The company launched in 1995, the same year Windows 95 was released, and the first time JavaScript was introduced and deployed. This means that the company is at that legal drinking age where it can experiment and offer a truly extraordinary experience to any visitor. It uses cutting-edge cloud computing technology with years of experience, offering Hosting Virtual Private Server services, Cloud Servers with Web Hosting Panels, WordPress and cPanel support, Cloud Private network, basically, if you think it exists, the chances are high that Kamatera has you covered.

Now, the way I see this, this is perfect for any business that wants to have instant-scaling potential in the future. A company that can start low and build itself up, with servers that can follow their growth.
If you want to open a startup or already have one in the web and app development sectors, maybe you want to open your own bakery, sell bagels online, and have a Kamatera server in the backyard. Well, anything is possible, at least that is what they claim.

However, this is the promise of just about any hosting provider out, so what makes Kamatera special, and is it worth the hype?

Getting Started with Kamatera

Since I’m the obvious expert here, after all, I’ve eaten a lot of bagels, and my bakery does indeed have a Kamatera server in the back; I’ll introduce you to how all of this works.

Signing up is a simple process, and you’ve probably signed up for thousands of websites at this point, possibly skipping the terms and conditions as well as the privacy policy, so I’m just going to say that its easy, clean, you get a 30-day free trial, what’s not to love here?

We are moving on.

Server Management

You log into your freshly made account and are invited to boogie! There are two dancing stickmen waiting for you to add your first module and be the life of the party!

Now, on the left side of the screen, you have a plethora of menu items, including:

• Dashboard
• My Cloud
• Servers
• Networks
• Hard Disk Library
• Add-on Services
• API
• Permissions
• Support
• Billing

Now, since we’re going to review the hosting part of the service, click on “Servers,” which should bring you to the server management tab.

Here you need to click on “Create New Server” to begin your journey. This is going to be quite the journey, by the way, so if you need to make lunch before your significant other comes home, now would be the time to make the preparations.

Now you get to wait for the wizard to load!

Excitement overload, I know.

Moving on, you can select a zone. I’m currently located in Europe, so it automatically detects that and suggests that I use a server in either The Netherlands (Amsterdam), Germany (Frankfurt), or the United Kingdom (London).

Obviously, not all of us live in Europe, so pick your corresponding region for the best result, or the region of your target audience, or just try all of them out, see what works best. I’m going to support the server that’s behind my local bakery and pick the Amsterdam option.

Now you get to pick an image.

You have Server OS Images, Desktop OS Images, Apps Images, Service Images, and your private images.

Okay, so if you have no idea what you’re doing here, I’d recommend using a Server OS image, as you are indeed making a server to host your website on.

On this menu, you can choose between:

• CentOS
• Debian
• FreeBSD
• Ubuntu
• Windows

Each of these has its own benefit and drawback, but if you’re cheap like me, you can pick Ubuntu, it’s simple, clean, and completely free to use, and best of all, many features support it.

Now you get to pick the version. I would highly recommend always picking the newest version available. If you are in the future and are a cyborg (Not sure what people look like in the future yet, but that’s what countless sci-fi movies have to lead me to believe), pick the version that’s on top of your list. In my case, this is 20.04 – 64 bit.

Alternatively, you can also pick the Windows option if you are into that.

Now, on the server specs, there’s a little button that says Detailed View; I’d recommend picking that to get the prices to show up; this will let you calculate the performance based on your budget.

Now, keep in mind that if you want cPanel, Magento, or WordPress, you can pick those in Apps Images.

Now you can pick between general, dedicated, burstable, and availability.

For the sake of this review, I’ll pick on general.

Now, as I previously mentioned, I’m cheap; I just want to get a website up and to run in no time, so I’m going to pick 1 CPU; I’ll also get 1 GB of ram since the price is the same as getting 515 GB of ram so why not double it, and get only 5 GB of storage.

This service’s beauty is that, if tomorrow I want to get, let’s say, 12 CPU cores because my bagel website has gained traction and more people want to order bagels, I can simply do so instantly. I can also upgrade the RAM and the storage individually, which is neat.

Moving on, you can also click on and enable daily backups, which costs more, and turn on management services, which also costs more. I’ll skip these.

Now, you have an optional advanced configuration setup prompt here.

If you click on a show, you can install scripts, generate SSH keys, and add server notes and tags.

Finalize your settings by setting a password and selecting the number of servers as well as the server name.

With that out of the way, you’ll get your billing cycle and pricing details. For my specific server, it came out at $9 a month. I could have bought two bagels for that price, but hey, business is business.

You will receive a notification that will inform you that your server is in the queue.

This can be reviewed at the bottom of the screen.

Once this is completed, you will see the completed message.

The server will also show up on the list.

So far, it’s looking good; nothing has broken down; good going, Kamatera!

If you click on open, you’ll see the entire configuration at a glance.

On actions, you can manage your server through a wide array of features and functions.

Now, if you want to manage your newly developed WordPress VPS, you can find the WordPress admin web, username, and password on the INFO tab.

Enter the information and log in.

