Honest Rackspace Review (11 Months)

It was 11 months ago to this day that I first signed up with Rackspace. I can honestly say that while the fee's, some of you may claim to be high (and well, I guess they are more than the average) the service and professionalism provided by Rackspace is unparalleled.

In the 11 months of hosting my server inside Rackspace, I have had my primary hard drive blow out. Now when this happened, the raid configuration switched over to the second / mirror hard drive, meaning absolutely no downtime during this event. It was suggested to me, by Rackspace, to use a raid configuration just in case something like this should occur. Well am I glad I listened! They had the primary raid device (hot swappable, again their suggestion) replaced within an hour – all of this without a second of downtime and without any need (although I did since I am pedantic) to call them – they were on it!

The only other time I experienced any service / availability related problems was when they had some sort of electrical fault and the two backup generators failed to start. This was completely out of the blue and obviously someone messed up big time. The server was down for a good 8 hours or so, and the CEO of Rackspace apologized so many times, I actually felt sorry for him and the entire team... They also credited my account for any downtime, as per the agreement we have together.

Team M8 (the support team assigned to me) and my account manager, Ginger Lee, deserve a big thumbs up! They always make me feel welcome when I call, have always been professional and most importantly, interested to hear what I have to say (and act on it accordingly).

About the only disappointment I have faced with throughout this ordeal, is that I was under the impression that because I have “Platinum” monitoring and support, which as I understand it, unless things have changed, is the best support – that if I needed something installed, that was all a-ok. Initially, it was... and the team always worked with me to install any service a growing business needs.

At some point, not long ago, however, I asked to have a certain PHP module installed to allow compilation / uploading of video files and I was actually charged an hourly fee for this. Normally I would appreciate the time in doing this, and understand a fee... however given they set a precedence and expectation with me from previous encounters and given my understanding there of the “Platinum” support offered, I was somewhat shocked... I did pay the fee for these things to be installed without mentioning this... but am still dumbfounded, I guess, as to why I had to pay (given I pay on an on-going basis for the Platinum support, which ain't exactly cheap).

I have only ever once spoke with someone (a receptionist / level one representative) and received pathetic attitude – this was during the power issues as mentioned above, and as of such have affected the break-down below.

Here is a break-down of the service / support. In fairness to my team, I have graded the teams efforts and Rackspace's as a whole, separately. In my opinion, the team that works with me, including my account manager, deserve recognition. So thank you, guys and girls, for doing a wonderful job.

TEAM:

Willingness: 10/10
Professionalism: 10/10
Duty of Care: 10/10
Expertise: 10/10
Reaction Time: 10/10

RACKSPACE:

Willingness: 10/10
Professionalism: 9/10
Duty of Care: 9/10
Expertise: 10/10
Reaction Time: 10/10
Uptime: 9/10