Blog posts from Rackspace Cloud blog |
1279 blog posts:
Dec 18, 2015
Sure, you can DIY OpenStack, or consume it as a commercial distribution, but "unless you have an internal center of deep expertise, OpenStack is best consumed as a service," writes Christian Foster in InfoWorld this week.
Dec 16, 2015
IT transformation is picking up speed and will continue to rely on expansion into the cloud, while a focus on cybersecurity and the search for talent will continue to impact the industry.
Dec 10, 2015
Increased storage, security and cost-saving measures are now available to enhance the already-robust Office 365 suite available from Rackspace, making it even more attractive to a wider variety of business users.
Dec 10, 2015
The latest release of Rackspace Private Cloud Powered by OpenStack, available today worldwide, expands storage and infrastructure options to provide additional high availability and disaster recovery solutions supporting our customers’ critical data needs.
Dec 10, 2015
Dozens of Rackers around the world are headed into classrooms this week as part of the global Hour of Code initiative, which seeks to demystify coding for youngsters and spark their interest in computer science.
Dec 09, 2015
You spoke, we listened — and now we’re excited to announce the upcoming launch of our next generation of OnMetal Cloud Servers – bare metal made better with the elasticity of the cloud and consistent performance of a dedicated environment.
Dec 08, 2015
Looking back at the previous week's After Hour Recap, which hosted Rackspace Senior Process Engineer Robert Chapa. Robert builds the automation that drives fanatical support, and talks about how he harnesses New Relic Inisghts to optimize and cut down on costs.
Dec 08, 2015
In an earlier post, I detailed the risks of “Shadow IT,” the growing practice of employees within a company procuring IT services without the involvement of the IT department. Think of a marketing manager who, rather than waiting on an overburdened IT team to meet her needs, contracts with a cloud service provider, and with […]
Dec 03, 2015
Scicasts, which offers a single, searchable resource of the massive information stream the scientific community needs access to, relies on Rackspace to help manage its big data analytics through Hadoop.
Nov 27, 2015
This week The Download looks at all the things Rackspace has to be thankful for, including the wide array of expertise we leverage to help businesses thrive.
Nov 25, 2015
Don’t be the next Ashley Madison. Design efficiently and architect for cost-effective cloud redundancy combined with fully managed security as a service
Nov 23, 2015
On this week's Office Hours Hangout we're talking Containers again, this time with our very special guest, O'Reilly Media CTO Andrew Odewahn.
Nov 20, 2015
The recent Microsoft Future Decoded event in London was a reminder about how the expectations placed on enterprise technologies have become more demanding — and not keeping up can mean a business being left behind.
Nov 19, 2015
Rackspace Hosted Exchange 2016 gives customers a new Outlook web app user interface, now called Outlook on the Web, which offers an enhanced mobile experience, plus improved email, calendar and search.
Nov 18, 2015
If you use a Rackspace single-tenant Dedicated VMware vCenter Server hosting solution or Rackspace Private Cloud powered by VMware vCloud, you can now monitor four popular application stacks using vRealize Operations 6.1.
Nov 18, 2015
As a security product manager with Rackspace, my job is to help solve the overall security needs of our customers. I study its business and its security needs, evaluate product technical capabilities, manage contract negotiation and procurement and define deployment processes.
Nov 17, 2015
The Mitaka documentation team will focus on three priorities this cycle — and they're always looking for doc contributors.
Nov 17, 2015
Defending against today’s advanced security threats require specialized expertise and technology. Meeting the need internally is resource intensive; leveraging outside resources is often prohibitively expensive. What's the answer?
Nov 16, 2015
Managed Cloud for Adobe Experience Manager will help solve the complexities of AWS with Rackspace Fanatical Support and expertise.
Nov 13, 2015
This week we take stock of all the content our Fanatical Support for Amazon Web Services (FAWS) team has been working on, since launching Fanatical Support for AWS offering last month.
Nov 12, 2015
To save you the time and trouble of doing all the legwork on your own, we put together, Productivity & Collaboration 101, an introductory guide on choosing and deploying productivity and collaboration tools.
Nov 11, 2015
International Military Antiques has enjoyed stunning success since going online more than a decade ago, due in part to support from Rackspace Managed Cloud with digital expertise to power their Magento ecommerce platform.
Nov 10, 2015
Two weeks ago, we announced Carina by Rackspace — an intuitive and instant-on native container environment — and we’re thrilled by the early demand and number of people that have already signed up. But this isn't the first time we've innovated using container technology.
Nov 09, 2015
Big Data management, cybersecurity in the cloud, building a global ecommerce platform and the latest analyst research into cloud adoption — all this and more in one day at Rackspace::Solve LA, this Nov. 17. Register for this free event today!
Nov 09, 2015
This week on Office Hours Hangout, three Racker military veterans talked offered suggestions about how to make the transition from military life to civilian work go more smoothly.
Nov 06, 2015
This week we check back in with the Rackspace Community, sharing some of the helpful tips and advice Rackers are offering customers with a wide variety of IT challenges.
Nov 06, 2015
Register for the 1st Azure Webinar Series "Hybrid Clouds: Azure Real-World Use Cases"
Nov 06, 2015
Ever since AWS announced the addition of Lambda last year, it has captured the imagination of developers and operations folks alike.
Nov 05, 2015
Rackspace is proud to be the Platinum Sponsor of this year’s FutureStack, the 3rd annual New Relic user conference, where data nerds from across the globe will unite — join us!
Nov 05, 2015
If your organization is contemplating a move to the cloud, your first consideration should be what type of cloud is right, public or private? Increasingly, the answer is a mix of both — the hybrid cloud.
Nov 04, 2015
Containers are definitely a hot topic in the Cloud world, but the truth is, we're still in the early adoption phase, and many of our customers are still developing their strategies around containers.
Nov 04, 2015
RackerGamers is preparing for their annual participation in a 24-hour game-a-thon for Extra Life, a global initiative that brings gamers together to play video games (as well as board and tabletop games) as they raise money for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals.
Nov 03, 2015
Rackspace helps luxury content and commerce beauty destination VIOLET GREY scale for spikes in traffic and manage their back-end operations, so they can focus on bringing Hollywood beauty to the masses.
Nov 03, 2015
Today, we continue our deep dive blog series, Overcoming the Challenges of Microsoft Azure. This week, we’re taking a closer look at how the high cost of Azure-related expertise can stifle cloud investment and inhibit innovation.
Oct 30, 2015
Today The Download takes a look at this week's OpenStack Summit, which wrapped up on Friday in Tokyo, Japan.
Oct 30, 2015
Each week, Rackspace futurist Robert Scoble looks at emerging trends in his newsletter Life and Tech. This week's installment looks into some of our recently announced innovations, as well as what they'll mean for our multi-cloud world:
Oct 30, 2015
These four key strategies will help your business build and maintain a good email reputation.
Oct 29, 2015
As OpenStack Tokyo comes to a close, Rackers look back at the week.
Oct 29, 2015
In Tokyo, Women of OpenStack asked: what are the unconscious biases we carry that affect how we work and interact with others, and how can we overcome them?
Oct 28, 2015
The Rackspace Cloud Databases team is proud to announce that High Availability (HA), scheduled backups, as well as some additional key features are now available in Cloud Databases.
Oct 28, 2015
The OpenStack Security Project is seeking help from the community: find out how to write notes, hack tools, conduct security code analysis, and do threat analysis.
Oct 28, 2015
When planning your architecture for AWS, choosing where to put development environments can often be a tricky question
Oct 28, 2015
Check out this lively video of day one at OpenStack Tokyo.
Oct 28, 2015
Carina is a free public beta of a new service that allows you to create managed clusters for running containers in the cloud using the same tools you use today for running containers locally on your own computer.
Oct 28, 2015
When OpenStack is used as a service, there is no complexity and expensive configuration, allowing for organizations to deploy IT resources on apps and software aimed at growing their business.
Oct 27, 2015
The two 1,000 node clusters will make up the world's largest developer test cloud — and Rackspace and Intel are now actively seeking developers eager to put their features to the test.
Oct 27, 2015
If you haven't yet moved to the cloud, you’re probably seriously considering Azure. And if you have already moved to the Azure cloud, you may be grappling with some very real management and resource challenges.
Oct 27, 2015
Rackspace Private Cloud Powered By OpenStack now offers support for Rackspace Integrate Systems for compute – a fully integrated modular rack of compute, storage and networking, built according to the Open Compute design principles.
Oct 27, 2015
I searched how other parents helped their kids with Type 1 diabetes and discovered Nightscout, an open source, DIY project that allows real time access to glucose monitoring data.
Oct 21, 2015
As the OpenStack Summit gets underway next week in Tokyo, Rackspace remains deeply committed to OpenStack, now the dominant private cloud software in the world.
Oct 21, 2015
At OpenStack Summit Tokyo, more than 30 Rackers will speak. Check out their schedule here — and don't miss our Wednesday morning container demo!
Oct 21, 2015
If you use a Rackspace single-tenant Dedicated VMware® vCenter Server™ hosting solution or Rackspace Private Cloud powered by VMware vCloud®, you can now access the latest version of the VMware IT operations management tool, 6.1 (vROps 6.1).
Oct 21, 2015
Announcing the limited availability of RackConnect Global, which provides highly available, secure, private network connectivity between Rackspace and your off-premises data centers or infrastructure at other cloud hosting providers, such as Microsoft Azure.
Oct 20, 2015
As Cloud Files has grown, it has experienced scaling problems and limitations with Python. Hummingbird, written in Go, has dramatically improved performance in the two production environments where it’s deployed so far.
Oct 20, 2015
If you haven't yet moved to the cloud, you’re probably seriously considering Azure. And if you have already moved to the Azure cloud, you may be grappling with some very real management and resource challenges.
Oct 19, 2015
This week, Office Hours Hangout spoke with two of the Rackers behind Fanatical Support for AWS, Senior Director of Product Erik Carlin and Director of Product Marketing Tom Bressie.
Oct 16, 2015
In this week's excerpt of Robert Scoble's Life and Tech weekly email letter, he examines the way Light.co cofounder and CTO Rajiv Laroia approached building a new camera.
Oct 16, 2015
This week we highlight the Rackspace Community — a "many to many" support channel, meaning any Racker, customer or end user can submit content, ask and answer questions and otherwise interact.
Oct 15, 2015
As part of the Student Opportunity Lab at Grace Hopper, software developers Kacie Houser and Sara Safavi will present “Yes You Can! Be a Software Developer: Building Your Career” at Grace Hopper on Fri., Oct. 16 between 10:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. in Hall A3 Level Three GRBCC.
Oct 14, 2015
At Grace Hopper, I'm speaking about my experiences with OpenStack over the last five years here at Rackspace, where we collaborate using developer techniques.
Oct 14, 2015
Jon Oberheide, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Duo Security, which provides best-of-breed two-factor authentication to Rackspace customers, writes about what should be a foundational piece of every organization's cybersecurity system.
Oct 13, 2015
Ladies, Rackspace wants YOU to come work for us — and we want to meet you at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference Oct. 14-16 in Houston. You can skip the line at the career fair by pregistering with us today.
Oct 12, 2015
Don't just survive Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year. Check out "How to Thrive on Black Friday 2015" and get prepared for the biggest shopping weekend of the year.
Oct 12, 2015
A chance encounter in San Antonio by a couple of War College alums has lead to Rackspace and the U.S. Air Force 960th Cybersecurity Operations Group seeking opportunities to share cybersecurity talent and ideas.
Oct 09, 2015
AWS introduced a slew of new features at re:Invent Wednesday that will make the cloud easier to use and more reliable. But many companies are still seeking experts to guide them.
Oct 09, 2015
"We are templating our templates!" Justin Phelps, a DevOps Engineer at Rackspace, explains the value proposition for using Ansible to test AWS CloudFormation templates.
Oct 08, 2015
AWS introduced a slew of new features at re:Invent Wednesday that will make the cloud easier to use and more reliable. But many companies are still seeking experts to guide them.
Oct 08, 2015
MongoDB 3.0's WiredTiger offers more granular concurrency control, write-ahead log, memory cache and native compression, and that means lower storage costs, greater hardware utilization, higher throughput and more predictable performance.
Oct 08, 2015
In this week's excerpt of Robert Scoble's Life and Tech weekly email letter, Scoble goes deep on what it means to live in a multi-cloud world.
Oct 08, 2015
In this first of a multi-part series, learn how to use technologies like Git, Docker and Elastic Beanstalk in AWS deployments.
Oct 08, 2015
EC2 costs can make up 80 percent of your monthly AWS bill. Learn how to choose the right EC2 instances for the greatest efficiency.
Oct 07, 2015
Thanks to additional safeguards already in place, the invalidation of the Safe Harbor U.S. - EU framework should not significantly impact Rackspace.
Oct 07, 2015
Re:Invent kicked off Tuesday with controlled chaos — and the news that Rackspace will now provide its trademark Fanatical Support for one of the world’s leading cloud platforms — Amazon Web Services.
Oct 07, 2015
With years of experience managing cloud environments, and through its partnership with AWS, Rackspace has developed opinionated standards and best practices for architecting solutions in the AWS ecosystem.
Oct 07, 2015
Rackspace's AWS-certified DevOps engineers offer step by step instructions for terminating AWS instances as part of our Fanatical Support for AWS.
Oct 07, 2015
Rackspace crafted its Fanatical Support for AWS offerings and pricing based on feedback from customers. We offer service levels for companies from start ups to enterprise.
Oct 06, 2015
Take a technical look at how Rackspace Fanatical Support for AWS will configure your AWS account based on best practices, streamlining the process of getting you started with your new account.
