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Rackspace Cloud Servers vs. VPS Platforms

10 points by mattyb 17y ago

christefano 17y ago
From what I can tell, SoftLayer's offerings are similar and the prices are better when compared to Rackspace Cloud. $99 at SoftLayer gets 250GB of storage and 2000GB of bandwidth while it gets only 50GB of storage and 500GB of bandwidth at Rackspace Cloud. "Utility billing is essential for any Cloud platform and something else you will not find from a VPS provider. You pay for your server instances on a per hour basis, so if you only need an instance for a certain amount of days/weeks that is all you pay for." SoftLayer does this, although they call each instance a "CCI" (cloud computing instance) instead of VPS.
mdasen 17y ago
It feels like Rackspace is grasping at straws to differentiate their products from the competition. Examples: oversold-nature: this is common in OpenVZ setups and some others, but not Xen and at least Amazon and Linode are both on Xen (as are prgmr and ChunkHost). You have your dedicated resources. instant-provisioning: Linode and Amazon both have this for the most part and it's true that Linode might not have the capacity to launch 100s of instances at once all the time, but that isn't a consideration for most. cloning: I know this can be accomplished with Amazon and I'm pretty sure with Linode as well (might be a support ticket, though). no bloatware: I haven't used a VPS provider that had it. persistent storage: everyone has this - even Amazon now with their EBS which is way more flexible. hourly billing: not something that most need, but it is an advantage over Linode. utility bandwidth: basically a way for them to charge you high prices for bandwidth. resource granularity: an advantage over Amazon, but most VPS providers are in line with Rackspace. -- Rackspace has a good service with a great history (both as Cloud Servers and as Slicehost), but this article is trying to create product differentiation where there isn't really much. Slicehost/Rackspace haven't reduced pricing since it was introduced over 3 years ago and they're trying to maintain a premium position as Amazon reduces their prices, Linode becomes a larger competitor, and lots of other smaller companies try to enter the space. That requires product differentiation.
- wgj 17y ago
  I couldn't help but notice they stayed away from discussing round trip http request/response latency. (Or really any other performance metric.) I'm not sure how good Rackspace cloud is in this regard, but other cloud options do not test well. If they are not drawing attention to it, it leads me to assume they would rather not discuss it.
- bretthoerner 17y ago
  > persistent storage: everyone has this - even Amazon now with their EBS which is way more flexible. The point is that theirs is persistent by default. You're given a (probably sparse) filesystem on top of RAID 1+0. You can reboot the machine (or something can fail) and your data is still there. With this and static IPs you basically don't have to think about it as a special "cloud" machine and plan for failures and data loss. With Amazon EBS you pay per operation and it's a slower networked disk. If a node fails you need to bring up another and mount/configure the EBS volumes to get up and moving again. Use the right tool for the right job, of course, but for my time & money I like Rackspace's persistent storage more.
- mnordhoff 17y ago
  FWIW, Linode pro-rates billing to the day, crediting unused funds back to your account, which is usually flexible enough when you only want a VPS for a few days.
tialys 17y ago
This story was [dead]-ed once already since it's clearly nothing more than an ad for Rackspace Cloud. Apparently an effective one. Before you upvote, take a look at the 'story' here.
neovive 17y ago
Interesting that there is no mention of Slicehost. I wonder if Slicehost will exist in the longterm or will it's customers get folded into the Rackspace Server offering. Coincidently, I'm in the process of searching for a host and am close to selecting Slicehost.
- 0x44 17y ago
  Hi neovive, the Slicehost and CloudServers brands are two separate products within Rackspace. That's why there's no mention of the former.

10 points by mattyb 17y ago

From what I can tell, SoftLayer's offerings are similar and the prices are better when compared to Rackspace Cloud. $99 at SoftLayer gets 250GB of storage and 2000GB of bandwidth while it gets only 50GB of storage and 500GB of bandwidth at Rackspace Cloud. "Utility billing is essential for any Cloud platform and something else you will not find from a VPS provider. You pay for your server instances on a per hour basis, so if you only need an instance for a certain amount of days/weeks that is all you pay for." SoftLayer does this, although they call each instance a "CCI" (cloud computing instance) instead of VPS.

mdasen 17y ago

It feels like Rackspace is grasping at straws to differentiate their products from the competition. Examples: oversold-nature: this is common in OpenVZ setups and some others, but not Xen and at least Amazon and Linode are both on Xen (as are prgmr and ChunkHost). You have your dedicated resources. instant-provisioning: Linode and Amazon both have this for the most part and it's true that Linode might not have the capacity to launch 100s of instances at once all the time, but that isn't a consideration for most. cloning: I know this can be accomplished with Amazon and I'm pretty sure with Linode as well (might be a support ticket, though). no bloatware: I haven't used a VPS provider that had it. persistent storage: everyone has this - even Amazon now with their EBS which is way more flexible. hourly billing: not something that most need, but it is an advantage over Linode. utility bandwidth: basically a way for them to charge you high prices for bandwidth. resource granularity: an advantage over Amazon, but most VPS providers are in line with Rackspace. -- Rackspace has a good service with a great history (both as Cloud Servers and as Slicehost), but this article is trying to create product differentiation where there isn't really much. Slicehost/Rackspace haven't reduced pricing since it was introduced over 3 years ago and they're trying to maintain a premium position as Amazon reduces their prices, Linode becomes a larger competitor, and lots of other smaller companies try to enter the space. That requires product differentiation.

wgj 17y ago
I couldn't help but notice they stayed away from discussing round trip http request/response latency. (Or really any other performance metric.) I'm not sure how good Rackspace cloud is in this regard, but other cloud options do not test well. If they are not drawing attention to it, it leads me to assume they would rather not discuss it.
bretthoerner 17y ago
> persistent storage: everyone has this - even Amazon now with their EBS which is way more flexible. The point is that theirs is persistent by default. You're given a (probably sparse) filesystem on top of RAID 1+0. You can reboot the machine (or something can fail) and your data is still there. With this and static IPs you basically don't have to think about it as a special "cloud" machine and plan for failures and data loss. With Amazon EBS you pay per operation and it's a slower networked disk. If a node fails you need to bring up another and mount/configure the EBS volumes to get up and moving again. Use the right tool for the right job, of course, but for my time & money I like Rackspace's persistent storage more.
mnordhoff 17y ago
FWIW, Linode pro-rates billing to the day, crediting unused funds back to your account, which is usually flexible enough when you only want a VPS for a few days.

tialys 17y ago

This story was [dead]-ed once already since it's clearly nothing more than an ad for Rackspace Cloud. Apparently an effective one. Before you upvote, take a look at the 'story' here.

neovive 17y ago

Interesting that there is no mention of Slicehost. I wonder if Slicehost will exist in the longterm or will it's customers get folded into the Rackspace Server offering. Coincidently, I'm in the process of searching for a host and am close to selecting Slicehost.

0x44 17y ago
Hi neovive, the Slicehost and CloudServers brands are two separate products within Rackspace. That's why there's no mention of the former.