4 ms·

Rackspace Cloud switching CDN from Limelight to Akamai

35 points by jread 16y ago

byoung2 16y ago
This has been a big issue in the Rackspace Cloud user community. There has been no support for CNAME, SSL, or invalidation, so lots of customers (including me) have looked to other providers. I moved all of my projects to Amazon Cloudfront for this reason. Hopefully with the move to Akamai, Rackspace can play some serious catch-up feature-wise.
- ambirex 16y ago
  I agree, this had was showstopper for a previous project. We had briefly looked into a stop gap solution of a SSL proxy but that really negated the CDN features. I'm glad we choose to go with Amazon, because they have continued their lead in the cloud services space. I am very glad to see Rackspace (and others) continue to expand their offering into this market.
  - chopsueyar 16y ago
    Are you guys only delivering VOD content? Any live streaming?
    - byoung2 16y ago
      Not on any public projects, but I have been experimenting with Cloudfront RMTP streaming. I'm interested to see if there are any big projects using this.
    - ambirex 16y ago
      it was an ecommerce system for photographs. To be able to store and display the assets from an ssl page with out that pesky warning.
- PStamatiou 16y ago
  Interestingly, I was just brainstorming yesterday on how it could be possible to serve my jekyll blog entirely on CloudFront due to the default root object and cname support among others. http://paulstamatiou.com/amazon-cloudfront-cdn-origin-pull http://paulstamatiou.com/amazon-cloudfront-cdn-origin-pull Really impressed with AWS these days.
- rjamestaylor 16y ago
  CNAME, SSL, Edge Purge (invalidation), and more are coming with the addition of Akamai to the Rackspace Cloud Files product. We're excited, too. A big reason for this new partnership is feedback received from the Rackspace Cloud user community received here: http://feedback.rackspacecloud.com http://feedback.rackspacecloud.com. (See this link for today's announcement: http://bit.ly/RackCloudAkamai http://bit.ly/RackCloudAkamai and for ongoing updates on the partnership between Rackspace and Akamai, see http://www.rackspace.com/akamai http://www.rackspace.com/akamai ). Robert J Taylor Sr Systems Engineer Rackspace Hosting robot AT rackspace DOT com
sounddust 16y ago
Is anyone else having the same issue with these services as I am - namely that Rackspace Cloud (and Amazon Cloudfront) do not support gzip compression? That means that any advantage in latency that you gain from serving a file locally is offset by the fact that it must be served uncompressed. It seems like it should be an absolute requirement for any CDN provider (and the smaller ones like SimpleCDN and MaxCDN do support gzip). I've repeatedly asked Rackspace if they plan to support gzip and they haven't given any indication that it's coming; this e-mail confirms it's not even on their roadmap.
- seiji 16y ago
  The CDN should pass through whatever you give it. If your servers return gzip content for a request, the CDN will cache it. It sounds like you want a configurable distributed web server instead of a CDN proxy cache.
  - sounddust 16y ago
    That's exactly how MaxCDN and SimpleCDN work, but Cloudfront and Rackspace Cloud don't pass through requests from your own server; rather, they require you to manually upload the files you want to serve via CDN in advance.
    - asb 16y ago
      But Cloudfront now supports custom origins which I believe allows gzip by forwarding the Accept-Encoding header and caching different versions of the file depending on the value of that header.
      - thezilch 16y ago
        You are correct: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2097326 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2097326
      - sounddust 16y ago
        This is great to know, but it seems like a lot of unnecessary work on our part to make it work. That means for each file we have to manually create and upload a compressed version, ensure that the compressed and uncompressed versions are always in sync, and properly set up custom origins for the files. Instead, Amazon's front end should just check the incoming accept-encoding header and automatically compress as needed.
wildmXranat 16y ago
We've got 500K objects on Amazon and any one of them needed to be accessible via SSL. That and the price made Amazon an easy choice from a myriad of competitors.
prakash 16y ago
If you are interested in CDN performance comparison as seen by end-users take a look at our Charts: http://cedexis.com/data/charts.html?country=223&providerType=3&chartType=all http://cedexis.com/data/charts.html?country=223&provider... Gabriel (yegg) wrote about our services on his blog -- http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/12/testing-cdn-performance-via-cedexis-radar.html http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/12/testing-cdn-perf...

