
Rackspace launches Performance Cloud Servers - ropiku
http://www.rackspace.com/blog/got-the-need-for-speed-meet-performance-cloud-servers/
======
csmuk
Wouldn't poke them with a 20' long stick.

When we spoke to their rep about data security and access in the UK they made
no guarantees about our stuff being secure from meddling by their own staff or
external agencies. They literally told us that we'd be better off elsewhere
and refused to comment further.

we're in a position where we have UK data protection to consider and shipping
data out of the EEA is illegal for us. Obviously this is still a problem if
someone takes it.

In the end we ended up with a wholly UK owned DC and company.

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teoruiz
Where did you end up?

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csmuk
[http://www.thebunker.net/](http://www.thebunker.net/)

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oijaf888
[http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/servers/pricing/](http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/servers/pricing/)
(scroll down a bit) has the pricing, they start at $0.68/hr for 15GB of ram,
40gb ssd system disk, 150gb ssd data disk and 4 vcpus. Significantly cheaper
(however with lower specs) than the cheapest Amazon offering with an SSD
($3.10/hr I believe).

~~~
josephlord
That pricing is the "performance 2" group. The "performance 1" group starts
at:

$0.04/hr for 1 GB RAM, 20GB SSD system disk, 1 vcpu.

That is about $30/month. More than Digital Ocean but a much cheaper entry
point than the prices you listed.

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ilaksh
OK but not only is Digital Ocean a lot cheaper but so is Linode. Does the
Rackspace server have a better CPU, or am I paying for better support
supposedly, or what?

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josephlord
I haven't tested all the providers heavily enough relative performances or
support realities to know and I wasn't contradicting you but the parent post
listing incorrect entry pricing for the performance models.

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markwillis82
Having used rackspace for the past 5 years, I'm happy to see some more
performance machines in the cloud.

We have quite a CPU intensive infrastructure so will be benchmarking the new
performance servers against themselves to see if it is still cheaper to scale
out then scale up.

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vidarh
If you have a CPU intensive infrastructure, why in the world are you using or
considering cloud servers? Unless these are in use just a fraction of the day?

You can get several times the CPU capacity for around the same price with
dedicated servers. And nothing stops you from combining and scaling out with
cloud servers to handle peaks.

~~~
markwillis82
We scale based on load, so rather then having dedicated boxes being unused
during quiet times we can scale our infrastructure down and then up when we
need to. Going to a hybrid platform maybe in the future

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sschueller
I used Rackspace back in 2000 for my first startup after our existing hosting
solution could not take the load.

This was a huge mistake!

Rackspace canceled our contract without warning and without the ability to get
our data. Their customer care was extremely rude and completely incompetent. I
will never ever host anything again with Rackspace.

Luckily we had external backups and were able to purchase our own hardware and
install it in a local Boston data center.

~~~
corobo
I'd seriously hope things have changed in 13 years, there's a pretty big
difference between 2 and 15 years experience. You're probably safe to drop the
grudge at this point

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kamakazizuru
wouldn't touch rackspace with a stick. We tried them for 6 months -
particularly because we weren't price sensitive and wanted the "fanatic
service" they promised. The service however is terrible bordering on non-
existant. Digital Ocean or Linode on the other hand - price + service I'm
happy with!

~~~
FridayWithJohn
Their service was terrible? Maybe you just had some rather unlucky experience.
We've been using RackSpace (I'm based in the UK) for almost 2 years now and
their service has really been fantastic. To give you one example, I had an
almost 2 hour phone call (no charge by the way) trying to track down an issue
with our LAMP stack.

~~~
nemesisj
We've had a horrible experience with Rackspace. Truly awful. We're in the UK,
hosting in London (as a backup) with Linode as a primary. The main problem is
that Rackspace has no proactive monitoring or support in any way, and their
boxes tend to thrash a lot due to misbehaving "noisy neighbours". Their
support staff are really poorly trained as well and most of them are new.

I'd be interested in hearing from them if the noisy neighbour problem will
still be relevant now that everything is on an SSD, or if it just delays the
inevitable.

Regardless, we'll just wait for Linode though - they'll deliver it cheaper and
better, with much better support.

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jnoller
If you're a developer looking for more benchmarks / comparisons - I put
[http://developer.rackspace.com/blog/welcome-to-
performance-c...](http://developer.rackspace.com/blog/welcome-to-performance-
cloud-servers-have-some-benchmarks.html) up this morning. Raw data in github;
and I'd love to get more to run.

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meritt
Someone in their design team apparently made a mistake and removed the "next
generation" server pricing (non SSD). For reference, those prices are:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20130627213956/https://www.racks...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130627213956/https://www.rackspace.com/cloud/servers/pricing/)

These "next gen" servers (now 'Standard' flavor in their API) are still
available and the 'Performance' servers are currently only available at their
IAD (Northern Virginia) datacenter.

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alberth
To bad this is still about 26x more expensive than Hetzner.

Hetzner just launched new servers themselves.

[http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-
pr...](http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-
produktmatrix-px)

For €139/mo. :

\- new E5-1650 hexcore CPU

\- 128GB of ECC RAM

\- 2 x 240GB SSD

Edit: formatting and price comparison of €139 vs $3971/mo.
[http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/servers/pricing/](http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/servers/pricing/)

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ilaksh
How much do they cost? Seems like this is a response to Digital Ocean.

I wonder how long until Rack space and the rest provide a Docker container
service.

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thejosh
DigitalOcean isn't really Rackspaces competitor in terms of pricing.

Docker works fine with rackspace, doesn't it?

edit, pricing: As Performance Cloud Servers roll out, they will replace
Standard Cloud Servers as our default offering.

~~~
vidarh
> Docker works fine with rackspace, doesn't it?

I'm assuming what he meant is support for deploying Docker containers
_directly_ rather than renting a server and installing Docker on it and
running your containers in that.

~~~
ilaksh
Right. Its similar to the distinction between installing Xen yourself on a
dedicated server versus using a VPS provider.

I am actually working on a service where you can easily deploy VPSs that have
Docker installed on them with a control panel for conveniently managing the
containers. I can then have features like a menu option to move containers
between VMs and automatically creating DNS and proxy configuration for
container-based virtual hosting. I.e. you click a button on the container and
just type in the sub domain or domain name next to the public port exposed by
Docker and then that gets automatically set up so you can access that service
on that container through a domain name.

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jnoller
We have single click Docker deployment - go to servers, select "deployments"
then select the docker option. We also have scientific python images, and more

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porker
Is the 'We' here Rackspace? Am confused :s

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jnoller
Yes, sorry - the "we" is rackspace.

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ksec
I still dont get these so Called Cloud Hosting, When i can order 2 Dedicated
Servers in OVH / Hetzner for Redundancy and it will still cost 50% less then
what RackSpace offers.

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ladino
you better try: [http://www.df.eu/de/cloud-hosting/cloud-
server/](http://www.df.eu/de/cloud-hosting/cloud-server/) (cheaper + more
power) → a strato company!

