Elastx is a Sweden based public cloud platform founded by a group of open source enthusiasts as an alternative to US based cloud platforms. High availability and security are their main priority for all of the service offerings. Elastx ensures high availability by having their services across three different data centers located at 20km with at least four internet connections each to support data redundancy. Data centers are camera monitored, and only authorised personnel are allowed in after passing several levels of security checks. Internet connections are secured with Bot & Scraper and other tools so that they can offer reliable and secure services for all applications using their platform. Besides, this all Elastx services provides excellent support for all their offerings, including:

• 24x7 support services
• Application monitoring
• A support portal to track and monitor support issues
• A status page to keep users informed about service status and planned services schedule

Elastx complies with GDPR; therefore, it can handle personal data, and all its services are Cloud Act free. Also, they meet the requirements for ISO27110, ISO 27017, and ISO 27018, which is required for safety and security compliance by many businesses. This blog will walk you through the services offered by Elastx and how it seamlessly works with Backup Ninja, a simple and reliable backup service.

Elastx Services

 Elastx service offerings are divided into platform, connectivity, security, and other services with each having individual products in it. Platform services focus on providing virtual data centers, containers, and platforms as a service. Connectivity services provide connection services for security, performance, and secure cloud connectivity. Elastx security services come in three variations for you to choose from including Bot & Scraper, DDoS, and web application firewall services. The final category focuses on offering support services such as application monitoring, mail relay, and professional support services.

Platform Services

The section gives you an overview of all platform services offered by Elastx.

OpenStack IaaS

OpenStack IaaS is Elastz Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) which allows you to have a fully customized virtual data center to meet your needs. All services are fully automated, and all you need to do is design how each resource like networks, storage, firewalls, servers is to be configured. Elastx OpenStack IaaS is built using the open source project OpenStack and implements the following components on its platform:

• Computer Resources (Nova): Nova handles instances of virtual machines with different Flavours. Flavors describe the CPU memory, disk, and the type of hardware the instance works on. Elastx instances run on shared nodes with specific hardware configurations and flavors. You can create the instance with standard flavor and run it on an available zone.
• Network (Neutron): Elastx has designed and built its network to be redundant and scalable across the data centers. Neutron manages the network and firewall to give their users the shortest traffic route for data movement. You are allowed to create networks, subnets, addresses, or security groups for your virtual data center.
• Disk Image (Glance): Glance handles operating system images, and you can choose the operating system image you require for your infrastructure from the various offered images. You also have the flexibility to upload your preferred operating system image, which will be stored by Glance in the object storage.
• Volume (Cinder): A volume is a disk from a central storage location. Cinder by Elastx handles storage volume for you. You can connect more than one volume to an instance which should be running the same availability zone.
• Open Storage (Swift): Swift is object storage allowing you to store massive amounts of structure and unstructured data in a cost-effective way.
• HSM (Barbican): Barbican manages secrets like security certificates, encryption keys which are stored in HSM (Hardware Security Module).
• Load Balancer (Octavia): Octavia is a load balancing service to spread the load over multiple instances.
• Orchestration (Heat): Heat supports auto-scaling of resources.
• Metrics (Ceilometer): Ceilometer serves as a log where it collects and stores information on how all resources are used.
• Billing (Cloudkitty): This component is used to calculate the cost for the services used in the platform.

Kubernetes (CaaS)

Elastx can create a robust private Kubernetes container for stable and effective operation on the OpenStack platform for your developers. This service offers a non-redundant test/development cluster, a fully managed service with twice a year upgrades.

Jelastic

Elastx is a supplier for Jelastic in Sweden and it’s popular Platform as Service delivered by at least 50 hosting providers. Jelastic allows you to create a complete server environment for your Java, PHP, Ruby, Python, or Node.js application or run your own Docker container.

Connectivity Services

There are three different connectivity service offerings; Cloud VPN, Cloud Exchange, and Cloud Connect. Cloud VPN is a service to secure communication to Elastx over the internet. Cloud Connect is a service to connect site to site with a 10gb connection over a fibre connection at an affordable cost. Suppose you need latency, security, and bandwidth, you can use Cloud Exchange services to connect your data center to a cloud provider or to connect between Elastx and another cloud provider.

Security Services

Bots and Scrapers typically reduce the site speed, accessibility, and capacity by swamping the sites with thousands of records per second. However, not all bots are a threat; many are useful to provide functionality like indexing and monitoring. The Bots and Scrapers service by Elastix identifies and categorises the bots before allowing them to access your system. Bots and Scraper module is included in all platform services offered by Elastx. Besides this, Elastx also provides DDoS Protection and Web Applications Service to ensure maximum security for your application and infrastructure.

Backup Ninja on Elastx

Backup Ninja is a simple and secure backup service to backup open source databases, files, and folders locally or on the cloud using advanced encryptions for security. It works well with any cloud providers offering S3 compatible object storage without any complicated configuration. Swift is an object storage component in Elastx which allows S3 compliant tools to backup and restore data in it within minutes. The upcoming sections will show you how to configure and schedule backups on Elastx on Backup Ninja.

Setting up Elastx on Backup Ninja

Step 1: Select Elastx as a cloud provider.

Step 2: Enter the Elastx cloud credential settings. The bucket name can be any name of your preference.

Step 3:  Give a name for your cloud storage configuration. This will be used when you schedule a backup.

Step 4: Elastx cloud is configured on Backup Ninja.

Schedule Backups on Elastx Using Backup Ninja

Once you have successfully configured the cloud storage, you can now easily configure the backup schedule on Backup Ninja in just five steps.

Step 1:  Enter the details for the backup schedule.

Step 2: Select the cloud credentials created earlier from the dropdown. The retention period has defaulted to 7 days, you may change it accordingly.

Step 3: Enter the backup name in the given format.

Step 4: Select the given option to state when the backup should be scheduled.

Step 5: View the configured schedule on the dashboard.

Conclusion

If you are in Sweden and looking for a public cloud provider, then Elastx is an excellent option. Elastx does not only offer storage services; instead, it lets you have a varied range of services like platform, infrastructure, connectivity, and support services. Their highest priority is high availability and data redundancy to ensure your data is always saved and available if a disaster strikes. Besides, with Elastx you are free to configure and manage resources for your virtual data center the way you want with high availability and security.