Running VMs on the Cloud (Amazon, Google, Rackspace, Microsoft, Digital Ocean, HP)

I have been using OpenStack a lot the past few months through the FutureGrid project and I've gotten quite fond of the idea of running VMs on the cloud. However, since I'm a networking guy, I was intrigued by the availability of public IP for these VMs. On FutureGrid, it is quite hard to get enough public IP addresses so many times you end up with VMs no public IP access which can be cumbersome to access. Anyways, I wanted to see how different cloud providers handled this problem. This is a quick list of things that I noticed:

Amazon EC2
- Gives an internal DNS and external DNS which points to internal and external IP addresses
- Local OS does not know the external public IP address
- Access only available through public key over ssh (for Linux)
- Firewall options available
- Allows you to define your own private network http://aws.amazon.com/vpc/
- $0.020 for cheapest instance 0.615GB RAM http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/

Google Compute Engine
- Internal DNS mapping is available, but no external DNS mapping
- You have to use gcutil to connect which discovers external IP and creates public key
- You also have to use gcutil to connect over ssh, which is pretty annoying
- Local OS does not know external public IP address
- Firewall options available
- Allows you to define your own private network https://developers.google.com/compute/docs/networking
- $0.013 for cheapest instance 0.6GB RAM https://cloud.google.com/pricing/compute-engine

Rackspace Cloud Servers
- It does not provide a DNS mapping by default
- Local OS gets two NICs one with private IP and another with public IP address
- Support username/password over ssh, you have to configure public-key on your own
- Firewall options available (not by default)
- Allows you to define your own private cloud (not by default) http://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/article/getting-started-with-cloud-networks
- $0.022 for cheapest instance 512RAM http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/pricing/

Windows Azure
- Provides DNS to external public IP
- Local OS does not know public IP address
- Supports both password or public key for ssh at VM creation time
- Firewall options available
- Allows you to define your own private network http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/services/virtual-network/
- $0.020 for cheapest instance 768MB RAM http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/

Digital Ocean
- No DNS mapping by default
- Local OS has one NIC with a public IP address
- Supports both username/password and public key
- No firewall options
- No support for defining your own private network
- $0.006 for cheapest instance 512 RAM https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing

HP Public Cloud
- No DNS mapping by default
- Local OS has one NIC with a private IP address
- Firewall options available
- Supports on public key for ssh access
- No support for defining your own private network
- $0.035 for cheapest instead 1GB RAM http://www.hpcloud.com/pricing

Clearly Digital Ocean won hands down because they are so cheap ... wow only $5 to run host a VM ... wow

Overall, I'm excited that there is so much competition in the IaaS space and I'm leaving out GoGrid, VMWare, HP and many others. Plus this is great for my research because with all of these VMs running at different providers, people will need to connect them in a secure fashion. Ok gotta go.