“With Cloud Servers™ you get what you want when you need it. Make a new server for staging and four new servers for production. Delete one, create three more. You only pay for what you use”

We previously reviewed Rackspace Cloud Files last year, so we thought it was about time that we brought you our review of their Cloud Servers.

General Information

Rackspace Cloud Servers offer both Windows and Linux based systems, for this review we will be testing out a Linux server.

 Prices

The price structure is based on hold long the server is in existence for, based on an hourly period. So if you only wanted a server for a few hours you only pay for those few hours. This makes it ideal for testing or other short lived projects.

Below you will find the price structure that Rackspace have for their Cloud Servers, Linux servers are priced for just $10.95/month up to $700.80/month.

Although as you will noticed the above price structure does not include and bandwidth – this is an additional charge based on how much you use. It is priced at $0.18 per GB for bandwidth out whereas bandwidth in is free.

Our Usage

After a lot of consideration we decided to have a second cloud server running alongside our VPS.Net server. This would be the home to some of our newer websites and start-up websites. So although we will not be testing it was a great deal of data, we can test speed, uptime and ease of use perfectly.

Our Review

The sign up process is easy, we will not run through this with you as it’s just a lot of billing information etc.

The control panel is easy to use and provides all the features that would you need.

The cloud server creation is a really simple process, once you’ve clicked on ‘Add Server’ you get a list of Images to choose from. We believe that this list is growing all the time so we suggest checking which images they have ready when you sign up.

Once you select the image that you wish to create your cloud server from, you will be asked for a server name (we suggest using a valid hostname) and the size that you would like it.

You will then be sent to the cloud server control panel where after a short amount of time (will vary on how big the server is) it will build the server and you will receive an email with all the information required including password.

It’s as simple as that. You are then free to install what you want on the server (eg. Cpanel).

Onto our review…

The speed of the server seems very good, ping tests using HostTracker show that it actually performs slightly better than our VPS.net cloud server.  In general speed has been very good and we haven’t noticed any slow periods and things like Cpanel etc load quickly.

Support is one of the things that Rackspace is amazing at – for years Rackspace have been known for their excellent support and customer service, although we have not yet had to use the support as we have had no issues they provide live chat, a 24/7 telephone number and ticketed support – more than any company we have ever used. We tried out their Live Chat to see how quickly a question about the Cloud Servers was answered and they provided a detailed response in less than 30 seconds with first contact being made seconds after opening the live chat window. Excellent! For those that may not have enough knowledge to run a server themselves can pay for the ‘Managed Level’ of support where Rackspace will install what you ask etc etc, this is available at $100/month.

Overall we can strongly recommend Rackspace Cloud Servers, we have found them to be very good and we will continue to use them in the future. Thumbs up from us.

 More Information

Click here to go to Rackpace Cloud Servers

Screenshots

We have been busy over the last couple of months and we are pleased to annouced we have completed our review of Gigenet Cloud Servers. As with all of our reviews we actually test the services ourselves with live websites to bring a first hand experience of the service which we believe is important to help you make an informed decision when choosing your Cloud Server provider.

You can find the review here: Gigenet Cloud Server Review

We hope you find the review useful.

Gigenet Cloud Servers Review

Gigenet was previously known as VPSHive.

Prices

Prices start at just $10/month for the lowest package Gigenet Cloud have to offer which would get you 384MB RAM and 15GB Disc Space. Gigenet do not appear to show a minimum CPU speed like other Cloud providers before you sign up and login, we will expand on this further below, but for the $10/month plan we can confirm you would get 0.80Ghz dedicated CPU, but unfortunately we do not have a list of dedicated CPU against the RAM/Storage, but we will try to get hold of one .

WHM/Cpanel will cost a further $10/month which seems to be standard across cloud server providers.

Gigenet Cloud Prices

Our Usage

We decided to run a small site that we have achieving around 100 visitors per day to check for up time and response time, so unfortunately we were no able to test this cloud server with one of our bigger sites, but this should still give us an indication of what Gigenet Cloud Servers are like.

