I wanted to share my experience with Rackspace Cloud, till now their support and service are a+, the control panel used to be slow but not it's fixed, the only problem i faced till now was with their control panel file managed but it's not that important as you can use ftp instead, i have cloud sites account with them to host my site Rapid Zone and i strongly recommend them.
View 14 RepliesI am now with Rackspace's new cloud servers. I understand that they are still under a "beta testing" but I decided to give it a go.
Over all I like it. There are however some annoying parts which I will list first.
1. DNS manager issues... I have many DNS records for my domain and it seems that the DNS manager isn't so forgiving. It gives you the ability (or you think so) to delete an individual record however I have never been able to do that. It would always return with an error which is quite annoying. So I moved my DNS servers to another location and have been happy since.
2. Chat support is too much like dell tech support. The first person you get doesn't really know what he is talking about (I have been talking with them a few times about the above mentioned DNS issues and they confirmed multiple bugs within the system but this was at level 2 support and it was quite annoying having to explain the problem to everyone that I spoke too) What I ended up doing is going with Slicehosts chat room where I always found a very helpful hand (they are the same company so it's not stealing). They helped me with many of my issues.
3. The documents/wiki is very hard to find. If I didn't get a link to it from a tech support guy then I wouldn't of known it was there. All it is, is a wiki formatted silcehosts article repo. But it is quite helpful. My tip is to make it more visible.
Overall I am happy with the speed and stability of the server. So thanks Slicehost/Rackspace for your service.
I am considering a move from Pair Networks to Rackspace. When I talked to the folks at Rackspace, the guy thought I was a good fit for their Cloud Sites product.
I have several Wordpress blogs, the busiest one doing around 15,000 views daily. I also have 3 vBulletin forums, once which is pretty busy and doing around 400,000 views per month. I also run a few member sites, blog powered and using Amember Pro.
I'm wondering if this is just too much to throw on the Cloud. I've heard that disk I/O is a little slower on the Cloud, and vBulletin is pretty intensive on the database.
Another option I heard is to get a dedicated server with Rackspace, host the databases and anything else I want on that server, but put the code base for the busiest sites into the Cloud in order to take advantage of the load balancing.
Any feedback?
Pair Networks has been great, but I started looking around yesterday because they were having a hard time making one of my servers cope right with the busy blog. Server load through the roof and I was frustrated. I have a feeling I'm overpaying Pair for servers which may be a little dated here. Hence, my lookint into Rackspace.
So, feedback on the Cloud or Cloud w/ Dedicated? Any other pretty busy forums/blogs you know of running in Rackspace Cloud Sites?
What do you guys think about Cloud Servers by Rackspace?
They said its kind of like a VPS but more powerful.
who here has experience? Is it phenomenal or awful?
View 14 Replies View RelatedI'm currently running two classified ad sites with a php script and a mysql database. Both just launched, but I expect them to have decent traffic within 1 year.
Here are the two options I'm currently considering:
1. a fully managed dedicated server such as Wiredtree provides. This will roughly cost me between $250 and $350/month.
2. go with Rackspace Cloud. Take advantage of their $100/month and then just pay as you go as traffic increases.
It's a hard decision.
Am trying to choose a shared host. Either RackSpace Cloud Sites ($100 a month) or MediaTemple ($20 a month) or MediaLayer ($19 a month).
I was really inclined to MediaTemple but I read some real bad review about it. Am wondering what has your experience been with any of the above. In Cloud Sites, do the 10000 CPU cycles get over quickly?
The title basically says/asks it all. I believe Mosso initially had no Rackspace affiliation other than using Rackspace's services, and then subsequently became a subsidiary of Rackspace. Now, over the past few days, Mosso has become The Rackspace Cloud.
Given Rackspace's reputation, I have to believe this is good news, but I figured I'd toss it out there for the pros to discuss.
I've thought about taking the plunge to Mosso/Rackspace Cloud but haven't pulled the trigger yet. I wouldn't use anywhere close to the full $100 package at the start but I'd probably grow into it within 6-12 months, as my sites get back online and grow. Thus, I'm kind of facing the old chicken-and-egg conundrum: I don't want to pay $100 for $10 worth of usage, but at the same time, moving sites -- and especially IMAP email accounts -- is such a pain in the rear end, I don't want to keep moving every time my sites/traffic grows.
