

Rackspace Developer+ Program - jnoller
http://www.rackspace.com/blog/rackspace-developer-program-for-developers-by-developers/

======
old-gregg
Disclaimer: my company was acquired by Rackspace 2 years ago. I am a developer
myself and below are my honest impressions (and things I have learend) of
Rackspace cloud.

Back when they launched it after having had acquired Slicehost, Rackspace
Cloud was the only alternative to AWS and had one significant differentiator
back then: the local storage on the instances wasn't ephemeral - it was
permanent. The benchmarks and pricing were competitive, so the growth was
phenomenal and life was good as a result. And that's when Rackspace dropped
the ball by losing some focus and getting obsessed with launching platform
services one after another ignoring the compute. They even launched what I
believe was the first PaaS ever and gave it an unfortunate name of "cloud
sites" (and confusing plenty of developers at that point, who couldn't tell
"cloud sites", significantly less powerful service, apart from "cloud
servers")

As a result, for a few years the lineup of VMs they offered hasn't changed,
while AWS was launching new types all the time.

So about two years ago Rackspace ended up with a great control panel (easiest
cloud CP to use IMO), a comprehensive set of back-end services: block storage,
object storage, MySQL-as-a-Service, email sending and receiving, MongoDB-as-a-
Service, cloud deployments, CDN and many more... But the selection of virtual
servers was small and the hardware was getting obsolete at that point.

Since then I've seen tremendous investments being made into the core: the
compute. Rackspace launched "performance" line of VMs. They still feature
persistent (backed by RAID-10 SSDs) local storage, latest Xeons and
ridiculously performant network. In a way it's "advantages of backwardness" at
work: the performance line of compute is all fresh latest&greatest gear: the
servers, the networks, etc. The performance, particularly on disk I/O, is
awesome. I hope they'll keep the ball rolling by keeping it up to date by
launching new generations in time.

Moreover, Rackspace hired (or acquired) some brainy engineers out of Bay Area
who've pushed for "at scale" compute offering which is now called OnMetal
([http://rackspace.com/onmetal](http://rackspace.com/onmetal)) - because
that's how internet giants internally do compute, container-based
architectures without virtualization, running on highly specialized high-
uptime servers (open compute). So... Rackspace cloud today is the only way to
experience "facebook-style" infrastructure by renting it by the minute.

The culture of "true web scale" infrastructure is very strong internally,
that's why Rackspace has been a huge supporter and believer of Docker, and
some Rackers - having grown tired of the sad state of Linux distribution -
founded CoreOS ([http://coreos.com](http://coreos.com)), the fresh look at
running massively scalable infrastructure from the operating system point of
view. Today, Rackspace is the only cloud where you can run Docker containers
on top of CoreOS natively on highly efficient (performance per dollar)
instantly-provisioned OpenCompute gear without noisy cpu/disk/network
neighbors and without virtualization tax.

What could be better?

Well... Rackspace is not the cheapest for undersized deployments [1]. They've
never been known for doing things like selling the over-provisioned VMs
running on the cheapest machines on consumer-grade SSDs in RAID-5 arrays. A
typical Rackspace customer treats a server outage as a big deal, "engineering
for failure" for many (most?) cases is actually more expensive than just
outsourcing reliability into a higher quality infrastructure. They love to
make everything redundant and tend to go with higher spec and high-MTBF parts.
Another component of the higher pricing is the support organization. The
culture of bending backwards to make customers happy is insane, here's an
example: if a customer asks for help resolving problems with Sendgrid (a
competing email sending service), Rackspace support people will gladly assist,
without bothering them with showing off the superiority of Mailgun - my
company Rackspace acquired. I was blown away by that, customer gets help with
whatever they feel like getting it.

You can even go as far as asking Rackspace to just run certain components of
your infrastructure for you, saving on Devops positions. That's their
bread&butter.

While Rackspace offers alternatives to most AWS services, they're not 1-to-1
equivalents. CBS (alternative to EBS) is vastly superior in my opinion because
(based on what I know about EBS from public sources) CBS is simpler, has been
delivering more predictable and higher performance/uptime experience, Cloud
Files (S3 alternative) is comparable, ObjectRocket (MongoDB-as-a-Service) is
absolutely phenomenal - the only DBaaS I can recommend anywhere, but there're
no Redshift or Glacier counterparts.

