The M5 Cloud is supported. However, you are the systems administrator of the Operating System and software within your VM. If you need help getting your desired environment configured with the M5 Cloud control panel, please ask. By asking us, you are helping us understand what might need to be improved. If you want to know how to get the fastest and most accurate service from us, please see this HOWTO.

My server is unreachable!

NOTE: If you cannot reach your server from your particular location, that does not necessarily mean that your server is offline. If you can, try connecting from a second location on an entirely different network. If you are able to reach your server from the second location, then it is likely a problem on your network or out on the Internet between you and us.

If you are ever unable to reach your server, we will need some information in order to do any sort of investigation into the cause….

• Please tell us your apparent IP address (where you are trying to connect to your server *from*) as reported by WhatIsMyIPAddress.com.

• Please tell us the IP address you are trying to connect *to*. (If your server has more than one IP address, this could be important.)

• Please send the output of a ‘traceroute‘ or ‘mtr‘ from your location to your server. If possible, also send a traceroute or mtr from your server back to your location.

• Tell us the exact time of the outage, as best you can. (This will help us to correlate your outage with any other events on the network.)

With that information ready, open a ticket.

I can’t log in at the Customer Portal

You are here because you can’t log in at our customer portal. This is where all of our current customers work with Profile and Contact Information, Support Tickets, Billing, and where dedicated server customers can manage monitoring and reboots.

The first thing you should try is clicking on the “retrieve password” link at the bottom of the “Login” form. (Don’t worry… No one can actually retrieve passwords from the system.) The pop-up form allows you to regain access by providing your email address, client ID (a 4-digit number), or username (*not* an email address). Supply one of those identifiers and click “Email Reminder” or just press Enter… You will soon receive an email from ‘service’ @m5hosting.com (check your Spam bucket!) containing your login ID (a.k.a. “username”) and apassword reset code.

Once you have your password reset code, you can click on the URL in the email, with the password reset code embedded in it, or you can enter it into this password reset form. [You can navigate to this form from the login page by clicking on "retrieve password" (again), and then clicking the "I have a password reset code" link.] Then just enter your new password twice and click “Reset” to reset your password….

Done!

Oh, you’re still here? Well, if the above procedure didn’t work, fear not… Your account is not locked. There have likely been too many failed login attempts from your location.

Send us an email asking us to temporarily add your apparent IP address to the “Rate Limit Whitelist”.

You should be logged in now, but if your initial ticket did not get you satisfactory results, please see this HOWTO.

I can’t log in at the Cloud Manager

You are here because you can’t log in at our cloud control panel. This is where you can manage your cloud resources (create, destroy, reboot, resize, auto-scale, backup, and create templates from your VMs). If you want to access your M5 account (manage Profile and Contact Information, Support Tickets, Billing, and dedicated servers), then you need to log in at our customer portal instead.

The first thing to know is that these two systems use separate logins. If you have changed your password in one system, it does NOT change your password in the other system. We try to make the login IDs the same for consistency, but we also understand that this may cause some confusion.

If you are having trouble accessing the M5 Customer Portal, see this FAQ.

If you are having trouble accessing the M5 Cloud Control Panel, please open a ticket and we’ll be happy to help.

How do I change my password in the Cloud Manager?

To change your password, click “My Profile” in the top-right corner of the page, and then “Edit Profile” in the row of menu buttons. Scroll down to the “Login Password” section, enter your new password (twice), and click “Save” at the bottom. If you ever lose your password, just let us know!

I changed my password in the M5 Customer Portal (service.m5hosting.com), but it hasn’t changed in the Cloud Manager…

These are separate systems with separate passwords. Though you may have the same login ID (username) for both systems, changing your password in one does NOT change the password in the other system. If this is confusing, you can request to have your login ID (username) changed in the Customer Portal to emphasize that these are separate accounts.

If you are having trouble accessing the M5 Customer Portal, see this FAQ.

If you are having trouble accessing the M5 Cloud Manager, please open a ticket and we’ll be happy to help.