Oct 06, 2015
We've spent the past several months working with customers that love Rackspace expertise and support, and with today's launch of Fanatical Support for Amazon Web Services, we will now be able to provide them the best managed-service offering on that platform.
Oct 05, 2015
This week, we walk you through the steps of creating your own custom "fire drill" plan to practice what to do in the event that traffic spikes above a certain threshold and the site goes offline.
Oct 05, 2015
Two weeks ago, we showed off Barreleye, the world's first Open Compute server with an OpenPOWER chip, publicly for the first time at a Rackspace-hosted Open Compute engineering workshop.
Oct 02, 2015
This week in the Download we're highlighting three powerful posts in support of our new Rackspace Managed Security and Compliance Assistance offerings. As most executives are coming to understand, no company today, whether startup or enterprise, should try to handle all its security by itself.
Oct 02, 2015
Each week, Rackspace futurist Robert Scoble connects with startups and other innovative companies, then makes connections and shares insights in his free, weekly email newsletter, Life and Tech.
Oct 02, 2015
Getting started used to be the toughest step in your Big Data journey, but Rackspace and Hortonworks have created a certified solution delivering the reliability and the stability customers expect. Learn more during our webinar, “Tools to Make Big Data Deployments Easy,” on Oct. 14.
Oct 01, 2015
Rackspace and Garrison Lyman Group are partnering to enable digital marketing success through high-performance, extensible, secure technology.
Sep 30, 2015
Rackspace's Egle Sigler and Dana Bauer will lead coders to work on the OpenStack project while at the Open Source Day codethon at Grace Hopper this year.
Sep 30, 2015
Winning the UK Customer Experience awards is an external recognition of the power of Rackspace Fanatical Support and validation that our ecommerce practice is delivering a world-class customer experience.
Sep 30, 2015
Managed Cassandra powered by DataStax, which Rackspace last week added to its Data Services portfolio, combines optimized DataStax Enterprise with the know-how of Rackspace and DataStax experts.
Sep 29, 2015
Rackspace Managed Security and Compliance Assistance combines the strongest tools with the best experts to help customers secure the systems inside their companies.
Sep 28, 2015
We kept hearing from customers who wanted a managed Big Data experience in the cloud -- so that's what we've given them, with Managed Cloud Big Data.
Sep 28, 2015
Two of our resident experts, Rackers Jackie Campbell and Joe Ashcraft, joined us this week on the Hangout to discuss the who, what, when, where, why, and how of load testing, and how they use it to Fanatically Support our customers.
Sep 28, 2015
After 23 years in British and U.S. intelligence, Daniel Clayton found problems in the private cybersecurity sector, including an overreliance on technology against human threats, and communications failures from analysts to the boardroom.
Sep 28, 2015
Shared SAN is a great pay-as-you-go storage option for workloads that need fluctuating burst capacity and flexible deployment but not the guaranteed high performance of single-tenant dedicated storage.
Sep 28, 2015
Building on the contributions of nearly 1,500 individuals from 169 organizations around the world, today we’re proud to announce the availability of Rackspace Private Cloud Powered by OpenStack v11.0, based on OpenStack Kilo. With each new release of OpenStack, the Rackspace Private Cloud team takes on the task of further testing the OpenStack release with […]
Sep 25, 2015
Each week, Rackspace futurist Robert Scoble connects with startups and other innovative companies, then makes connections and shares insights in his free, weekly email newsletter, Life and Tech.
Sep 25, 2015
When cloud competitors share information about cyber attacks, we reduce our collective attack surface, drive up hacker costs and reduce their gains.
Sep 24, 2015
Our Business Email 101 Guide offers a detailed, step-by-step walkthrough to help decision makers evaluate the many different email hosting options on the market (free vs. professional, in-house vs. managed hosting, Webmail services vs. hosted Exchange).
Sep 23, 2015
As the U.S. VMworld 2015 recedes into our rear view mirror and we gear up for Barcelona next month, you might be wondering if a large trade show like this is worth attending. After my experience in San Francisco earlier this month, my answer with a resounding yes, and here's why:
Sep 22, 2015
Redis hosts Dev Day for Redis developers and unConf for Redis users on Oct. 19, 20. Come join us!
Sep 22, 2015
Redis hosts Dev Day for Redis developers and unConf for Redis users on Oct. 19, 20. Come join us!
Sep 22, 2015
Rackspace has expanded its data services offerings with the addition of Managed Cassandra powered by DataStax to its leading, comprehensive data services portfolio.
Sep 22, 2015
Rackspace has expanded its data services offerings with the addition of Managed Cassandra powered by DataStax to its leading, comprehensive data services portfolio.
Sep 21, 2015
This week on Office Hours Hangout, we featured three tasks our customers can offload — to Rackspace or another third party partner — during the all important shopping holiday surge.
Sep 21, 2015
This week on Office Hours Hangout, we featured three tasks our customers can offload — to Rackspace or another third party partner — during the all important shopping holiday surge.
Sep 18, 2015
Next week, several of our most accomplished data specialists will speak at the Percona Live Data Performance Conference. If you’ll be there, swing by a session to learn how you can optimize productivity of your existing database ecosystem.
Sep 18, 2015
Next week, several of our most accomplished data specialists will speak at the Percona Live Data Performance Conference. If you’ll be there, swing by a session to learn how you can optimize productivity of your existing database ecosystem.
Sep 15, 2015
Rackspace opened the doors of our first permanent work space in New York City at Herald Square, 34th Street yesterday. Eighteen months in the making, our new office already feels like home!
Sep 15, 2015
Rackspace opened the doors of our first permanent work space in New York City at Herald Square, 34th Street yesterday. Eighteen months in the making, our new office already feels like home!
Sep 15, 2015
This month marks the one-year anniversary of our Master Agent/Agent Program, which allows new segment of partners to offer Rackspace Managed Cloud and award-winning Fanatical Support to their customers.
Sep 15, 2015
This month marks the one-year anniversary of our Master Agent/Agent Program, which allows new segment of partners to offer Rackspace Managed Cloud and award-winning Fanatical Support to their customers.
Sep 14, 2015
As the holiday traffic season approaches, Office Hours Hangouts focuses on how your business can prepare. This week we talked about the two “levers” that improve performance: add resources to the stack powering the application and asking the resources to do less.
Sep 14, 2015
Instead of putting resources towards infrastructure, and hiring a person to manage that in-house, Pass The Notes was able to leverage various cloud services from Rackspace and grow their team internally.
Sep 11, 2015
This week, Rackspace hosted a Women in Leadership Summit and cut the ribbon on it's OpenStack Innovation Center with partners Intel and the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Sep 10, 2015
As part of Canonical's Certified Public Cloud program, Rackspace now offers Ubuntu across our entire portfolio — public and private clouds, OnMetal, and now dedicated and hybrid environments.
Sep 09, 2015
Our London data center has just launched the Compute and Memory-Optimized flavor classes of the Rackspace Workload-Optimized Cloud Servers. This new breed of cloud servers delivers exceptional levels of computing power.
Sep 09, 2015
Commerce specialists at Rackspace have pretty much seen it all. As the No. 1 hosting provider for the Internet Retailer™ Top 1,000 for the fifth year in a row, we can help ensure that your online stores are always available, and running at peak performance.
Sep 08, 2015
This week on Office Hours Hangout, Insights Product Manager Henry Shapiro shared some of the ways customers can use Insights to boost ecommerce data collection.
Sep 04, 2015
This week, The Download takes a look at some of the ways technology is helping businesses succeed, either via the cloud, or through other means of IT transformation.
Sep 03, 2015
Our recent infographic, Making the cloud work for you and your customers, offers a clear and concise look at how, by partnering with Rackspace, your company can broaden your offerings, boost revenue and deepen customer relationships.
Sep 03, 2015
Rackspace is pleased to announce the ability attach Cloud Block Storage volumes to OnMetal servers. This has been one of the top feature requests for OnMetal, and it really opens up the product to new use cases.
Sep 02, 2015
Now everyone can get in the kitchen with OpenStack. To help operators, administrators and anyone working with OpenStack, a trio of Rackspace experts have come together to write the "OpenStack Cloud Computing Cookbook - Third Edition."
Sep 01, 2015
For the third year running, Rackspace ANZ has been named one of the top 50 places to work in Australia by Business Review Weekly magazine, placing 12th in 2015 for companies under 100 employees.
Sep 01, 2015
As Congress returns from recess, Rackspace and its allies are once more calling for action on patent reform. Check out this video from Rackspace VP & Associate General Counsel Van Lindberg.
Sep 01, 2015
Customers will now be able to monitor the states of all Rackspace Monitoring Agents through the check, alarm and notification plan they're already familiar with — at no additional cost.
Aug 31, 2015
On last week’s Office Hours Hangout, cohost Drew Cox and I discussed several new tools, features, and products Rackspace has released in the last year that we think will be most helpful to customers going into the 2015 Black Friday season.
Aug 31, 2015
Through its Linux for Ladies program, Rackspace's Open Cloud Academy is creating a local technical talent pipeline by providing an inclusive training environment aimed at women interested in tech.
Aug 31, 2015
Rackspace and VMware are excited to announce an interoperable OpenStack cloud architecture that helps IT administrators thrive in the new multi-cloud world.
Aug 28, 2015
The Download takes a look at some of the timely topics our friends over at the Rackspace Support Network have been writing about over the past week.
Aug 28, 2015
UK crowdfunding platform Crowdcube leverages Rackspace Managed Cloud to manage spikes in traffic and keep its in-demand app running smoothly.
Aug 28, 2015
As you prepare your ecommerce site for increased holiday traffic, security planning is critical, to protect against visitors looking to stall your site, hijack your legitimate visitors or steal your data.
Aug 26, 2015
To ensure performance, Brigade uses Rackspace OnMetal Cloud Servers, offering the highest levels of speed, reliability to users.
Aug 25, 2015
Like the Spurs, Rackspace faces challenges when recruiting talent to San Antonio. But as the recent signing of LaMarcus Aldridge shows, some are taking a second look at this South Texas city.
Aug 24, 2015
It’s never too early to start thinking about Black Friday. With only three months left before the largest online shopping weekend returns, we spent our latest Office Hours Hangout talking about tips for thriving on Black Friday, including four new and/or improved Rackspace Products that will help our customers’ Black Friday go off without a hitch. We’ve […]
Aug 24, 2015
Managed Cloud for Adobe Experience Manager is a new product being developed by Rackspace, which offers a better way to deploy and manage AEM.
Aug 21, 2015
Welcome to the Download, where we share some of the week's tech stories that caught our attention.
Aug 21, 2015
No, not for your favorite puggle who sleeps on the couch all day long. You can now get insurance for those fluffy, slobbery and persistent production workloads running on Azure compute, and feel comfortable sleeping at night through Fanatical Support for Microsoft Azure. This game changing offering brings managed services to the Azure platform, allowing you to confidently transition from your datacenter to the cloud.
Aug 20, 2015
Rackspace is proud to support the 2015 OpenStack Silicon Valley event as a headline sponsor. Come to our “OpenStack Fleet Management: What Rackspace Has Learned” session for unique insight from Matt Van Winkle, Senior Manager of Operations at Rackspace.
Aug 19, 2015
Rackspace Intelligence is now generally available, giving customers a real-time and comprehensive overview of the health of their infrastructure at one glance.
Aug 18, 2015
As businesses continue to rely on email systems for data transmission, the possibility of those systems becoming a pathway for sensitive information leakage, be it unintentional or malicious, is an increasing risk. Rackspace Hosted Exchange with Data Loss Prevention provides a method to control sensitive data transmission and mitigate that risk.
Aug 17, 2015
If you’re curious how a Windows developer would go about starting an open source project, you aren’t alone. Our most recent Office Hours Hangout guest, Don Schecnk, found himself ready to start an open source project, but didn’t know where to start. Fortunately for us, he documented his process, and spoke with us about it on our […]
Aug 17, 2015
Principal architect for Rackspace Private Cloud Powered by OpenStack Philip Williams spoke at OpenStack India Day on storage architecture and technologies and the impact of OpenStack in energizing markets. He found high interest and energy among attendees and students.
Aug 14, 2015
Happy Friday, everyone. It’s time for another edition of the Download, where we share some of the tech stories that caught our eye
Aug 13, 2015
Rackspace has been awarded a 2015 Australian Business Award for Best Service Product, honouring our Managed Cloud offering. This follows state and national CSIA award wins, and taking top spot at the CeBIT.AU awards earlier this year.
Aug 11, 2015
As email volume and dependence continues to skyrocket, so to do associated risks. Given that 70 percent of all email traffic is spam — the primary delivery method for viruses and malware — designing and implementing the right security solutions is crucial.
Aug 10, 2015
We asked Justin Phelps about Ansible, how it can help our customers, and where they can get started with Ansible. We also spent some time talking about creating and hosting static websites, and how to incorporate those into a larger application design.
Aug 10, 2015
VMworld 2015, which runs from Aug. 30 - Sept. 3 in San Francisco, brings together thought leaders, subject matter experts, and IT professionals to immerse themselves in the latest in virtualization and cloud technology. Rackspace VMware experts will be on hand to share our expertise in Managed Virtualization, Managed OpenStack and Managed Cloud.
Aug 07, 2015
Check out these awesome Rackers who've posted photos in solidarity with #ILookLikeAnEngineer, the hashtag that's gone viral after the image of a self-described "extreme introvert" received so much attention in a San Francisco tech ad.
Aug 06, 2015
It’s never too early to start thinking about holiday e-commerce. Ignore current heat indexes and think traffic spikes, instead. Are you prepared? Is your network infrastructure properly set up to handle peaks? If not, Rackspace and Magento can help.