I wish these guys had a $25 or $50 starter plan from which users could upgrade. I'd be all over that. (I know about their lower-cost Cloud Server packages (or whatever it's called), but I'm not tech-savvy enough for unsupported hosting.)
I've been with Rackspace for about a year and a half, thought I'd share my experience. It was.... so-so.
Quick summary:
They try hard, but their techs don't seem to know what they're doing. I give them an "A" for effort and a "D+" for results.
Sales
The Rackspace sales process is tricky. They will quote a very high price for a very long contract, but it is negotiable. I got quotes from 3 places: Rackspace, InetU, and Datapipe. They were originally all about the same, but Rackspace negotiated down 30+%. I did agree to a 2-year contract, because I had heard lots of good things about Rackspace and didn't anticipate any problems, but in hindsight that was not a good idea. Ask yourself why they need you to sign such a long-term agreement... why are they so worried you'll want to leave, after all? In the future I'll avoid contracts longer than 12 months.
Hardware
Top-notch. I never had a problem. Not much else to say here.
Features / control panel
Rackspace has its own account management portal for things like billing, bandwidth graphs, support tickets, DNS, etc. It is quite good, intuitive and easy to use. One nice feature is the ability to manage multiple users on your account and give them different permissions.
One thing that could use some major improvement is the server monitoring system. "Rackwatch" as it's called is very limited. Most monitoring systems even at discount hosts have more advanced features. Rackwatch did not always catch website outages for us (even extended downtime), so I had to use an outside monitoring service. Also, Rackwatch gets turned off during scheduled and emergency maintenance, so if you want to know your real uptime, eg for SLA credits, you'll need outside monitoring.
Uptime/Network
Decent. The bandwidth is high quality. The only major problem we had with the network was last fall, when their entire datacenter went down several times over a few days due to a car accident outside. I won't rehash the details here since it was all over the Internet at the time. They did issue a credit for a small portion of the monthly fee that month. I think they had another major outage this winter, but it didn't affect our server.
Support
Rackspace has built their reputation on "fanatical support." They do try very hard, much harder than other hosts I have used, but I was not impressed by the level of technical knowledge. I had some problems in the beginning because they told me some wrong things about how their database backup software worked, which caused some crashes. Later, a technician logged into our server to install new managed backup software (without scheduling a maintenance window beforehand or notifying us), and managed to kill the ethernet and bring the whole system down. Rackwatch conveniently "missed" the outage but it showed up on our other monitoring service and we tracked down the cause in the server logs. I brought this up in a support ticket but it was ignored.
The good thing about Rackspace is that you can get them on the phone anytime, and they will respond quickly to support tickets -- Not necessarily with the right answer, but at least they respond quickly. I think that's basically what they mean by "fanatical".
Earlier this year Rackspace started upgrading its managed backup system, and that's when things really went downhill for us. First there was the issue with the Rackspace tech killing our server and then ignoring us. Then, we were having serious load issues for about a month. It caused major problems on our website and we were frantically trying to figure out what was wrong with our application for a couple weeks. Finally it turned out that it was caused by their new backup software hogging all the system resources during evening primetime. If we had a more experienced staff here, we probably could have figured that out relatively easily ourselves, but we don't -- that's what we're paying Rackspace thousands for. If they are going to make changes to the server like installing new backup software, it's up to them to make sure they don't destroy the system. We finally figured out what the problem was and mentioned it in a support ticket, but that ticket got ignored, too, and we gave up. Since Rackwatch couldn't detect the downtime (it just checks whether http is running, not whether it's actually serving up pages), they didn't recognize it as downtime for SLA purposes/credits.
We don't have time/desire to babysit our web host, so we decided in the end to move our server elsewhere. Now we regret the long-term contract, because we'll end up in collections if we don't cough up the several thousand dollars left on our term. If you ever do sign a long-term contract, I strongly recommend that you insist on a clause that lets you out of the contract if service is sub-par. I'm sure the "big guys" do this. We didn't think of it at the time we were negotiating, but wish we had.
Conclusion
Overall rating: 5/10
From what I've heard, this was not a typical experience with Rackspace -- most people seem to be pretty positive about them. We might have been unlucky. But I also think they have a very powerful PR machine, and you can probably find a comparable host for half the price who spends a little more money on techs and a little less money on advertising and polishing its image.