I guess what I'm saying is this: Rackspace Cloud has evolved into a grown up
contender with a solid feature set matched only by AWS, with multiple DCs all
over the world and some unique capabilities (like OnMetal flavor of cloud
servers), which differentiates by over-investing into hardware infrastructure
and support. So if those qualities matter, take a look. The program Jesse is
announcing only makes it easier for you.

[1] Once you cross $10K/mo hosting spend, they're very competitive especially
when you factor in the cost of running/managing the infrastructure.

~~~
unoti
> Rackspace Cloud was the only alternative to AWS and had one significant
> differentiator back then...

One other big differentiator compared to AWS, and the reason I went to
Rackspace in the first place: straightforward pricing. Figuring out how much
an AWS machine was going to cost was, back then at least, like trying to
figure out how much it'd cost to buy a hundred Yen next Monday, for someone
who has no experience with currency markets. Amazon's pricing was very
complex, but with Rackspace, it was easy for me to tell how much a month would
cost for what I needed.

> if a customer asks for help resolving problems with Sendgrid (a competing
> email sending service), Rackspace support people will gladly assist... I was
> blown away by that, customer gets help with whatever they feel like getting
> it.

While the uptime and performance of the machines I have on Rackspace has been
great, the "fanatical support" claim is empty marketing B.S. in my personal
experience. A year ago, I had a machine's performance tank while my startup's
traffic started to simultaneously ramp up. It turned out there was another
host on the same machine slurping too much disk resources, they moved it away.
That improved things some, but I ended up needing an expert to take a look at
my Apache configuration. I begged Rackspace to help. My startup's life was
hanging in the balance: traffic was going up, and performance was going down.
I desperately needed help from an expert, and asked Rackspace for help, and
offered to pay. They did nothing for me.

I started researching it for myself, and basically trained myself to be much
more of an Apache configuration expert over the next 48 hours. I needed help,
I had money, I was super desperate, and they did nothing for me.

I guess the real problem was that I didn't need help with SendGrid, or perhaps
I couldn't figure out the right people to ask.

~~~
jnoller
You should _not_ have had that apache problem and not gotten help. Period.
That's unacceptable, and I'm sorry. We're working on it

~~~
snowwrestler
Overall I've been a happy Rackspace customer for years, but we've had the same
experience with Apache troubleshooting. The support ended at whether Apache
was up and running. Beyond that we were told Rackspace considered it to be
"application tuning"\--which covers all the important settings that are used
to manage loads and secure Apache. Luckily a development company we had on
contract had a great Linux admin who could help us out.

From this perspective Rackspace definitely has _not_ performed a devops role
for us. Network administrator? System administrator? Yes, absolutely, and
great support for both. But devops is where the application meets the server,
and IME Rackspace has stayed away from that.

I do see the reason for it--what does Rackspace know about our application?
It's not fair to hold them responsible for that. But it created a gap in our
professional support.

edit: words

~~~
jnoller
I think support has to move up the stack to be remotely relevant to 2014
markets and beyond. This is my goal and why I'm running point on the dev to
dev support. But to your point, on the 15th we precisely outlined what is
covered on each support level:

[http://www.rackspace.com/managed-cloud/](http://www.rackspace.com/managed-
cloud/)

Fundamentally; support has to become systems level, and not single instance
level, and that means gaining knowledge and expertise (which we have in house)
about the nuances of a given application stack.

~~~
quicksilver03
I guess it depends on the use case and the sysadmin knowledge of the client. I
find that the frontier of responsibility becomes too much blurred when the
service provider takes care of anything above the hardware: I personally
prefer when the service provider concentrates on power and network stability,
and anything else is my responsibility.

------
latch
Rackspace is a tarnished brand for me. I immediately associate it with
ridiculous pricing and bad "cloud" (mosso). With closed eyes it refused to see
the quicksand of commodity it built its tower on.

I was hoping to come up with ways that companies with poor brands can
recapture a lost audience. But I'm drawing a blank because it's a competitive
market. It's like the car industry an the generational memory people have
about various manufacturers. So, the only advice I have is: don't fuck with
your brand.

~~~
korzun
> Rackspace is a tarnished brand for me.

I have dozen of servers with them (both cloud and hardware) and in terms of
support and network they are pretty good.