Aug 04, 2015
We’ve often recommended customers use GitHub during our weekly Cloud Office Hours Hangouts, but we've never really taken a deep dive into it, or how our customers can start using GitHub, so we spent our most recent Hangout doing just that.
Jul 31, 2015
This week, we revisit our announcement with Intel about the OpenStack Innovation Center,at our San Antonio headquarters.
Jul 31, 2015
As a member of a team that strives to be the world’s greatest service company, I am proud to announce that Rackspace has earned leader positions in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting in North America and Europe, for the second year in a row. The assessments, which Gartner publishes separately for each region, are […]
Jul 29, 2015
Rackspace will begin offering its Private Cloud powered by VMware vCloud® in the fourth quarter of 2015 in Australia, giving customers complete control of their vCloud environments.
Jul 28, 2015
Rackspace is proud to be the first and only provider to offer customers dedicated 10G switches, 10G hybrid connections and collapsed network options, all backed by Fanatical Support.
Jul 27, 2015
Rackspace CDN is a simple but effective tool to help your web site's performance, allowing users to browse deeper, get more engaged and shop longer. Read on for some handy CDN tips.
Jul 24, 2015
This week in the Download, we recap a barrage of IT security news, starting with the schadenfreude-inducing revelation that infamous cheater hookup site AshelyMadison suffered a massive data breach.
Jul 23, 2015
To accelerate the enterprise capabilities of OpenStack, further we have formed the OpenStack Innovation Center with Intel. This effort will significantly increase the number of engineers working in the OpenStack community, making the project even stronger and more capable.
Jul 22, 2015
I still fondly remember the early days of OpenStack, when there were spirited debates at the company around whether or not we could create our own open source cloud platform, or if we should even try.
Yet here we are, five years later, with one of the most successful, fastest-growing open source projects in the world. That kind of growth instills a lot of pride. It’s kind of like watching your child grow up.
Jul 20, 2015
As Rackspace expands its Managed Data Services portfolio, we’re excited this week to announce the addition of ObjectRocket for Elasticsearch, combining the high availability, scalability and speed of ObjectRocket’s purpose-built platform with the ability to store, search, and analyze a variety of structured and unstructured sources for real-time ad-hoc data discovery. With Fanatical Support from […]
Jul 17, 2015
The world of technology generates so many great stories, it’s hard to keep up during the weekly grind. Each Friday, we compile some of the stories that caught our eye. This week was a big one for Rackspace, as we rolled out Fanatical Support for Microsoft Azure, the cloud computing platform that’s increasingly being adopted by enterprises. The combination […]
Jul 17, 2015
The world of technology generates so many great stories, it’s hard to keep up during the weekly grind. Each Friday, we compile some of the stories that caught our eye. This week was a big one for Rackspace, as we rolled out Fanatical Support for Microsoft Azure, the cloud computing platform that’s increasingly being adopted by enterprises. The combination […]
Jul 14, 2015
The launch this week of Fanatical Support for Azure is an exciting addition to the Rackspace portfolio of expertise and service for a wide array of products and platforms. Adding Rackspace Fanatical Support for Azure means that our hundreds of Microsoft Certified professionals can now help you realize the full potential of this powerful cloud […]
Jul 14, 2015
The nature of cyber security is changing, and the failure to adapt threatens businesses in an entirely new way
Jul 13, 2015
Rackspace President and CEO Taylor Rhodes sent this letter to our customers who consume Microsoft products this morning: To our amazing customers, Our strategy, from the time Rackspace was founded, has been to differentiate ourselves and create value for you in two major ways. First, we strive to be the customer service leader in our […]
Jul 13, 2015
Rackspace support for Office 365, which was launched with limited availability in May, has now been released into general availability across the U.S., which means that customers can now get access to Rackspace’s fanatical support 24/7!
Jul 10, 2015
The world of technology generates so many great stories, it’s hard to keep up during the weekly grind. Each Friday, we compile some of the stories that caught our eye. This week it would be hard not to focus on the technical issues that caused disruptions across the private and public sectors in the U.S., exposing cracks in the […]
Jul 08, 2015
Deploying Google Apps for Work for hundreds of users and over legacy technologies in dispersed locations, all while accounting for accessibility and security can get complicated.
Jul 07, 2015
ObjectRocket by Rackspace is challenging you to wreak havoc in your community by building a mobile app to improve some aspect of your neighborhood — and a chance to win $10,000.
Jul 03, 2015
The world of technology generates so many great stories, it's hard to keep up during the weekly grind.
Jul 02, 2015
It is time for cloud competitors to seriously consider collaborative efforts. That means market leaders pooling resources to drive innovation for a short period of time, then dissolving the partnership and pushing innovative outcomes toward profitable solutions in-house.
Jul 01, 2015
Rackspace’s Technical Career Track program isn’t for the smartest Rackers, or those with the most technical skill. It’s for the smartest, most technically-skilled Rackers who’ve also demonstrated strong leaderships skills — but don’t want to follow the traditional management path to the top.
Jun 30, 2015
"We said we would do it as soon as it becomes legal..." read the subject line of the email Randy Bartels sent to his Rackspace coworkers at 10:51 a.m. Friday, letting them know he and longtime partner Sean P. Wise were headed to the Bexar County Clerk's Office to wed.
Jun 30, 2015
Today’s guest post is by Shiem Edelbrock, Chief Technology Officer of The Control Group, a San Diego-based tech company whose projects include Instant Checkmate, Reverse Phone and NextGen Leads. As the CTO of The Control Group, I manage our flagship product, Instant Checkmate, which allows users to perform background checks on just about anybody. We […]
Jun 29, 2015
Rackspace Data Services now supports popular Hadoop ecosystem tools Apache Storm and Apache Kafka. Together, Storm and Kafka combine to make workloads like the processing of incoming streaming data sources easy, by providing a single destination for the incoming data feed.
Jun 26, 2015
The world of technology generates so many great stories it can be hard to keep up. We'll be highlighting some of the most interesting each Friday in the Download. And if you come across a cool, weird or noteworthy tech-related story worth sharing, let us know in the comments section or send it directly to [email protected].
Jun 26, 2015
Our guest blogger today is Ken Goldberg, president of Microcomputer Consulting Group (MCG), which assists clients in applying technology to solve business problems in a cost effective, streamlined and intelligent manner. MCG is also part of Rackspace’s Email Reseller program. You can read more about their high-performance cloud infrastructure in this case study. Below, Goldberg writes about how natural disasters like […]
Jun 25, 2015
VMware® vRealize™ Operations™ 6 is now included with Rackspace’s single-tenant service, Dedicated VMware® vCenter Server™ — check out the five reasons why it rises above the crowd of IT operations management tools.
Jun 24, 2015
Have you ever been in the middle of an important meeting — or just a really good lunch — and had to drop everything to run and feed your parking meter? This was the pain point most distressing to James Gibbs and Daniel Lopretto, co-founders of the Pittsburgh-based app Meter Feeder, which allows users to find and […]
Jun 24, 2015
Rackspace now bundles the award-winning VMware® vRealize™ Operations™ 6 (vROps, formerly vCOps) with their hosted Dedicated VMware® vCenter Server™ (Dedicated vCenter) service. Customers who purchase VMware vSphere® licensing from Rackspace will receive a vROps 6 license for their hosted environment free of charge. Rackspace’s offering, Dedicated vCenter, is a single-tenant environment that allows customers to […]
Jun 23, 2015
When Austin brothers Roy and Ryan Seiders got sick of replacing their cheap coolers after every hunting and fishing trip, they decided to build a better cooler. YETI Coolers was born in 2006, and the high end, industrial strength coolers — they’re even certified bear-proof — quickly gained a cult following among fellow outdoors enthusiasts. […]
Jun 22, 2015
Each day, Rackspace empowers our email resellers to deliver enterprise-level services to customers who would otherwise be unable to offer it.
Jun 22, 2015
As Rackspace has rolled out its DevOps offering in Australia, we’ve discovered that often, culture trumps technology when it comes to strong and successful DevOps teams. Here are some suggestions for companies looking to make a successful transition.
Jun 20, 2015
Sometimes, free soda beats out the free gym. Rackspace hosted its first Health & Wellness Expo last week in an effort to spur Rackers on to better health.
Jun 19, 2015
The world of technology generates so many great stories it can be hard to keep up. We'll be highlighting some of the most interesting each Friday in the Download.
Jun 18, 2015
Carl Thompson, aka Redragon, has earned the Red Hat Certified Professional of the Year award. He's also a member of Rackspace's elite technical career track program, which allows technical employees to take on leadership roles without personnel management.
Jun 17, 2015
A Rackspace-commissioned white paper offers a concise overview of the factors that can impact an organization’s email solution’s security risks and unplanned downtime. Has your organization evaluated the risks?
Jun 16, 2015
Recent honors from Rackspace's partner companies reaffirms its strategy of eschewing a one-size-sits all approach to partnering in favor of a flexible approach that allows partners to leverage programs that truly fit their needs.
LISTEN: Cloud Architect Kevin Jackson on OpenStack, Solve events and Co-Authoring a Cookbook (sorta)
Jun 10, 2015
As OpenStack Israel approaches, Alan Weinkrantz, Brand Ambassador to Israel for the Rackspace Startup Program, sat down with Kevin Jackson, Principal Cloud Architect and co-author of the OpenStack Cloud Computing Cookbook, for the Times of Israel.
Jun 09, 2015
When Rackspace Cloud Metrics moved its production system from running on virtual cloud machines to running on Rackspace OnMetal, it got a more reliable system that's also — miraculously — cheaper.
Jun 08, 2015
With solid end-user adoption, Skype for Business Server (Lync) could help your business attain a healthy ROI.
Jun 05, 2015
Rackspace Monitoring and Intelligence teams have released a series of new features in the past six months, stepping up to be the “Single Pane of Glass” customers want for cloud monitoring.
Jun 04, 2015
Rackspace is honored once again to have earned Microsoft’s Hosting Partner of the Year award. This is an honor we’ve now earned for the fifth time — the only hosting company to hit that milestone. And while it highlights the work we’ve done over the past year, it also stands as a testament to the success of […]
Jun 03, 2015
Rackspace was honored to receive, for the second year in a row, the Americas Cloud Service Provider Accelerator Award from EMC at this year’s Global Partner Summit. The award is given annually to high-achieving EMC business partners who exceeded growth expectations and demonstrated a commitment to excellence.
Jun 02, 2015
To achieve greater productivity through successful workplace collaboration, you’ll need employees communicating seamlessly via Google Apps for Work and Office 365.
Jun 02, 2015
The end of support for Windows Server 2003 on July 14 means the end of security updates and patches; is your company prepared? Join Rackspace and Microsoft for a webinar June 4 to learn your options.
Jun 01, 2015
Rackspace is committed to supporting our partners -- including when it comes to tips on creating a successful social media marketing strategy. Check 'em out!
Jun 01, 2015
In February, we kicked off a series of webinars featuring Rackspace and AvePoint SharePoint pros to answer your questions about the complexities of running SharePoint in the cloud. In case you missed them, here’s a quick recap: Webinar #1: What Is Cloud and Its Impact on the Future of SharePoint? This session offers a closer […]
Jun 01, 2015
Rackspace introduces Dedicated ObjectRocket™ for MongoDB™ which combines speed and scalability with fully dedicated hardware and networking
May 29, 2015
Operation Windigo is still active, and the group continues using compromised servers to infect vulnerable Windows computers.
May 28, 2015
San Antonio’s fledgling tech ecosystem is gaining serious momentum thanks to SATechBloc, a new grassroots organization, an ongoing tech training effort and a shot of support from the White House.
May 27, 2015
There’s a lot of talent out there on the Internet and social media, but how do you discover it, whether you’re in the industry or a potential fan? Let’s say you ARE the talent; how do you cut through the online clutter to get your work in front of agents, producers or fans? Finally, the […]
May 27, 2015
A new ebook from ObjectRocket, The Emerging Skillsets of the Data Revolution: Defining Key Data Roles, defines four roles and skill sets necessary to wring the most benefit from a company’s data assets.
May 26, 2015
Solve London, which kicks off on June 4th, will the first Rackspace::Solve event in Europe!
May 26, 2015
From keynotes, design sessions, new leading technologies and operator discussions, Rackers were out front, engaging and participating, at last week’s OpenStack Summit in Vancouver. We had great discussions with vendors and other cloud providers about how to run and scale OpenStack to serve the needs of both large public clouds and smaller private clouds. Because […]
May 22, 2015
Women of OpenStack created an accessible online community within the unbelievable 19,232 followers on the OpenStack LinkedIn page.
