
Slicehost accounts will be converted to Rackspace cloud accounts - jsprinkles
http://go.rackspace.com/index.php/email/emailWebview?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoksqjMZKXonjHpfsX%2B7%2BgkUK6%2BlMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4FTMNqI%2FqLAzICFpZo2FFKG%2BOeb5BB%2BfA%3D
======
seats
Definitely a misleading title and kind of unfair to Rackspace. I founded
Slicehost (with Matt Tanase) and I absolutely think this is the right thing to
do and definitely is the best thing for existing Slicehost customers.

Given that this is a public plan now I feel like I can share that during the
acquisition process of Slicehost we debated heavily what the right thing was
to do with the brand. It was honestly a very very tough call and at the time
the thing we all (Matt, me _and_ Rackspace) were most sensitive to was to not
disrupt the Slicehost community. We succeeded in that goal but the net effect
(unintentionally so) was to disconnect Slicehost from Rackspace's cloud
roadmap and effectively strand the product.

Unfortunately I think in hindsight I can say that our decision was probably
the wrong call. I honestly think everyone would have been better off if we
just ripped the band-aid early and tried to figure out how to make the core
Cloud Server community out of the incoming Slicehost customers.

Control panels, features, pricing, etc all change and in the long run are only
ephemerally important. What matters is having your interests be in the direct
path for the company that is serving you and as a Rackspace Cloud customer
you'll have that, while as a Slicehost customer you did not (post
acquisition).

I definitely can see this from all sides and for Slicehost customers, all I
can say is that at no point along the way did anyone (at Slicehost or
Rackspace) ever have less than the best intentions for the brand and the
community. There are some serious champions of Slicehost at Rackspace both in
the form of former Slicehost employees still there (Paul Tomes, article site
creator) and long time Rackers. Trust me that these guys are really working
for the best for you all.

~~~
thesethings
Thank you for making an awesome product in Slicehost.

You mention that "...control panels...are only ephemerally important..."

Many in this thread disagree. You can see it getting brought up over and over
as a reason we loved Slicehost, and a reason we don't like other alternatives
as much.

I won't get too deep into UX theory here, so I'll just say this: people who
make apps: if you hear the same comments over and over from your customers,
they might be on to something interesting.

I truly believe in the expression "listen to what your users do, not what they
say." So i'm not gonna pretend every lil gripe we have about this is right.
But there is definitely a pattern in this thread that Rackspace can learn
from.

[update: so far i've counted 18 mentions of the phrase "control panel" in this
thread. it, and all user experience, matters a lot.]

~~~
seats
I don't disagree with you. It's just that even if the Rackspace control panel
was perfect today that wouldn't fix the core issue.

The core issue is that you're going to have your needs met if you are on the
critical path, especially for a company growing at such a fast pace that has
to deal with the reality of making choices on where to spend scarce resources.

By your own logic, having more people be squeaky wheels for the Rackspace
control panel should be a good thing. It will be even more pressure for that
to be addressed.

~~~
thesethings
My point is that you might be measuring customer needs/migration path in a way
differently than customers do (if you repeatedly see them move away to a 3rd
party, especially one particular 3rd party).

A common theme in this thread is that people _inside_ Rackspace see Rackspace
Cloud + Slicehost as very similar, because 1) they have a common corp
ownership 2) they have an increasingly common (but hidden-to-users) back-end
3) they have common staff in some cases.

But the customers in this thread see Linode + Slicehost as much more similar
because 1) their control panels are a bit more similar 2) they share DNS
flexibility + other featuers 3) Price (Linode moving in more attractive
direction for some use-cases).

Neither interpretation is necessarily right, but in this era it's definitely
time to rethink what customer needs are (if you're outlining a migration
path). I don't think RS is wrong for discontinuing Slicehost (I'd definitely
wanna EOL older products), I just think they're wrong in how they parse
features, experiences, and what user needs are.

I see since I posted earlier that user:polvi (hiya!) says the Cloudkick posse
is working on the control panel for RSC. I've no doubt that _all_ providers
will greatly up their UX game (something something Dave McClure design dogma
:D).

It just feels disingenuous for RS peeps to say over and over "Slicehost
services are not dying, it's just the _brand_ that's going away" when real
features and real UX are going away, at least for a window of time. And it's
totally normal for users to go where those features and UX can be found, even
if it's a separate company. To users, that feels easier.

~~~
seats
We are in agreement for sure.