If you used them back in the day, give it another shot. Totally different
picture now.

> But I'm drawing a blank because it's a competitive market.

I don't think there is much competition when it comes to hosting mission
critical applications.

Typical options are AWS or Rackspace. If you require any sort of dedicated
hardware Rackspace is the only solid choice.

I tried putting stuff on DO last month for another start-up and so far their
NY-EAST went down more than any of our cloud instances within Rackspace.

~~~
bsenftner
You really should take the time to learn how to build your own server cluster.
The savings is exponential. The control is complete. The knowledge is
priceless.

~~~
korzun
> You really should take the time to learn how to build your own server
> cluster.

Not sure where I mentioned that I don't how to do that. But thanks?

> The savings is exponential.

For a lot of start-ups rolling their own infrastructure is generally a giant
waste of time and money in both short and long term run.

~~~
kylestev
>For a lot of start-ups rolling their own infrastructure is generally a giant
waste of time and money in both short and long term run.

Exactly. Which is why people go to Rackspace: not having to hire their own in-
house DevOps guy (which doesn't scale as your servers grow) to take care of
their servers.

------
lawl
[https://developer.rackspace.com/signup/](https://developer.rackspace.com/signup/)

> _Want two 1GB CPUs or one 2GB?_

No 1.5 GB CPUs? Disappointed. Hopefully they offer 0.25 Terrawatts of RAM at
least. That would be nice with 314159 kilohertz of cloud.

~~~
jnoller
Argh, typos - fixing

~~~
simonebrunozzi
jnoller, do you work for Rackspace? Don't worry too much about typos, they
happen.

~~~
jnoller
Yes I do - and they've already been fixed!

------
pekk
So Rackspace wants to compete with the EC2 Free Tier and get developers hooked
on their platform. Those developers should consider how much they will have to
pay after the first year.

It's a pity that Rackspace is taking away its cheaper, smaller sized
instances. Oh well - at least Linode and Digital Ocean still want my money.

~~~
mikegioia
I'm in the process of migrating from Rackspace to Linode actually. The main
issue is, we run a lot of average-powered machines and the prices at Rackspace
were too oppressive. It's $80/mo for an 8GB server at Linode vs. $350 NextGen
Standard) or $233 (NextGen Performance 1) at Rackspace. Our data size isn't
that large so I value redundancy and ~$750/mo for one MongoDB replicaset is
far, far too much.

~~~
jnoller
FWIW: For MongoDB replicas and scale out - I would recommend taking a look at
ObjectRocket. I'm not kidding when I say they're the only way I'm using mongo
in an application.

On the pricing: You are right; we are not attempting to be price competitive
with VPS providers. We can discuss the difference between Cloud servers (in
general) and VPSes as a whole, but they really are meant for different things
and will always be priced differently.

Also, as of the 15th, that 8gb box costs $186.88 /mo for a full 730 hour month
now. Of course, that doesn't compare to the Linode offering. But then with
cloud block storage, autoscale and other features rolled into the application
it's a bit different

------
korzun
So I'm not sure why there is a spin on this. This is (as others pointed out)
basically a free yearly trial.

When I was writing an API client for their cloud infrastructure (before they
rolled their own)

> [https://github.com/AlekseyKorzun/rackspace-open-cloud-
> php](https://github.com/AlekseyKorzun/rackspace-open-cloud-php)

I had to spin up instances for testing purposes on my own dime, luckily I had
disposable income.

In my case, if I money was an issue, their Developer+ program would let me
(technically) release 1.0.0 but I would never be able to release 2.0.0 that
uses their new API specification because my credit would expire.

~~~
hyperliner
I have tried Digital Ocean for these types of tests. Very cheap.

~~~
korzun
Yup they are cheap and fast to provision.

I use and recommend them for projects but I'm still not sure about running
production grade stuff on their infrastructure.

~~~
jnoller
Since I'm honest: I also have a DO account for the things I feel a VPS is good
for; IRC bouncer, little programs I just need a shell for, etc.

------
thrown_produce
There is no mentioned about Developer+ anywhere in the dashboard, account or
billing-pages.

I would suggest that this and the time left is somewhere mentioned because I'm
not exactly interested in paying a "infrastructure charge" for spinning up a
few test-servers.

Second, I signed up via "International Customer" and according to the
Dashboard I can't create servers in London - the only Datacenter in Europe.
I'm in Europe so I would want to run my servers in Europe...

(I have opened a support ticket to confirm that I am indeed a Developer+
before I start creating anything.)