35 points by jread 16y ago

This has been a big issue in the Rackspace Cloud user community. There has been no support for CNAME, SSL, or invalidation, so lots of customers (including me) have looked to other providers. I moved all of my projects to Amazon Cloudfront for this reason. Hopefully with the move to Akamai, Rackspace can play some serious catch-up feature-wise.

ambirex 16y ago
I agree, this had was showstopper for a previous project. We had briefly looked into a stop gap solution of a SSL proxy but that really negated the CDN features. I'm glad we choose to go with Amazon, because they have continued their lead in the cloud services space. I am very glad to see Rackspace (and others) continue to expand their offering into this market.
- chopsueyar 16y ago
  Are you guys only delivering VOD content? Any live streaming?
  - byoung2 16y ago
    Not on any public projects, but I have been experimenting with Cloudfront RMTP streaming. I'm interested to see if there are any big projects using this.
  - ambirex 16y ago
    it was an ecommerce system for photographs. To be able to store and display the assets from an ssl page with out that pesky warning.
PStamatiou 16y ago
Interestingly, I was just brainstorming yesterday on how it could be possible to serve my jekyll blog entirely on CloudFront due to the default root object and cname support among others. http://paulstamatiou.com/amazon-cloudfront-cdn-origin-pull http://paulstamatiou.com/amazon-cloudfront-cdn-origin-pull Really impressed with AWS these days.
rjamestaylor 16y ago
CNAME, SSL, Edge Purge (invalidation), and more are coming with the addition of Akamai to the Rackspace Cloud Files product. We're excited, too. A big reason for this new partnership is feedback received from the Rackspace Cloud user community received here: http://feedback.rackspacecloud.com http://feedback.rackspacecloud.com. (See this link for today's announcement: http://bit.ly/RackCloudAkamai http://bit.ly/RackCloudAkamai and for ongoing updates on the partnership between Rackspace and Akamai, see http://www.rackspace.com/akamai http://www.rackspace.com/akamai ). Robert J Taylor Sr Systems Engineer Rackspace Hosting robot AT rackspace DOT com

sounddust 16y ago

Is anyone else having the same issue with these services as I am - namely that Rackspace Cloud (and Amazon Cloudfront) do not support gzip compression? That means that any advantage in latency that you gain from serving a file locally is offset by the fact that it must be served uncompressed. It seems like it should be an absolute requirement for any CDN provider (and the smaller ones like SimpleCDN and MaxCDN do support gzip). I've repeatedly asked Rackspace if they plan to support gzip and they haven't given any indication that it's coming; this e-mail confirms it's not even on their roadmap.

seiji 16y ago
The CDN should pass through whatever you give it. If your servers return gzip content for a request, the CDN will cache it. It sounds like you want a configurable distributed web server instead of a CDN proxy cache.
- sounddust 16y ago
  That's exactly how MaxCDN and SimpleCDN work, but Cloudfront and Rackspace Cloud don't pass through requests from your own server; rather, they require you to manually upload the files you want to serve via CDN in advance.
  - asb 16y ago
    But Cloudfront now supports custom origins which I believe allows gzip by forwarding the Accept-Encoding header and caching different versions of the file depending on the value of that header.
    - thezilch 16y ago
      You are correct: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2097326 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2097326
    - sounddust 16y ago
      This is great to know, but it seems like a lot of unnecessary work on our part to make it work. That means for each file we have to manually create and upload a compressed version, ensure that the compressed and uncompressed versions are always in sync, and properly set up custom origins for the files. Instead, Amazon's front end should just check the incoming accept-encoding header and automatically compress as needed.

wildmXranat 16y ago

We've got 500K objects on Amazon and any one of them needed to be accessible via SSL. That and the price made Amazon an easy choice from a myriad of competitors.

prakash 16y ago

If you are interested in CDN performance comparison as seen by end-users take a look at our Charts: http://cedexis.com/data/charts.html?country=223&providerType=3&chartType=all http://cedexis.com/data/charts.html?country=223&provider... Gabriel (yegg) wrote about our services on his blog -- http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/12/testing-cdn-performance-via-cedexis-radar.html http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/12/testing-cdn-perf...