May 21, 2015
The evolution of your IT department is here. The industry calls it “the cloud” and OpenStack is one part of the solution. And while designing and building for any cloud environment can be a challenge, approaching this task with the right mindset and focus can help can make your project a success. This isn’t just […]
May 21, 2015
Jonathan Bryce, executive director of the OpenStack Foundation, on Monday kicked off the summit by announcing the roll out of base interoperability tests and requirements that will help define a common core for all OpenStack products. This process, called DefCore, means certain standards must be met in each OpenStack-powered environment, whether private, public or hybrid. […]
May 21, 2015
Tech has long had a reputation of being a male-dominated industry where women are drastically underrepresented. While women make up 59 percent of the U.S. labor force, they fill less than 30 percent of the roles at tech companies, according to CNET Magazine. The data is even more troubling when you consider that female employees are […]
May 20, 2015
How we build and think about servers is constantly evolving. In the past, infrastructure was considered primarily the realm of the systems administrator. Over time that role grew, and instead of merely configuring systems, many of these administrators began writing and committing software by following devops philosophies. Now, many of the people who are building […]
May 20, 2015
Five years ago, a small group of 75 developers flocked to Austin, Texas, for the first-ever OpenStack Summit. What began as a low-key gathering has since morphed into an internationally recognized event with a global following. This week, more than 5,000 users, developers and administrators of the open source software have convened at the Vancouver […]
May 20, 2015
Anne Gentle is a bit of a legend in OpenStack circles. She is the original OpenStack documentation person, a founding member of the Women of OpenStack group and a long-standing member of the Technical Committee, among other roles. But recently, she has decided to hang up one particular hat: that of Documentation Project Technical Lead […]
May 20, 2015
This week at OpenStack Summit Vancouver, we demonstrated new software from the OpenStack project Magnum, which allows cloud operators to offer Containers-as-a-Service to their cloud users. Containers are hot today, and a crop of new open source projects have surfaced to bring this exciting technology to users. Among them: Docker, Kubernetes, Apache Mesos, and numerous […]
May 20, 2015
The OpenStack API Working Group has a clear mission: To improve the developer experience of API users -- and we'll be doing just that at Liberty Design sessions this week in Vancouver.
May 19, 2015
The government of Mexico is headed into the cloud, and it’s counting on OpenStack to take it there. That was the message to a group of OpenStack Summit attendees Monday in a break-out session from Victor Lagunes, CIO of the Office of the President of Mexico. As chief information officer, Lagunes is responsible for supporting the country’s National Digital […]
May 19, 2015
While previous OpenStack summits have debated the merits and relevance of Barbican, a ReST API designed for the secure storage, provisioning and management of secrets, this week’s summit in Vancouver will reflect its maturity as a bonafide OpenStack project. Until recently, discussions around Barbican were introductory in nature, whereas now, people are interested in how […]
May 18, 2015
Only 4 percent of the universe is known. Only 15 percent of server capacity is utilized. What do these two statistics have in common? CERN. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is working to understand the unknown universe through its Large Hadron Collider experiments — and it’s using OpenStack to maximize utilization of server capacity. You may […]
May 18, 2015
Attending VMworld 2015 in San Francisco this August, or in Barcelona in October? If so, you can vote now for topics that will become break-out sessions and panel discussions at the conferences. Rackspace has been offering managed hosted services powered by VMware® since 2006, and has grown to become VMware’s largest vCloud Air™ Network service […]
May 18, 2015
With a growing number of OpenStack projects, how do you define what is the minimum set of OpenStack features that should be enabled? Not only it is a question for installing and configuring OpenStack, but it is also a question for users: what kind of OpenStack are they getting? Will two different OpenStack deployments provide […]
May 16, 2015
As I plan my schedule for my tenth OpenStack Summit, I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve learned in four and a half years of building a community doc team from scratch. At this Summit I’m transitioning from serving as Documentation Project Team Lead (PTL), moving into Technical Committee work including the API Working Group, so […]
May 15, 2015
Rackspace received some great news this week: the UK Great Place to Work awards ranked us No. 6 on its annual list of Best Workplaces for 2015. The ceremony was a fantastic evening in London that marked the 11th year Rackspace has been included in this highly-respected workplace study, It reflects all the effort each and every one of us puts […]
May 15, 2015
We’re five years into the OpenStack revolution, and the best is yet to come. Next week, more than 5,000 developers, evangelists and users will convene at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Canada to meet and exchange ideas on all things OpenStack at the annual OpenStack Summit. Dozens of Rackspace specialists will be on site to […]
May 13, 2015
Scalability and security sound complex. In this two-part blog series, we seek to eliminate some of the confusion by digging deeper into how users can grow a configuration without compromising the integrity of your app’s security.
May 12, 2015
Customers are looking for the elasticity and on-demand scalability of the cloud without having to give up the proven and trusted security tools typically found in traditional physical server environments. The answer in almost all cases of trying to grow a configuration without compromising the integrity of your app’s security is found in a hybrid solution that combines a number of platforms in a secure and scalable way.
May 12, 2015
Almost every business is looking for ways to better support mobile and remote employees, enhance collaboration and improve efficiency. But existing technology solutions often consist of cobbled together tools that create compatibility, security and performance issues. Google Apps for Work delivers a complete suite of email, productivity and communication tools, but it can also create […]
May 12, 2015
Today, Rackspace announced support new Hadoop ecosystem tools that allow for exciting connectivity between traditional relational databases and data platforms like popular big data services like Rackspace Cloud Big Data. By building integration between databases and data processing platforms, users can move data in and out systems to create technology stacks with multi-tiered functionality. MySQL […]
May 11, 2015
In today’s increasingly mobile world, Mobile Device Management is no longer a nice to have—it is a necessity, whether you chose to do it yourself or leverage a SaaS based solution with third-party support. Rackspace provides Fanatical Support for Office 365 and can help you manage MDM as part of our offering.
May 11, 2015
For the past 15 or so years, I’ve been on a mission to help businesses use technology to make productivity easier, cut costs and bring efficiency to everyday tasks. For many years my focus and passion was directed through SharePoint, but since joining Rackspace I’ve been able to dig deep into our Cloud Office vision. […]
May 11, 2015
As you may already know from our public announcement and Steve Crusenberry’s blog, Rackspace launched Rackspace CDN last week. If you’ve read those posts, you already know that Rackspace CDN is designed to bring Akamai’s industry leading network to “cloudy” users that want features like instant provisioning, self service APIs and control panels, and pay-as-you-go, […]
May 07, 2015
Over the past decade, Tillman and his growing team at DialSource have been revolutionizing the way sales and support teams work through an innovative telephony infrastructure approach.
May 07, 2015
Earlier this year, our Cloud Databases team announced API support for replication. This week, we bring some more good news that we’ve integrated the feature into the Control Panel. Starting today, you can add and manage read replicas for your Cloud Database Instances using the Control Panel within with just a few clicks. Replication is […]
May 05, 2015
All businesses have a need for nimble technology that can grow alongside their business. Technology is expanding to become not just servers in closets and email accounts, but collaborative tools that help employees quickly communicate and increase their productivity no matter where they are located. Microsoft Office 365, including Exchange, Outlook, SharePoint, Skype and Office, […]
May 05, 2015
DialSource is a global leader in cloud telephony. Our flagship product, DialSource for Salesforce, uses real-time data and breakthrough technology within the Salesforce.com ecosystem to intelligently automate the sales cycle. Our goal is to change the way the enterprise communicates. With our platform agnostic technology, we improve communication across all channels, all hardware, all software, […]
Apr 30, 2015
Rackspace's Matt Shover explains how hybrid cloud links public, private, onmetal and VPN.
Apr 29, 2015
Rackspace announces Fanatical Support for Google Apps for Work.
Apr 28, 2015
Rackspace's Wes Henderson describes ways to make your app successful in the cloud.
Apr 28, 2015
Today, Rackspace announces our launch of Rackspace CDN (Content Delivery Network) partnership with Akamai.
Apr 23, 2015
Rackspace is thrilled to announce the opening of our new custom designed eco-friendly data centre in Crawley, UK, on Wednesday 22nd April.
Apr 22, 2015
Microsoft Ignite (Chicago, May 4 – 8, 2015) is a unified enterprise technology conference hosted by Microsoft. From speaker sessions, to technical training and hands-on labs, Rackspace will be on hand to show how our managed cloud solutions can work for Microsoft users. Our expert team will cover new innovative technologies and provide guidance and […]
Apr 21, 2015
We are very excited to announce that as of today, the Brocade Vyatta vRouter will be available to Managed Operations customers as a fully managed security and networking solution in the open cloud. Why is this a big deal, you ask? A little over a year ago, we partnered with networking specialist Brocade to make […]
Apr 21, 2015
OpenStack is an open source project, not a product. With 17 integrated programs, three incubated programs and hundreds of unique configurable attributes, there are a massive number of potential configurations. How can you ensure the configuration you choose will meet your workload’s demand today and support your scaling needs in the future? Rackspace engineers and […]
Apr 20, 2015
Join Rackspace Digital at Magento Imagine next week to see how managed cloud helps Magento customers
Apr 17, 2015
Rackspace was named best IaaS Provider for Guaranteed SLAs and best In Hosted Private Cloud Adoption, in latest Vendor Window report from 451 Research.
Apr 16, 2015
Brad Duncan, security researcher at Rackspace, discusses a new ransomware named "Threat Finder."
Apr 15, 2015
Rackspace Data Services helps companies maximize utilization, productivity and innovation. Come hear from our team at Rackspace Solve: New York on May 7 at the Conrad Hotel!
Apr 14, 2015
Rackspace::Solve New York on May 7 will feature an in-depth look at our IT Transformation practice, which helps companies get the most out of their central IT resources.
Apr 13, 2015
If you have questions about running SharePoint in the cloud, our experts have answers. Our SharePoint webinar series is a three-part dive into a range of issues SharePoint users frequently experience. We started this series with the discussion, “What Is Cloud and Its Impact on the Future Of SharePoint?” Anyone who missed it can catch […]
Apr 09, 2015
It is now relatively easy to have hybrid infrastructures comprising containers, virtual servers and bare metal machines. Container adoption is getting easier than ever. Docker has been downloaded more than 200 million times and Google spins up more than 2 billion containers in a week. The downside to this ease in infrastructure creation is that […]
Apr 07, 2015
*This posts originally appeared at https://www.twtgroup.ca/openstack-is-everywhere/ OpenStack is everywhere. You’ve probably used it in the last 24 hours, whether you know you did or not. These are two of the many insights we learned from Interzone’s OpenStack panel: “Masters of the OpenStack Universe.” TWT’s Shawn Freeman took on the role of moderator on the main stage Wednesday to […]
Apr 06, 2015
Do you use separate tools for desktop and app sharing, web-conferencing, instant messaging and Presence? Are all of your tools integrated with Outlook? Do you have to stop and think which collaboration tool you need for a particular activity? Challenges like these make it difficult to promote a collaborative culture. Having multiple collaboration tools can […]
Apr 02, 2015
As the Rackspace Private Cloud team meets with companies, organizations, and individuals around the world, we often discuss the advantages of cloud and why a private cloud solution may be the right fit for them. I recently presented a webinar on “Why Private Cloud,” where I summarized the 3 top considerations driving customers to a […]
Apr 01, 2015
Today, Rackspace is thrilled to announce a deeper strategic relationship with Chef that doubles down on our commitment to accelerating DevOps within organizations. Together, Rackspace and Chef will extend our relationship with a range of skill-building and services programs, including engineering collaboration, DevOps implementation content and training for Rackspace technical support staff. At Rackspace, we provide […]
Mar 31, 2015
Most IT professionals would agree that 2014 was a long year. Heartbleed, Shellshock, Sandworm and POODLE were just a subset of the vulnerabilities that caused many of us to stay up late and reach for more coffee. As these vulnerabilities became public, I found myself fielding questions from non-technical family members after they watched the […]
Mar 30, 2015
On March 5 in San Francisco, Rackspace hosted our Redis Conference. Our goal was to gather the best and brightest in the Redis community and build better collaboration between app developers, database administrators and Redis to Go practitioners. Our featured speaker was Salvatore Sanfilippo, an open source software developer at Pivotal who’s best known as […]
Mar 30, 2015
“Who is going to manage your cloud?” It’s a question we see shaping IT decisions for the next decade. The cloud’s speed, flexibility and price have opened up myriad opportunities for companies, but they’ve also created complexity. Companies must increasingly ask themselves if they want to spend their time looking for the hard to find experts to manage […]
Mar 27, 2015
In November we had announced the Limited Availability of Neutron API, making it easier for Rackspace Cloud users to build rich network services and laying the foundation for a number of immediate and future network services. Please see that announcement here: http://www.rackspace.com/blog/build-rich-network-services-with-openstacks-neutron-api/ Today we are happy to announce the Unlimited Availability of Neutron API making […]
Mar 26, 2015
As most entrepreneurs know, boostrapping can be a tricky path—especially when the founding team isn’t flush with cash. At Maptiv8, which transforms big data into beautiful UX, we know the realities of bootstrapping all too well. But over the past three years of our bootstrapped journey, Maptiv8 has scaled its operations, kept its team lean and pivoted towards […]
Mar 26, 2015
Cloud computing, dominated only a few years ago by software developers and other early adopters, is now moving solidly into the mainstream of global business. Organizations of all sizes and maturity levels are using cloud solutions to host a broad variety of applications and workflows, from ecommerce to data analysis. How can this huge new […]
Mar 25, 2015
In real estate, it’s no longer just about location, location, location. To help people find great homes (in great locations!) that fit specific needs, real estate professionals need the technology to offer the freshest information through user-friendly websites, to help their clients find and assess prospective properties easier. BoomTown was founded in Charleston in 2006 […]
Mar 25, 2015