Our Review

The signup process is simple and pain free, to get into the control panel you just need your personal details including your Credit/Debit card information, before you get to the control panel you do not need to select machine size etc. We suggest you consider what kind of plan you need carefully, if your just starting out remember you will not need a large cloud server. The best thing about a cloud server is that you are able to upgrade at any point so if you just have a couple of small sites start off on a small package and upgrade when needed.

Once you’ve created your account you need to decided what resources you are willing to use/spend taking into account extras like Cpanel, IP addresses. It will give you your cost per month as you use the slider to assign resources. When you’ve decided on that you can go ahead and create your cloud server.

Like other Cloud Server providers, Gigenet Cloud Servers give you the option from a number of system templates including preinstalled Cpanel etc and Windows Servers. You will find a full list on their website.

Once created it is just like a normal server. If you have chosen to have WHM/Cpanel you will need to follow the setup wizard at yourIP:2086 (login with username ‘root’ and the password will be specified once you create the cloud server), the setup is simple enough.

Although the control panel has all the information and functions that would be needed, we found that sometimes we thought that sections could have been in a better place and things could be done differently. We think this is probably personal opinion, what doesn’t suit us, may suit someone else.

Speed wise we found Gigenet to be very similar to our VPS.net Cloud Server, which was slightly quicker than a normal VPS that we tested it agaisn’t.

General support is free of charge, we do not have response times as we have never really had a technical support issue, although sales team responded quickly to emails and Live Chat with sales is also answered within about 10 seconds. We have email support for a non-technical issue and it was resolved within an hour (Working Hours), but we have not emailed them outside ‘normal’ working hours.

Overall we found Gigenet Cloud Servers to be one of the leaders in Cloud Server providers especially as they are still reasonably new in the market. Not our number one at the time of writing, we still believe that VPS.NET is a better option, but Gigenet is certainly number 2.

More Information

Click here to go to Gigenet Cloud

Screenshots

Gigenet Cloud Main Control Panel

Gigenet Cloud Server Creation

vps.net logo

VPS.NET will soon be adding the Windows operating system to their support cloud servers.

A recent post of the VPS.NET Blog states:

I wish we could be sitting on the beach, sipping Pina Collates, talking about how awesome Windows is on VPS.NET. Unfortunately the launch didn’t happen – not yet at least. I can’t even tell you how close Windows is to being ready. Even as a Mac user, I’m ridiculously giddy with excitement thinking of the Windows launch. For those of you who like an ETA, I’m told that Windows WILL be ready to go next week. Again, we’re just waiting on hardware.

We will keep you up to date!

Win An Ipad

VPS.Net are giving away an Ipad.

For you chance to win all you have to do is send them a postcard (presumably a local one). We believe this competition is open to everyone from all countries. It is also open to users that do not currently use VPS.Net.

Not only that you will get $10 off your next hosting bill (or $10 off your first month if you are a new customer).

The Rules Are:

• The post card MUST be post marked by June 4th.
• It has to feature a location or land mark.
• Your email address must be on the post card.
• Only one email address can be on each post card.
• One $10 discount per client.

For more information click here.

We have searched the Internet to show you that a range of sites can use Cloud Files whatever the content is.

Homeoogle

Homeoogle Screenshot

Homeoogle allows you to customize your Google™ homepage with wallpapers. All the wallpapers appear to use Rackspace Cloud Files.

homeoogle.com

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Tweetmeme

tweetmeme.com Screenshot

TweetMeme is a service which aggregates all the popular links on Twitter to determine which links are popular. Tweetmeme seems to be using a mixture of Amazon s3 and Rackspace Cloud Files.

tweetmeme.com

We are having trouble finding more examples of CDN Files Clouds. Do you own a site that uses a CDN Files Cloud? Let us know and we’ll put your site up here! Contact us below:

Rackspace Cloud Logo

You may have seen our previous blog post here for uploading files to Rackspace Cloud using the PHP API. Despite the relatively easy script it wasn’t plain sailing for us and we had to troubleshoot a number of errors. We wanted to share our fixes with you as we couldn’t find any resolutions on Google.