What can I do with my service with M5?

We often get asked by prospective or current customers whether they are allowed to do something on their server, such as install and run a particular piece of software or listen on an additional port. The answer is a simple “Yes, but…”

Yes, you can do whatever you like on your server… as long as it is not in violation of our Acceptable Use Policy, (so nothing illegal and nothing that interferes with other customers and services). Also see our Terms and Conditions.

Can I run an IRC server on my virtual machine?

No. IRC is the only protocol that is prohibited by our Acceptable Use Policy.

Are these servers “managed”?

No. The long-winded answer is that the servers we offer are what are known in the hosting industry as “unmanaged” (though a more accurate term would be “customer-managed”, or “self-managed”). Once you have the login information to your server or VM, you are now the administrator (‘root’). This means you have the ability to install/uninstall software as you please, and communicate on whatever network ports and protocols you like.

It is often said that with great power comes great responsibility. Being administrator also means that you are responsible for the day-to-day maintenance of everything from the Operating System inward (OS, middleware, applications, accounts, backups, etc.). If your server is compromised and used to send abusive traffic to/from our network, this becomes your problem. We therefore recommend that you have someone on your team who is explicitly responsible for keeping up with security updates to your software and managing access to your server. If you do not have that expertise in-house, and cannot hire it at a reasonable rate, please ask us about a “managed server”.

Which Operating Systems do you offer?

The most-requested operating system is Linux, so we made the most popular GNU/Linux distributions available first. But we are working hard to make sure that at least one version of Windows Server will be available as well. We would love to have FreeBSD and OpenBSD available, but they are simply not ready yet.

We will of course continue to support FreeBSD and OpenBSD on our dedicated servers.

• Linux (CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu)

• Windows Server 2008 R2

Which Linux distributions do you offer?

• CentOS 5.8

• CentOS 6.3

• Debian 6

• Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

• Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

• Ubuntu 11.10

• Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

All distributions except Debian are available in both 32- and 64-bit flavors.

Do you sell cPanel licenses?

Yes. We have a template with cPanel pre-installed. It is based on a recent supported version of CentOS.

NOTE: You will need to open a ticket and ask us to allocate a license to each VM that you provision from this template.

IMPORTANT: There is a monthly cost for each VM provisioned from this template. Any fraction of a month is billed for the month.

Can I upgrade my server size?

Yes. You can adjust the amount of RAM, CPU and disk space. Each resource can be adjusted independently from the others. If you need more disk space, but are OK on CPU and RAM, then you can increase the size of your disk or add another disk.

You pay for each resource independently. Disk space, memory and CPU shares are priced hourly. This means that you can change your resources and the new rate will be reflected within one hour.

Internet data transfer and disk I/O (IOPS) are priced on straight utilization. You are billed for what you use, regardless of time.

Is bandwidth free between my M5 Cloud VMs?

Not by default, but it can be.

All traffic sent out the Internet-facing (public) interface on each VM is billable, even if it is going to another VM at M5 Cloud. However, you can add a free private interface to each of your VMs, which can route to any other M5 Cloud VM in the same region but not to the Internet. Traffic sent over private interfaces is unlimited and free of charge.

NOTE: You must configure your OS and applications properly to ensure that traffic between your VMs is using the private interface. Creating a private interface **does NOT** automatically route local traffic over that interface!

What are my resource limits? (How big can I go?)

All accounts have some default resource limits in place. If you expect to need more resources at one time than these limits allow, please just open a support ticket requesting higher limits. We can handle most requests very quickly.

Currently, the default limits per account are as follows:

• 4800% CPU

• 160 GB RAM

• 2 TB Standard Disk Block Storage (1 TB in each of two zones)

By default, the Internet-facing network interface is limited to 500 Mbps. You can add a free private interface on your VMs, which can route to any other VM but not to the Internet. Private interfaces have no speed limit.

Can I get my resource limits increased?

Yes! We place protective resource limits on each account. You may request these limits be raised by contacting support. There is no cost to increase these limits and customers in good standing can expect a very rapid response to such requests.

