impressed that it kept pushing to know when the product would be available.  Another inquiry wanted an environment that could host as many as 72 servers, so some very big companies are looking for this sort of service."

Internode Virtual Private Servers run on high-availability IBM hardware within a gigabit-speed Cisco-powered network at the GlobalSwitch data centre in Sydney. Redundancy is provided by PIPE’s Brisbane data centre while the virtualisation environment is based on VMWare VSphere software.

Internode Virtual Private Servers cost from $120 per month for a basic entry-level server to $5000 a month for an enterprise-grade, multi-server configuration with failsafe backup and redundancy systems.

Standard Internode Virtual Private Server configurations range from a 2GHz single-core server with one gigabyte (Gb) of memory and 30 Gb of data storage to a four-core system with 8 Gb of RAM and 100 Gb of storage.  Internode is supporting a range of operating systems including Windows Server 2003 and 2008, Red Hat Enterprise Edition and the CentOS, Ubuntu and Debian flavours of Linux.

Internode also provides a range of management options for Internode Virtual Private Servers from full web-based customer control and monitoring of virtual servers to complete management, where Internode effectively provides full system administration services to maintain the virtual server.

During Internode’s Virtual Private Server development, the first organisation to use the product was Australia’s inaugural Global Green Challenge, an event that involved a fleet of solar-powered and alternative fuel cars from around the world driving from Darwin to Adelaide in October last year.

Global Green Challenge Event Director Chris Selwood said the Internode Virtual Private Server had worked extremely well to deliver the event’s high-availability website. "It was quite a heavy load from all around the world, but we had no reports of any issues from that demand," he said. "The server worked extremely well and it was well supported by Internode. I’d have no hesitation in recommending it to other organisations that require a high availability system without the hassle of managing hardware."