And that’s how you create a VPS using Kamatera for WordPress usage.

Web Hosting Panels

Kamatera offers you cPanel and WHM on Linux and Parallels Plesk for Linux or Microsoft Windows when it comes to the web hosting panels.

Here you can configure the webserver configuration, as well as FTP servers and SSL hosts, networking setup, reseller management, backup and restore capabilities, package management, control over bandwidth allocations, built-In migration tools, Easy GUI interface to manage the server, site security policy control, password configuration, Rich API for managing, Support, Full control over the webserver configuration, auditing tools.

Increasing the Server Configuration

What I and I assume many other experts out there genuinely love about Kamatera is the fact that you can update your configuration at any moment.

Today I’m cheap, tomorrow I might win the lottery and have some money to burn, or I simply might get rich from my bagel shop and feel like upgrading. I can do this by simply clicking on any of the drop-down menus on the right side of the screen and easily switch to whatever configuration I need at the moment, and this is what keeps things interesting and unique.

Network Management

In the network management tab, you can select the Zone tab and select a, well, region.

This is where you can create your very own network, truly spectacular.

To do this, you need to enter the VLAN name, the IP Address Scope, the Subnet Mask, the Gateway, the first DNS, and the second DNS and click on create a network.

If this is confusing, here are explanations about what each of these means:

VLAN- A VLAN is a number assigned to each switch port, the two switch ports in the red mini-switch could be assigned with VLAN#10, and the other could be VLAN#20

IP Address Scope- this is a range of IP addresses that the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol or DHCP server is configured to destitute.

Subnet Mask – a 32-bit number that is created by setting host bits to 0s and network bits to 1s. The subnet mask separates the IP address in the network to host addresses. The 255 address is always assigned to a broadcast address, and the 0 address is always assigned to a network address.

Gateway – a server designed to transform data streams to better match the device capabilities.

On the hard disk library page, you can select a zone and create a new server from pre-defined parameters.

Now, we won’t get into this too much, but it is important to note here that Kamatera allows you to create a new desktop, a new app, and a new service.

Add-on Services

This is where you will initially find the Cloud File Server and create an organization to manage users.

To do so, click on “Add Organization”.

Create a name and a password for the organization.

You can now individually add users by entering their email, password, validating their password and give them a quota.

Here you will have a view of all of the users.

Keep in mind that in order to use it, you will need to download and run it through OwnCloud.

Simply log into your account, and you will have access to all of your files.

API

Here you can manage the keys, check out the documentation, the CLI, and find the Developer Tools.

In the Permissions tab, you can create users as well as groups.

To do this, simply click on “Add New User.”

And here you’ll find all of the information about that user.

Refund and Cancellation

For the refunds, we will be going through the ticket support path.

To start with, go to Support and click on My Tickets.

Here, you can click on ‘create new ticket’, and after that, you need to enter the department as billing, subject that you want a refund, and in the content, you need to state what you need. Finally, click on Create Ticket and you are good to go.

Now, if you want to cancel any further charges, you need to remove any servers you have set up, as they are the ones that cost you on a monthly basis, so if you have 0 of them, you won’t be charged.

To do this, login to the Cloud Management Console.

Using the Management Console, you can Create, Upgrade, Download and Cancel your Services at any time.

Now, you can also disable your account, ant to do this, click on your name on the top right corner of the screen next to the Log Out Button, scroll down until you find Account Status, and click on ‘Disable My Account’.

Cloud Servers Explained

A cloud server is very similar to a regular server, except that this one is located in a virtual machine that works through a cloud infrastructure. It offers advantages, such as a high level of salability and the large availability, especially when you consider the price to performance ratio.

The cloud service model is a solution for a diverse type of computing resources, from startup development to enterprise IT, cloud server models, etc.

You get to set up a server within minutes, even if you’re inexperienced, you get instant scaling up or down as per requirement, 99.95% uptime, no hardware maintenance, low costs of ownership, a simple backup and monitoring solution as well as solid pricing.

Cloud Private Network Explained

A private cloud network is a model that provides your business with private access to the computing environment that you need. It has benefits such as providing exclusive access to data and eliminating privacy concerns. Private cloud networks are cost-effective, reliable, have increased security, and improved energy efficiency.

Cloud Firewall Explained

The Cloud Firewall prevents unauthorized access to your network infrastructure through intercepting and then rerouting or blocking unwanted traffic. This firewall analyses the data packets and filters them based on their source, as well as the destination and content, according to pre-defined rules you have set.

To set up the cloud firewall, you need to log into your Kamatera Control panel, Launch a new firewall in any of the data centers, configure the VLANs and connect to the firewall NICs.

Log into the firewall using the IP and URL that was provided by the portal and you can continue to manage the firewall rules.

Cloud Block Storage Explained

Cloud Block Storage is a data storage system meant for cloud servers. It is a virtual private hard disk when you think about it and can be used to store any information. These storage systems are meant for files, databases, images, or another type of file data that is high in demand and requires a lot of background storage processing power as well as offering online backups.

