Cloud Servers, Virtual Machines

Flexible and Powerful Cloud Computing

Access and control your cloud servers through our fully integrated web-based interface or via API. Execute power operations, assign IP addresses, set up monitoring and alerts, view activity history and more.

Create on-demand high-performance cloud servers with any combination of operating system, CPU, memory and storage. You won't be locked into rigid, one-size-fits-most virtual machine sizes.

Powerful scheduling tools to automate and complete cloud server admin jobs — to individual machines or Groups of VMs — or define and apply alert policies to be notified if and when actions should be taken.

Manage cloud servers via powerful Web-based interface

On-demand cloud servers with totally customizable resource allocations

CenturyLink Cloud Control Portal has powerful scheduled tasks for cloud servers

Runner and Bueprints ease deployment of complex cloud environments

Simplify Deployments

Deployment complexity runs the gamut — from running a simple script on one or two servers, to repeatedly installing Active Directory Domain Services on Windows Server 2012. Our Cloud Blueprints and Runner cloud automation service reduce the opportunity for error and greatly simplify the process.

Create alert policies and manage usage of your cloud servers

Get Notified of Usage Spikes

Create CPU, memory or storage alert policies, apply them to individual cloud servers or logical Groups. Consume alerts in three ways & email, webhook, or from the Control Portal web interface. Notifications allow you to respond before trouble sets in.

Schedule Tasks from to Control Portal to manage your cloud servers.

Set It and Forget It

With Scheduled Tasks, you can automate and coordinate maintenance activities, turn off developer machines over the weekend, or automatically delete or archive servers at the end of a project.

Take snapshots of your cloud servers for quick reference

Reduce Uncertainty

Take a snapshot of any cloud server (or Group of servers) when you reach a milestone to allow a server to be quickly reverted back to a set point in time. You can even set up snapshots to be taken at scheduled intervals, as well as control retention duration, up to 10 days.

Reference Architecture

View our reference architecture guide for building highly available and scalable web applications using CentyuryLink cloud servers.

Application Hosting Best Practices

Deploying a Database?

CenturyLink's Relational Database service – Relational DB – makes it easy to deploy a MySQL-compatible database on our cloud.

Launch a Relational Database

Cloud Server Features

Orchestration & Management

Set up server Groups to organize, administer and manage multiple servers as a single unit.
Server snapshots can be taken at scheduled intervals and let you to quickly revert a cloud server back to a set point in time.
Create your own baseline OS templates for cloud servers, including customized builds, software packages, security templates or other components.

Security & Compliance

CenturyLink Cloud offers built-in “defense in depth” security.
Deploy Patching-as-a-Service to automatically patch your cloud servers. Ideal for longstanding VMs and mission-critical workloads.
Our platform is SSAE 16 SOC2 Type 2 certified, and we’ve helped customers comply with industry regulations like HIPAA, PCI DSS and ISO27001.

High Availability and Performance

Our cloud infrastructure is optimized across the stack for high performance – from premium hardware to custom performance enhancing technologies.
We include powerful built-in redundancy features that improve uptime – all included in the cost of your cloud servers.
Reinforce your solution with services such as shared or dedicated load balancing for maximum uptime.

Available Preconfigured OSs

CentOS 5, 6 and 7
Debian 6 and 7
RedHat Enterprise Linux 5, 6 and 7
Ubuntu 12, 14 and 16
Windows Server 2008 R2
Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2

Configuration Options

Build cloud servers to meet your specific requirements, rather than choosing from a rigid set of pre-configured options. Our servers are consumed and billed on an hourly basis — no contract required. So you can scale up or down as best makes sense for your development, testing or production requirements.

CPU	Up to 16 vCPUs	hourly, per vCPU
Memory	Up to 128 GB RAM	hourly, per GB
Storage	Up to 4 TB local	hourly, price per GB allocated
Orchestration	Use Blueprints to build an unlimited number of deployable “templates” including cloud server specs, operating systems, software packages, and scripts. Deploy on-demand.	included
Infrastructure Management	Conduct routine infrastructure administrative tasks, including maintenance and bulk updates.	included
Infrastructure Monitoring	Comprehensive Cloud Server monitoring and reporting across memory, CPU, disk usage, and server performance.	included
Account Management	Track Cloud Server usage with categories that match their organizational structure. This simplifies billing across different divisions.	included
Autoscale	Manage and apply CPU Autoscale policies for cloud servers. Automatically scale up and down based on user-defined thresholds.	included
Security	“Defense in depth” security model, with safeguards at multiple levels.	included
Patch Management	Automatic patching of individual servers or Groups through Blueprint, script package or API.	included

Optional Features

The following products are available for customers with advanced requirements. They may be added to a single cloud server or Groups of servers. Contact us for a custom quote.

