The Complete Enterprise
Public Cloud Platform

Designed for your business needs today and tomorrow, the Lumen Cloud Platform is reliable, secure, robust and global.

Important Notice! The Lumen Public Cloud Platform will go end-of-life on September 30th, 2023. Please ensure that you have a plan to migrate prior to this date as all services will terminate on October 1st, 2023.

Lumen provides Cloud and Bare Metal servers on the Edge. Learn more here.

Overview

Public cloud servers for DevOps, development, test and production.

Public Cloud Servers

Virtual private cloud servers offer scale and flexibility, along with the unique security, performance, and management that today’s businesses require. Whether you’re a one-person development initiative or a member of a robust enterprise IT operation, our cloud platform delivers.

Bare Metal physical dedicated servers in the Cloud.

Bare Metal Cloud Servers

The best of both worlds — the computing power and single tenancy of a physical server, with the automation and pay-as-you-go flexibility of a virtual machine. Bare Metal servers deploy in minutes and are managed from the same Control Portal. Easily integrate them with VMs for a Hybrid IT solution.

Unified administration with our Cloud Control Portal

Unified Administration

Automate daily server administration and cloud management functions and expert-intensive processes, freeing up IT staff, with the Lumen Cloud Control Portal. Power operations, logical grouping and APIs remove the tedium and opportunity for error inherent in complex tasks.

Infrastructure

Lumen Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) Cloud Platform offers on-demand provisioning of high-performing virtual machines with any combination of operating system, storage, and memory. Our cloud servers rely on fully redundant enterprise-class hardware connected through private high-speed virtual LANs and leverage storage that delivers up to 20,000 IOPS.

Run a Variety of Modern Operating Systems

On our Cloud Platform you’re able to provision servers that run Windows Server, CentOS, Debian, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Ubuntu.

Deploy to Carefully Constructed Data Centers Around the Globe

Few cloud platforms are capable of giving you as many data center options. Each security-audited data center contains “Nodes” that are engineered to include fully redundant enterprise-class hardware from front-end firewalls to storage.

Customize All Aspects of Your Servers

No pre-defined instance sizes here. Choose up to 128GB of RAM, 16 vCPU cores and 4TB of storage for any given cloud server. All resources are priced on an hourly basis, so you’ll only pay for what you need, when you need it. And you can scale up on-demand, delivering true cloud flexibility.

  • Firewalls

    Our cloud nodes contain a series of full-featured firewalls that provide deep packet inspection and routing services.

  • Front End Switches

    These switches carry customer-facing traffic that occurs when customers access their VMs or when VMs access the public Internet.

  • Hypervisor Host Servers

    This expandable set of servers runs the hypervisor and enables the efficient multi-tenancy of a Foundational Node on our Cloud Platform.

  • Storage Systems

    Each node has a robust SAN storage system that leverages both SATA and SSD drives for optimal performance and reliability.

  • Management and Monitoring Servers

    The Lumen Cloud Platform utilizes dedicated servers for networking and usage monitoring, terminal services access and platform management.

  • Back End Switches

    These high-performing switches are dedicated to traffic among servers and are optimized for transferring large amounts of data quickly.

Network

The Lumen Cloud Platform’s cutting-edge network relies on an ISP-neutral Internet connection and enterprise-grade hardware to reliably deliver safe traffic to the servers on our infrastructure, whether they’re VMs or Bare Metal cloud servers. Customers integrate with our network through VPN tunnels and intra-data center Direct Connect.

Network Architecture

The Lumen Cloud network is engineered to be highly available, secure, and fast.

  • Multi-Backbone Peering

    Our ISP-neutral Internet connection provides high availability in the case of downtime for a given provider.

  • Carrier-Class Hardware

    Lumen Cloud data centers rely on best-in-class, fully-redundant hardware for firewalls and switches on the perimeter as well as between customers/subnets. Interconnects within the data center use 100% 10GB networking.

  • Site-to-Site VPN

    Data centers are connected through a site-to-site VPN that encrypts the data as it passes among any of our global data center locations.

  • Secure and Segregated Networks

    Each customer gets their own VLAN(s), included at no additional cost with each account, and an unlimited number of private subnets to further define security zones.

Customer Network Integration

The Lumen Cloud should be a logical and physical extension of your own data center. Multiple options exist for connecting on-premises assets to our cloud.

  • Site-to-Site VPN

    Set up secure IPSec point-to-point VPN tunnels or MPLS VPN tunnels between networks.

  • Client VPN

    Connect to the Lumen Cloud from a client machine through software like OpenVPN.

