Hosting firm PEER 1 has announced the availability of its new public cloud division, called Zunicore.

Zunicore, which will be built on PEER 1’s FastFiber Network infrastructure, will offer users preset virtual machines (VMs), auto-scaling and customisable resource pools. PEER 1 also says that the new platform will offer what it calls FairPlay Pricing. This means customers will only pay for what they use and are not locked into long-term contracts, the company said.

It features a centralised dashboard which PEER 1 says will display the resources that are being used, what is remaining in terms of unused resources and options to increase or decrease resources, such as VMs.

Zunicore also uses persistent storage area network (SAN) storage rather than local hard drives. PEER 1 says this is a cheaper way of doing this, as well as being more reliable and offering a better performance.

The system will operate across PEER 1’s three data centres located on two different continents.

"Zunicore Cloud Hosting is built on the principle that a company should be able to focus on controlling its core business, rather than on its IT delivery vehicle," said Greg Rusu, general manager of the platform. "Zunicore provides users with a pool of resources and easy to use tools that let users quickly and efficiently manage their cloud hosting business needs."

PEER 1 recently opened a new data centre in England. The £45m facility is located near Portsmouth and uses technology from a company called Excool for cooling capabilities. CBR spoke to PEER 1 CEO Fabio Banducci about the launch.