Can I purchase additional IPs?

Yes. IPv4 addresses are available and priced hourly. Pay as you go accounts include one IPv4 address. Monthly bundles include more. Any IP addresses used over the amount included with your account will be billed for the time you have the IP address provisioned on a virtual machine. See the current price matrix.

See How do I add an IP address to a VM? for instructions.

Do you have an API?

Yes! M5 Cloud has a fully RESTful API that supports both JSON and XML, so it’s easy to automate management of your cloud resources. Documentation of the API is available upon request.

What is your SLA?

99.9% on all systems related to our IaaS Cloud service.

How am I billed?

When you sign up, you can choose from a few options. Most new accounts choose “pay as you go” where all resources are billed hourly. We do offer monthly prepaid bundles of resources at deep volume discounts. If you would like to upgrade to the monthly pre-paid account from your pay-as-you-go account, please let us know.

If you use more of any resource type (RAM, CPU share, disk space) than your monthly bundle at any time, you will be billed for the excess at the current “pay as you go” rate. You can upgrade your bundle at any time too.

See our current price matrix.

What forms of payment do you accept?

For cloud services, we accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover. We do not accept PayPal for cloud services, but we do accept PayPal for dedicated servers at M5Hosting.com. PayPal debit or credit card by Mastercard is accepted for both M5Hosting.com and cloud services.

How do I close my account?

The best way to stop incurring charges is to delete all of your virtual machines. Remember, you are billed hourly unless you are using a monthly bundle. You can stop incurring costs within the hour.

If you prefer to save some backups for future use and minimize your bill until that time, you can do that too by creating templates from your VMs and then deleting your VMs. The backup space used for these templates will continue to incur charges. You only need one template for each unique VM profile (OS, applications and custom configuration). Additional system-specific data can be backed up offsite.

If you just want to remove billing information from our system, and prevent any use of your account, please open a support ticket and we will help remove you from the system. We will require authentication that you are the owner of the account, and confirmation that you are authorized to do this for your account.

Virtual Machines

How do I create a Virtual Machine (VM)?

       To create a virtual machine (VM), click on “Virtual Machines” in the left column, then click “Add New Virtual Machine” at the top or bottom of the page….

     1) Choose a “label” (nickname), hostname and password

Warning: The password will be displayed as you type!

     2) Select the OS template (only CentOS/RHEL for now)

     3) Adjust the resources using the sliders or by typing in the numeric fields

Note: If you type in the text fields, give it a second for the slider to update before tabbing or clicking out of the field.

     4) IMPORTANT: You *must* choose a Network Zone (“z0″ for public, or “z0-private” for RFC 1918 IP addresses).

Finally, click “Create Virtual Machine” at the bottom of the page.

You will then be taken to the details page for this VM, where you can watch the “Virtual Machine Activity Log” as it is provisioned. Also, you can always come back to this page to retrieve the IP address and login information.

How do I create a custom template?

Custom templates in the M5 Cloud are created from backups. To create a backup see how to create a manual backup. To create a custom template from an existing backup, click on “Virtual Machines” in the left column, select the desired Virtual Machine (VM), then click the “Storage” tab at the top. Now click on “Backups” on the tab underneath and click “Convert to template”. Enter a label for your template and adjust the minimum memory and disk sizes if desired, then click “Convert Backup”.

After a moment your new template will be created. You can view your template by clicking on “Templates List” in the left column and then clicking the “User Templates” tab at the top. You can edit a template or delete a template from this page.

To add a new VM from your template, select the appropriate Operating System and Distribution and you will see your custom template listed in the “Template” pull-down menu.

How do I adjust the CPU and RAM resources for a VM?

To adjust the number of CPUs, the CPU guarantee, or the size of RAM on a Virtual Machine (VM) click on “Virtual Machines” in the left column, click on the desired VM, then click “Adjust Resource Allocation”. You can also change the Label of the VM on this page. Please note that currently only CentOS templates support adjusting resource without a reboot. Adjusting resources on a VM built from other templates will require a reboot.