Rackspace Open Cloud customers have consistently asked us for the ability to secure their cloud footprint without having to wrestle with complex security policies on individual cloud servers. The larger their fleet of Cloud Servers, the more useful it would be to have centralized control of security policies that could ease management overhead in a […]
Mar 19, 2015
This interview originally appeared here at superuser.openstack.org In this series of interviews, we’re talking to the new Individual Directors on the 2015 OpenStack Board of Directors. These Directors provide oversight of the Foundation and its budget, strategy and goals. The 24-person Board is composed of eight Individual Directors elected by the Individual Members, eight directors […]
Mar 17, 2015
Rackspace Cloud Monitoring notifies you the moment it detects an issue in your systems. But in certain situations, such as a scheduled maintenance period, you may not actually want these notifications. For example, if you are conducting a scheduled backup, you would plan on downgraded system performance, making any notification sent from Cloud Monitoring non-actionable. […]
Mar 16, 2015
SharePoint adoption is growing as businesses realize the productivity, security and convenience benefits of centralized collaboration. As it grows, planning, running, and securing SharePoint has become more time consuming for admins. Businesses hungry to get up and running on SharePoint without the deployment headaches are looking to hosted services to relieve the burdens and clear […]
Mar 13, 2015
Developer helps media and consumer partners monetize targets … Sponsorship is so much more than “logo-slapping.” Just because a big corporate logo is all over your favorite team’s arena doesn’t necessarily mean that the big corporation in question is activating its sponsorship effectively. To engage target audiences, savvy sports marketers are constantly looking for deeper […]
Mar 12, 2015
It’s Stevie season once again, and we’re proud to report another strong showing at the annual awards ceremony in Las Vegas on February 27. Rackspace took home not one, but two Stevies and a People’s Choice this year. Rackspace prides itself on our willingness to go above and beyond to serve customers, and the Stevies […]
Mar 12, 2015
? So, you are considering Lync as a collaboration tool and as a potential PBX replacement. Now, you need to decide whether to deploy and self-manage an on-premise Lync solution or let a hosting provider deploy and manage it for you. To help you determine the best option, you can compare the total cost of […]
Mar 11, 2015
Most of us know that mobile ecommerce is becoming increasingly important. But did you know that since 2010 mobile ecommerce has grown from $221 million in the US to over $12 billion? Just five years ago mobile accounted for less than one percent of total ecommerce sales (0.59%) and as of 2014 it accounted for […]
Mar 10, 2015
Managing your IT infrastructure is a tough job and it’s especially tough on those given the task of maintenance, on-call rotations, and outages. Sometimes, the administrators who receive these alerts are far away from their computers and can’t reach them in a timely manner to investigate or resolve the issues at hand. On the surface, […]
Mar 10, 2015
Brad Duncan is a Security Researcher at Rackspace, where he investigates suspicious network activity. Reviewing alerts on blocked emails sent to Rackspace addresses, we occasionally discover malicious campaigns designed to spread malware. Our researchers investigate these leads to gather malware samples, identify threat actors, and determine other indicators of malicious activity. This blog entry discusses […]
Mar 05, 2015
Over the last four months, I have had the opportunity to speak and mentor startups at just about every major accelerator here in Startup Nation – Israel. In doing so, I’ve seen a pattern evolve where public relations strategy is only discussed just prior to launch, if ever. I believe PR should be part of […]
Mar 04, 2015
While Israel is often referred to as Startup Nation, I have a slightly different name for it. I call it Acceleration Nation – not just because of the many accelerators here in the country, but because Israel is the most geographically efficient place in the world to observe and take part in the startup world. […]
Mar 03, 2015
The Sunday Times Best Companies Awards ceremony was held last week in central London and, for the tenth consecutive year, Rackspace was recognised for our outstanding approach to employee development and workplace welfare. This business-focused study is the result of detailed workplace analysis and the results are widely acknowledged as a barometer for new age […]
Mar 03, 2015
I am thrilled to join the blogging team at Rackspace, where I serve as a brand ambassador in Israel. My role is to #BeHelpful – mostly by working with startups on messaging, PR and strategic communications. I also help curate and onboard new startups to the Rackspace Startup Program, and collaborate with our Enterprise with […]
Mar 02, 2015
With Rackspace::Solve rapidly approaching, it’s my pleasure to share an update from all of us at DigitalFilm Tree, and what we like to call the Camera to Cloud Initiative — where we are looking to save Hollywood by eliminating physical transportation of media in the entertainment industry. Come see Guillaume speak at Rackspace Solve in […]
Mar 02, 2015
Brad Duncan is a Security Analyst at Rackspace, where he investigates suspicious network activity. Reviewing alerts on web traffic from Rackspace offices world-wide, we occasionally discover domains hosting exploit kits or other malicious files. Our researchers investigate these leads to gather malware samples, identify threat actors, and determine other indicators of malicious activity. This blog entry discusses one such recent investigation. […]
Mar 02, 2015
With the cloud landscape continuing to mature, we see the cloud market bifurcating into two segments. The first segment is unmanaged infrastructure that we know today as IaaS. The other segment is cloud that includes managed services, also known as managed cloud. As Rackspace pushes to extend its leadership position as the #1 managed cloud […]
Feb 27, 2015
We recently teamed up with Intel to develop an infographic charting the evolution of IT workloads. If you’ve been dying to know when the first email was sent, when BASIC was introduced, and which company first developed flash memory—you’ve come to the right place. More than half a century of IT innovation has resulted in […]
Feb 26, 2015
In addition to stability and scalability, enterprises need a private cloud that is highly available and can be upgraded without experiencing downtime or impacting critical business operations. In fact, several industry analysts have cited the pain of upgrading from one release to the next as an inhibitor to OpenStack adoption in the enterprise. Today, with […]
Feb 25, 2015
RedisConf is just around the corner! We’ve got a full day of inspiring keynotes, intensely practical sessions, and plenty of fun networking when we gather next Thursday, March 5th, at the Innovation Hanger located at 3601 Lyon Street in San Francisco. With over 300 registrants and 20 speakers from big names like Hulu, Pivotal, Heroku, […]
Feb 25, 2015
At a Los Angeles charity auction some years ago, NBA Hall-of-Famer Earvin “Magic” Johnson offered one lucky bidder the chance to sit courtside with him at a game and join him for dinner after. The opportunity fetched the Boys & Girls Club of America a $15,000 donation. Ryan Cummins and Matt Pohlson, then graduate students […]
Feb 25, 2015
Over the last two years Rackspace has released several enhancements to its Cloud and Managed Big Data Platforms powered by the Hortonwork Data Platform, including support for different versioning, OnMetal, Spark and other enhancements. Our commitment to ensuring that our HadoopTM users have a current and relevant big data environment to meet the fast changing […]
Feb 24, 2015
Editor’s Note: SponsorHub is a Rackspace customer that delivers analytics to the sports and entertainment industry. To view SponsorHub’s pre-and post-Super Bowl XLIX findings or to download the full presentation, visit http://slidesha.re/1A1mOxA. It’s Super Bowl Sunday. The clock reads 0:00 and a champion has been crowned. No, we’re not talking about the New England Patriots — although […]
Feb 24, 2015
If your business revolves around a website or web application, we know you’re thinking about performance on a daily basis. But you may not know just how impactful that performance can be on your bottom line. Did you know more than 30 percent of web visitors typically leave a site if that site doesn’t load […]
Feb 23, 2015
Sitecore is one of the most popular and highly rated providers of Customer Experience Management technology (also known as Web Content Management or WCM). These are the applications that marketers rely on to power their websites. Rackspace Digital provides the Sitecore expertise, support, and an optimized cloud platform that removes all the technical headaches of […]
Feb 23, 2015
This year, thousands of OpenStack developers and users of OpenStack will flock to the annual OpenStack Summit, which takes place May 18 through May 22 in Vancouver, Canada. Thousands more submitted speaking proposals, with more than 60 coming from Rackspace specialists. Like last year, the Vancouver summit’s agenda will be determined by a public vote. If you’re a […]
Feb 20, 2015
The ObjectRocket team challenged you. We knew you were full of ideas and we wanted to see them come alive using ObjectRocket. That’s why we started the NoSQL Mobile Application Challenge from August – November last year. You delivered. Here is the story of how we gave away $20,000 and free data stores hosting to […]
Feb 20, 2015
Collaboration among team members is necessary for any business to succeed, and company leaders are constantly striving to boost their teams’ productivity. After all, every business wants its employees to work smarter, not harder. Various collaboration tools and workgroup support systems can help increase productivity, but only if employees are actually using the tools – […]
Feb 19, 2015
I hope you’ve been following our in-depth Building a Disaster Recovery Solution using VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager™ (SRM) series. Today, I’m back to walk through the fourth and final leg of our journey. We’ve come a long way, and you should have a nice disaster recovery (DR) solution in place with test plans and […]
Feb 18, 2015
In my last post, I outlined how to architect a solid VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager™ (SRM) solution. At the beginning of, I reviewed how to leverage SRM, and also discussed the importance of the proper planning needed before using SRM. In this post, I’ll cover how to actually build and deploy an SRM-based solution. […]
Feb 06, 2015
Everyone knows that Rackspace hates patent trolls, but we can only fight them one at a time. Solving the patent troll problem for everyone requires changing the system that aids and encourages troll behavior. Yesterday morning, Congress took a big step forward in trying to shut down these financial parasites. House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Bob […]
Feb 03, 2015
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis – a major reason companies migrate to the cloud – typically consists of pure number crunching. For example, hardware for a server upgrade has a fixed price, as does the software license. Paying for those incremental resources through a utility billing model is often much more cost effective. It’s […]
Jan 30, 2015
Back in the early days of ecommerce, using the search function of an online store was long-winded and unpredictable. Retailers and their developers had to design systems that could cope with spelling mistakes and ambiguous searches and slowly but surely, we began to embrace that all-powerful search box and trust the results it provided. As […]
Jan 28, 2015
Last week, Rackspace announced the unlimited availability of Dedicated VMware vCloud®, the most recent addition to our Managed Private Cloud portfolio. Dedicated VMware vCloud is a single-tenant, Rackspace-hosted, private IaaS cloud with a dedicated cloud management stack for each customer. It is proactively supported 24x7x365 by our VMware certified professionals up to the guest operating […]
Jan 27, 2015
Rackspace and Microsoft have a long-standing partnership hosting enterprise applications. A four-time Microsoft Hosting Partner of the year, Rackspace already provides Fanatical Support for over 10,000 compute instances running Microsoft SQL Server. The symbiotic nature of infrastructure expertise and mature technology products is a focal reason customers choose hosted Microsoft solutions at Rackspace. The database […]
Jan 26, 2015
If you’ve ever wanted to host your own WordPress blog or learn more about the world’s most popular CMS, you’re in good company. By most counts, WordPress sites make up almost a quarter of all websites. Amongst CMS based sites, WordPress accounts for about 60 percent of the sites. Last week Rackspace was happy to announce […]
Jan 23, 2015
Here at Rackspace, we have a strong commitment to open source software and communities, in particular open source databases. One such technology is Redis, which has seen a lot of growth since its inception in 2009. During the past six years, the community has grown to over 150 contributors with almost 5,000 code releases. If […]
Jan 22, 2015
Rackspace and AvePoint will co-host a free webinar on Tuesday, February 3rd at 11:30am ET to discuss “What is cloud and its impact on the future of SharePoint?” The webinar will feature four SharePoint MVP panelists: Dux Sy (CTO, AvePoint); Shyam Oza (Sr. Product Manager, AvePoint); Jeff DeVerter (Sr. Director, Rackspace); Todd Klindt (Architect, Rackspace). Register now for the webinar!
Jan 21, 2015
In continuation of our New Year’s Resolution for IT series, we’d like to offer up a more in-depth look into our second resolution: “Becoming a Service Provider to the Business.” Many of you may already be on your own journey to adopting a service provider model. This post and the January 28th webinar are designed […]
Rackspace and VMware Enter into Strategic Partnership to Deliver Managed Private Cloud to Enterprise
Jan 21, 2015
Today, Rackspace announces the unlimited availability of Dedicated VMware vCloud®, the most recent addition to our Managed Private Cloud portfolio. Dedicated vCloud is a single-tenant, hosted environment that enables enterprises to take the next step in their virtualization journey by offering advanced automation, self-service, hosted catalogs and access to the vCloud API and vCloud web […]
Jan 20, 2015
Whether it’s between two people or a dozen, good collaboration depends on effective communication, goal setting and on-the-fly problem solving. These factors come with challenges that mobility presents.
Jan 19, 2015
The New Year begins with a fresh start and new ideas. If you happen to be working on a new application—or are redesigning one that you have in production—you may want to consider architecting your app to run on the cloud. To assist you with this, Rackers BK Box, Caleb Groom and Ryan Walker authored […]
Jan 15, 2015
Your data footprint is getting larger. From documents and contracts to family photos and beloved songs, your data and files are important pieces of your life – both business and personal. What would you do if you could no longer access your data? Here are five tips to avoid falling victim to ransomware hackers.
Jan 14, 2015
Cloud Office at Rackspace thrived in 2014 with major product developments and huge customer wins. Each year Cloud Office teams strategize on how to provide the best services and products for our customers worldwide. The execution of those strategies in 2014 resulted in a mega year for Cloud Office and our customers alike. Here’s a Cloud Office year in review.
Jan 13, 2015
As a startup, BuyerDeck focuses heavily on innovation. We have to balance high availability and innovation while creating a tool that connects buyers and sellers in real time and closes that feedback loop. A product like ours demands infrastructure that is available and up – downtime is simply unacceptable. At the same time, we need to deploy updates seamlessly. To do that, we leverage the Rackspace Cloud and ObjectRocket MongoDB.
Jan 08, 2015
You have a business to run. You can’t get bogged down worrying about the day-to-day intricacies of infrastructure and operations. You’ve got bigger fish to fry than data backup, patching, security, proactive monitoring and incident response. You need a trusted partner to help you – to handle your cloud operations while you focus on building your business without the pain of hunting down and hiring top-dollar staff to do it for you. That’s where Rackspace Managed Operations comes in.
Jan 08, 2015
As we kick off 2015, the Cloud Databases team has a few early gifts for you. Starting today, we support replication for Cloud Databases and added Control Panel integration for managing your configuration settings.
