On: Announcing New Lower Request Pricing for Amazon S3

[Matsta]

What I don't get is now Rackspace Cloud files (with the Akamai CDN) is pretty much the same price as s3, and you don't have to pay for GET, PUT etc. requests at all.

I think Akamai's CDN is still faster then Amazon's (especially here in New Zealand), and is one flat rate rather then Amazon's rate which increases outside of US/Europe.

Also Rackspace's control panel is much easier to use then Amazon's (In general I don't like the AWS panel, it's takes a while to get the hang of it, especially teaching a newbie is a nightmare) I can't say much about the API, but I'm guessing Amazon win's that as it is the standard.

[jread → Matsta]

Rackspace Cloud has regions in the US and UK only. AWS has regions globally including 3 in the US , 1 in Europe, 2 in Asia, 1 in Australia and 1 in South America. Object storage content is often sensitive in nature and not distributed publicly by CDN. Additionally, AWS provides a larger and more comprehensive suite of complementary cloud services including a more robust compute platform.

[toomuchtodo → Matsta]

We've had the opposite experience.

Akamai's NetStorage is a pain in the ass to work with vs S3. Akamai's CDN replicates much slower than Cloudfront (we've seen distribution/caching complete in seconds, vs upwards of hours for Akamai).

Yes, the AWS GUI is......difficult sometimes. We don't pay them because of their GUI. We pay them because their replication of our content is quick.

[gioele → toomuchtodo]

If the AWS GUI is difficult, then what about the Rackspace CloudFiles GUI?

But you are right, we pay them for their services, not for their web interfaces.

[old-gregg → Matsta]

Disclaimer: I work at Rackspace. And I love CloudFiles, and honestly prefer it to the S3.

I've talked to a few folks at PyCon this year who used both and the consensus was that:

  - CF API is faster 
  - Akamai is slower to replicate

Look at using Cloud Files with Fastly: best of both worlds.

[melbourne_mat → Matsta]

Dude just a quick vocab tip: try 'than' instead of 'then'.

[eblume → melbourne_mat]

No, no, please - just leave that stuff in other parts of the web. Let's keep discussion on-topic here, as much as possible.

Don't mean to be snippy, I'm just worried about HN.

[Matsta → melbourne_mat]

I suck at grammar :p

[jschulenklopper → Matsta]

We thought that you were going to write: "You're apparently better in grammar then I am." :-)

[idupree → Matsta]

https://www.rackspacecloud.com/ ...has a SSL error (for me right now - their certificate expired 2 days ago).

[rgbrenner → idupree]

is www.rackspacecloud.com used for anything? I ask because the certificate is for * .rackspacecloud.com and expired on 4/1.. but https://manage.rackspacecloud.com has a * .rackspacecloud.com cert that expires in July (issued in 2011).

Also www.rackspacecloud.com just redirects to www.rackspace.com