Networking	Supports data transfer over public Internet interfaces. Note: there is no charge for internal data center traffic.	Cost on a per GB-out model
Data Backup	Set custom retention policies for data stored on VMs.	Cost per GB used
Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity	Off-site replication to a secondary data center for the 2 most recent backups. Service Level Agreements for RTO and RPO are also available.	Cost per GB used & network bandwidth consumed for replication
Virtual Load Balancing	Citrix Netscaler virtual load balancer.	Monthly, per virtual
CDN	CDN delivery services from multiple providers.	Appliance instance. Different sizes are available.
IPSEC VPN	Persistent point-to-point VPN tunnel.	Cost per GB

Use Cases

Scale for Growth

Cloud servers are perfect for high-growth or seasonally dynamic computing scenarios. CenturyLink Cloud's lighting fast deployment, autoscale (both horizontal and vertical), all-utility billing, and Group management features all position your business for growth. And you can just as easily power down unnecessary resources at the click of a button, so you only pay for what you need.

Going Global

Business today operates on a global scale, and cloud computing makes that happen. With our public cloud available in multiple data centers around the world, you can establish a geographically-friendly presence wherever your customers are. This means not just reduced latency and a better user experience, but also a real demonstration of your commitment to that geography.

Development and Test

As organizations recognize the need to respond more and more quickly to market pressures, Agile Development is becoming the norm. Development and testing environments need to be spun up fast, and decommissioned just as quickly so as not to consume precious IT OpEx or CapEx budgets. CenturyLink Cloud servers are perfect for Dev/Test, with fast and easy deployment and pay-as-you-go utility billing.

Achieve High Availability

Analysts claim unexpected downtime can cost organizations as much as $300,000 per hour. Regardless of the size of your organization, designing your IT infrastructure for high availability is fundamental to your success. Cloud technologies create easy access to load balancing, autoscale and disaster recovery features that can be much more difficult to implement in traditional IT environments.

“CenturyLink has...a portfolio of truly integrated cloud services, supported by one of the most sophisticated and flexible cloud platforms in the industry.”

— Lynda Stadtmueller, Vice President – Cloud Computing Services
Frost & Sullivan Stratecast Report

A free trial with up to $500 in usage

No-cost onboarding support from our Cloud Solution Architects
Access to CenturyLink Cloud products and services
High performance, fast deployment times and intuitive management capabilities that will push your business forward

Pricing

Resource	hourly	monthly
Virtual CPU 2 Ghz+ Processor (up to 16 CPU)	$0.009	$6.48
Virtual RAM 1 GB (up to 128 GB)	$0.0135	$9.72
Block Storage Persistent storage. Price per GB.	$0.000167	$0.12

Resources charged hourly, monthly estimates based on 720 hours. Does not include operating system/software licensing.

Build a Quote or view pricing catalog

Data Center Locations

North America
US Central (Chicago)
US Central (Salt Lake City)
US East (New York)
US East (Sterling - VA1 & VA2)
US West (Seattle)
US West (Santa Clara)
Canada (Toronto — Markham)
Canada (Toronto — Mississauga)
Canada (Vancouver)

Europe
Great Britain (Portsmouth)
Great Britain (Slough)
Germany (Frankfurt)

Asia Pacific
Australia
Singapore

Resources

Getting Started Guides Stop Wasting Money on Idle or Forgotten Cloud Servers Cloud Server APIs

Cloud Management Manage complex cloud solutions from a single platform with Cloud Application Manager.

Infrastructure & Compute Access and control high-performing virtual and physical machines.

Compute

Storage

Networking Increased reliability and faster performance in the cloud.

Managed Services Save time and increase productivity with management from CenturyLink’s highly-skilled team.

Application Services Manage and provision faster and more efficiently.

Database

Services

Platform Services

Cloud Reseller Program Become a Reseller and fast-track your ability to offer white-labeled enterprise cloud services.

High Performance Cloud Servers