Jan 07, 2015
Happy 2015 to everyone in the IT industry! May all of your technology dreams and predictions come true! As many post their predictions for the cloud industry (including our very own CTO John Engates, with his Cloud Predictions for 2015) we’d like to offer up a few New Year’s Resolutions for IT decision makers to consider as they transition into the Managed Cloud era.
Jan 07, 2015
CloudU is launching a series of learning programs in 2015 aimed at making the cloud more accessible and easier to understand, no matter where you’re at in your IT career. The learning series is designed to reduce the ambiguity about the role of the cloud in a rapidly evolving IT industry. The first learning series will focus on installing, designing and implementing a fully functional WordPress site hosted on Cloud Sites.
Jan 06, 2015
When your software keeps techs in the field connected; speed, reliability and uptime are imperative. When we started Bella FSM seven years ago, leveraging Rackspace managed hosting was a no-brainer. Why? Two words: Fanatical Support. We’re a small company with limited resources. We rely heavily on Rackspace to manage and operate our server infrastructure.
Jan 05, 2015
As we dive headfirst into 2015, we wanted to take a quick a look back at the most popular posts we published in 2014. For the second consecutive year, our ongoing battle with patent trolls took center stage. We also saw new product and feature launches like OnMetal Cloud Servers and chat draw great interest. Without further ado, here are the top 14 Rackspace blog posts of 2014.
Dec 23, 2014
The holiday season can literally be “the most wonderful time of the year” for Internet hackers. When spending and credit card use is up… so is criminal activity. With just five simple steps, however, you can greatly reduce your exposure to these crooks – or at least limit the amount of damage they can cause – and keep your inbox safe.
Dec 22, 2014
At HelpSocial, we built our social media support apps and our API on the Rackspace Cloud. Why? Because the Rackspace Cloud is driving new innovation across various technology platforms, including social media.
Dec 19, 2014
This week, we join the OpenPOWER Foundation, highlight big data for small businesses and showcase how MyDirectves is using the cloud to change how people make their medical wishes known. Check out all that and more in this week’s digest.
Dec 18, 2014
Let’s take a look back at 2014 and revisit the Rackspace Startup Program’s adventures and some of the startups that we highlighted through the year.
Dec 17, 2014
The wait is finally over for public folders in Hosted Exchange 2013. Exchange Public Folders let you share calendars, tasks, contacts and email across your organization. You can access folders from Outlook and other Exchange mail clients, the same way you access your personal folders. Starting today, Rackspace Hosted Exchange 2013 customers can log into the Cloud Office Control Panel and enable public folders.
Dec 17, 2014
MyDirectives is using the Rackspace Cloud to change the way people make their medical wishes known.
Dec 16, 2014
Rackspace has publicly announced our affiliation with the OpenPOWER Foundation, and we are now an official member. OpenPOWER is a community dedicated to opening access to the lowest-level parts of servers: chips, buses, boards, firmware, and so forth. We anticipate that this movement will bring increased freedom and value to two other communities that we participate in: OpenStack and the Open Compute Project. We think that by working within this new community, Rackspace can deliver improved performance, value, and features for our customers.
Dec 15, 2014
One of the biggest misnomers in the big data community is that the “big” aspect of your data is a driving force behind your choice to implement a big data solution. I have sat through vendor presentations where they tout the exabytes of information accumulated by companies like Twitter and Pinterest. While these are always good reference points of how the technology is evolving, our customers (and most companies) are not dealing with exabytes of data. The truth is, in the real world companies are utilizing big data technologies to get insights from seemingly small amounts of data. This drove me to create a very simple and direct approach to showcasing “How startups can leverage big data.”
Dec 12, 2014
In this week’s digest, we take a look into the crystal ball and predict how the cloud will advance in 2015. We also talk about using Grafana to monitor your data; launch RackConnect RegionLink; and discuss the transition to an IT as a service broker.
Dec 11, 2014
In this edition of Straight Up Startup, HelpSocial CEO Matt Wilbanks offers insight into building a startup around social media customer service.
Dec 11, 2014
Here, we take a deeper look at RackConnect RegionLink and discuss the importance of digital diversification while examining how RegionLink compares to alternatives.
Dec 10, 2014
Today, we expand the RackConnect portfolio of connectivity services to include a new inter-region private connectivity service. RackConnect RegionLink is a fully service that enables you to transfer data between Rackspace Regions at a lower latency and with better throughput than over the Internet by utilizing an MPLS VPN connection over the Rackspace backbone.
Dec 10, 2014
For the past few years I’ve used this holiday period as a chance to do some prognostication. It’s a fun exercise – looking back at trends from the previous 12 months and trying to predict what’s next. So what can we expect in 2015? Here are my predictions.
Dec 09, 2014
Here we’ll show you how we make it simple to bring up a Grafana dashboard to generate monitoring data for any kind of server, our infrastructure can receive and display that information so you can have a consistent experience across all of your products, Rackspace or otherwise.
Dec 08, 2014
The time has come. IT must reinvent itself or risk becoming irrelevant. It’s just not possible for IT to function effectively any longer in a traditionally reactive role. Rather, IT must carve out a more strategic relationship within the business by becoming a service broker. So what does that entail?
Dec 05, 2014
Want to know how Tipsy Elves survived the Shark Tank effect (again)? Or learn how to build a disaster recovery solution using Site Recover Manager? Or get an update on OpenStack? You can get all of that and more in this week’s digest.
Dec 04, 2014
Rackspace Startup Program member MuniBilling uses the scale of the cloud to offer a SaaS solution for small government and property management companies or any other entity that needs to bill for recurring payments.
Dec 03, 2014
In my last post, I described how to use VMware® vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager™ to orchestrate the failover of a group of virtual machines (VMs) from one location to another. I also discussed the importance of planning when it comes to using Site Recovery Manager. This post outlines how to properly architect a solid Site Recovery Manager solution.
Dec 03, 2014
Since our appearance on Shark Tank late last year, Tipsy Elves' business has grown tremendously, and so has the amount of web traffic to our ecommerce site. We rely on Rackspace to ensure our site can handle the load.
Dec 02, 2014
Rackspace last month sponsored the Texas Conference for Women; it was a new experience for the company. For those that are unfamiliar, Thursday, November 13 marked the 15th anniversary of Texas Conference for Women. When Anita Perry took the title of first lady of Texas, she focused on hosting this event to empower and elevate women in Texas. By sponsoring the conference, Rackspace was able to spread our mission on elevating women in technology to a group of more than 6,000 attendees. We were also able to bring visibility to Rackspace as a brand and inform the public of our products, services and job openings.
Dec 01, 2014
“IT as a Service Broker” ranked No. 4 in Gartner’s Top 10 Technology Trends for 2014. What’s a service broker you might ask? A broker is anyone who acts as a go-between in a transaction—just as a stockbroker buys and sells stock on behalf of a client. In this context, the “broker” is the central IT department that is offering cloud services to a “client,” who could be an internal end user, partner or customer.
Nov 26, 2014
A lot of the talk at OpenStack Summit Paris this month centered on the current state of OpenStack and its future. As the four-year-old project continues to grow and mature, what will OpenStack look like in five, 10 or 15 years? In this video, Rackers Jim Curry and Van Lindberg discuss OpenStack's future.
Nov 25, 2014
For customers who need a swift ROI, and even those who value return on agility (ROA), managed service providers (MSPs) are strongly considered a new and healthy alternative to traditional IT outsourcing (ITO).
Nov 25, 2014
A vital component of Fanatical Support is educating our customers on the technology we employ. We also must engineer an experience that makes using that technology seamless and simple. This level of sophistication was an early goal of the RackConnect team and is one of the key improvements to the latest iteration of RackConnect v3.
Nov 24, 2014
In our newly available Rethinking People Costs in Enterprise IT white paper, we offer a financial perspective to help businesses consider how to evolve IT from a traditional cost center into a source of innovation.
Nov 24, 2014
On Black Friday 2013 we and almost 200 other apps on the Shopify platform suffered outages and service disruptions due to our servers not being able to handle the traffic explosion. That day, we moved to Rackspace and were up and running throughout the weekend and Cyber Monday. Here are some of the steps we’ve taken to ensure Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2014 are bright days for Bold Apps.
Nov 21, 2014
As part of our Fanatical Support promise, Rackspace believes in investing in STEM and tech in our local communities. We believe that open sharing makes us all smarter and fortifies our community's technical and entrepreneurial foundations. We do this across the globe, from Texas to Australia. And it is especially evident in our mid-Atlantic dev office in Blacksburg Va. -- affectionately known as "Racksburg"
Nov 21, 2014
This week, Forrester rated Rackspace Private Cloud a “strong performer;” we reduced the price of our DevOps Automation service; we talked about the scalability of RackConnect v3; and much more. Check it out now in the weekly digest.
Nov 20, 2014
Within the startup movement, there are plenty of events happening globally in December 2014. The Rackspace Startup Program is here to keep you up to date with valuable information on events and happenings inside the global startup community. Here is a partial list of global startup events complied by the contributors of StartupDigest.
Nov 20, 2014
At Rackspace, we’re immensely excited about our partnership with New Relic that helps power our DevOps Automation Service. Since announcing the partnership in early October, we’ve turned our attention maximizing the impact of Fanatical Support and Application Monitoring in solving common customer problems. In this post I’ll address one of these areas, auto scale.
Nov 20, 2014
Today, we make it easier for Rackspace Cloud users to build rich network services with the availability of the OpenStack Neutron Networking API. This milestone greatly increases your ability to create and manage networking services and capabilities and makes it possible to add a number of immediate and future improvements.
Nov 19, 2014
Rackspace recently earned the 2014 MSPWorld Cup Award for Best Cloud Solution at the MSPWorld Conference. The MSPWorld Cup, awarded by MSPAlliance, recognizes companies that demonstrate consistent efforts to advance the cause of cloud and managed service providers through cutting edge technology, services and solutions to the IT channel.
Nov 19, 2014
We have just released an enhancement in the notification emails for Cloud Monitoring remote checks to make it easier for you to digest the content. While the change is small, we would like to take this opportunity to give you an overview of the remote monitoring feature in the context of explaining the feature.
Nov 18, 2014
We designed RackConnect and our hybrid cloud to deliver on the promise that you could have the best of both worlds - the security and predictability of dedicated servers combined with the scalability and programmatic control of the cloud. In keeping with this paradigm, the newest version of RackConnect – version 3 -- emphasizes scalability and your ability to “own the base and the rent the spike.”
Nov 18, 2014
Forrester Research, Inc. has named Rackspace Private Cloud (RPC) a “strong performer” in The Forrester Wave™: Hosted Private Cloud Solutions, Q4 2014. We believe that this rating is great recognition of the momentum we’re seeing with our OpenStack-powered private cloud solution. What we find even more exciting, however, are some areas of improvement that RPC can capitalize on to offer a stronger private cloud solution, which are some of the exact enhancements included in the latest release of Rackspace Private Cloud.
Nov 17, 2014
In this video from Openstack Summit Paris, CERN's Tim Bell and Rackspace DevOps Practice CTO Chris Jackson talk about cloud federation and the work Rackspace and CERN openlab are doing together.
Nov 17, 2014
We believe that DevOps is fundamental to delivering cloud management expertise at scale, irrespective of our customers' workload or solution. Part of delivering expertise at scale is transferring scale savings to customers to make it incredibly valuable. As of this week, we have cut the cost of DevOps Automation in half to a fixed monthly fee of $2,500.
Nov 14, 2014
It was another rocking week here at The Rack. We joined the Microsoft Cloud OS Partner Network; launched Mailgun managed email; examined the difference between DIY MongoDB and ObjectRocket MongoDB; and much more. Check it all out in this week’s digest.
Nov 13, 2014
This infographic highlights some of the more pervasive considerations for running MongoDB at scale in comparison to leveraging a managed service like ObjectRocket.
Nov 13, 2014
A year and a half ago, we published several blog posts about the Pillars of Cloudiness. These posts served as a guide for architecting an application to take full advantage of the cloud’s capabilities. We realized that there was a wealth of information in these posts and we wanted to combine—and update—them into a white paper called The Cloud Pillars.
Nov 13, 2014
Mist.io is a Rackspace Startup Program and Geekdom San Francisco member looking to simplify server management across multiple clouds.
Nov 12, 2014
We have added a new service that truly responds to our customers’ demands: support for Hyper-V Server and Microsoft Cloud OS. This is significant as Rackspace and our teams of experts now have the ability to design and deploy private clouds running on Microsoft’s Cloud OS.
Nov 12, 2014
With Mailgun managed email, Mailgun experts advise customers on industry standards and veteran techniques, ensuring that good email doesn’t fall through the cracks.
Nov 11, 2014
Despite a nearly 7 percent national unemployment rate, the unemployment rate in IT hovers just below 3 percent, according to a Dice report. Among IT hiring managers, 62 percent report that filling open positions is taking longer than it did last year, with some technology professionals reporting up to a six-month hiring cycle.
Nov 11, 2014
Security - knowing your data and your business are safe - provides peace of mind. That’s why security is an area that we’ve focused on while building RackConnect v3, the latest version of hybrid cloud platform.
Nov 10, 2014
Back in August, I unveiled Rackspace's step into Microsoft virtualization and private cloud offerings. Well, today I am honored to tell you that Rackspace now supports Microsoft’s cloud platform, which includes Microsoft Hyper-V, System Center, Windows Server and Windows Azure Pack, in all of our U.S. data centers. Additionally, Rackspace is now a member of the Microsoft Cloud OS Network.
Nov 10, 2014
When we talk to our customers, we often hear one thing loud and clear: you want choice. You want us to have a robust portfolio where you have the flexibility to choose an option based on the price-performance requirements of your specific application or workload. The recent launch of Memory and Compute Workload-Optimized Cloud Servers provides you more options to choose from for each phase of your application development.
