Rackspace Private Cloud

Overview – Rackspace Managed Private Cloud Overview

What Is It?

Rackspace offers managed private cloud hosting that claims to provide greater agility, security, customization, and performance than other options on the market. According to Rackspace, you can “get the agility, scalability, and efficiency of the public cloud, with the greater levels of control and security of a single-tenant, dedicated environment. It can be hosted on-site at your own data center or at a service provider’s data center.”

In addition, the company’s managed private cloud hosting comes with always-on service and support, hybrid cloud technology, and a broad range of hosting partners. It is also available in most nations, including the UK, Mexico, Australia, India, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Today, Rackspace serves over 300,000 customers in 120 different nations.

Who Is It Best For?

Rackspace managed private cloud services are best-suited for companies with some specific needs. For instance, any business dealing with workloads and data that require the highest security, those addressing compliance regulations, and those with mission-critical business applications can all benefit from Rackspace managed private cloud hosting. Additionally, those looking for data center consolidation, IT-as-a-service, and disaster recovery support can also benefit here.

Managed Services

• Always-On Service and Support – The company’s specialists are able to maintain and monitor private clouds 24/7 to minimize problems and challenges.
• Hybrid Cloud Technology – Connect your private cloud to any public cloud using RackConnect.
• Managed backups and restorations
• On-demand support consultations
• URL, port availability
• All-time hardware monitoring and replacement within one hour
• Managed firewalls
• OS patching

Best Features

Rackspace stands head and shoulders over other providers in a number of important ways, including:

• Immense experience in managed cloud hosting – Rackspace is perhaps the single most experienced provider out there.
• Level of customization – Customers can customize their hosting plan to almost any degree desirable.
• 100% uptime guarantee – Where some hosts might offer 99% or 99.9%, Rackspace guarantees 100% at all times.
• Scalability – Pay only for what you need and don’t pay for services you don’t require.
• IT Solutions – Rackspace can act as a company’s entire IT department, ensuring a hands-off approach and the ability to focus on mission-critical elements.

Shortcomings

While Rackspace does offer quite a few impressive features, the company does have a few areas where things could be better.

• Confusion – The sheer number of options and configuration choices available can be incredibly daunting. It takes time and effort to sort through everything and decide what is right for a particular business.
• Documentation – While Rackspace offers plenty of managed services, it is less well-suited for those who want to take an active hand in troubleshooting their own issues. Some customers report a lack of documentation available through the company’s help center.
• Data Backup – The company does offer data backup capabilities, but they are limited in size. Many customers are forced to use a third party solution to back up all company information.
• Miscellaneous Errors and Issues – Some customers have reported miscellaneous errors and issues when using Rackspace, including API runtime errors without clear reasons, complications managing cloud-to-public cloud firewall and network rules, and limited support for or access to open-source tools.

Pricing/Costs

Pricing is by direct quote only.

Reviews

Rackspace offers a number of benefits. One of the things I like best is their internal support. Getting someone on the phone is simple and easy. Every time I’ve called, I’ve reached someone. The product is geared toward power users, and they provide support through people who are competent in that area. Not only is the company responsive by phone, but they also offer a ticketing system and online chat for additional support.

Rackspace is very stable even in the face of widespread bugs and threats that would hinder other hosts. The pricing is not the cheapest, but it is a great value for what you receive. With that being said, I dislike having to log into the web interface to do anything related to reading or creating support tickets, although that is a minor annoyance.

Perhaps my largest complaint is that their automated backup service is pretty limited. You can schedule automatic back up image creation of servers and storage volumes attached to specified servers, but they are limited in size. Because of that, it is impossible to backup all of your data without using a third party.

— Jim

Rackspace is synonymous with outstanding support and we have experienced nothing but the best. Their employees are friendly, helpful, knowledgeable, and expedient. However, the price for Rackspace managed private cloud hosting is high, although you do receive excellent service for the price. With that being said, this is definitely not a solution for those looking to experiment and see if they actually need managed hosting. If you don’t know that you need managed hosting, go the self-serve route.

The company can act as an entire IT department, so those who lack the in-house capabilities can still benefit from the cloud. Rackspace is also very secure. We have used them for some time now and have never had a security concern, unlike with other companies we have used.

— Daniel