IONOS is a webhosting and cloud provider owned by United Internet AG. The company was previously known as 1&1 Internet AG. IONOS is part of several projects and initiatives to develop european sovereign infrastructure. They are one of the largest members of Gaia-X and Sovereign-X.
IONOS has a strong history in domain and webhosting, with many products around small company and private websites. With the IONOS Cloud, they are expanding the service portfolio with classic cloud products, such as Object Storage, the AI Model Hub, managed Kubernetes, and a full data platform with the Stackable Data Platform.
IONOS are taking a very unique approach to their cloud console with the Data Centre Designer. It is a visual tool which allows to configure IaaS components with a visual diagram tool. Peak click-ops.
Features & Services
The IONOS platform has the standard set of services, such as Kubernetes, storage, and databases. With a background as server hoster and webhosting provider, IONOS has a complete range in that area, e.g. webhosting, a website builder, a transactional email service, and SEO services.
A unique offering of IONOS is a managed Stackable Data Platform.
Developer Experience
IONOS are providing a variety of tools to work with their platform.
Console & Data Center Designer
At first glance, the IONOS console looks similar to that of other cloud providers: a menu on the left with a list of primitives and a large canvas with details taking the rest of the screen estate.
Taking a closer look, IONOS are following a unique approach with the Data Center Designer for virtual data centers. This graphical designer lets us lay out infrastructure in a visual diagram.
API
The IONOS API is grouped by cloud resource. It is well documented and easy to understand. Since IONOS is providing SDKs for many programming languages and is supporting many configuration management tools, we should very rarely get into the situation where we need to work with the API directly.
SDKs
Like the API, the IONOS SDKs are grouped by resource. One for DBaaS, one for the API gateway, one for the container registry, and so on… The SDKs are available for Golang, Python, Java, Ruby, and Node.js. All SDKs are open source on GitHub.
CLI, Terraform and others
Next to a Command Line Interface (CLI), the IonosCTL and a IONOS Terraform provider, IONOS supports a variety of other tools for configuration management:
- Ansible
- Chef
- Puppet
- Pulumi
Data Centres
According to IONOS data centres, IONOS are operating 10 data centres in Europe and in the US. These are
- Frankfurt am Main 1, Germany
- Frankfurt am Main 2, Germany
- Berlin, Germany
- Paris, France
- London, UK
- Worcester, UK
- Logroño, Spain
- Las Vegas, US
- Newark, US
- Lenexa, US
A company presentation of 2022 states that IONOS is operating in 32 data centres, 11 of which were fully owned by 2022.
Check the map of data centres for the geography of the data centres.
Environmental Policy
IONOS have an elaborate environmental policy based on a number of measures. All European data centres are powered by 100% renewable energy. One US data centre is powered with 100% wind energy. IONOS is also working to consume less electricity by improving energy efficiency of the data centres and especially the cooling. Similar to Scaleway, IONOS also have a policy about how to use and reuse (server) hardware. Employees are expected to reduce travel and to use climate-friendly means of transport, e.g. train, if possible. Full environmental policy: Umweltschutz und Nachhaltigkeit bei IONOS.
Certifications
IONOS holds a wide range of certificates, including the German C5 certificate and PCI DSS for the processing of several million credit card transactions.
A comprehensive overview over certificates and compliance can be found on the IONOS certificates page.
Some certificates, such as the PCI DSS certificate, apply only to certain products, not to the complete cloud platform.
Conclusion
The IONOS Cloud offers several unique strengths, including its innovative Stackable Data Platform. With its extensive network of data centers, decades of experience in data center operations and server hosting, and a commendable commitment to environmental sustainability, we are optimistic that IONOS will continue to expand its cloud service portfolio into a comprehensive solution. Additionally, the Data Centre Designer stands out as a creative and distinctive feature. One current limitation is that the IONOS documentation is available exclusively in German. That said, we would welcome further investment in the cloud service portfolio, particularly in the development of automation tools such as a Command-Line Interface (CLI).