What is “CPU guarantee”?

The CPU guarantee is the percentage of each of your selected number of CPUs that are always available for that VM’s use. If no other VMs (yours or anyone else’s) are currently using the remaining capacity on those CPUs, then your VM can “burst” above this guarantee. But, as soon as another VM starts using the part of those CPUs that are not guaranteed to your VM, then your VM will no longer be able to use that additional CPU capacity.

For example, let’s imagine you chose to create a VM with a guarantee of 50% of 2 CPUs (paying for 100% CPU guarantee total), and that you are running a CPU-intensive application that can use up to 100% of two CPUs. If this VM is alone on a hypervisor, or if the other VMs on that hypervisor are all using other CPU cores, or if other VMs on that hypervisor are also using your two CPU cores but are currently idle, then your VM will be able to use up to 100% of both of its two CPUs (200% CPU total). But if another VM on that hypervisor has also allocated a guarantee of 50% of two or more cores and is on the same two cores as your VM and is also running a CPU-intensive application, then your VM will only be able to use up to 50% of each of its two CPUs (100% CPU total).

If you chose to pay for 1% of 12 CPUs (12% CPU total), you could potentially get up to 100% of 12 CPUs (1200% CPU total) if no other VMs were using that capacity. But when other systems started using that capacity you would only be guaranteed 1% of 12 CPUs (12% CPU total), which could be insufficient for your application.

Our general advice is to determine how much computational power your application needs to function properly (perhaps through some trial-and-error experimentation) and use that information to choose the number of CPU cores and the guaranteed CPU percentage.

NOTE: You can adjust this value on your VM after it has been created. See “How do I adjust the CPU and RAM resources for a VM?”.

How do I adjust the disk resources for a VM?

To change the size of any disk attached to your Virtual Machine (VM) click on “Virtual Machines” in the left column, select the desired VM, then click the “Storage” tab at the top. All disks attached to your VM will be listed here. To change the size of a disk click on pencil icon (edit) and enter the new size of the disk.

Please note that the M5 Cloud will automatically reboot your VM to perform this operation.

How do I add a disk to an existing VM?

To add a disk to an existing VM click on “Virtual Machines” in the left column, select the desired VM, then click the “Storage” tab at the top. In the lower right click on “Add New Disk”. Select the Data store you would like to build the disk from and the size of the disk. By default the cloud will automatically create an ext3 filesystem on the disk. To change this behavior deselect “Require Format Disk”. If desired, you can allow the M5 Cloud to update your the Linux FSTAB file with a mount point of your choosing at the bottom of this page. It will create the mount point for you.

Please note that the M5 Cloud will automatically reboot your VM to perform this operation.

Why can’t I create another Virtual Machine (VM)?

You may not be able to create an additional virtual machine (VM) if your existing virtual machines are using enough of your available resources such that insufficient RAM or disk space remains available in your account.

Note: We place protective resource limits on each account. You may create as many VMs as will fit within the resources in your “billing plan”. You may request these limits be raised by contacting support.

To see your current limits, click on “Users and Groups” in the left column. Then click on “Billing Plan” to the right of your user. Here under the “Max” columns you can see the current limits on your billing plan.

To see your current usage, go to the Dashboard and click on the “pie chart” or “cloud” icons on the big “dial”.

Note: New VMs require a minimum of 1GB RAM and 5GB disk. You can reallocate resources within each of your existing VMs by clicking “Adjust Resource Allocation” on each VM’s overview/details page.

How do I ensure my VMs are always booted on different hypervisors?

The M5 Cloud supports Virtual Machine (VM) segregation, allowing you to ensure a VM is never booted to the same hypervisor as another VM, if desired. Isolating a VM from multiple VMs is not yet supported.

To isolate a VM from another VM, click on “Virtual Machines” in the left column, click on the desired VM, then click “Segregate Virtual Machine”. Now select the VM that you would like to keep the current VM isolated from in the pull-down menu.