  • Intra-Data-Center Direct Connect

    Using a Lumen Cloud colocation partner for your own data center? Connect to your assets in our cloud using Single Mode Fiber (SMF, 1310nm) 1Gbps (1000base-LX) or 10Gbps (10G-LR) fiber. Also use 1 Gbps copper if the cross connect is less than 100m in length.

Traffic Management

The network contains robust network traffic management technology as well as self-service firewall policies.

  • Pervasive Load Balancing

    Our Platform relies on components produced by an industry-leading vendor to provide web application load balancing with SSL offloading. Additionally, dedicated load balancers (virtual appliances) can be deployed for customers with more stringent requirements.

Features

High Performance

Run your application on a cloud platform built with enterprise-class hardware all the way from the firewalls to the virtual machine host servers. High-speed 10GB networking between application tiers prevents bottlenecks and hybrid SAN/spindle disks deliver a minimum of 2,500 IOPS and up to 20,000 IOPS.

  • 70% Max Allocation to Accommodate Spikes

    Each virtual machine host server is closely monitored to ensure that CPU and RAM never surpass 50-70% utilization to allow for enough headroom for spikes at peak traffic.

  • New Hardware, Top Performance

    Each Lumen Cloud node is made up of best-in-class, enterprise-grade hardware. We partner with industry-leaders for all aspects of our infrastructure, from servers to storage and network to security.

  • High Speed Networking

    Network speed between application tiers will never be an issue on our Cloud Platform, as we deliver up to 10Gbps per vNIC, employ load balancers that deliver up to 1Gbps, and leverage firewalls that delivery up to 6Gbps.

  • Low-Latency, High-Throughput Storage

    For all Lumen Cloud storage options, the I/O throughput will reach 6 Gbps, latency is less than 5ms, and storage performance has a maximum IOPS of 20,000.


Security

Our Cloud Platform was built with an overarching focus on security and the “defense in depth” approach tackles platform security from multiple angles. From isolated customer VLANs to role-based access, the Lumen Platform is engineered to aggressively ward off unscrupulous traffic while enforcing a “least privilege” policy for its users.

  • Separation of Physical Assets

    Servers on the Lumen Cloud are assigned to specific roles (e.g. terminal access) in order to reduce the attack surface and require each server to run with the fewest possible OS services and open ports. Customers have no access to physical hardware or hypervisor layer.

  • Zone-Based Firewalls.

    Our firewalls create customer-specific VLANs that don’t permit traffic to flow between networks (except if specifically authorized by the account holder).

  • VPN-Only Access to Servers

    By default, no Lumen Cloud server gets connected to the Internet, unless public ports are explicitly opened by the customer. Each customer uses a certificate-based VPN connection to securely log into cloud servers.

  • Role-Based System Access

    Users are assigned area roles (such as “Account” or “Server”), resource type permissions (e.g. “blueprints”), and permissions to individual Servers and Groups. This lets customers assign users a minimal — but functional — set of permissions.

Orchestration

Autoscale

Our cloud infrastructure supports Autoscale. Create and manage Autoscale policies that automatically scale deployments up and down based on the real-world performance of that environment. Users may configure Autoscale policies for CPUs “vertically” on a per server basis.

Manage multiple Autoscale policies on our Cloud Platform.
Create and Manage Multiple Autoscale Policies

Point and click for easy access to the details of configured Autoscale policies, including the servers assigned to each one.

Autoscale permits you to scale up or down as required.
Scale Up, Down, In or Out

Ensure cloud environments are always using the optimal amount of resources. Both horizontal and vertical Autoscale options are built in and available.

Blueprints

Create reusable models of complex environments for rapid deployment and automation using our growing library of Blueprints.

Lumen Cloud Platform Blueprint Library
Growing Library of Existing Best Practice Blueprints

Our Platform Engineers and even other customers have authored best practice Blueprints that automatically build complex multi-server environments to support things like Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, Basho Riak, and more. Blueprints are a unique feature of our Cloud Platform that save valuable IT resource time and ensure consistency across multiple deployments.

Design Wizard allows you to customize Blueprints.
Blueprint Design Wizard

You can always add servers and software to Blueprints, as well as configure servers with default or user-uploaded software packages. Other Blueprint tasks can include adding a public IP address to a server, installing SQL Server, joining an Active Directory domain, adding storage disks, and more. You can also invoke one Blueprint from another to allow for highly modularized templates that can be easily reused.

Parallelized build engine deploys Blueprints
Parallelized Build Engine Blueprint Deployments

Deploying a Blueprint on the Lumen Cloud involves adding its tasks to a build queue that is monitored by the highly parallelized build engine. This allows you to view detailed build logs and provides the option of resuming failed Blueprints from their offending step.

Management

The Lumen Cloud Platform has been engineered to surface significant management capability to customers. This includes the ability to orchestrate complex server environments with Blueprints, manage customer accounts, and programmatically administer the platform through an expansive API.