Nov 10, 2014
In our new How to Meet the Growing Demands on IT white paper, we offer four practical steps to help organizations beginning to transition from a traditional on-premises hardware and software management approach to an internal cloud services broker approach.
Nov 07, 2014
OpenStack Summit Paris is just about over. It was a great week. In case you missed it, here’s a roundup of our coverage from the Paris Summit. We’ll see you in Vancouver in May.
Nov 07, 2014
Rackspace Private Cloud Senior Director of Product Management Bryan Thompson stopped by for a live Google hangout to talk about our new production-ready application stacks and the latest release of Rackspace Private Cloud. Here's a full recording of that hangout.
Nov 06, 2014
In this video, we hear from Rackspace OpenStack experts about why making OpenStack simple, scalable and stable is integral to the project’s success.
Nov 06, 2014
Rackers Drew Cox and Alan Bush caught up with James Denton, OpenStack Network Architect for Rackspace Private Cloud and author of Learning OpenStack Networking (Neutron), and Phil Hopkins, Rackspace Cloud Technologies Instructor, for a live Google Hangout digging into what’s new and what’s to come in Neutron. Here’s a full recording of that Hangout.
Nov 06, 2014
Among the OpenStack projects getting the most attention here at the OpenStack Summit Paris is the Neutron networking project. Here I take a look at some of the new things in Neutron.
Nov 06, 2014
Rackspace Startup Program member Fashion Metric is a big data SaaS solution that empowers apparel retailers and brands to gather intelligence about their customers and personalize the online apparel shopping experience.
Nov 05, 2014
Rackers Drew Cox and Alan Bush caught up with CERN’s Tim Bell and Racker Chris Jackson this week for a live Google Hangout from OpenStack Summit Paris. Here's a full recording of that Hangout.
Nov 05, 2014
At OpenStack Summit Paris this week, myself, along with CERN’s Tim Bell and Marek Denis, showed the progress we’ve made federating OpenStack clouds, and I’m incredibly proud of the progress we’ve made in a short space of time.
Nov 05, 2014
At the Women of OpenStack working breakfast this week at OpenStack Summit Paris, women got together to share their experiences, support each other and discuss ways to increase the number of women involved in OpenStack. In this video, we hear from some of the Women of OpenStack.
Nov 05, 2014
In Paris this week, it feels like OpenStack has really turned the corner and has become a true enterprise cloud platform. 2014 is the year that OpenStack stabilizes and draws larger companies into the community.
Nov 04, 2014
Rackers Alan Bush and Drew Cox were able to catch up with Rackspace Principal Architects Kevin Jackson and Justin Shepherd for a live Google Hangout to dig into what’s new and exciting in Juno and other insights from OpenStack Summit. Here's video of that conversation.
Nov 04, 2014
In this video, we take a look at day one of OpenStack Summit Paris and get some insight into how the event and the project have evolved.
Nov 04, 2014
In this post, I would like to take you through the experiences and learnings I have had with testing Auto Scale, and how the ability to test it improved drastically using Mimic, an API-compatible mock service for Identity, OpenStack Compute and Load Balancers. You can learn more about Mimic at OpenStack Summit Paris this week.
Nov 04, 2014
OpenStack gave birth to the tenth release, Juno, on October 16. This brought with it over 240 new features and well over 3,200 bugs squashed, making Juno the most stable and feature rich OpenStack release to date for enterprises to deploy. Let's take a closer look at what makes Juno tick.
Nov 03, 2014
At OpenStack Summit Paris, customers discussed how OpenStack gives them more choice.
Nov 03, 2014
As OpenStack continues to grow, we, as a community, need to simplify OpenStack.
Oct 31, 2014
A recent Rackspace-sponsored survey shows that DevOps can deliver business benefits, such as an increase in sales and customer conversions. This infographic highlights just some of the survey’s data, including the business benefits tied to DevOps tactics.
Oct 31, 2014
Happy Halloween! It’s been a busy week here at Rackspace - we prepped for OpenStack Summit Paris; took a deep look at DevOps; added two new Cloud Servers flavors; heard from a Managed Operations customer; and more. Check it out in this week’s digest.
Oct 31, 2014
Based on your feedback about our virtual Cloud Servers, one thing is clear: the more flexibility you have in defining your infrastructure, the better. So today, we’re adding two new workload-optimized flavor classes to our Cloud Servers lineup that allow you to create servers that meet your specific compute and memory requirements. The new servers allow you to define storage completely separately from compute – they boot exclusively from Cloud Block Storage.
Oct 30, 2014
HubSpot and Rackspace have collaborated on the new ebook '9 Reasons People Are Ignoring Your Emails,' which contains tips to help make sure that your important emails get read; not ignored or trashed.
Oct 30, 2014
Within the startup movement, there are plenty of events happening globally in November 2014. The Rackspace Startup Program is here to keep you up to date with valuable information on events and happenings inside the global startup community. Here is a partial list of global startup events complied by the contributors of StartupDigest.
Oct 30, 2014
We polled 700 technology decision makers in the US, UK and Australia about DevOps adoption and found that among those familiar with DevOps 86 percent have either already implemented DevOps (51 percent) or is planning to adopt DevOps practices (35 percent). The survey confirmed that the business value of implementing DevOps is real.
Oct 29, 2014
frog design interviewed industry experts and practitioners for their insights and personal experiences with DevOps. When Rackspace’s San Francisco office opened its doors to us, we were uniquely pleased to have the opportunity to learn how its teams works to build an environment where DevOps can be a strategic advantage.
Oct 28, 2014
With a Rackspace Managed Cloud and the Rackspace Managed Operations service Bold Apps doesn't worry about the infrastructure that’s powering our apps. It greatly simplifies what we do. Rackspace knows our products – it’s not just hosting our servers. With our previous host, the support we received was basically them saying “Here’s some server space, deal with it.”
Oct 27, 2014
In August, Rackspace and Alert Logic hosted a webinar on how compliance and security are related. If you missed the event, here's a brief recap and full video of the webinar.
Oct 27, 2014
External cloud and managed infrastructure service providers offer attractive opportunities for IT to offload activities to focused vendors with economies of scale, experience and expertise.
Oct 24, 2014
OpenStack Summit Paris kicks of Monday, November 3 at Palais des congress de Paris. The five-day conference brings together OpenStack developers, users and administrators from around the globe to talk in depth about the open source cloud software. As an OpenStack founder, Rackspace will be at the Summit sharing OpenStack insights and updates through speaking sessions, book signings and more. Here’s where you can find our OpenStack experts throughout OpenStack Summit Paris.
Oct 24, 2014
Last month, Racksburg (the Rackspace Blacksburg offices) joined New River Valley Rocketry (NRVR) and several local community technology groups to support a very special STEM outreach rocket launch here in Virginia’s New River, attended by Homer Hickam of "October Sky" fame.
Oct 24, 2014
This week, we hosted our final Rackspace::Solve event of 2014 in Chicago; launched our Cloud Office at Rackspace business unit; asked whether IT support can scale; and much more. Check it all out in the weekly digest.
Oct 23, 2014
Rackspace Startup Program member LifeCellar used the Rackspace Managed Cloud to build a digital wallet to manage important life information.
Oct 23, 2014
Cloud Office at Rackspace is a one-stop shop for your collaboration and productivity tools. Under one roof we offer email hosting with Microsoft Exchange and Rackspace Email; collaboration with Microsoft SharePoint and Lync; file backup and protection with Jungle Disk; and more.
Oct 22, 2014
In this infographic we look at some statistics on SMB cloud adoption rates, how businesses use the cloud and the benefits they are realizing as a result of adoption.
Oct 22, 2014
You asked and we answered: Rackspace Cloud Databases now supports SSL to encrypt connections between your applications and your Cloud Database instance.
Oct 21, 2014
To help ensure you find a trusted email provider with solutions that fit your business needs, we’ve created a simple four-step Email Hosting Buyer’s Guide.
Oct 21, 2014
When Rackspace launched more than 15 years ago, we sought and got lots of good advice — along with one bit of counsel that we’ve blatantly ignored. That nugget of conventional wisdom was that customer service and support – and especially the Fanatical Support that we sought to provide – would not “scale.” We’re hearing more of that sort of thinking of late. Yet the argument is more spurious than ever. Here I discuss why.
Oct 20, 2014
At Rackspace::Solve Chicago on Monday, a number of innovative companies shared stories about how they partner with Rackspace to overcome the pressing technology challenges that impact their businesses.
Oct 20, 2014
At Rackspace::Solve Chicago, tech evangelist and author Guy Kawasaki outlined his top 10 strategies for fostering innovation.
Oct 20, 2014
RackConnect v3, the latest iteration of our hybrid cloud platform, will be available to all new Rackspace customers starting October 23. This latest version of RackConnect delivers the same level of versatility while addressing the needs of our fastest growing and most security conscious customers by focusing on security, scalability and sophistication.
Oct 17, 2014
With the opening this week of our Mexico City office, Rackspace is committing to our customers and to the future of the Managed Cloud in Latin America.
Oct 17, 2014
This week, we opened our new office in Mexico City, launched Cloud Big Data OnMetal, geared up for Rackspace::Solve Chicago and much more. Read all about it in this week’s digest.
Oct 17, 2014
I was delighted yesterday to visit Mexico City and celebrate the opening of our new Rackspace office there, amid longtime customers, local dignitaries, and the Rackers on both sides of the border who have made this expansion possible. Here are excerpts from my remarks.
Oct 16, 2014
This year, OpenStack participated in Open Source Day (OSD) at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) for the second time. The main focus of this year’s Open Source Day was humanitarian applications. Along with OpenStack, participating open source projects included Microsoft Disaster Recovery, Ushahidi, Sahana Software Foundation and others.
Oct 16, 2014
Recently, while visiting our Rackspace office in Sydney, I had the privilege to attend a startup pitch competition organized by the Rackspace Australia/New Zealand (ANZ) Startup Program. On hand for the 2014 Small Teams Big Impact Award event were six startup finalists selected by a panel of independent judges based on the following criteria: Innovation, Disruption and Market.
Oct 16, 2014
Where does fashion meet technology? At Fashion Digital. On Monday, October 20 and Tuesday, October 21, ecommerce retail leaders will meet in New York City to learn about transformative ecommerce technologies and online retail. Rackspace Digital will be there to discuss how we can help power your digital strategy.
Oct 15, 2014
Rackspace is tracking an industry-wide security issue broadly referred to as "POODLE," (Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption). This is a vulnerability affecting the SSLv3 protocol, and a number of Rackspace customers may be impacted. At this time, we are not aware of any attacks attempting to leverage the vulnerability, but we're closely monitoring the situation.
Oct 15, 2014
At Rackspace::Solve Chicago on Monday, October 20, Accruent will highlight how it is constantly optimizing our platforms; share its experience updating the infrastructure for companies that join the Accruent family; and share tips on how to effectively optimize infrastructure and eliminate points of failure. Register now for Rackspace::Solve Chicago.
Oct 15, 2014
October marks the five-year anniversary of the CloudU program. Since the program launched in 2009, CloudU has extended its global reach to over 20,000 learners from over 17 countries. To celebrate and recognize key members of the CloudU community, CloudU has launched “Who’s Who in CloudU,” an interactive billboard that highlights members of the CloudU community.
Oct 15, 2014
In the world of Big Data, bare metal is king. With Cloud Big Data OnMetal you can take advantage of the flexibility of the cloud and the performance of bare metal.
Oct 14, 2014
At Rackspace::Solve Chicago, Zipline Labs will highlight how it uses Rackspace DevOps Automation Service and the Rackspace Cloud to ensure that it can perform and scale in a secure way for future growth. Zipline will also demo its iOS app, which humanizes the transfer of money, before it's available in the app store.
Oct 14, 2014
The Center for Research Computing (CRC) at the University of Notre Dame offers a heterogeneous high-performance computing environment where faculty, students and others can conduct scientific research. We selected OpenStack and Rackspace Private Cloud for a key component in our research cloud because we need to be dynamically flexible.
Oct 13, 2014
There’s a new generation that has grown up with iPhones. They have never known a world without touch screens, smartphones and slick, snappy interfaces. At Rackspace::Solve Chicago, Paul do Forno from Razorfish will talk about building and selling to the 'touch generation.' Here's a sneak peek.
Oct 13, 2014
If you’re in an organization investing in outsourcing IT projects to a managed hosting or cloud service provider, there are the 12 critical success factors you should consider.
Oct 10, 2014
Rackspace experts will be out in full force next week at VMworld Europe 2014, as we take to the Fira Gran Via in Barcelona to showcase how Rackspace manages all the things through managed VMware®, managed OpenStack® and Managed Cloud.
Oct 10, 2014
Since the launch of OnMetal, you have asked us to expand the base images that we offer. Our goal is to have parity in what we support for our virtual Cloud Servers and OnMetal. Hence, we have been working hard to have other popular Linux distros supported for OnMetal. We are excited to let you know that we now support a substantial number of distros.
Oct 10, 2014
In this edition of Straight Up Startup, Querium Vice President of Client Services and Operations Aruni S. Gunasegaram offers insight into building a startup.
Oct 10, 2014
This week, we launch Fanatical Support for Google Apps for Work; prepare for Rackspace::Solve Chicago; hear from Rackspace customer Kendra Scott about its ecommerce growth; add new product capabilities; and more. Take a look in this week’s digest.