UX at rackspace now is ick at best, but since the Polvi virus is currently
spreading in the place, I'd bet on significant improvement.

I just see that there are two independent issues. One is that Rackspace UX
needs help, the other is that there are dual/competing brands, one of which is
feature stranded. Clearly they are related when you consider collapsing the
brand into one, but I still think it's worth thinking about them in terms of
two distinct issues.

------
mrtron
Let me explain why this is incredibly annoying for a long term (read: selfish)
customer.

I have a ton of apps running on my old slices. A client pays monthly for the
one slice and it really doesn't look like it will cover costs with the shift
to their 'cloud' servers. I really don't want to have to go and reconfigure
several versions of python and django and several apps. I don't want to
migrate databases. I don't want to move various processes that have been
running without being touched for 3-5 years.

The email doesn't give us any indication of the migration path. I don't care
about your IPv6 problems or your OpenStack announcements.

Even something like domains hasn't been addressed. I use the slicehost
interface to manage a dozen or so domains and their subdomains. Am I going to
have to shift nameservers and reconfigure these domains?

Read their initial announcement to gain some perspective on how the
acquisition was described.

"Our number one goal is to continue delivering the Slicehost experience. In
fact, we hope to make it even better." <http://www.slicehost.com/rackspace>

~~~
StavrosK
As far as I remember, Linode have a tool to migrate your DNS automatically.
Migration, for me, was relatively painless, apart from the fact that I had to
confirm each domain and change the IPs by hand. I'm sure you can write a
script to do it, if you have many.

If you're worried about costs, Linode's price is half Slicehost's. That should
make the migration time worth it.

~~~
macmac
Is <https://github.com/Schultz/slicedns2linode> what you mean?

~~~
logic
Thank you for posting this. Aside from one wildcard record (that shouldn't
have worked anyway), it handled all of my zones perfectly.

------
nbpoole
Or you can switch to Linode, which provides more resources and a more fully-
featured web interface for less money. I switched several months back and I
haven't run into a single issue. :)

Edit: To be fair to Slicehost, they provided me with wonderful service for
over a year and I never had a single issue while I was with them. I'm sad to
see that they'll be shutting down.

~~~
icey
I don't know how feasible this is; but it would be killer to be able to have a
1-click migration process.

i.e. "Moving from slicehost? Provide your credentials and we'll bring
everything over automatically. Just click this button!"

~~~
ben1040
A couple months ago someone posted a link on HN to a pretty cool looking tool
that automatically would generate a Puppet script based on your server
environment (packages installed, etc). I didn't save it, and I can't find it
now from googling.

Now I've set up a Linode account and want to migrate my config from Slicehost,
and it looks like this might be a useful opportunity to test out that tool.
But for the life of me I can't remember it's name.

Does anyone have a link?

~~~
plusbryan
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2344080>

~~~
ben1040
Thanks! This is exactly what I was looking for.

Also laughing hard at the irony of the title.

~~~
howradical
I'm certain blueprint can make this transition easier for most people, if
anyone has any questions, please get in touch - matt@devstructure.com

------
patio11
I have paid Slicehost a premium for a few years to avoid having to spend
expensive engineer time on a migration to an unproven system which will almost
certainly require downtime and break something in production. This
announcement is absence-of-happy for me.

I respect the desire to EOL an old product line holding up dev schedules, but
this email has a lot of things which scare me (multi month dialogue about
migration? Translation: "hit a button to reboot server" is not in the cards.)
It also doesn't identify any benefit for me to stay: Rackspace's dev problems
are not my problems because, prior to this email, my servers worked.

------
polvi
I'm one of the co-founders of Cloudkick (YC W09) and now part of the
Rackspace. I wanted to reassure everyone that this is a migration, not
"killing" off your slices. The Rackspace Cloud is based on the Slicehost
technology, but has the full support and momentum of Rackspace behind it.

If you have any questions, concerns, or would like to discuss this with anyone
at Rackspace - please do not hesitate to reach out directly to me:
alex.polvi@rackspace.com

~~~
yesimahuman
I was a slicehost customer, then a rackspace customer, and now a linode
customer.

The biggest reason I love linode now is the control panel. Slicehost also had
a good control panel, but the Rackspace Cloud CP is severely lacking. It's
extremely slow and the DNS is in a really awkward spot (click a server and
then click DNS to see a global DNS...it doesn't make sense).

I was a fairly happy Rackspace Cloud customer but Linode is just a great
experience. What is Rackspace doing to improve the cloud offering?