Account Management

Our Account Management capabilities allow you to use parent and child accounts to define distinctive business units with an organization and detailed billing system to see both overall and specific charges. Add users to accounts and assign them specific Area (Account/Server) and Resource (blueprints/storage/group/server) permissions.

Sub-Accounts

Account holders may create sub-accounts which can be billed and managed separately from the parent. Blueprints are designed with a setting to allow “private shared” privacy which means that only sub-accounts can see certain Blueprints of a parent account.

Billing System

The Lumen Cloud Control Portal allows you to view detailed billing history for each account and sub-account. Within each invoice, see charges for Groups, servers, storage, VPN, network bandwidth, external IP addresses, and more. This is particularly useful for enterprise IT groups providing infrastructure for different cost centers within the organization. It’s equally valuable for Resellers or SaaS deployments.

Single Sign-On (SSO)

Single Sign-On (SSO) is provided between a customer’s Identity Provider (IdP) and the Control Portal. Lumen Cloud supports service-provider-initiated SSO via SAML authentication. Customers use a specific URL that initiates a redirect to the customer’s IdP. The IdP authenticates the user and securely sends the authentication details to the Control Portal where the user is logged in without providing Lumen Cloud-specific credentials.


Bulk Server Management via Groups

The Lumen Cloud includes deeply integrated server Group management. This allows customers to use inherited settings to create and manage a practical structure for cloud servers.

Group Monitoring

Create and customize monitors for CPU, Bandwidth, Disk, Memory, Drive, and ping. Additional monitors supported by contacting the Lumen Cloud NOC.

Group Power Actions

Power on, power off, reboot, pause, reset, and shutdown any or all servers in a Group with a single command.

Group Software & Script Execution

Install a software package from the public or private library, or execute a script against the Group’s servers.

Server Defaults

Set the operating system, memory, CPU, and storage preference for any new servers in a Group.


Infrastructure Management

Aggressively using automation on cloud infrastructure is a way to ensure a safe, high-performing environment. Our Cloud Platform features a comprehensive self-service Control Portal that empowers you to intricately or broadly manage server Groups, define sophisticated firewall policies, craft multi-tier environment templates, and closely monitor usage and performance of all your cloud servers.

Role-Based Access Policies

Accounts may contain a variety of user types, each with their own role and responsibilities. The Lumen Cloud encourages segmentation based on predetermined account permissions. All activities within the platform are checked against the active user’s role (e.g. “Server Administrator,” “Account Administrator,” “Billing Manager”), and individual resource permissions.

Robust Alerting & Reporting

Define or inherit server alerts of interest and thresholds for alerts. Metrics such as CPU, memory and disk usage are automatically monitored and reported for each individual server. Additional custom monitors may be deployed by contacting the NOC.

Access and Activity Logs Kept Forever

The Platform records user access and activities in log files. All actions performed through the Control Portal — such as server provisioning, server reboot, Blueprint deployment — are logged and auditable.

Managed Services

Cloud eExperts are at the ready to maintain and administer your cloud deployments for optimum performance and value. Available managed services include operating systems, web server, middleware, database, directory services and more.

Run Repeatable Tasks on a Schedule

Scheduled Tasks let users choose a time, frequency, and expiration date for a power command (“Pause,” “Power On,” “Reboot,” “Shutdown”) against a server or Group of servers.

Self-Service Networking

Create additional VLANs and define firewall rules. Firewall rules are created between VLANs and comprise a source IP address range, destination IP address range, and a list of ports to open.


API

Our Cloud Platform enables you to manage your cloud environments from afar through an industry-leading API offering. Manage Cloud Servers and Groups, deploy Blueprints, create accounts, view invoices, add a public IP address, and much more through a SOAP and HTTP API that supports both XML and JSON for all operations.

  • Provision and Administer Servers

    The API includes all of the operations necessary to create, modify, delete, snapshot, archive, restore, and issue Power Commands against a server.

  • Manage Server Groups

    You can also easily create, archive, delete, and issue Power Commands against predefined Groups of servers via API.

  • Deploy Complex Environments

    Use the API to retrieve and publish Blueprints that make up self-contained server environments on our Cloud Platform.

  • Read Network Details and Manage Public IP Addresses

    Use the API to get network details including the gateway, network mask, list of IP addresses and host data center, as well as adding or releasing a public IP.

  • Manage your Account(s) and Users

    Create, update, suspend, and delete accounts — or individual users within an account — on the Lumen Cloud.

  • Review Detailed Billing Information

    The easy-to-use billing API allows you to lookup current server/Group charges, estimated monthly charges, past invoices, and more.

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