News & Features
Windows Cloud Hosting Has Arrived!
Fast & Dependable Windows Cloud Hosting Options Meet Storm On Demand’s Unrivaled Performance

We have once again re-engineered Storm On Demand® and the result is a freshly minted option to deploy Windows 2008 R2 SP1 images! This is currently available in our Fully Managed, Core Managed and Self-Managed packages and comes with all of the Storm On Demand® features that have helped us gain our reputation as the Cloud Hosting industry’s premier option for High Performance solutions.
Available On:
Supported Software:
- Windows 2008 64-bit
- Parallels Plesk
Available Regions:
- US West (Arizona)
- US Central (MIchigan)
As ASP and .NET scripts, integrated functionality characteristics and enhanced development of searchable databases have all gained in popularity, Windows has gathered momentum amongst our users. Storm On Demand’s performance and feature-rich platform provides these new Windows Cloud Hosting users a robust and smooth functioning experience from the smallest applications to the largest enterprise solutions. This was made possible by our extensive re-engineering and commitment to answer the growing demand for Windows with a seamless integration into our existing Storm On Demand® platform and the popular options and features it boasts:
- Advanced Networking & Load Balancing Made Easy
- Industry-leading Management Console
- Cloud Attached Firewalls
- Private Networking
- Load Balancing
- Deploy from Images
- Save Images for Future Deployment
- Deploy Windows and Linux Servers with the same platform
- Automated Server Deployment on Demand
- With Hourly Pay-As-You-Go Billing, You Only Pay for What You Use
- Multiple Geographic Regions Available
- Scale from Storm Server, to Storm SSD or Storm Bare Metal on Demand
- More Options Being Added by the Day
Our Windows platform has been completely engineered in-house, and is sure to please anyone looking to get the highest performance experience out of Windows Cloud Hosting. Please contact a Sales Engineer if you need help deploying a server or if you have any questions. You can reach us at 1.877.330.7760 option 2 or via email: sales@stormondemand.com. You can also chat with us at StormOnDemand.com.
Storm SSD Redefining High Performance

Join with us to celebrate what is sure to be one of the year’s most anticipated developments in High Performance Cloud Hosting: the unveiling of Storm SSD, by Storm On Demand. Having set the industry benchmark for I/O speeds recently with Storm 96GB, our engineers have done it again, eclipsing our previous record with the inclusion of Solid State technology!
Benefits of Storm SSD:
- Increased power, speed and performance
- Full redundancy
- Reduced I/O queues
- Unrivaled database performance
- High I/O performance, eliminating starved CPU states
- Eliminate “bottleneck” effect

Storm SSD is poised to open a world of innovation in the hosting market that has been previously untapped. In a recent benchmarking test, Storm SSD 12GB performed 4K Sequential Writes at 225,000 IOPS. By contrast, Storm’s non-SSD 8GB instance performed the test at 15,000 IOPS with Amazon EC2 m1.large clocking in at 4,900. We are excited to push the boundaries of what people have come to expect from Cloud hosting with one of the industries first products designed to use the lowest possible server load and maximize your performance
Complete Test Results:
| Amazon EC2 m1.large |
8GB Storm | 12GB Storm SSD | |
| 4K Sequential Write | 4,900 IOPS | 15,000 IOPS | 225,000 IOPS |
| 4K Sequential Read | 7,800 IOPS | 28,000 IOPS | 475,000 IOPS |
| 4K Random Write | 265 IOPS | 204 IOPS | 20,000 IOPS |
| 4K Random Read | 210 IOPS | 700 IOPS | 35,000 IOPS |
| Testing performed using iozone3_398 with the following command line options on each server instance: iozone -l 32 -O -i 0 -i 1 -i 2 -e -+n -r 4K -s 4G |
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| Amazon EC2 m1.large |
8GB Storm | 12GB Storm SSD | |
| Sequential Write | 36MB/s | 110MB/s | 900 MB/s |
| Sequential Read | 33MB/s | 150MB/s | 1,900 MB/s |
| Random Write | 1.5MB/s | 1.6MB/s | 77 MB/s |
| Random Read | 1.1MB/s | 2.4MB/s | 142 MB/s |
| Testing performed using iozone3_398 with the following command line options on each server instance: iozone -l 32 -i 0 -i 1 -i 2 -e -+n -r 4K -s 2G |
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Storm SSD virtually eliminates the "bottleneck" effect of inbound and outbound data. In conjunction with the enhanced I/O speeds, these specifications combine to afford our users a previously unavailable level of performance. The outcome of this marriage of High Performance hardware and Cloud Hosting technology is a new breed of hosting environments, custom designed for the highest level of performance when utilizing frequently accessed information, large read-intensive databases, and any other enterprise application in which the lightning fast read/write speeds of Storm SSD could be unleashed.
Product & Pricing Information
| Type | RAM | DISK | CPU | COST |
| 3G-SSD | 3G | 35G | 1 | $75/month |
| 6G-SSD | 6G | 70G | 2 | $150/month |
| 12G-SSD | 12G | 140G | 4 | $300/month |
With these High Power innovations enabling enhanced usage of your resources along with providing full redundancy, it’s clear that our users will find great value in Storm SSD. The pricing, listed in the table above, will remain competitive and commensurate with similar SSD powered hosting products. We are excited to see the new level of performance our users will achieve with what is sure to be one of the year’s most notable advancements in Cloud Hosting!
Mind Your Hosting Region

