- Reaction score
- 888
Ok so this is my plan: I feel like I have enough experience in the field to give some real in-depth opinions of web hosting and the various providers out there. It is my hope that this will be of some use to those webmasters out there who are scratching their heads about how to get their site going. So here we go.
Rackspace Cloud is my first [del]victim[/del] chapter. Check out their site here:
http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/
In 2008, Slicehost, a fairly reputable and decent quality VPS hosting company was bought by Rackspace for the development of their cloud architecture - they wanted to take what Slicehost had done and expand on it. So they started work after purchasing Slicehost and consequently the rights to all their technology. Back then, a VPS with Slicehost containing 256 MB of RAM, 10 GB of disk space, and 100 GB of bandwidth cost $20/month, which wasn't too bad - it was good quality and they had good support.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and some of them sooner than others. And so Rackspace Cloud started to bloom. Rackspace is no small competitor in the hosting market. They are one of the biggest hosting providers out there with datacenters in several countries and a customer base that puts most hosting companies to shame. And so with their brand name behind the Slicehost technology, their cloud started to expand. They are now reaching the point where their main competitor in the market is Amazon and their EC2 compute instances.
Why is this history important? It sets the baseline for my main point: Rackspace is pure corporatism - they do not care about individuals and only care about the really big companies who are going to be buying tons of cloud instances. How do I know this? I'll list some facts:
- Cloud instances at Rackspace still cost the same as the Slicehost instances did back in 2008.
- Rackspace runs servers with ~3-4 year old Opteron CPUs in most cases.
- They obscure these facts while touting their add-on services - Cloud Files, Cloud Sites, Cloud Load Balancers, Managed Cloud Servers. Most smaller operations do not need these things.
- Despite an outpouring of protests when announcing the end of the Slicehost brand and the conversion of all Slicehost customers to the Rackspace Cloud, they proceed ahead with the plan without giving adequate information to anxious developers who don't know if or when their server is going to vanish out from underneath them.
Here's a quote from the Slicehost main page back in 2008:
Here's a link to that: http://web.archive.org/web/20080603231902/http://www.slicehost.com/
Did you check out the Rackspace page up there? Does that look to you like a company that is keeping things simple and just letting you get down to business with no frills? Not in my opinion. I am greatly saddened by the systematic destruction that Rackspace has wreaked on the great and innovative set-up that identified Slicehost. Just check out the pricing:
256 MB RAM
10 GB disk space
100 GB outbound bandwidth/month (inbound is free)
$28.95/month
If you've shopped around a bit, you'll easily find that this pricing is complete garbage. And if you stick around, I'll show you in later posts.
The Quick and Dirty:
PROS:
- Rackspace is good for large operations that need a good amount of support and/or management.
- Rackspace can adapt well to large increases in traffic - they have tons of hardware ready to go.
CONS:
- Rackspace overcharges for someone just looking for a simple VPS platform
- Rackspace does not seem to care about upgrading their hardware to take advantage of increased efficiency and processing power.
- Rackspace has largely ignored the input from current (and many former) customers of Slicehost in their conversion to Rackspace Cloud.
Rackspace Cloud is my first [del]victim[/del] chapter. Check out their site here:
http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/
In 2008, Slicehost, a fairly reputable and decent quality VPS hosting company was bought by Rackspace for the development of their cloud architecture - they wanted to take what Slicehost had done and expand on it. So they started work after purchasing Slicehost and consequently the rights to all their technology. Back then, a VPS with Slicehost containing 256 MB of RAM, 10 GB of disk space, and 100 GB of bandwidth cost $20/month, which wasn't too bad - it was good quality and they had good support.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and some of them sooner than others. And so Rackspace Cloud started to bloom. Rackspace is no small competitor in the hosting market. They are one of the biggest hosting providers out there with datacenters in several countries and a customer base that puts most hosting companies to shame. And so with their brand name behind the Slicehost technology, their cloud started to expand. They are now reaching the point where their main competitor in the market is Amazon and their EC2 compute instances.
Why is this history important? It sets the baseline for my main point: Rackspace is pure corporatism - they do not care about individuals and only care about the really big companies who are going to be buying tons of cloud instances. How do I know this? I'll list some facts:
- Cloud instances at Rackspace still cost the same as the Slicehost instances did back in 2008.
- Rackspace runs servers with ~3-4 year old Opteron CPUs in most cases.
- They obscure these facts while touting their add-on services - Cloud Files, Cloud Sites, Cloud Load Balancers, Managed Cloud Servers. Most smaller operations do not need these things.
- Despite an outpouring of protests when announcing the end of the Slicehost brand and the conversion of all Slicehost customers to the Rackspace Cloud, they proceed ahead with the plan without giving adequate information to anxious developers who don't know if or when their server is going to vanish out from underneath them.
Here's a quote from the Slicehost main page back in 2008:
Slicehost said:
Here's a link to that: http://web.archive.org/web/20080603231902/http://www.slicehost.com/
Did you check out the Rackspace page up there? Does that look to you like a company that is keeping things simple and just letting you get down to business with no frills? Not in my opinion. I am greatly saddened by the systematic destruction that Rackspace has wreaked on the great and innovative set-up that identified Slicehost. Just check out the pricing:
256 MB RAM
10 GB disk space
100 GB outbound bandwidth/month (inbound is free)
$28.95/month
If you've shopped around a bit, you'll easily find that this pricing is complete garbage. And if you stick around, I'll show you in later posts.
The Quick and Dirty:
PROS:
- Rackspace is good for large operations that need a good amount of support and/or management.
- Rackspace can adapt well to large increases in traffic - they have tons of hardware ready to go.
CONS:
- Rackspace overcharges for someone just looking for a simple VPS platform
- Rackspace does not seem to care about upgrading their hardware to take advantage of increased efficiency and processing power.
- Rackspace has largely ignored the input from current (and many former) customers of Slicehost in their conversion to Rackspace Cloud.
