2 Rackspace Cloud Reviews:

Rackspace Cloud Introduction

Rackspace Cloud is a wholly owned subsidiary of the hosting giant Rackspace. Partnering with major cloud service providers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Cloud, OpenStack, and VMware, they’ve provided cloud solutions to the likes of Xero and Domino’s Pizza for years. For extreme scalability and a wide variety of cloud hosting plans, Rackspace brings a lot to the hosting table.

Services

They offer the most robust cloud hosting services of almost any hosting company. By partnering with major cloud players, they can offer almost infinite scalability.

Here’s how it works. First, you choose your provider. Say, AWS. Then Rackspace manages this entirely for you, so you interact with your cloud server via Rackspace. This system gives you all the scalability of a major cloud operator, with the customer service and support of a local hosting company.

Rackspace offers a wide range of cloud services. These include private cloud hosting and public cloud hosting via their hosting partners as well as hybrid hosting, which combines Rackspace’s own dedicated hosting solutions with their partner-run private or public cloud offerings.

Public cloud hosting

Rackspace Cloud uses AWS, MS Azure, and OpenStack to provide public cloud hosting. For AWS, this service includes onboarding, architecture, system management, and PCI and HIPAA compliance support. The various levels of support varies depending on what plan you opt for.

Their MS Azure plan has much the same features. It’s just built on a Microsoft platform and includes access to Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates.

Their OpenStack solution has the most flexibility, again with Rackspace helping provide different levels of service depending on which plan you opt for. Higher tiers include backups, better reporting, and enhanced monitoring.

Private cloud hosting

Rackspace Cloud offers private cloud hosting via MS Azure, OpenStack and VMware.

Their Azure service is based on Microsoft’s Hyper-V and Systems Center hardware and Rackspace’s fanatical customer support. Their Microsoft private cloud can be almost fully managed by Rackspace, who can launch and manage your OS of choice and manage the underlying MS cloud platform. Alternatively, you can launch a web-based interface (think cPanel) to service your own cloud.

Like their MS Azure offering, Rackspace also offers private cloud hosting with OpenStack. Customers have the option to choose from completely Rackspace-managed solutions, sacrificing control and versatility for ease and convenience, or take on management and design of the cloud themselves, extending upstream capabilities but with the advantage of a managed server with regards to security and performance tuning.

Customers also have the option of running their private cloud via Red Hat rather than OpenStack.

Finally, customers have the option of a private cloud through VMware. Their VMware private clouds allow customers to take their existing VMware hosting solution and scale them up effortlessly. This is all run through existing software technologies like VMware vSphere, NSX, Virtual SAN and the vRealize Suite.

Hybrid servers

Finally, Rackspace offers hybrid servers with RackConnect. It’s a propriety system that allows you to connect existing dedicated servers to the cloud, offering the best of both worlds and easy management. Plus, their hybrid plans come with Rackspace management, so you can relax knowing you can call in the cavalry if you have to.

Summary

Because of Rackspace’s size and dense partnership network, they are capable of offering an unparalleled range of cloud hosting solutions. And with their focus on scalability and support, it’s no wonder that businesses and applications flock to them for all their hosting solutions.