If you refer to one of our previous posts, we talked about wanting to get involved in the cloud computing. After much deliberation we chose RackSpaceCloud. The pricing was great and let’s face it, I like to support solutions from my hometown. Of course, I have to mention the great support of the RackSpace infrastructure that provides a framework for the cloud to exist. Well anyway, I bit the bullet back in January and setup an account.
Now for those of you who aren’t familiar, RackspaceCloud has three main features. The Cloud Sites is sort of like a HostMonster or GoDaddy. It allows for you to host your website or web application on their cloud. Starting at $100/month, you can get a full hosting experience and RackSpaceCloud manages the server for you. It is also 100% scalable. If you need more space, bandwidth, computing cycles, etc., just a few clicks and you are well on your way to an upgrade (or downgrade if your needs change).
Now if you are not afraid of getting your hands dirty, you can take part in Cloud Servers. This is a fully virtualized Linux server. If you need command line access, this is the route for you. Simply put, it’s a full Linux Server. However, it is virtualized and because of that, it is much cheaper than buying a hardware server. The server starts at $0.015/hr and scale from there. You can purchase what you need. It doesn’t make sense to buy a 5TB system with 16GB of RAM when you only need say 10GB of storage and 256MB of RAM. If you like to configure Apache and run your system from command line and EMACS, this is for you. You even get a static IP.
Finally, there is Cloud Files. This is a place where you can store all of your files online. Their prices start at $0.15/GB/mo. It is essentially your online hard drive. Use it for storage or use it for backups, your choice. However, it is also a fully functional CDN. The CDN bandwidth starts at $0.22/GB. You can now deliver rich content for your websites very fast.
We at Torchlight Technologies decided to purchase Cloud Files and Cloud Servers. Being that we are fans of Linux, we are in no way threatened by command line. We setup apache and hardened the security on our server. We then decided to host some websites. We are currently hosting two websites for customers, one for demos at Torchlight, and one is my own personal website. We were able to setup a LAMP server with little issue. I also have another server that I am currently just toying around with, trying out new scripts and tricks for Linux. Best thing, if I just totally destroy this server, simple click, it’s gone. Almost as if it never happened. I originally set my server to be 40GB with 1GB of RAM. I realized after about a month, that was too much for now. In a matter of seconds, I went into the RackspaceCloud control panel and downgraded to 20GB with 512MB of RAM.
So how was our first month in production? Well my production server is running smooth. My testing server is running pretty well also (considering it’s a test server). We haven’t utilized Cloud Files yet. However, we will soon be backing up all of the configuration files and content files onto the Cloud Files. Soon, we will also be using the CDN feature for some of our images and whitepapers. I am also going to setup a few more servers for my employees to toy around with and sharpen their Linux skills.
Another great thing is that you can resell the cloud services. RackspaceCloud will actually handle the billing process for you and you can divy up the servers, storage, hosting and so on and then bill accordingly. If you are looking to host websites for a few customers, I highly recommend using RackspaceCloud. Not only will you have a solid place to host your sites, you can also streamline your billing process and be sure to get paid promptly. Not many hosts can brag about their fanatical support but RackspaceCloud certainly can.
During the time I had this RackspaceCloud, there was only one issue on their end. The hardware that our Cloud Server was hosted on was beginning to show signs of failure so they were going to move my cloud server to another machine. They sent me an email before they made this transition to let me know exactly what was going on. I did have another incident in which I forgot my password. I just jumped online, talked to the support team via chat, and had my problems resolved.
In the next month, we will begin to run SugarCRM, OrangeHRM, and OpenBravo for a fictitious company and test the cloud’s ability to host web applications on our service cloud. Stay tuned…
“During the time I had this RackspaceCloud, there was only one issue on their end. The hardware that our Cloud Server was hosted on was beginning to show signs of failure so they were going to move my cloud server to another machine.”
Only one issue. That’s great.
I think that the RackSpaceCloud Linux sites work a lot more reliably than the RackSpaceCloud Windows sites.
In fact, I’m quite certain of it.
We host a RackSpaceCloud Windows site, and our site was down more than 200 hours last month due to connectivity issues, security issues, failing hardware, scheduled and unscheduled maintenance blackouts and “misbehaving nodes”.
Yes, 200 hours is several WEEKS of down time. And that was just last month.
Blame Windows. Blame their rapid growth. Blame the immature cloud software. Whatever.
Most of us just want a web host that WORKS.
You know?
Anyway, we are moving our Windows/IIS sites immediately to a dedicated server, but we are also keeping our Linux sites with RackSpaceCloud.
I would not recommend using them to host a Windows/IIS site.
Hello,
Well I am sorry to hear about your experience. I can’t relate in the fact that I almost never use Windows/IIS. I am a “Linux evangelist” and pretty much just use that. Also, are you using Sites or Servers? I have limited familiarity with Sites but I do have experience with Servers. The only reason I don’t use Sites is because I am not intimidated by command line in Linux. I can setup my own Apache and File types so Servers gives me more power and control. 200 hours down is absurd, I will not disagree with that. If I had to guess the problem, I would have to say it’s cloud technology, it’s still in it’s infant state.
I do think that Rackspace does Linux pretty well. To date, I haven’t had too many issues. The hardware did crash at some point but they caught it early and moved my cloud. I think there was a few minutes of downtime during the transfer. One thing that I also had an issue with was forgetting my password. I hit the reset password button and nothing happened. I didn’t get an email with a new password. However, I jumped on chat with tech support and they gave me my password in a minute. Wrote it down and have been fine since. I don’t know, perhaps the dedicated server is a better option. I don’t know if Windows is ready to be virtualized in a cloud due primarily to it’s large footprint.