Can I get a “console” on my VMs?

The M5 Cloud technology has a built-in console feature. Browse to the VM you wish to access and click on its name to view its details. At the top of the page are three “menu buttons”: Overview, Networking, and Storage. Hover your mouse over the “Overview” button and a row of menu buttons should appear below that, including “Console”. Slide your mouse down to the lower row of menu buttons and the over and click on “Console”. Now you should be taken to a page with an “Open Console” button. Click that button and a new window should open with a Java console applet.

Please note that the “Power Saving” features are still enabled. Hit an innocent key like “Shift” to wake up the console.

If you need further assistance, please open a ticket.

Help, I broke something! Can I boot my VM in “recovery mode”?

You can! Click on “Virtual Machines” in the left column, select the desired Virtual Machine (VM), then click “Reboot in Recovery”. A pop-up window showing the login credentials will be shown. Click “OK” to reboot into recovery mode. You can access the system via ssh or from the console to do whatever you need to do. Once you are finished with the console, navigate back to the overview page for your VM and click “Reboot Virtual Machine”. The VM will then reboot into the normal operating system.

WARNING!!! Recovery mode is very insecure by default! PLEASE configure the firewall for your VM via the M5 Cloud interface to block port 22 to the world, only allowing access from designated IP addresses. See how to configure custom firewall rules.

If you need further assistance, please open a ticket.

Hypervisor Zones

What are your “Hypervisor Zones”?

Hypervisor Zones are groupings of hypervisors according to their hardware specifications. As our cloud grows, we will inevitably introduce different generations of hypervisors… some with more RAM, faster CPUs, CPUs with more cores, etc. In order to bill properly for these different types of computing resources, we have to keep the various types of hypervisors in separate hypervisor zones.

We currently have the following hypervisor zones available for public use:

• zone ‘A’: 8 cores @2.0 GHz, 20GB RAM max per VM
• zone ‘B’: 8 cores @2.4 GHz, 80GB RAM max per VM
• zone ‘C’: 12 cores @2.4 GHz, 80GB RAM max per VM

You cannot choose a hypervisor zone as you are creating a new VM in the Cloud Manager. It will be selected automatically to efficiently allocate resources within the cloud. But you can hot-migrate a VM to another hypervisor zone once it is fully built.

See below if you want to learn how to move your VM between HV Zones.

I want to make my VM larger than I’m currently able to. Can I move my VM to a different Hypervisor Zone?

If you would like to move your Virtual Machine (VM) to different Hypervisor Zone with more available resources, click on “Virtual Machines” in the left column, select the desired Virtual Machine (VM), and then click “Migrate Virtual Machine”.

Only hypervisors that have the necessary resources available to accept your VM will be listed. The “Zone” is designated by the third letter in the label on the hypervisor. (For example, ‘hva01′ would be in hypervisor zone ‘A’.) See above for a description of our available hypervisor zones.

Backups

Do you offer backups?

Yes! Every disk on any virtual machine can be configured with “Auto-backup”, which will automatically perform and retain one daily, one weekly, one monthly, and one annual backup of the entire disk. You can set this option when you create a VM, or you can add it later.

You can also perform ad hoc backups of any disk. The cost is based on the amount of space used on the backup server. All backups are stored compressed, so the amount of data stored and billed for is as low as possible. See our current price matrix for the cost per GB.

Even without the backup service, you are protected against a hard drive failure on the host, as we utilize hardware RAID mirroring across multiple drives. However, this is not a substitute for proper backups.

How do Automatic Backups work? How do I enable them?

The M5 Cloud supports automated backups. With this feature enabled the M5 Cloud will take yearly, monthly, weekly and daily backups of your Virtual Machine (VM). When creating a new VM you can configure automated backups by selecting the “Required automatic backup” option on the “Add new virtual machine” page.

To enable automatic backups on an existing VM click on “Virtual Machines” in the left column, select the desired VM, then click the “Storage” tab at the top. Click on “Yes” under the “Autobackup?” column for the desired disk.