Unpredictability can cause a lot of anxiety for any business. Phrases like “disaster recovery”, “business continuity”, and “redundancy planning” all probably percolate to the top of your business’s priority list annually, or perhaps even every quarter.
When in the process of selecting a web host, nearly every customer I’ve spoken with inevitably wants to discuss handling risk. After all, it is their livelihoods that they have invested in their small, medium or even large business.
We discuss risk on practically every level: physical, logical, and virtual, or perhaps every layer: server, service, and site. Determining at what levels and layers to add redundancy, quick recovery, and/or other methods of fault tolerance can be a daunting task. Common answers include: RAID arrays, managed high availability solutions, load balancers, managed file replication and, of course, multi-region capability.
Multi-region capability was once the most difficult of those solutions to implement. Formerly, it was as expensive as it sounded and often very laborious to manage. With products like Storm on Demand and its “Region” capability, it’s very quick and easy to move your data to a new zone should a region fail for any reason, large or small. Preparedness is a potent protector of business.
The Impact of Internet Latency on Web Sites
When a company decides where to host their data, network performance always comes into play. Network performance is often simplified to just network bandwidth. The common misconception is: greater bandwidth is equal to faster delivery of information.
Latency is the quiet brother of bandwidth and equally important to consider. Latency impacts network performance by causing delays in transmission, which prevents data from using all available bandwidth. High latency can cause severe issues with network performance, slowing downloads and increasing the time it takes to load a web page. When all other site and network efficiencies have been put in place, latency can be the near-inescapable bane of the modern website, with limits set by the speed of light itself.
The Liquid Web network, for example, uses state-of-the-art switching equipment to ensure the lowest latency possible. Once latency at a single site is completely minimized, considering the geographical region in which your data is hosted is the next step in lowering latency.
Even a few milliseconds (ms) of latency can lengthen the time it takes your backups to complete or your employees to load the data they need. Thankfully, with products like Storm on Demand and its “Region” capability, it’s very quick and easy to migrate your data to the nearest zone!
Storm On Demand Featuring New Operating Systems!
Our users spoke, and we answered the call: we re-engineered Storm on Demand all the way down to the hypervisor and made CentOS 6.2, Arch Linux and the latest updates from Ubuntu and Debian available to our users. This re-engineering was made with an eye to the needs of our users and our ultimate goal to consistently improve performance and add new capabilities whenever possible. These updates will include all of the latest features, up-to-date tools, fine-grained controls, user-friendly resources, and refreshed life and support cycles.
Now Available!

- Cent OS 6.2
- Arch Linux
- Debian 6.0
- Ubuntu 11.10
Have you been itching to test out the speed, flexibility, and exemplary package management system boasted by Arch Linux? Want to apply the streamlined features, user-friendly improvements, and efficiency of CentOS 6.2 to your enterprise solution? Have you wanted to see what the enhanced community resources and improved interface of Ubuntu 11.10 have to offer? Now is the time to see how these Operating Systems can take your Cloud Hosting to the next level!
Undertaking such a significant re-engineering effort with Storm On Demand, all while maintaining the exemplary service we’ve come to be known for, will pay off as our users have a full palette of features at their disposal on the industry’s highest performing Cloud. Our recent expansion, in addition to these operating system updates, are just a step in our commitment to listen to our customers and continue to innovate and improve as we expand. Feel free to reach out to us with feedback here.
Storm On Demand Unveils New Regions!
Experience High Performance & Enhanced Security With New Arizona Location

We’re proud to announce that Storm On Demand has expanded to feature two separate geographical regions. In the new regions, US Central (headquartered in Michigan) and US West (headquartered in Arizona), Storm will now offer its users true Geographic Redundancy and higher performance features while reducing latency!
Benefits of Storm on Demand Regions

- Locate Data Closer to End-User to reduce Latency
- Back-up Data with “Hot Standby Site”
- True Geographic Redundancy
- Clone Easily Between Regions
Improved Performance
The unveiling of our Western Region is a huge coup for users seeking high performance cloud hosting with the option of Geographic Redundancy. Already achieving some of the loftiest benchmarks for performance in the cloud hosting industry, Storm On Demand’s highly connected network will now allow users to experience a significant performance upgrade on top of our already impressive marks. Simply put, the shorter physical distance your data has to travel to from its location to your end users, the faster your enterprise runs.
Geographic Redundancy
In addition to the performance upgrades detailed above, Storm On Demand users will now be able to use the host’s separate regions to create Geographic Redundancy with a “hot standby site.” Similar to fail-over clustering, a hot standby site allows your operation to move to a fully functional standby system should your primary system fail. Although both Storm On Demand Regions are located in Disaster Neutral areas of the United States, this type of redundancy is ideal for when unexpected situations arise that can’t be mitigated by simply employing local redundancy systems.
We’ve Lowered Your Bandwidth Costs!

