A review of the Rackspace CloudSites elastic managed web hosting
Concurrently with my review of the Media Temple (mt) Grid Hosting Service, I took some time to review, and even install Drupal in the Rackspace CloudSites hosting environment. My main motivation for testing the Rackspace CloudSites offering was to find a hosting solution that was monitored, robust, flexible, and extensible.
I had been using RackSpace CloudServers for some time and although I was happy with the flexibility it provides (root access and the ability to spawn new servers at will), I had spent far too much time monitoring each server and updating them to keep things running and optimized. In monetary terms, if I spend $49 a month on a 1GB RAM CloudServer, and then spend an average of 5 additional hours a month monitoring and optimizing the server, then the real cost of having and maintaining that server comes to about $400. As such, having someone else spend time monitoring the server was, and still is a very attractive proposition.
RackSpace CloudSites appeared to be such a solutions as it would provide an extensible and monitored solution thereby providing peace-of-mine and stability to the hosted websites and applications. Notably nice, the CloudSites management interface works well, especially for someone already familiar with the control panel for CloudServers and CloudFiles (their Storage solution and CDN). It is also good that Rackspace has integrated the common controls (for Sites and Servers) so that functions such as DNS can be managed from one place.
Balancing Server Management and Restriction
Disadvantages:
There are some issues and concerns that resulted in my decision not to use Rackspace CloudSites as my hosting enviroment:
- Control-panel instability
- No of SSH connection (FTP Only)
- No svn client or server installed
1) Control-panel instability seems to be a constant problem with the Rackspace applications. I have used CloudServers and CloudFiles, and it is not uncommon to see an error message when attempting to perform even the simplest of processes. Their error messages seek to be light-hearted and whimsical, but that can be quite unwelcome when a customer is frustrated
2) SSH access is almost a standard with all hosting solutions - even with the most common of shared hosting offerings. It is purely understandable that root: access is blocked to enable to the monitoring team to do their work without costantly having to deal with changes that customers may make (thereby jeopandazing the efficiencies of stardandization and optimal configuration). That said, I know that it is possible to balance security and flexibility by providing SSH access to allow customers to carry out some intermediate administration functions. I was shocked to hear from the Fanatic Support (the admittedly ever-present and responsive support team) that they do not allow SSH connections to the hosted space. That only leaves FTP access to move files to and from the server. THis, combined with the lack of an SVN client on the server means that transer is clunky and inefficient.
3) No serious development process, or one that merits to be called as much should be without a version-control system. So the absence of SVN support (or any other system) in the Rackspace Cloudsites server is a major no-no. That one issue disqualified this solution from my list of contenders. There isn't much to say about this -
Version control is necessary for anyone who doe snot fancy spending time wondering which version of a given file is the right one, and why a given change was made, so not having version control cannot have a justification.
The above key features and descriptions of the Rackspace CloudSites hosting solution outline and discuss what went into consideration ebfore I decided not to continue with the service, and instead keep looking for a better hosting service.
NB: In mind-January 2010, Rackspace decided to increase the monthly cost of a CloudSite hosting account from $99/month to $149/month. Unless they have followed up with major feature additions and improvements, I am not sure that this news will bring the more or better business.