Cloud Load Balancer

Cloud Load Balancer is a virtual and very scalable high availability component that improves the user response time as well as the system’s stability through the distribution of workloads across plenty of working servers and resources. This is done in order to maximize the performance as well as avoid overload.  You have features such as load balancing algorithms such as Round Robin, handling of SSL decryption, least connections and weight, and even session persistence across HTTP/S protocols.

Managed Cloud Plans

The most basic plan includes providing services related to the Operating System and are categorized into support, installation, configuration, and operations.

The planning of your server infrastructure is based on your applications, the users, and their location.

They can be installed and configured as you request them to be. Here you can manage the operating system and the security upgrades, the software patches for the operating system, web server, application server, database, and other software, setup and fine-tuning, domain transfers, and load balancing setups.

You also have the extended plan that offers 24/7 monitoring, troubleshooting, automatic updates, maintenance, backups, DNS updates, Database Support, and a Development Environment.

Kamatera Features

You have Server Management, Cloud Management, Cloud Storage, and Server Backup.

In the server management section, you get access to CPU Monitoring, Email Monitoring, Patch Management, Server Monitoring, Credential Management, Event Logs, Scheduling, Virtual Machine Monitoring, and Much more.

In the Cloud Management section, you get access to Controls and permissions, capacity analytics, demand monitoring, performance analytics, supply monitoring, billing and provisioning, cost management, multi-cost management, overflow approval, and so on.

In the Cloud Storage section, you get access to controls and permissions, backups, data synchronization, file sharing, archiving and retention, data migration, encryption, version control, and much more.

In the Server Backup section, you get access to backup scheduling, compression, differential backup, encryption, VM backup, bare-metal restore, continuous backup, disaster recovery, and incremental backup.

Pricing

Okay, so before we get into the pricing, there’s one thing you need to keep in mind. All of the services on offer come with a 30-day free trial, albeit with certain restrictions, but you can still experience everything even before spending a single dollar.

• When it comes to Cloud Servers, they begin at $4 a month or $0.005/hour.
• When it comes to Cloud Block Storage, it begins at $0.05/month per gigabyte.
• When it comes to Private Cloud Network, it comes at no cost.
• When it comes to Cloud Load Balancer, it starts from $9/month.
• When it comes to Cloud Firewall, it starts at $9/month.
• When it comes to Managed Clout, it starts at $50/month per managed server.

The neat thing about the pricing is the fact that you can calculate everything up-front, based on your specific needs and choices.

This is showcased on the image, where I have selected a Type A server, with one CPU core, 1 GB of ram, 20 GB of storage, and 1 Public IP in Europe.

Performance of Kamatera

When it comes to performance, I ran the single core, 1 GB of ram server, and here’s what I got.

When it came to the average latency, it sat at 63ms. When it came to the P99 latency, the latency of the slowest HTTP requests that run on the web, I saw a latency of 155ms. The CPU idle was at 92% and completed 304 successful requests. Next, I tried to transfer large files, and the tests were repeated 4 times from different servers and the fastest one out of them was used as a point of comparison. Now, when it came to the download speed, I saw speeds of 1.90 Gbps, and when it came to upload speeds, I saw a performance of 309 Mbps. When it came to the average read and write speeds, I saw a read speed of 6.33 GiB/Sec and a write speed of 5.02 GiB/sec.

Overall this is excellent performance and I would highly recommend Kamatera for speed freaks.

Security and Backups

Kamatera offers top-notch security in all of its data centers, whereas only authorized personnel can enter the premises. They also use CCTVs and sensors for surveillance and tracking movement. Finally, there is a technical team that monitors all traffic and stops any cyber threats. With all of this in mind, Kamatera handles security and maintenance even for unmanaged hosting, at no extra cost.

At this point, I would like to mention the robust dedicated firewall scrubbing traffic and preventing malware, DDoS, and similar attacks. Another worthy mention is Kamatera’s disaster recovery service that lets users quickly recover their data without server downtime.

Better yet, the company provides an option to build your private cloud, in case you run an enterprise-grade setup processing sensitive info. This way, you would be able to outsource the service, yet not expose your data.

Kamatera provides a leading Disaster Recovery Management solution. It includes 24/7 real-time data replication, whereby your database is saved onto a hard disk drive in real-time. In other words, you will always have an up-to-date version of your data to restore. All you will need to do is specify a recovery point objective down to the second. In turn, Kamatera will provide you with a recovery time objective (RTO) of minutes.

The system also monitors the state of health of your servers and anticipates the moment of failure.  If a failure occurs, Kamatera achieves the recovery by an add-on solution known as a Server Recovery Option (SRO).

Summary

Okay, so this article can be a bit difficult, especially if you are a newcomer; however, the same can be said about Kamatera as-well. It’s not a hosting service that takes you by the hand and guides you each step of the way, but instead, it is a safe-haven of sorts for people who like to get technical. It is affordable, unique, and lets you scale up and upgrade at any time. The team behind the company has over 20 years of experience and offers some of the biggest VPS hosting solutions in the industry. The support system also gives you answers quickly. This is simply one of those services that have been around for a long time, and for good reasons.