At Storm On Demand we are constantly working hard to drive down costs for our customers, while simultaneously increasing performance and reliability. Today we are proud to announce significant price reductions to our bandwidth pricing for all current and future Storm On Demand customers. Effective Wednesday, October 19th, customers will not pay for any inbound data transfer. In addition we are slashing our pricing for outbound data transfer from $.15/per Gig to $0.05/per Gig!
We’ve also lowered the price on our bandwidth bundle options, which now include free incoming bandwidth. Clients who currently have bandwidth bundles will see a reduction in costs, as well as their incoming bandwidth not being deducted from their bundled quota.
| Bandwidth Bundle | OLD Cost (split between inbound & outbound) |
NEW Cost (only charges outbound – no inbound charge) |
| 250 GB Transfer/mo. | $25 | $10 |
| 500 GB Transfer/mo. | $45 | $20 |
| 1000 GB Transfer/mo. | $70 | $40 |
| 2000 GB Transfer/mo. | $130 | $80 |
| 4000 GB Transfer/mo. | $250 | $160 |
This means that Storm On Demand customers can upload unlimited amounts of data and not be charged a penny for inbound data transfer! This pricing reduction represents a nearly 80% savings over our previous pricing! For example, if you were transferring 10TB inbound and 10TB outbound you will save 78.26% with our new pricing. Current Storm On Demand customers will see their bandwidth pricing automatically reduced.
These price reductions are a result of our ongoing network improvements including expanded network capacity and the addition of many important new peering partners. Storm On Demand’s network is now peered with Amazon, Google, Akamai, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook and many more. This means that Storm on Demand is simultaneously improving our networking infrastructure while also reducing costs to customers.
By avoiding the tiered pricing plans utilized by other cloud hosting providers, Storm On Demand’s pricing structure empowers our users to generate instant savings by not paying for bandwidth they’re not using and not paying a premium for the bandwidth they are using. Many of these tiered plans require you to use more than 350TB of bandwidth to attain the cheapest outbound bandwidth pricing. Storm On Demand ensures that our users will receive the best pricing on bandwidth, even for low usage.
We’re looking forward to hearing great feedback from clients, old and new, as they take advantage of this significant price reduction! In the meantime, Storm On Demand will continue to grow and develop with our customers in order to continue offering the most amazing high performance cloud hosting options in the market.
Storm On Demand is Taking Cloud Hosting to New Heights with 96GB!
We’re excited to introduce you to the latest advancement in the Cloud Hosting! We have recently rolled out our first batch of 96GB Storm Servers and we’re proud to report that they have achieved, by far, the best I/O performance available in a Cloud, thanks to our extensive engineering.
In addition to 96GB of RAM, each of these servers contain 32 cores (at 2.0GHZ each, 64.0GHZ total), writes at over 3 Gbit/s and reads at over 4 Gbits/s. This is integral to the 96GB’s unparalleled I/O performance which allows these servers to operate larger operations at previously unheard of speeds. Unlike most public cloud platforms, Storm On Demand Servers’ incredible I/O performance helps overcome the common objection of I/O contention associated with switching to Cloud Computing.
New Storm on Demand 96GB Features
- 96GB RAM
- 32 Cores operating at 2.0GHZ each
- 3.3+ Gbit/s writes
- 4.0+ Gbit/s reads
The ease of scaling seamlessly from a small server instance to literally the most powerful server hardware available has come to set Storm On Demand apart in the Cloud Hosting market. With 96GB Storm Servers, we have raised the ceiling on our own definition of “most powerful server.” This seamless scaling, up or down, can all be done as simply as a mouse click or automatically leveraging our complete API. We believe users shouldn’t have to sacrifice performance to adopt Cloud Computing.
All Storm Servers are available with your choice of Ubuntu, CentOS or Debian. Liquid Web’s world renowned Heroic Support® is optionally available on all Storm Servers. You can learn more about the new options at https://www.stormondemand.com/pricing/ or by calling (877) 330-7660. Don’t hesitate to contact us immediately with any questions you might have. Thanks to our Heroic Support® staff and automatic migrations, your important applications could be benefiting from this outstanding flexibility right away.
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