“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 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.

Rackspace Cloud Logo

Uploading Files to Rackspace Cloud using PHP (Aka Mosso)

Uploading files directly from a PHP script to Rackspace Cloud is actually easier than you might think although there are not many tutorials for this kind of script, so we thought we’d share the information. We have also included the source code for this tutorial.

1. First you will need a Rackspace Cloud Account, if you don’t have one, sign up here.
2. Once you have a Rackspace Cloud Account you will need to download the Rackspace Cloud API, these are available here. For this tutorial you will need to download the PHP API.
3. Extract and upload the folder and rename it to something sensible, we will rename it to “cloudapi”.
4. Next we need a simple upload script, written in HTML:

<form action="upload.php" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="POST">
File: <input name="uploadfile" type="file" />
<input name="submit" type="submit" value="Upload" />
</form>

1. Now we have the upload script we need the upload.php code:

<?php
// include the Cloud API.
require('cloudapi/cloudfiles.php');

//Required username and API key found in your account
$username = ""; //Username
$key = ""; //API key

//Connecting to Rackspace Cloud
$auth = new CF_Authentication($username, $key);
$auth->authenticate();
$conn = new CF_Connection($auth);

//Set the Container you want to use
$container = $conn->get_container('INSERTCONTAINERNAME');

//Temp store the file
$localfile = $_FILES['uploadfile']['tmp_name'];
$filename = $_FILES['uploadfile']['name'];

//Uploading to Rackspace Cloud
$object = $container->create_object($filename);
$object->load_from_filename($localfile);

//Completion Message
echo "Your file has been uploaded";
?>

1. We will now run through the above code;

• Line 03- ensure this file exists and the path is correct.
• Line 06 & 07 – You will need to enter your Rackspace Cloud API key, this can be found in your account at Your Account -> API Access.
• Line 15 – Insert your container name here, case may matter, so keep and eye out for your Capital Letters.

Download the Source Code Here.

Getting errors? Keep an eye out for our new blog post over the next couple of days where we will discuss errors and issues we had when trying to run this script and how you can solve them.

Edit

Tip:

For those folks with UK Rackspace accounts, you’ll need to use the following call when creating the $auth object:

$auth = new CF_Authentication($username, $key, NULL, UK_AUTHURL);

(as of v.1.7.9)

The reason being is that there are two different authentication URL’s for each client base.

Thanks to Anh for this tip.

Rackspace Cloud Logo

We here at Clloud, have heard a rumour that Rackspace Cloud will soon we releasing a revamped version of their control panel, probably within the next couple of months, which is suggested could include long awaited features such as CNAME support.

We are unsure at the moment if the revamped control panel will be for both Cloud Server and Cloud Files users, or if it will just affect Cloud Files users. We expect that it will be both with hopefully a wide range of new features.

When we find out more information we will update you all.

Happy Clloud’ing!

Rackspace Cloud IPhone Application Review

The Rackspace Cloud Iphone Application is Free of charge and is available from the App store.The Application allows you to connect to your account to manage your Cloud Servers and Cloud Files. We will be testing the Cloud Files part of the app in this blog post. You will need a Rackspace Cloud Account BEFORE using this App.

You will need to get your username and API key from your Rackspace Cloud Account, this is available in ‘Your Account -> API Access’. When you load up the app you will be asked to input these details. (The API is very long unfortunately, happy typing). Once you’ve done that it will authenticate your account…

Rackspace Cloud App Authenticating

Once you’ve logged in it will show you your Cloud Servers, if you have any, but we will continue to Cloud Files using the button in the bottom right. You will then see all your containers, for this example we will create a new container called ‘test’.

Rackspace Cloud App Containers

If we go into the container at the moment it will obviously have no files. With the Rackspace Cloud App you are able to upload images from your gallery or straight from your camera.

Rackspace Cloud App Upload

We will upload an image that we took earlier..

Rackspace Cloud App Uploading

Usually it will complete quickly depending on if you are connected to Wifi or not. We were connected to Wifi at this time so it uploaded within 10 seconds, although if you are only on 3G it will take longer. Once it has uploaded you can view it straight from the App.

Rackspace Cloud App Uploaded File

Our Review

The Rackspace Cloud App is a great addition to Rackspace’s current line up, with a lot of the features that the online control panel has. We would like to see a few more statistics in there (usage etc) and perhaps billing but you can’t complain, it’s free. Well worth the download.

Remember to check out our review of Rackspace Cloud Files!

http://c1126332.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/rscloudapp4.png

Rackspace Cloud App Uploading

Rackspace Cloud Files Review

General Information

“Rackspace Cloud Files offers:

• Use as much or as little storage as you want and pay as you grow
• Store files as small as a few bytes or as large as 5 GB
• High performance, redundant online storage starting at 15 cents a GB
• Serve media to your users around the globe – fast!
• Utilize CDN bandwidth starting at only 22 cents a GB
• Sign up with no minimum commitments or contracts”

Prices

Our Usage

Remember for this test we have only tested Rackspace’s Cloud Files not Rackpaces Cloud Servers. For our tests we were using around 16GB/month on Cloud Files on one of our more popular sites where a large number of images are stored, currently around 66,000 requests a month with nearly 4000 files coming in at 0.40GB total in size.

Our Review

For the above statistics we were charged a total of around $5. The cost taking into account how much a dedicated server would cost is very little so we can then host the rest of our site on very low powered Shared Hosting Account, VPS or dedicated server with little bandwidth or hard drive space. Therefore it is a financially viable way to host your files.

In relation to speed, Rackspace Cloud Files appear to load as quick as, if not quicker than, images of an equal size elsewhere. We will carry out proper speed tests in due course.

Rackspace support respond to their support tickets promptly, usually within ‘working hours’, and responses are generally very informative. They also have a live chat support feature which allows access to instant support. (This has currently been untested by ourselves, meaning we are unable to comment on this so far, however, when we use this facility, our thoughts will be reported on here)

We quite like that Rackspace Cloud File comes with a control panel to allow you to manage your files, unlike Amazon’s S3 that throws you in at the deep end so-to-speak and expects you to find your own tools. We found that fireuploader (firefox plugin) is a great tool to use with Rackspace Cloud Files.

Unfortunately at the moment Rackspace Cloud Files does not support Cname, for more detailed information on Cname use a reliable search engine, but for now it basically means that you are unable to to make the file ‘appear’ to come from your domain. After talking with Rackspace Support, they have informed me that this feature is due to be implemented in Q2 of 2010. We will keep you updated on this.

Update – We have just tested the Rackspace Cloud Iphone App. You can see the review here.

More Information

Click here to go to Rackspace Cloud

Screenshots