

Rackspace launches new OpenStack cloud - teoruiz
http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/nextgen/

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mase
This is actually really great. One of the things I hated so far about
Rackspace Cloud was that I couldn't scale the resources independently. If I
need to upgrade to multiple CPU's or more RAM I don't want to be required to
double or triple my disk capacity - that's a giant waste, especially with the
availability of Cloud Files.

Now if their Database hosting would include Mongo, I'm sold!

~~~
apendleton
Judging from the price page, it doesn't actually look like this does that. The
price tiers are still some combination of a fixed amount of storage and RAM
per tier, with no mention of number of cores. Maybe this is because their EBS
clone isn't ready, yet?

~~~
bretpiatt
Cloud Block Storage is available through the limited availability program and
it is billed as a separate add-on to Cloud Servers so you can have a flexible
amount of additional storage to go with the fixed amount provided with each
CPU/Memory instance type.

[edit added to answer the reply] This is not the dNAS solution available as
part of our dedicated cloud platform offerings that can be connected to Cloud
Servers over RackConnect -- it is an API accessible block storage solution
that is part of our public cloud platform. [/end edit]

~~~
apendleton
This seems to address the use case of wanting more storage for a given amount
of memory, but not the reverse. You can't, say, get 16gigs of ram, without
also getting a 620gig disk, nor can you control core count independently of
the other variables, in contrast to (for example) EC2, where there are a
variety of instance types with different tradeoffs in CPU and memory, and
storage is effectively always added (and billed) separately. It's unfortunate
that Rackspace isn't taking advantage of the opportunity this relaunch
presents to increase the flexibility of their product.

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moe
I'm glad and grateful they've open sourced their stack.

Yet it sheds some amusing light on their pricing;

    
    
      Openstack at Rackspace: 30G Ram, 1.2T Disk = $1314/mo
    

Rent a box at Hetzner, take the time to install Openstack;

    
    
      Openstack at Hetzner: 32G Ram, 2x3T Disks, probably faster CPU = $77/mo
    

Obviously that only makes sense when your time is "free", and Hetzner is not
exactly as solid as Rackspace. And you should rent a couple more boxes for
redundancy.

But still, I'm almost tempted to start a little Hetzner-Cloud...

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benbjohnson
It's good to see the option of SSD-backed block storage in a major cloud
provider like Rackspace. Block IO is a killer for a lot of apps. Though, we'll
have to see if the benchmarks support their claims though.

~~~
snewman
Where did you see the mention of SSDs?

~~~
benbjohnson
Scroll down to their diagram and click on "Block Storage" on the left. It
mentions the choice of SSDs or SATA drives.

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melvinng
I think hackernews is overloading the cloud. I can't load the video.

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adrianpc
"OpenStack® is the open alternative to proprietary cloud platforms and lock-
in."

Oh the i®ony.

~~~
tomgruner
There are many registered trademarks in the open source world, including
Linux, Ubuntu, and Wikipedia among others. OpenStack is also a registered
trademark. I don't see any irony at all. Registering a trademark is a way to
protect an open source project from abuse by people who would take advantage
of the name to endorse their own unrelated product. Try getting the source
code for aws and try getting the source code for open stack, and then tell me
which one you think is more open.

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bretpiatt
Couple of additional comments about the OpenStack projects all of the new
services are powered by on this HN submission:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3847486>

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asharp
Here's to hoping that its cloudfiles implementation no longer uses a file
replicated sqlite db for indexing. (iirc it did earlier on. Scared me stupid
when I found out).

~~~
bretpiatt
Can you explain why the account and container index architecture in OpenStack
Swift (which powers Cloud Files) scares you? Have you really looked into the
architecture or did you just hear the information anecdotally? A link to the
architecture overview: <http://swift.openstack.org/overview_architecture.html>

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sciurus
I don't see any information on the CPU resources available or IPv6 support.

