Testing out a "public cloud" provider - need your suggestions.

[Moby-Dick]

I'm running a beta test for a cloud provider & as such have the ability to provision servers & applications within a resource pool.

I've already tested a load balanced wordpress site, so have a few Centos boxes running apache & mysql setup.

trying to think of other things I can do with it ?

note I wont be hosting anything dodgy or giving anybody access to the boxes other than via a published service - as a beta the service can be withdrawn at any time , so dont ask me to host a business website on it either !!

So - who wants a vApp ?

stick your suggestions here and I'll do my best to implement the best idea ( as long as its not going to cost me anything !)

[ikonia]

databases are always a good test on cloud based systems, I recommend doing some work focusing around databases, seeing how the clouds respond to dynamic requests for ram/cpu/io

time based functionality is always good too, tasks which have a dependency on strict time keeping.

host migration too, shut down a whole host in the cloud and see what happens during migration.

Network security, how the host provider has secured inband and out of band networking between vlans.

tons for cloud based systems. Lots of people are trying to do cloud based computing, few are doing it well.

[Moby-Dick]

Thanks for the suggestions there !

I've got a mySql box running , so I'll see if I can find a bit of a benchmark to run against it and see if I can really generate some heavy load within my resource pool.

I don't have any access to the underlying hosts in the cluster - its via vCloud Director so if they do things properly VM's should just vmotion over , unless its a "dirty" shutdown in which case you are looking at a few minutes for HA to kick in.

Security wise I'm looking a few options
- Native Security using the vshield product between a vApp network and the others
- VDC level virtual firewall appliance - so far used endian , but will possibly try pfsense / m0n0wall / vyatta

In terms of infrastructure as a service its a pretty much out of the box setup in comparison with someone like Terramark who have had their own wrapper around the product for quite some time.