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
Rackspace provides great uptime, however their ticket service is terrible. It takes them 3-4 hours to respond to normal tickets and 1-2 hours to respond to emergency tickets. If it's a real emergency they ask you to call them but when you call them the person never finishes what they are suppose to do. The person starts and then goes to dinner or their shift ends and nothing gets done.
Well I learned my lesson before and decided to call them instead of submitting a ticket. So I called them tonight at 6PM to tell them my website was hacked. The guy on the phone said it looked like it was a mysql injection. He said would remove some things and ask for a restore and I said okay fine and hung up. An hour passed and didn't receive an update via phone call or ticket. Where did this guy go? Well his shift probably ended. No sense in calling again since it won't leave a trail...
So I submit an emergency ticket on 2008-05-18 19:24:39
No response until 22:05:07 they apologized for the extreme delay and said restore was starting.
Here it is 23:03:25 and my website still isn't restored.
This has happened to me 3 times already and it takes rackspace around 5-6 hours to do a simple restore (I have the support tickets to prove it).
I would understand if it was a crappy hosting company..but I am paying close to $500 a month for a server and expect better service. Does this happen to anyone else or am I an exception to the rule.
It's been 4 hr 22 min since I first submitted a ticket and around 5.5 hours since I first called them and my website still isn't restored properly...
I bought a server with RackSpace, for the network, support, quality, and other reasons.
Anyways I am starting up a new VPS division, and thought why settle for the rest when you can have the best. Because there is all of these "budget providers" out there that use cogent, and dual or quad core servers.
So I thought that if I bought the best server I could, with the option to keep upgrading (off peak hours of course). With premium bandwidth, and still be competitive why not?
The server that I bought through RackSpace is below.
Dell PowerEdge 2950 III
Dual Processor, Quad Core Intel Xeon L5335
8 GB Memory (Fully Buffered)
4 x 146 GB (10k RPM) 2.5" SAS Drive(s), Raid 5
Unlimited Data Backup
100 Mbit Dedicated Port
80 IPs
Like I said I will upgrade that server when it gets time, because it could still use some tweaks. Also after this, me and RackSpace where talking about a cluster, but I don't know how that will work out, I think that it would be nice if it didn't pose any problems. And also load balancing.
But anyways I have not received the server as of yet, and I was wondering if anyone could give me your opinions. As this is my first time, and want to make sure that i am going about everything correctly.
I also have hired 3 admins, just for this venture, that have alot of knowledge with VPS nodes.
Also we where wanting to use virtuozzo , but they don't sell it. Would you recommend VMWare, or HyperVM?
I need to obtain a qutoa for a hosting from 3 hosting company (this is a project for a state goverment so you guys know the drill). I am contacting Rack space, who else on that level I should contact.
View 14 Replies View RelatedAbout a month ago I switched from Virtual Private Hosting on ************ to dedicated hosting on RackSpace. It was definitely an improvement, but I'm still dissatisfied.
Here are painful parts of my experience with RackSpace:
1) RackSpace wanted me to sign paper contract (************ didn't require that). That paperwork took almost a day (several hours of my efforts + some wait time). Sales guy couldn't open several versions of "Microsoft Office Image Writer" that I emailed to him, so I had to resend the document in different format.
2) It is a little unpleasant to deal with RackSpace sales guys. They forget (or "forget") to answer some of my questions; use some slightly unpleasant pushy sales techniques. Is it typical for any sales reps, not only RackSpace's sales?
3) After the contract was signed, it took RackSpace almost 4 days to install the server. I signed the contract Wednesday July 3rd 2008 and was hoping that on Saturday-Sunday night I'll be able to move my web site (postjobfree.com) to RackSpace. But RackSpace set up my server only on Monday - not convenient time for me and my users to do the move.
4) RackSpace promised me that they would help with the migration. They gave some tips, but not all of them were good. For example, they suggested me to shut down my web site for few hours while I will copy my database. Not a good approach for 24/7 service. So, basically I was mostly left on my own with the migration.
Fortunately, I used advise of Omar Al Zabir about smooth web hosting migration: http ://msmvps.com/blogs/omar/archive/2006/08/27/110061.aspx
Ironically - it was Omar's recommendation to use RackSpace for web hosting that made me pick them.