~~~
polvi
Rackspace is investing heavily into the cloud. The Cloudkick acquisition was
part of that. I am extremely happy to hear that the CP was one of your major
pain points, because it is one of (if not the top) priority to improve. The
team that is based in San Francisco is working directly on that project. If
these sorts of problems are interesting to you, please let me know!

~~~
yesimahuman
That's great to hear. I'm excited for more competition in the space.

That being said, I've raised the issue of the location of the DNS manager many
times and have been told that it is by design and won't change. Go to the
Linode or Slicehost CP and a link to the DNS manager is on the dashboard,
where it should be. I just don't understand the reasoning for hiding it behind
a specific server instance despite it being a globally applicable system. This
is probably more annoying to me because of the slow speed of the control
panel, meaning it takes a long time to get to the DNS manager.

Best of luck with the improvements!

~~~
RackerJP
yesimahuman: Despite what you have heard, that is something that is scheduled
to change. Take a look at
[http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/blog/2011/03/21/announcing-
ra...](http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/blog/2011/03/21/announcing-rackspace-
cloud-dns-api-private-beta-for-us-uk-cloud-customers/) This will be the
foundation for a brand new DNS Manager in the Control Panel, and it will give
you the ability to script your changes!

------
jcampbell1
Is it just me, or is this an example of terrible corporate communication. As a
slicehost customer, I don't give a shit about what Mark thinks about IPv6 and
OpenStack. All I care about is what is going to change. He makes statements
like "as seamless as possible". That doesn't have any meaning.

If the major change is going to be a new control panel, and a different way of
accessing support, then just say so.

~~~
igrekel
I agree that the email is just about things that have little interest to
customers. My own questions were more along the lines of: \- Will I need to
restart my servers, reinstall, reconfigure them for the change? \- How long
will be the downtime? \- Will the IP change (My DNS is managed elsewhere) \-
Will it still be 64 bit? \- When will this happen approximately? \- Will we
able to choose when it happens for our instances?

Also the fact that I haven't received the email myself is not reassuring at
all. I am not going to just sit around and remain without a predictable
migration path, be it a migration to Rackspace or elsewhere.

~~~
Nutella2
Yes, I got this e-mail today and was most impressed that it went on for so
long without providing any information useful to me, the customer. None of the
links in it go to anything that is useful to me, either. It's nice that they
agonized over their business decision but now that they've made it surely the
important thing is to tell us how exactly it is going to affect us and what we
need to do. None of that is mentioned. Makes me feel like they really are not
taking any customer concerns seriously.

------
epochwolf
Great. I hope rackspace fixes their control panel before this happens. The
current one has required me to contact support to make dns changes because my
end was throwing errors. After a year of that bullshit I left for a different
host. I found rackspace's servers to be excellent but the control panel is
very slow, buggy, and lacks functionality that the slicehost panel has. (like
setting TXT records in the dns.)

Edit: Just to note. The only issue I've had with rackspace was the control
panel. The support was excellent. The people working there are excellent. I
want to use their product. The control panel not working just made me feel
dependent on support for everything I'd rather manage myself.

~~~
forsaken
Yes! I can't believe the control panel has been able to exist in such a shitty
state for a long time. I mostly interact with cloudservers through the API
these days, but last I remember, the control panel didn't let you set up
wildcard DNS, which was a major use-case for me. It actually had javascript
validation to disallow it, if you turned off JS, it worked fine.

------
starnix17
I hope they keep their articles section, it was really helpful for me when I
was setting up my first VPS.

~~~
trustfundbaby
Yup ... I was a linode customer but I set up my instance using the slicehost
tutorials :\

------
plusbryan
Misleading title: Slicehost accounts will be converted to Rackspace cloud
accounts. They are killing the brand, not the product.

~~~
locopati
Afaik, Rackspace cloud accounts are more expensive than Slicehost accounts.
Have you seen or do you know of how this changes pricing?

~~~
mdp
Actually, I made the switch from Slicehost to Rackspace because it was
cheaper. It's pay for what you eat pricing, so you don't get a free allotment
of bandwidth, but it's around ~$11 for a 256 meg instance.

