Hi
FULL DISCLOSURE: I'm not related to OVH in any way - I don't work there and don't know anybody working there.
No sarcasm intended in the subject but the fact is that OVH is gearing to offer 'cloud' based services - even if they are exactly the same as VPS but with per-hour billing.
The shape of the offer is changing at the moment but what we got so far is beta-testing period where any OVH client can request one mC (miniCloud) which was said to be 1 CPU core @ 1 GHz, 256MB RAM and 5GB HDD for max 3 days testing, then next person will get it... yup - it was intended to waiting list style, but... mine (and those of my friends) running for 3-4 weeks already and have 2GB RAM :-)
From their forum posts it seems they can't saturate their platform so all testing instances still do work and they need more testers to saturate it
In short their plan (as of the time I write this post) is to deliver different types of 'clouds' for different needs. They are aiming for sys-admins, developers and resellers. Of course it makes sense!
€1.99/mo would be the miniCloud I'm testing now. Response times are just fine, sometimes larger files download from mC terribly slow but hey, it's beta, right? Key thing is that those 5GB of disk are persistent, so you can start/stop at will, run server for few hours as needed at the cost of €0.02/hour. mC offers no redundancy - if host goes, it's gone. Of course there are some limitations to stop abuse and I understand those are not yet decided, but some info can be found on OVH forums. Of course there will be also redundant versions etc, so there is something new going on in the clouds and it is quire refreshing to see it.
Underlying platform is VMWare based, initially Debian 5 was offered as the only option and OVH says they are working on other OSes.
To cut the story short(er)...
http://forum.ovh.co.uk/showthread.php?t=3559&highlight=miniCloud and
http://forum.ovh.co.uk/showthread.php?t=3725&highlight=miniCloud
