8 ms·

Rackspace Developer+ Program

84 points by jnoller 12y ago

lucraft 12y ago
Is an Infrastructure Credit like a free trial?
- jnoller 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      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 12y ago
        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 12y ago
        if you have any issues - gimme a holler: jesse.noller@rackspace.com
    - jnoller 12y ago
      Yes, you could go into the startup program! See the last item in the FAQ https://developer.rackspace.com/developer-plus/faq/ https://developer.rackspace.com/developer-plus/faq/
  - philbarr 12y ago
    So this is essentially a free 12 month trial? The problem with that is I don't want to sign up today because the trial will start from the day I sign up. So if I had something ready to go today that would be fine but I don't - and by the time I do have something to go I may well have forgotten about this. If this is an attempt to get to the section of the market currently filled by the likes of Digital Ocean (to name but one) then this might be the wrong way to go about it. Personally, I want to be able to start small (VERY small, like FREE), and scale it up as I get customers. Digital Ocean and the like are great for small but I worry that they won't fit if I need to scale. So maybe you could offer something cheap and small as opposed to the "big or nothing" attitude that Rackspace seems to have. If I knew I could start miniscule but go all the way up to massive with the same provider then that's a big selling point for me.
    - jnoller 12y ago
      > So this is essentially a free 12 month trial? The problem with that is I don't want to sign up today because the trial will start from the day I sign up. So if I had something ready to go today that would be fine but I don't - and by the time I do have something to go I may well have forgotten about this. Agreed, and feedback like this will help me hone the time limit and other things. The program isn't ending any time soon, but I hear you loud and clear on the 12 month limit. > If this is an attempt to get to the section of the market currently filled by the likes of Digital Ocean (to name but one) then this might be the wrong way to go about it. Personally, I want to be able to start small (VERY small, like FREE), and scale it up as I get customers. Digital Ocean and the like are great for small but I worry that they won't fit if I need to scale. Bluntly: It's not. I've put comments in other threads, but this is not an attempt to go after VPS providers. It is not an attempt to dissuade people from adopting VPS providers. A cloud server and the associated technologies is different than what a VPS typically offers, and is designed for different architectures. The costs and the way you build your application (should be/are) different. > So maybe you could offer something cheap and small as opposed to the "big or nothing" attitude that Rackspace seems to have. If I knew I could start miniscule but go all the way up to massive with the same provider then that's a big selling point for me. For me, ideally we remove the time limit. That's my goal.
joeemison 12y ago
I'm signing up. Will report back.
- hyperliner 12y ago
  There is nothing to report. What do you want to report back? You were just given $50! Go party!
  - jnoller 12y ago
    Well; 600$ really and my email address ;)
  - joeemison 12y ago
    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.
unoti 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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.
latch 12y ago
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.
- bobx11 12y ago
  The product manager below clarified that it's a 1 year free trial... so you're pretty spot on. EDIT: I'm just realizing now that the product manager is Jesse Noller, prolific Python and PyCon contributor... so maybe it's not evil at the root after all.
  - jnoller 12y ago
    It's really not evil. Seriously
- korzun 12y ago
  > 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 12y ago
    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.
lawl 12y ago
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 12y ago
  Argh, typos - fixing
  - simonebrunozzi 12y ago
    jnoller, do you work for Rackspace? Don't worry too much about typos, they happen.
    - jnoller 12y ago
      Yes I do - and they've already been fixed!
pekk 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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
- jnoller 12y ago
  Anyone who needs help calculating how much they will pay after the year is up can ask me, and it will also be shown on the invoice each month.
korzun 12y ago
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 12y ago
  I have tried Digital Ocean for these types of tests. Very cheap.
  - korzun 12y ago
    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.
    - hyperliner 12y ago
      Agree. Don't run production on DO. It's still shaky and evolving. For for dev work, probably one of the best values.
    - jnoller 12y ago
      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.
- jnoller 12y ago
  See, it't not a yearly free trial - and that's why I avoided saying that completely. Other providers have a free tier with a specific instance type, or # of api calls that you're "limited to" per month, if you exceed those, you're charged. That's not free. The same applies here, except we don't dictate which products or APIs you use; you will get the credit, for one year, applied to the services you need for your application. Also, if any time you're writing OSS bindings to our APIs, or openstack, let us know. We'll hook you up for free to get that support in there.
newman8r 12y ago
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 $50/mo/service fee as of a few weeks ago. Might try this out, but pretty happy with AWS.
- jnoller 12y ago
  Remember; that 50$/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 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      You're grandfathered in then - sounds like you're running an old 512mb next gen machine
old-gregg 12y ago
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.
thrown_produce 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      sent!
wink 12y ago
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 12y ago
  I agree.
  - jnoller 12y ago
    I'll change the button!