My biggest concern is that the Rackspace Cloud product doesn't seem as
polished as Slicehost. Slicehost was a great service for newer users, with
great documentation and help resources.

~~~
jonknee
But bandwidth is _expensive_. That 256 slice had 150GB of b/w included, which
brings the Rackspace Cloud cost to $37.95. It really adds up quick if you were
using any serious percentage of your bandwidth allotment.

------
rkischuk
My first instinct is to plan a migration to Linode or Softlayer. I use
SliceHost because I want to push a button and have a running server, and push
another button to resize it in less than a minute. If I wanted more control,
I'd be using EC2.

I'm hoping someone with Rackspace Cloud experience can pipe in, but at a
glance, it looks like a more bare-metal offering, like EC2, where you have to
worry about more of the low-level concerns. Thoughts?

~~~
wallfly
No, you are incorrect. Slicehost technology __is __Rackspace Cloud _Servers_
technology. Cloud _servers_ and Slicehost slices are running in the same racks
on the same hardware using identical technology stacks -- always have been.
The control panel for managing a Rackspace Cloud account and products
(including servers) is distinct from the Slicehost customer control panel, and
the support teams were distinct groups of people. Now these two corporate
structures and logical pools of resources will simply be merged under the name
Rackspace Cloud Servers.

~~~
wallfly
Oh, forgot to point out the other big difference. Slicehost had (and still
has) a monthly billing model with a monthly bandwidth allowance bundled into
the cost. Rackspace Cloud _Servers_ costs are calculated on two factors: how
many hours the Cloud Server ran that month (from the day/time you instantiated
it); AND then bandwidth usage is calculated separately, based on some $$/GB
rate:

[http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/cloud_hosting_products/server...](http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/cloud_hosting_products/servers/pricing/)

So, the real point is that even if this wasn't apparent to you the customer,
the substantial differences between Cloud Servers and Slices was _branding_
and different pricing models; the support teams were also separate (and the
two front-line support teams have different "styles"). Otherwise, behind the
scenes, they're literally the same thing -- in terms of data centers, hardware
platforms and hypervisors, etc., etc.

~~~
kaiuhl
This is what I was looking for in this thread, so thank you.

The email left me concerned of the transition and what it would mean for
uptime of websites, but if it's literally just a change of billing, branding,
and control panel, why are they waiting months and months to change this? If
it doesn't affect my websites' uptimes or IPs, they should just rip off the
bandaid now.

------
baggachipz
I've been waiting for the final reason to force me to transition my sites off
my Slicehost account. They've clearly been gutted and left in the dust; their
plans haven't upgraded in specs while their competitors have. It's really too
bad, Slicehost was so great before they were purchased.

~~~
patrickod
They had the best customer service of anybody I've ever used. I'm sad to see
them go

~~~
blhack
Absolutely. Slicehost has been the example I've used for "doing it right" for
quite some time.

The chat was _awesome_. You could jump in there at pretty much any time and
start talking to somebody who could help you immediately.

~~~
robszumski
Rackspace has live chat too...

------
burke
I'm seriously considering migrating from Slicehost to Linode. I've been a
Slicehost customer for over 2 years. I was happy with them at first, but I
don't think I've noticed a single thing change about their service since I
signed up. Particularly the pricing. I'm now paying double what I would at
Linode for a 1024MB VPS, and the control panel isn't as nice. These guys
dropped the ball, big time. This announcement (Very vague -- I don't even
understand what they're announcing) will probably just make me start migrating
this weekend.

------
jen_h
A real bummer.

Have really enjoyed the uptime, stability, and performance Slicehost has given
us over the last few years. I've got our web site configured to be brought up
on AWS in a flash if needed--but we've never needed...uptime of 99.99% in the
last year, 100% in the last 6 months. And crazy affordable. Their
support/incidence response rocks, too.

Vaya con Dios, Slicehost, I loved you much.

------
wildmXranat
What do I do as an administrator with regards to communication and guarantees
of up-time when I communicate these concerns to my clients ?

Here is my take: The longer Rackspace waits on transition details, the more
customers will leave. I will if I don't see a concrete plan of migration, and
I realize that these things are not easy.

------
jrockway
This is my wakeup call to finally switch over to Linode.

------
mindcrime
Interesting stuff... I'd been thinking about leaving Slicehost for Linode
anyway; now I guess I should at least wait and see what the new setup is going
to look like. Any current Rackspace Cloud customers want to comment on their
experience(s)?

~~~
plusbryan
Rackspace Sites user here - same control panel, different product (was called
Mosso). CP is pretty terrible, but services are fast/reliable.