Can I create a backup manually?

Yes. You can create a backup manually any time you choose. Click on “Virtual Machines” in the left column, select the desired Virtual Machine (VM), then click the “Storage” tab at the top. Now click the truck icon (Backups list) for the disk you want to create a backup for. Finally, click “Take a Backup”. A backup will immediately be scheduled, but it may take a few minutes to complete.

Can I set up custom backup schedules?

Yes. You can configure custom backup scheduling options for any Virtual Machine (VM) on the M5 Cloud. You can either edit the existing Automatic Backup scheduling or create new schedules. To make scheduling changes click on “Virtual Machines” in the left column, select the desired VM, then click the “Storage” tab at the top. Now click the clipboard icon (“Schedule for Backups”).

If you have automatic backups configured this list will already be populated. Feel free to hit the pencil icon (“Edit”) to change the existing schedules or the “—” icon to delete a schedule. To add a new schedule click on “New Schedule”. Select a duration and a time period. For example, to schedule an automatic backup every two days you would enter “2” for the duration and select “Days” in the “Period” pull-down menu.

How do I restore a VM from backups?

To restore a Virtual Machine (VM) from a backup click on “Virtual Machines” in the left column, select the desired VM, then click the “Storage” tab at the top. Now click “Backups” on the tab underneath and click “Restore” next to the backup you wish to restore from.

This operation will immediately reboot the VM, format the disk, and restore from the backup.

Load Balancers

How do I create a load-balanced cluster?

M5 Cloud supports the creation of load-balanced clusters. These allow you to distribute traffic across multiple virtual machines.

• First, create the VMs to be the cluster nodes.
• Go to the Dashboard in the Cloud Manager.
• Click on “Load Balancers” in the left column and then click on “Add a new Balancer” in the upper-right.
• Provide a network port to balance across the nodes. If you want to balance multiple ports, click the green “plus” icon next to the “Ports” field and enter an additional port on the next line. (You can repeat this process to add more ports to be balanced.)
• Specify an internal label and hostname.
• Choose the “public” network zone.
• Specify the port speed.
• For each VM to put behind the load balancer, choose the VM from the drop-down list and click “Add Node”. [NOTE: Be sure to assign a node during this initial configuration. If you do not assign any nodes when the LB is created, it could be randomly assigned to a different network from your nodes. Then you would be unable to add your nodes to it later!]
• Finally, click “Save” and your load balancer will be built.

NOTE: This will reboot the VMs that you included as cluster nodes.

How much does each load balancer cost?

Load balancers are billed by the resources they consume. Each load balancer appliance is currently provisioned with the following resources:

• 512MB RAM
• 10% of 1 core, CPU guarantee
• 6GB disk

You can see the hourly rate for each load balancer on its Overview page. Click on “Load Balancers” in the left menu, and then click on the label of the load balancer. Look for the field labeled “Price per hour powered ON/OFF”.

Which IP address is balanced across the cluster?

Each load balancer comes with two IP addresses. The first is the management IP address. The second is the load balanced IP address.

You can see the IP addresses for each load balancer on its Overview page. Click on “Load Balancers” in the left menu, and then click on the label of the load balancer. Look for the field labeled “IP Addresses”.

So, for example, if the IP addresses on a load balancer were X.X.X.99 and X.X.X.100, you would configure DNS to direct traffic for your load-balanced services to the X.X.X.100 IP address.

Resource utilization

How much bandwidth am I using?

You can view your current and historical bandwidth usage in our Cloud Manager. Just log in, go to the details page for your virtual machine, and click the “Networking” menu button at the top of the page. Make sure the “Network Interfaces” subsection is selected just below that. You should see a list of the network interfaces for this virtual machine. Just click the little icon that looks like a bar graph (“Interface usage”) and you will be taken to the “Network Interface Usage” page for that interface.

The top chart shows bandwidth used in the last 24 hours, accurate to within one minute. The bottom chart shows hourly usage for up to three months.