5) Average response to my ticket requests is about few hours (2-3 may be?). Sometimes ticket response time is shorter; sometimes it's longer (up to a day or even more in some cases). It's an improvement in comparison with ************, but is that really the best in hosting industry?
6) Most of the time responses are good, ...............
Has anyone set up a cloud before? What OS do you use?
I read Ubuntu Server now comes with cloud capabilities and RHEL has had clustering for a long time. How do you data center gurus set up clouds?
Surely, if I'm doing this question, I don't need the cloud, but as all the people are talking about it, I think in it.
We host simple websites, with about 10GB/bandwicht/month as much usage. Actually we have 5 low budget dedicated servers instead to have 1 power server with all in, with that we distribute the possibilities of hardware fails.
We don't have any VPS, I personally prefer host in a physical server, we can put the 5 servers in 5 VPS into one big server, but if HD fails, all goes down.
So, now with cloud, I think it's the same that VPS, hardware could fails as always, and the cloud can complicate the resolution of a problem, so my final question, it's cloud for me? anything I'm missing?
Thanks as always for your replies! Anyway, it's nice to have a new technologie in the table to discuss about it!
When creating cloud hosting based-on VPS, I assume each VPS added will need to be on different machines? Which one will have better performance in this case
- 1VPS with 2GB RAM, 1GHz CPU
- 2VPS with 1GB RAM and 512MHz CPU each. 2 VPS is setup on the same server. One runs Apache, one runs mySQL.
Of course, using for the same website.
I have dedicated server P4 3.2 Ghz with ThePlanet for 4 years now. Since I want to upgrade a server I started to think if it will be good idea to change to the Rackspace.
They offer AMD Opteron 246 for pretty much same price I am getting my P4 3.2 Ghz at ThePlanet. Is it faster processor?
I do not need faster CPU, I want to upgrade Hard drive but if I am getting faster CPU it's good.
Several points here.
1. I can not complain about ThePlanet. Never had a problem. And whenever I had opened ticket they were answered in time I expected.
2. I need a good/fast network.
Should I switch?
Good morning. I have been a customer of Rackspace for approximately 2 years. I love their level of service. However, I'm paying $475 for a dedicated server with the following specs:
Single AMB Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0Ghz, 1B RMD, 80GB HDD
Are there less expensive alternatives that provide similar level of support as Rackspace?
We are a web design firm and we provide hosting for our customers who design their websites with us, we do not promote ourselves as a web hosting company. We are in the market for years and the most thing that confuses us is the hosting problems. Server problems when occur take all of our human resources (we are a small company) and that affects our other (main) work which is web development.
We've tried a lot of reseller then VPS providers, each provider will experience some problems even after a long time of stability.
Sorry for the long introduction but it was necessary to let you know what exactly I want. I know Rackspace from a long time and I was happy when I found out that they are providing a new service (mosso.com) especially for web design firms, they provide 80 GB of disk space with their zero-downtime network and other cool features for $100 monthly which I think is very affordable compared with Rackspace's reputation even it's more than what I pay for my current provider but I'm really looking for stability that makes me concentrate on designing and programming. The problem is that they told me that their customers must have a U.S bank account which we don't have.
Can you suggest companies that provide same quality services with affordable prices (reseller or VPS)
I am looking for hostings companies that are comparible to Rackspace or are competitors to Rackspace. I have two of my clients on Rackspace and I love their level of service. Unfortunately, some of my smaller clients are balking at the $400+ monthly cost.
What I really am looking for is a dedicated host that offers a package with good managed support as well as handles technical questions/issues related to system administration such as MySQL troubleshooting, password protecion, or Apache configuration. I have heard that www.servint.net is very good, but their $200 and $300 monthly packages are sold out.
I want to buy Rackspace dedicated server service, but after I search at WHT, I found some said it good and some said it not good.
If I want to don't worrired about security issues. Would you recommand me chose Rackspace? Or do you have any recommand provider?
need a couple of exchange accounts 1&1 charges $6.99 per account and rackspace $14.99 per account
also with rackspace you have to have atleast 5 accounts
i guess i need a 2nd opinion here which one would you go with and why
also how secure is rackspace's exchange against hackers
and if you have exchange only hosting what happens with the actual site?? like when someone types it in their browser
I run a company in the UK that has about 10 dedicated servers, such as db and web servers.