------
postfuturist
I here a lot of talk about linode, but they are hardly the only competitor.
I'm a very happy customer of ARP Networks <http://www.arpnetworks.com/vps> .
They support FreeBSD and OpenBSD in addition to Linux and have competitive
pricing. I run 4 low traffic sites (2 rails, 1 sinatra, 1 django) on a $10 VPS
without issue (using nginx, thin and tornado).

~~~
wewyor
They are probably the best option if you are going to run openbsd or freebsd
on a vps, though if you are going for linux I would say my experience with
prgmr (for a similar price range) was much better than arpnetworks and if you
want support/dns you should go with linode.

------
mhidalgo
The server administration information on slicehost has been real useful for
me, I hope they port that documentation over and it doesn't get lost. The
articles were basically my introduction to setting up a web server, db , and
installing language packages.

------
pilib
About a year ago, when I was making plans to rent a vps for my personal sites
and projects, Slicehost and Linode were the only real contenders. Slicehost
had backups at the time, Linode didn't, but Linode had a slightly better offer
overall. In addition to that, a review from uggedal.com favored Linode. Later,
they doubled the memory, introduced backups, so in my mind, I made the right
choice.

I must say, Slicehost articles are great though. They are exceptionally well
written. Not that Linode's articles are bad, but Slicehost articles are really
good guides.

------
niels_olson
For light use, I'm definitely glad I switched from slicehost to prgmr.com.

------
trey
Just signed up for a year of linode... goodbye slicehost, you were great!

------
ANH
Rackspace needs to talk about pricing before they lose more customers. I'm a
Slicehost customer and my main concern is what the price difference will be.
About to set up a Linode account...

~~~
tmarkiewicz
Two weeks ago we started migrating servers to Rackspace Cloud from Slicehost
and it appears to be equivalent in pricing to slightly less expensive for us.
YMMV depending on bandwidth, storage needs, RAM.

------
Interrante
I'm Mark Interrante, from Rackspace, I wanted to let you know that we will
have an FAQ on the transition posted at the Slicehost forums and on Hacker
News in the next 24 hours.

~~~
Poiesis
As of now, you have not appeared to live up to your promise. I don't see
anything here, in the first few pages of new submissions, or on the forums
first page.

You do not make a compelling case for continuing with you through the
transition.

------
brlewis
I hope the flood of refugees doesn't make my Linode 1024 slower.

------
trustfundbaby
I remember agonizing over picking slicehost or linode 2/3 years ago ... So
glad I went with linode.

~~~
heyimfromreddit
What made you choose Linode?

~~~
trustfundbaby
In the end it came down to price and size offering. Linode had a 128 or 192MB
instance at the time that was insanely priced. Slicehost started at 256MB.
There wasn't a lot to separate them otherwise.

------
dualboot
I'm most curious if this is a marketing decision or a result of an
unsustainable business model.

------
rhaygood
I'm a Slicehost customer, and I just found out about all this from a blog -
it's two days after this Hacker News post, and I still haven't received email
about the matter. Rackspace, I'm very, very unimpressed.

------
tomkarlo
Slicehost was awesome but my more recent sites have been on AWS. If they're
going to force me to transition my whole setup, I'm going to move it over
there and make my life easier.

Not very happy with this whole thing.

------
antihero
Didn't Rackspace just give up indymedia's servers with zero fight?

~~~
nenolod
well, that's the danger of MLAT treaties in this time of multinational
corporations. even though ahimsa.i.o was hosted in london, the datacenter
facility was owned by rackspace which was based in the USA so they had to
comply with the MLAT request initiated by the dutch. it was a shitty deal, but
certainly not rackspace's fault completely.

------
MichaelGG
They advertise starting at 1.5cents/hr. Does that mean the cheapest "cloud
server" I can get is $108? Versus the $20 or so I'm paying now?

Edit: 1.5 cents is actually $10.8 a month. Nevermind :\\.

~~~
trotsky
$10.80 (just correcting the math, I don't actually know about their fees)

~~~
MichaelGG
Oh duh, I put 15 cents in. How do I downvote myself?

------
ericmoritz
I've been putting off moving my Slicehost VPS to Rackspace Cloud. I'm glad I
won't have to now.

~~~
amac
Same. I guess it's a re-branding exercise and they'll do most of the heavy
lifting for us.

------
evertonfuller
Goodbye Slicehost. Hello Linode.

------
chopsueyar
You won't notice a thing.

-Rackspace