You can zoom into a specific time period by clicking and dragging in a chart. To zoom out, click the “Show all” button that appears in the upper-right of a zoomed chart.

How many IOPS am I using?

You can view your current and historical disk usage in our Cloud Manager. Just log in, go to the details page for your virtual machine, and click the “Storage” menu button at the top of the page. Make sure the “Disks” subsection is selected just below that. You should see a list of the disks associated with this virtual machine. Just click the little icon that looks like a bar graph (“Disk Usage”) and you will be taken to the usage page for that disk.

The top chart shows IOPS used in the last 24 hours, accurate to within one minute. The next chart shows hourly usage (in IOPS) for up to three months. The next two charts show disk usage as the amount of data written/read to/from the disk. (Disk usage is billed by IOPS.)

You can zoom into a specific time period by clicking and dragging in a chart. To zoom out, click the “Show all” button that appears in the upper-right of a zoomed chart.

Security & Networking

How do I configure custom firewall rules?

To configure custom firewall rules for a virtual machine (VM), click on “Virtual Machines” in the left column, click on the desired VM, then click “Edit Firewall Rules”.

Here you can add custom firewall rules for each interface you have already configured for your VM. The order of the rules is important. To make a rule for “Everything” you can simply leave the source address blank, it will add a rule for “0.0.0.0/0”. For example, to lock down ssh access on the default port 22 so that only you can access it you could add the following:

Interface Command Source Address Destination Port Protocol

22 ACCEPT MY.IP.ADDR 22 TCP

22 DROP 0.0.0.0/0 22 TCP

Alternatively, you could eliminate the second entry and rely on a “DROP” default firewall rule described below to block ssh traffic from everywhere else.

You can set the default firewall rules at the bottom of this page. By default this will be set to “ACCEPT”. If you would like to drop all traffic by default select “DROP” from the pull-down menu. This will drop all traffic except for any custom rules set above.

Don’t forget to click “Apply firewall rules” in the lower right for the changes to take effect.

Interface	Command	Source Address	Destination Port	Protocol
22	ACCEPT	MY.IP.ADDR	22	TCP
22	DROP	0.0.0.0/0	22	TCP

Can I add my ssh keys to the M5 Cloud?

You can configure the M5 Cloud to automatically provision every virtual machine (VM) you create with your own personal ssh keys. The ssh keys are part of your user profile. To add or remove ssh keys from your user profile, navigate to “My Profile” in the upper right and click “Edit Profile”. Then click “SSH-keys” in the upper right. Simply click “New SSH-key” and copy-paste your public key into the text window and click “Add new ssh key” to add the key to your profile. Having multiple ssh keys is supported.

If you already have VMs running, you can add your new ssh keys to them through the user interface. Click on “Virtual Machines” in the left column, click on the desired VM, then click “Set ssh keys”. Currently this requires a reboot of the VM.

How do I add an IP address to my virtual machine?

In the “Networking” -> “IP Addresses” tab you can find the list of assigned IP addresses, allocate new IP addresses, and rebuild network.

To allocate a new IP Address to a VM:

• Go to your Control Panel’s Virtual Machines menu.
• Click on your VM in the Cloud Manager and then go to “Networking” → “IP Addresses”…
• Click on “Allocate New IP Address Assignment”.
• Select a network interface from the drop-down menu. (Only the network interfaces you added to the VM will be available.)
• Select an IP address from the IP Pool associated with the network interface.
NOTE: You may select an IP address that is already assigned to a VM, but only one VM should be online at a time.
• Click “Add IP Address Assignment”
• Click “Rebuild Network” on your VM’s “Overview/Properties” screen. WARNING: This *will* reboot your VM!

Now, when you visit the details page for this VM, you can see both of the assigned IP addresses.

How do I add a private IP address to my Virtual Machines (VMs)?