~~~
thrown_produce
No reply yet from the "fanatical" support re: a simple billing/account type
question.

Linode, whom we use but need a second cloud for DR, answers to these types of
questions in minutes.

jnoller: Where in the dashboard can I verify that I have a Developer+ account?

~~~
jnoller
Working on that: if you email me: jesse.noller@rackspace.com I can confirm for
you. I run a report regularly that enables a developer+ right hand support
drawer.

~~~
thrown_produce
sent!

------
unoti
I've been a loyal Rackspace customer for years. The machines have performed
well and been ridiculously reliable, and overall I've been pleased with the
experience.

I guess this isn't targeted at people like me.

~~~
jnoller
You're not quite wrong, but I would (happily) point out that some existing
customers are using this as a dev/test program prior to production launching.
We can't attach it to an existing account though.

------
wink
So I just signed for an "international account" (and not UK) and my only
server choices are the 3 US locations and HKG/SYD.

Looking forward to that latency :)

Of course it's not your fault, but if UK is the _only_ sensible choice for
people in the EU (and needs a seperate account), please don't call the other
offer "International".

~~~
thrown_produce
I agree.

~~~
jnoller
I'll change the button!

------
lucraft
Is an Infrastructure Credit like a free trial?

~~~
jnoller
Not precisely - I'm the architect behind this and personally, I hate anything
labeled free or trial - they tend to draw people in, yes, but they're often
crippled or limited.

What this is 50$/month for 12 months (600$) off your cloud usage. There are no
support fees or minimum, you have direct access to developers here, etc. There
are no limits to what you can consume, no rate limiting, etc.

For anything you use - say, OnMetal, that goes above that credit (which could
increase in amount or time) you pay competitive infrastructure only rates.

As a dev; I much prefer the "let me build what I want to, or need to" versus
being stuck in a sandbox or worse, surprise costs if I do something crazy.

~~~
corobo
Is it possible to graduate from developer+ to the startups programme you guys
run if the situation would allow for it (startups requirements met, all that
jazz)?

Obviously you'd hope to be bringing in enough to cover hosting by year 1 but
out of curiousity really

Edit: A second question, is it possible to attach developer+ to an account
that already exists? Reason my account's a bit unloved at the moment is
because I'm not at a point where I can afford Rackspace prices

~~~
snsr
Regarding your second question, it looks like you must be a (relatively?) new
customer to participate. From the developer+ T&C:

> _2.1. Company is a New Cloud Customer. "New Cloud Customer" refers to a
> Company that does not have a Cloud Account prior to becoming a Cloud
> Services customer in accordance with Section 2.2 below._

~~~
corobo
Ah oh dear, I missed that bit! Thanks for that.

I guess if the time comes it'll be registered under its own entity so I'll pop
back at that time! :)

~~~
jnoller
if you have any issues - gimme a holler: jesse.noller@rackspace.com

------
newman8r
It's good they added this - their customer support rep told me this was coming
soon. That's after I told them I wasn't recommending them anymore because you
can no longer get an account without a $50/mo/service fee as of a few weeks
ago.

Might try this out, but pretty happy with AWS.

~~~
jnoller
Remember; that 50$/mo fee was _rolled into the product prices_ before. That's
why under the old model a 4gb server cost 1/3 of 4, 1gb boxes. The new pricing
lowers the infrastructure prices (and levels them so 1gb of ram == 1gb of ram)
but clearly states the support fee as a whole.

Note, the minimum fee only triggers if you use Cloud Servers, or OnMetal.

~~~
newman8r
Yeah, I use cloud servers. I think the bill on one of my grandfathered account
has been ~$16/mo - under the new system I believe it would be $50/mo.

~~~
jnoller
You're grandfathered in then - sounds like you're running an old 512mb next
gen machine

------
joeemison
I'm signing up. Will report back.

~~~
hyperliner
There is nothing to report. What do you want to report back? You were just
given $50! Go party!

~~~
joeemison
What's worth reporting back is whether Rackspace is worth using in a world
where AWS exists. A year ago, the answer was "No". OnMetal looks very
interesting, though.