The first error we got was;

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'InvalidResponseException' with message 'Unexpected response (): ' in /home/uname/public_html/rackspaceupload/cloudapi/cloudfiles.php:206 Stack trace: #0 /home/uname/public_html/rackspaceupload/upload.php(12): CF_Authentication->authenticate() #1 {main} thrown in /home/uname/public_html/rackspaceupload/cloudapi/cloudfiles.php on line 206

Now from the error message you would assume that it has something to do with your username or API key due to it mentioning the authentication function. Although if it was an issue with authentication you would probably see ‘AuthenticationException’ as the exception. In this case we found that Curl Open SSL was not installed despite having Curl installed. So ask your server administrator to install it for you if you receive this error.

Another big error we got was;

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'BadContentTypeException' with message 'Required Content-Type not set' in /home/uname/public_html/rackspaceupload/cloudapi/cloudfiles.php:1645 Stack trace: #0 /home/uname/public_html/rackspaceupload/cloudapi/cloudfiles.php(1962): CF_Object->_guess_content_type('/tmp/phpyese5G') #1 /home/uname/public_html/rackspaceupload/upload.php(19): CF_Object->load_from_filename('/tmp/phpyese5G') #2 {main} thrown in /home/uname/public_html/rackspaceupload/cloudapi/cloudfiles.php  on line 1645

This error took us a very long time to figure out, with some help from Rackspace Support we finally reached a resoltuion. We solved this by doing two things, first we installed the PECL Fileinfo Module, this module is to get file information, we the needed to install the PHP module ‘mod_mime_magic’. This then solved this issue and we can now upload to Rackspace Cloud.

Got another error? Having trouble resolving these errors? Fell free to leave a comment below and we will offer you any advice that we can.

vps.net logo

Your data is very important, dispite being a cloud things can still go wrong, for example, you accidently clear the contents of a very important file, this file would be duplicated across the cloud,so your data isn’t complete safe.

VPS.NET now offers Offsite Daily Rsync Backups for an additional £4/$5 per month per VPS. Rsync is a software application for Unix systems which synchronizes files and directories from one location to another by using delta encoding to minize the data transfer.

It takes about 5 minutes to set up Rsync backups with easy to follow instructions.

Around 70 per cent of Microsoft employees are working on cloud-related projects, and that figure will reach 90 per cent within a year, Mr Ballmer told an audience at the University of Washington. He said that he was “betting our company” on a move towards cloud-based software and services, and that there was “so much unrealised potential” in this sector.

“The cloud fuels Microsoft, and Microsoft fuels the crowd,” he said. “We’re all in.”

Cloud computing – the idea that software, files and services are not tied to an individual computer, but are in fact accessible everywhere, on any machine, via the internet – is a matter of increasing importance for technology companies.

Microsoft, which has traditionally earned most of its revenue from its operating systems and computer software, is keen to find ways of adapting this model for the internet age. The company has launched Windows Azure, a platform for developers to create cloud-based applications and services, and has also created online versions of popular programs, such as Word and PowerPoint.

Mr Ballmer said that although browsers lay at the heart of cloud services, the devices used to access these services really mattered. “The cloud wants smart devices,” he said, saying that the new Windows Phone 7 Series mobile operating system was designed with the cloud in mind, compared to previous versions of Windows Mobile, that were built for “voice and the legacy world”.

After his speech at the University of Washington, he sent an email to Microsoft staff reaffirming his commitment to the cloud initiative.

“Other companies have defined the cloud in a narrow, one-dimensional way,” he wrote. “Although these companies provide some interesting components, Microsoft is uniquely delivering on a wide range of cloud capabilities that bring increasingly more value to our customers.

“This view fuels our investments across the entire company, from datacenters to cloud platform technologies to cloud-based development tools and applications. Today, nearly every one of our products has, or is developing, features or services that support the cloud. As I said today, when it comes to the cloud, we are all in. We are all in across every product line we have and across every dimension of the cloud.

“Of course, there is more work to do. We have strong competitors. We need to be (and are) willing to change our business models to take advantage of the cloud. We must move at ‘cloud speed’, especially in our consumer offerings. And we need to be crystal clear about the value we provide to all our customers.

“We have an enormous opportunity in front of us. We have great products and services in the market today and a range of new ones on their way.

All of our products make the cloud better, and the cloud makes our products better.”