Rackspace: Review of Services and using Cloud Servers to go Virtual

02 April 2012

Founded in 1998 and based in San Antonio, Texas, Rackspace US, Inc. is a web hosting company that is responsible for millions of sites around the globe. They also cater to many of the world’s largest businesses and have won a slew of awards for excellence in hosting. They’re best known for their security and support, but since 2006, the new Rackspace Cloud has been turning heads in terms of an affordable and easy to use cloud server.

Rackspace Cloud Servers Review

As a cloud infrastructure, Rackspace’s Cloud Servers is a service allowing basic users to deploy multiple servers in an instant or to create advanced architectures. Their servers are virtual machines that run on Citrix XenSever for Windows and Linux and Xen hypervisor for strictly Linux.

Each of the servers’ hardware nodes processes information with a powerful quad-core processor and also delivers anywhere from 16 to 32 GB of RAM. This allows for allocations anywhere from 256 MB to 30 GB. CPU and disk allocations also scale up with the memory, allowing for a range from 10 GB to 620 GB.

Different from the company’s Cloud Sites product, users of Cloud Servers need to maintain the OS and solution stack. The trade off, however, is that the Cloud Servers service is very inexpensive and very easy to use when compared to a dedicated server. Users also have full root access, allowing for increased customization, and the flexibility of the services provided is a huge selling point for Rackspace.

For additional support, users can also purchase a managed service package, which includes a slew of routine services and common applications for the OS.

The biggest benefit of Cloud Servers is that users have access to the servers on demand. They’re scalable and able to be customized in a matter of minutes, even for a novice user, and with a wide range of various management tools and the company’s support team there to assist you, going virtual in a hurry isn’t an issue.

A package with Rackspace Cloud Servers gets you 100% uptime, on-demand server provisioning, a virtualization layer, image backups and expanded backups, a data center, a user-friendly control panel, and much more.

Going Virtual in the Cloud

From the conception of any idea to a virtual launch, you may have to sacrifice a lot of time, money and effort with different hosts out there. With the managed Cloud Servers at Rackspace, however, site owners can focus on their particular business while the host actually does most of the heavy lifting.

The Cloud Servers managed package includes constant monitoring, OS and application infrastructure layer support, and hands-on technical advice. Rackspace focuses on your environment and actually helps your network grow without restricting any access or seizing control of your server in any way.

Whether or not Cloud Servers is right for you is a call you have to make. But in terms of how Rackspace stacks up against the competition out there, it stands out as one of the premier cloud hosts on the web today.