Getting started / Core concepts
How Pantech fits together
The handful of ideas the rest of these guides lean on, including organizations, the two kinds of virtual machine, how traffic is filtered, where data lives and how you pay.
Organizations
Everything you create belongs to an organization: virtual machines, volumes, networks, keys, the credit balance and the invoices. It is the billing entity, so you set it up once, the first time you sign in, with the country it is registered in. That country fixes the currency you are billed in.
People join an organization by invitation and each holds one role: Owner, Admin or Viewer. See team and roles.
Two kinds of virtual machine
When you create a virtual machine you pick how it is networked. The choice is made once; a machine cannot move between kinds later.
| Standard VPS | VM in a VPC | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | Its own public IPv4 address | A private address in a subnet you choose |
| Filtered by | A security group | The subnet's network ACL |
| Reachable from the internet | Yes, on the ports its security group opens | Only once you give it a static IP or forward a port to it |
| Private network | None | Every VM in the VPC can reach the others |
Pick a standard VPS for a single server that faces the internet. Pick a VM in a VPC when several machines need to talk privately, say an app tier and a database. A standard VPS and a VM in a VPC cannot reach each other privately, even in the same region.
Security groups and network ACLs
Both are firewalls; they apply in different places.
- A security group is a set of inbound and outbound rules attached to a standard VPS. One group can cover many machines, and changing a rule changes all of them. Anything no rule allows is blocked.
- A network ACL belongs to a subnet in a VPC and applies to every VM in it. Its rules are numbered and checked lowest first, can allow or deny, and are stateless.
Disks
Every virtual machine comes with a root disk, sized by its plan. It holds the operating system and is wiped if you rebuild the machine.
A volume is a disk of its own that you attach to a machine. It outlives the machine it is attached to, can grow later, and never shrinks. See volumes.
Snapshots
A snapshot is a copy of a disk at a moment in time. There are two kinds:
- A VM snapshot copies a machine's root disk. Restoring one puts the disk back and reboots the machine.
- A volume snapshot copies a volume. Restoring one makes a new volume and leaves the original alone.
Snapshots are taken by hand. There is no automatic schedule. See backup and recovery.
Paying
Your organization has a credit balance that you top up by card, or by bank transfer if you are billed in naira. It starts with the activation credits you add when you set up your account: ₦1,000 or $1, depending on the country the organization is registered in. Creating a virtual machine or database takes an upfront payment of 40% of its monthly estimate, from that credit if it covers the whole amount, or else from your saved card. The upfront payment is deducted from your next bill, not added on top. Kubernetes nodes take no upfront payment, but creating a cluster needs a saved card or enough credit to cover 40% of a month for its nodes. Usage is metered by the hour, rated through the billing period and invoiced when the period closes, with 7.5% VAT added (the only payment that carries VAT) and your credit taken off the invoice before your card is charged. See how billing works.
Operations take a moment
Creating, starting, stopping and deleting all happen in the background. The console sends the request, shows the resource in a moving state (Provisioning, Stopping, Rebooting) and updates the page on its own when the platform finishes. You do not need to reload.