I also have a SAN device with data of around 1.3tb
Been a customer with rackspace for last 3 years and am now shopping around for better value for money.
With rackspace you pay a premium for support but the charges are becoming astronomical and I also feel that they dont look after you concerning price after becoming a customer.
Is there a rackspace alternative that can cope with 4tb of san data, 100mb unmetered and unlimited bandwidth running on an internal gigabit network?
I am looking at the higher end bracket and dont mind the solution being hosted in the US or UK.
I have been debating over 2 webhosts. I know w3schools.com is hosted by maximumasp and their site loads almost instantly. I also know rackspace is the top dog for web hosting. Which one would you recommend. I am a new web administrator.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI know that this post will get deleted like the last ones but I'm tired of getting spam from a Rackspace customer. sendemedia.com keeps claiming that I "agreed to receive information from Consumerbase and our partners". Bull. I would never sign up for intentional spam. Additionally, they're using an email address that I haven't used in literally 5 years that only gets spam any more.
But I report them every time to rackspace.com. And, apparently, given that they never do anything about it, rackspace.com is just fine with the spam.
Don't host with them! WHT will likely delete / water down this post but if you read this do not support rackspace!
I heard the other day from a very reliable source that this is a fact and they expect it to happen sooner rather than later. Since they seem to set the bar anyway seems it was only a matter of time. Anyone else aware of this or am I the only one? Searched the forum before I posted and nothing came up. Seems like a significant development to me...
View 14 Replies View RelatedLike a couple of others that have posted here recently, we are looking to switch hosting from Rackspace to someone else. We've been with Rackspace for 3 years, and host 2 dedicated servers with them for our e-commerce business. We were with three other hosting companies the 2 years before that with many headaches, and Rackspace really stabilized the IT part of our business.
But they don't seem to be too competitive on pricing as our business grows. Our servers are over 3 years old now, and we just wanted to upgrade to comparable HW. We have already replaced a couple of hard drives and would prefer to be proactive. But they won't move on their pricing which would be a SIGNIFICANT increase in our budget, and most of our original support team has moved on, and I don't sense the same level of support we once had.
Our system is Windows-based running Cold Fusion. We have a web server and a database server running SQL. I have a full-time Cold Fusion developer on staff, but need Windows managed dedicated servers for our growing e-commerce retail business. We sell products to consumers - we do NOT resell IT services. Our shopping cart and back end system was all developed in house in Cold Fusion.
So these are some of the possibilities we have come up with to replace Rackspace, and I would appreciate any feedback from those that may be utilizing services from any of these companies:
savvis
datapipe
handynetworks
crystaltech
att dot com/gen/webhosting?pid=10395
theplanet
Rackspace worth the $$?
The name, service and reputation is excellent but their prices seem to be much higher than similar services at other reputable providers.
The client looking at rackspace MUST have a reliable server, backups and security. These are not optional.
Is rackspace worth the extra dollars? Buying peace of mind or buying the name?
Does anyone knows any hosting company who sells VPS or Dedicated servers using RackSpace Datacenter / Network?
So in a simple way, im looking to find Rackspace "resellers", if possible one that sells VPS.
Seriously. We're currently with Superb, and they can't keep up with what we need. Horrible support, inept technicians, confusing price schemes, it's a total mess. We've named the company piñata Superb in honor of their techs and sales team, its that bad.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I don't think Superb is in a position to support us. We resell co-location to clients we do work for, such as Web site design, back-end communication, all large e-commerce sites that do lots of business and see lots of traffic. Currently, we have several clients with Superb, each one has multiple servers, but nothing load balanced- each server fills a specific role (Web, database, etc.) What our client is looking for is redundant, load balanced servers, and I have absolutely zero faith that Superb can handle an enterprise setup like this, given the established track record we already have with them.
Will Rackspace be any better? I hear all sorts of praise for them, with the only negative being price. Can Rackspace handle, say, several Web servers all load balancing a single Web site, with multiple SQL servers? Am I asking too much from Rackspace, or from Superb even? Is there another company that can offer a rock solid network, techs who know and care about their clients, that can support a multi-million dollar a year ecommerce client? Can you successfully co-locate this size of a setup or should we encourage our clients to bring this in house?
My experience with Superb and other smaller hosting companies before them has basically destroyed my faith that a hosting company can handle what we need. Someone make me a believer. Does anyone else do this at this scale?