If you have multiple virtual machines in the same “region”, adding private IP addresses will allow you to communicate between them without incurring bandwidth usage on your account. Before you can add a private IP address to a virtual machine (VM), you must first add a new “interface” to that VM:

• Click on your VM in the Cloud Manager and then go to “Networking” → “Network Interfaces”…
• Click on “Add New Network Interface”.
• Give your interface an arbitrary label (e.g. “eth1″, or “private net1″).
• For the Physical Network, choose a network that starts with “10.” (e.g. “10.2.0.0/22″).
• (Optionally, adjust the port speed.)
• Click “Add Network Interface”…
WARNING: This may automatically reboot your VM!

NOTE: If your VM is not reachable after adding the new interface, first check the console (Overview → Console → “Open Console”) and see if the VM is still rebooting, waiting for an IP address from the network). If your VM is fully booted and still unreachable, you can try using the “Rebuild Network” option on your VM’s “Overview/Properties” screen. WARNING: This *will* reboot your VM!

Now that you have a new interface on your VM, you can allocate it a private IP address….

• Click on your VM in the Cloud Manager and then go to “Networking” → “IP Addresses”…
• Click on “Allocate New IP Address Assignment”.
• Select the network interface that you just created.
• Choose an IP address from the drop-down list.
NOTE: We recommend choosing a private IP address that corresponds to the public IP address of your VM (e.g. for a VM with public IP address 108.161.144.99, you might want to choose the private IP 10.2.0.99).

• Click “Add IP Address Assignment”

Your new interface should now have a private IP address configured.

NOTE: If, after allocating the new IP address, your VM is not reachable or the private IP address is not immediately assigned in your OS, try using the “Rebuild Network” option on your VM’s “Overview/Properties” screen. WARNING: This *will* reboot your VM!

Now, when you visit the details page for this VM, you can see both of the assigned IP addresses.

If you have two VMs with private IP addresses, they should be able to communicate with each other via those IP addresses.

IPv6 support

IPv6 support is something we are working on in 2013. Of course we are well aware of IPv4 exhaustion and we have been making the best of the IPv4 allocations we have for some time now. We currently do not offer IPv6 because it would be an inferior product until all of our upstream providers support it.

If you would like to be kept posted on our IPv6 progress, please feel free to open a ticket with us with “IPv6″ in the subject line. That way, when we have announcements about this, we can search our ticketing system for “IPv6″ and update you.

DNS

Do you provide DNS hosting?

Yes! Anycast DNS Hosting is built into our Cloud Hosting environment. Anycast DNS lowers the time for your users to resolve your domain name, making your site come up faster for an improved user experience. Anycast also improves redundancy and protection from DNS-based denial of service attacks. The Anycast DNS servers are in 8 geographically disparate locations around the world.

Our Anycast DNS Hosting service is free of charge for all of our cloud hosting customers.

You are more than welcome to run your own DNS servers or outsource this service to another provider.

Do I need a domain name?

No. However, the PTR record for your IP address is automatically generated using the hostname you choose when building the virtual machine. If you use some random non-FQDN hostname, then your PTR record will be a random non-FQDN too. This might cause problems for outbound email deliverability, or other issues.

How do you handle reverse DNS (PTRs)?

”Reverse DNS” (known technically as PTR records) are DNS entries that map an IP address to a hostname. We control the reverse DNS records for our IPv4 networks and we cannot delegate this authority to you. If you need a PTR record set or changed for any of your IPs, please just send us a request and we will get it taken care of as quickly as possible.

(N.B.: If you are having trouble with mail sent from your server being rejected by some recipient domains due to the IP of your mail server not mapping back to the name advertised by your SMTP agent, you may need to have us change the PTR for your primary IP address to match this name.)

Cloud FAQ and HOWTO

Frequently Asked Questions; How to ___; etc.

Here are a list of things we get asked about often. Hopefully the answers here are helpful….

General

Virtual Machines

Hypervisor Zones

Backups

Load Balancers

Resource utilization

Security & Networking

DNS

General

Virtual Machines

Hypervisor Zones

Backups

Load Balancers

Resource utilization

Security & Networking

DNS

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