84 points by jnoller 12y ago

lucraft 12y ago

Is an Infrastructure Credit like a free trial?

jnoller 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      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 12y ago
        if you have any issues - gimme a holler: jesse.noller@rackspace.com
  - jnoller 12y ago
    Yes, you could go into the startup program! See the last item in the FAQ https://developer.rackspace.com/developer-plus/faq/ https://developer.rackspace.com/developer-plus/faq/
- philbarr 12y ago
  So this is essentially a free 12 month trial? The problem with that is I don't want to sign up today because the trial will start from the day I sign up. So if I had something ready to go today that would be fine but I don't - and by the time I do have something to go I may well have forgotten about this. If this is an attempt to get to the section of the market currently filled by the likes of Digital Ocean (to name but one) then this might be the wrong way to go about it. Personally, I want to be able to start small (VERY small, like FREE), and scale it up as I get customers. Digital Ocean and the like are great for small but I worry that they won't fit if I need to scale. So maybe you could offer something cheap and small as opposed to the "big or nothing" attitude that Rackspace seems to have. If I knew I could start miniscule but go all the way up to massive with the same provider then that's a big selling point for me.
  - jnoller 12y ago
    > So this is essentially a free 12 month trial? The problem with that is I don't want to sign up today because the trial will start from the day I sign up. So if I had something ready to go today that would be fine but I don't - and by the time I do have something to go I may well have forgotten about this. Agreed, and feedback like this will help me hone the time limit and other things. The program isn't ending any time soon, but I hear you loud and clear on the 12 month limit. > If this is an attempt to get to the section of the market currently filled by the likes of Digital Ocean (to name but one) then this might be the wrong way to go about it. Personally, I want to be able to start small (VERY small, like FREE), and scale it up as I get customers. Digital Ocean and the like are great for small but I worry that they won't fit if I need to scale. Bluntly: It's not. I've put comments in other threads, but this is not an attempt to go after VPS providers. It is not an attempt to dissuade people from adopting VPS providers. A cloud server and the associated technologies is different than what a VPS typically offers, and is designed for different architectures. The costs and the way you build your application (should be/are) different. > So maybe you could offer something cheap and small as opposed to the "big or nothing" attitude that Rackspace seems to have. If I knew I could start miniscule but go all the way up to massive with the same provider then that's a big selling point for me. For me, ideally we remove the time limit. That's my goal.

joeemison 12y ago

I'm signing up. Will report back.

hyperliner 12y ago
There is nothing to report. What do you want to report back? You were just given $50! Go party!
- jnoller 12y ago
  Well; 600$ really and my email address ;)
- joeemison 12y ago
  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.

unoti 12y ago

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 12y ago
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.

latch 12y ago

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.

bobx11 12y ago
The product manager below clarified that it's a 1 year free trial... so you're pretty spot on. EDIT: I'm just realizing now that the product manager is Jesse Noller, prolific Python and PyCon contributor... so maybe it's not evil at the root after all.
- jnoller 12y ago
  It's really not evil. Seriously
korzun 12y ago
> 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 12y ago
  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.

lawl 12y ago

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 12y ago
Argh, typos - fixing
- simonebrunozzi 12y ago
  jnoller, do you work for Rackspace? Don't worry too much about typos, they happen.
  - jnoller 12y ago
    Yes I do - and they've already been fixed!

pekk 12y ago

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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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
jnoller 12y ago
Anyone who needs help calculating how much they will pay after the year is up can ask me, and it will also be shown on the invoice each month.

korzun 12y ago

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 12y ago
I have tried Digital Ocean for these types of tests. Very cheap.
- korzun 12y ago
  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.
  - hyperliner 12y ago
    Agree. Don't run production on DO. It's still shaky and evolving. For for dev work, probably one of the best values.
  - jnoller 12y ago
    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.
jnoller 12y ago
See, it't not a yearly free trial - and that's why I avoided saying that completely. Other providers have a free tier with a specific instance type, or # of api calls that you're "limited to" per month, if you exceed those, you're charged. That's not free. The same applies here, except we don't dictate which products or APIs you use; you will get the credit, for one year, applied to the services you need for your application. Also, if any time you're writing OSS bindings to our APIs, or openstack, let us know. We'll hook you up for free to get that support in there.

newman8r 12y ago

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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    You're grandfathered in then - sounds like you're running an old 512mb next gen machine

old-gregg 12y ago

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.

thrown_produce 12y ago

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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    sent!

wink 12y ago

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 12y ago
I agree.
- jnoller 12y ago
  I'll change the button!