Oct 09, 2014
Tech evangelist and author Guy Kawasaki will kick off Rackspace::Solve Chicago (Monday, October 20) with a unique keynote presentation examining the art of innovation. We caught up with Kawasaki for a sneak preview of his Rackspace::Solve Chicago keynote. In this video, Kawasaki examines the main points of the art of innovation; how to innovate; and the cost of innovation. He also discusses some of his favorite innovators.
Oct 09, 2014
Now you can boot Performance 1 and Performance 2 Cloud Servers from a network attached volume in Cloud Block Storage. Here we take a closer look at some of the benefits you get when you use this feature.
Oct 09, 2014
Based on your feedback, we have enhanced and updated our DBA Services offering for MySQL, MS SQL and Oracle databases. Why? Through our conversations with you, we discovered that our single subscription offering was being leveraged to three very different types of users, so we have introduced a new two-tiered DBA Services offering to better meet the needs of these different users.
Oct 08, 2014
After successful Rackspace::Solve events in San Francisco and New York, it’s Chicago’s turn to hear from some of the most innovative companies about how they’re solving some of their most pressing technical and business challenges. Rackspace::Solve Chicago is Monday, October 20 at The Peninsula. Register now.
Oct 08, 2014
Rackspace DevOps Automation customers will soon be more tightly integrated into New Relic application performance monitoring than ever before.
Oct 08, 2014
At Kendra Scott, our mission is to make our customers say 'Wow.' Whether that is through our jewelry, our great customer service, a simple and elegant buying experience or the speed with which our website responds – our customers have to be wowed. Kendra Scott found the right fit with a combination of Rackspace-managed bare metal servers and Cloud Servers. We also host our ecommerce platform, Magento Enterprise, at Rackspace.
Oct 07, 2014
More than a year ago, we joined forces with the OpenStack Heat community with the goal of productizing the capabilities of orchestration. Today, Cloud Orchestration is generally available. It is a unifying product that will allow you to more easily create stacks using automated features that range from simple and click through to complex and customizable.
Oct 07, 2014
Today, we take our Fanatical Support mission one step further: we’re offering Fanatical Support for Google Apps for Work. You read that right - we’ll support your Google Apps for Work. This is the first combination of Google technology and Rackspace Fanatical Support.
Oct 06, 2014
Here is a dilemma: suppose you have a bunch of Cloud Servers, say in the Rackspace DFW data-center. Now, on one hand, for security reasons, you want to keep them as isolated as possible from the outside world (ideally by assigning them private un-routable IP addresses), but on the other hand you want to have connectivity to the Rackspace service network in order to be able to consume cloud services. You also want them to have connectivity to the Internet in order to enable your organization's employees to access them from any remote location or to connect your offices to your cloud deployment. This post discusses how you can “hold the stick at both ends,” namely by allowing external connectivity while keeping maximum isolation of your Cloud Servers.
Oct 06, 2014
Some IT initiatives, such as disaster recovery, are natural fits for cloud computing. Yet it can be challenging to know exactly where to begin when it comes to configuring self-managed recovery plans and replicating virtual machines (VMs) from on-premises to a cloud service provider.
Oct 03, 2014
Finally, fall is in the air. With each new season comes lots of exciting happenings, both here at the Castle and with our customers around the world. The first week of October has had its ups and downs—but we’re hoping the rest of the month will be one smooth ride into all things festive and Fanatical. Read all about it in this week’s edition of the Rackspace Weekly Digest.
Oct 02, 2014
Rackspace Startup Program member nurseVersity built an online test prep program for nursing students on the Rackspace Managed Cloud.
Oct 02, 2014
Rackspace Cloud Files is a super easy, reliable and cost efficient way to store your Cloud Sites website content.
Oct 01, 2014
At Rackspace::Solve New York, CloudMine CTO Marc Weil talked about solving for HIPAA compliance in a mobile environment and how CloudMine uses a hybrid cloud infrastructure from Rackspace to help ensure its customers’ mobile data is secure. Here’s video of Marc’s presentation from Rackspace::Solve NY.
Oct 01, 2014
Like other major cloud providers, we were forced to reboot some of our customers’ servers this past weekend to patch a security vulnerability affecting certain versions of XenServer, a popular open source hypervisor. This maintenance was especially difficult for many of you because it had to be performed on short notice, and over the weekend. We apologize for the downtime and inconvenience that you and others of our customers have suffered in recent days.
Sep 30, 2014
At Rackspace::Solve New York, SumAll CEO Dane Atkinson showcased how SumAll uses ObjectRocket to solve for big data. He was joined by ObjectRocket CEO and Co-Founder Chris Lalonde. Here’s video of Dane’s presentation.
Sep 30, 2014
I am a member of the Docker special interest group at Rackspace. We recently welcomed CoreOS CTO Brandon Philips to visit us to discuss using CoreOS with Docker containers with CoreOS. Here are some high-level takeaways.
Sep 30, 2014
With the recent introduction of more comprehensive partner networked ecosystems such as the VMware vCloud Air Network and the Microsoft Cloud OS Network, the value that a VAR traditionally brings to a customer wedded to their on-premise solutions has changed significantly. VARs must look to align more closely with managed service providers (MSPs) to continue to provide value to their customers in this hybrid world.
Sep 29, 2014
Nearly every IT leader these days is wresting with Shadow IT – the dynamic in which end users obtain IT solutions from cloud service providers without informing corporate IT. In fact, CIO Magazine’s 2014 State of the CIO Survey results revealed four out of five IT leaders feel IT projects done without IT involvement are creating problems.
Sep 29, 2014
The third and latest iteration of RackConnect, the Rackspace Hybrid Cloud connectivity solution, is now available to a select group of customers through our Limited Availability program.
Sep 27, 2014
Recently, an issue that has the potential to impact a portion of the Public Cloud environment was reported. Our engineers and developers continue to work closely with our vendors and partners to apply the solution to remediate this issue. While we believe in transparent communication, there are times when we must withhold certain details in […]
Sep 26, 2014
It’s been a busy and productive week at Rackspace. We continued our streak of challenging, and winning, against patent trolls. We updated Rackspace Private Cloud to feature industry-leading stability and massive scalability. We doubled down to prepare for one of the largest ecommerce events of the year: The Shop.org Summit in Seattle. Read all about […]
Sep 26, 2014
The Shop.org Summit is one of the largest ecommerce events of the year. This year, the summit heads to Seattle from Monday, September 29 to Wednesday, October 1. Rackspace Digital Specialists will be on hand at booth No. 938 at Shop.org ready to talk about the convergence of commerce and content.
Sep 25, 2014
A security vulnerability affecting GNU Bash (CVE-2014-6271), also known as the Shellshock bug or vulnerability, has been discovered. According to research, the bug could be used to remotely take control of a system that uses Bash, which is part of many Linux systems. Rackspace customers that use Bash as their shell should apply the vendor-recommended patch as soon as possible.
Sep 25, 2014
At Rackspace::Solve New York, Jon Hyman, Appboy co-founder and CIO talked about how Appboy leverages DevOps to solve for rapid customer growth and scale. Here’s video of Jon’s talk, with an introduction from General Manager of the DevOps Business Segment at Rackspace Prashanth Chandrasekar.
Sep 25, 2014
Within the startup movement, there are plenty of events happening globally in October 2014. The Rackspace Startup Program is here to keep you up to date with valuable information on events and happenings inside the global startup community. Here is a partial list of global startup events complied by the contributors of StartupDigest.
Sep 25, 2014
Rackspace Private Cloud has been updated to offer an industry-leading 99.99 percent OpenStack uptime guarantee, scalability up to 200 physical nodes and support for DevOps Automation Services.
Sep 24, 2014
In October, Rackers will once again take OpenStack to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.
Sep 24, 2014
At Rackspace::Solve New York, DigitasLBi Vice President and General Director of Technology Tony Bailey talked about how the agency solves complexity for brands and their customer experiences. Here’s full video of Tony’s presentation.
Sep 23, 2014
Just as summer comes to a close, so does our RPC Insights series. This series of webinars and blog posts by Rackspace Sales Engineer James Thorne provided detailed information and guidance to help you get started with Rackspace Private Cloud. Here’s a recap of the RPC Insights series.
Sep 23, 2014
Last year on our Office Hours Hangout, we spent a few weeks discussing some strategies and tools for scaling ecommerce sites in anticipation of traffic during the holiday season. Rackspace has added several tools and services that can help as you prepare for this year’s holiday traffic rush. We'll discuss those this Thursday at 1 p.m. CDT on our Office Hours Hangout.
Sep 22, 2014
Since we opened the Rackspace Australia office, we have worked to capture the essence of what makes Rackspace great – the culture, the people, the passion – and bring it to this part of the world. And Rackspace Australia’s recent recognition as one of the best places to work in Australia – for the second consecutive year -- shows that we’re leading a successful charge.
Sep 22, 2014
Rotatable Technologies is now an ex-patent troll. I say “ex-troll” because its patent, US Pat. No. 6,326,978, has been declared unpatentable by the US Patent and Trademark Office in response to a challenge (called an Inter Partes Review, or IPR) filed by Rackspace. This continues our streak of challenging, and winning, against patent trolls.
Sep 19, 2014
Two key themes that were woven into the fabric of Rackspace::Solve New York on Thursday were velocity and agility – and that the underpinnings of our infrastructure must deliver the performance that empowers your business to achieve those goals.
Sep 19, 2014
Rackspace::Solve New York; a letter from our new CEO to Rackers; the DevOps team takes home two Stevie Awards; and more in this week's digest.
Sep 19, 2014
Among the presentations this week at Rackspace::Solve New York, one clear theme emerged: the power of collaboration.
Sep 18, 2014
During a panel at Rackspace::Solve New York, Michelle Bailey, senior vice president of digital infrastructure and data initiatives at 451 Research, moderated a panel on opportunities in private cloud.
Sep 18, 2014
Businesses have moved beyond the exploration phase of the cloud and are now at the rationalization phase, the second of three technology adoption cycles, James Staten, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research told the crowd Thursday at Rackspace::Solve New York.
Sep 18, 2014
Rackspace Startup Program member Enplug is building a global network of social digital billboards and screens powered by Rackspace Managed Cloud.
Sep 17, 2014
Starting today, Rackspace Cloud customers using Cloud Load Balancers will be able to once again see graphs of incoming and outgoing bandwidth as well as average connection information for the past 24 hours for these traffic management devices.
Sep 17, 2014
As many of you may have seen, yesterday Rackspace made two big announcements: 1) we announced the end of formal evaluation of M&A transactions, and 2) we announced that I have been named CEO of Rackspace. We believe these announcements coupled with our laser-sharp focus on Fanatical Support and managed cloud services have Rackspace primed for future success. Here is the full text of the email I sent to all Rackers yesterday afternoon discussing these announcements.
Sep 17, 2014
How can IT regain a seat at the innovation table? The answer is simple - by aggressively refocusing resources on true core competencies and areas of differentiation, and investing in areas that truly create business value for the organization.
Sep 16, 2014
At O'Reilly Velocity this week I talked about how the main drivers that helped turn around the US Men's National Soccer Team are also needed to push forward the DevOps movement.
Sep 16, 2014
At Rackspace, our security team works diligently to increase security awareness at all levels of the company, like the Ice Bucket Challenge increased awareness of ALS around the globe.
Sep 16, 2014
SPTechCon starts today in Boston, and as the No. 1 managed SharePoint specialist, Rackspace will have several of our SharePoint experts on-hand throughout the show sharing their expertise and helping you get up to speed on all things SharePoint. Here’s where you can find them.
Sep 16, 2014
When it comes to a cloud provider, LifeCellar has three key requirements: security, flexibility and support. We found those and more with the Rackspace Managed Cloud.
Sep 15, 2014
Rackspace Cloud University (CloudU) earned a bronze award for excellence in the Best Custom Content category on September 10 as part of the 20th Annual Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards.
Sep 15, 2014
The Rackspace DevOps team took home two Stevie Awards for the Rackspace DevOps Automation Service at The 12th Annual American Business Awards.
Sep 12, 2014
This week, we gear up for Rackspace::Solve New York, show you how to set up your Rackspace email on the iPhone 6 and launch a new Master Agent Program. Check out all that and more in the weekly digest.
Sep 10, 2014
Our Rackspace Digital application specialists put together four reference architectures that optimize the right mix of price, performance and control for most businesses to help you make the most out of your ecommerce platform.
Sep 10, 2014
Many enterprises have invested millions of dollars over the years in IT management, monitoring and automation solutions for their data centers. So a natural question that arises when considering migration of workloads to hosted environments is around management tools. What new capabilities will be required? What new skills will our organization need? Is our existing toolset extensible at all?
Sep 09, 2014
At Rackspace::Solve New York on September 18, CloudMine will present how it solves for high mobile performance in regulated environments. Here's a sneak peek from CloudMine and registration information for Rackspace::Solve New York.
Sep 09, 2014
iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus were announced today. If you’re upgrading to iPhone 6, you can setup your Rackspace Hosted Exchange email in less than two minutes and in only a few clicks.
Sep 08, 2014
At Rackspace::Solve New York on September 18, Under Armour will discuss how it partners with Rackspace to solve for rapid ecommerce growth. Here's a sneak peek from Under Armour and registration information for Rackspace::Solve New York.
Sep 08, 2014
bfw Advertising is a full service advertising agency with expertise in building websites. However, bfw Advertising does not have expertise in cloud or Web Application Firewall (WAF) technologies. In order to focus on its business, bfw Advertising turned to Rackspace Managed Cloud and Alert Logic.
Sep 08, 2014
As part of our continued effort to better serve our partners, we’re expanding our Rackspace Partner Network to include a new Master Agent/Agent Program, a program through which a new segment of partners can offer Rackspace Managed Cloud and award-winning Fanatical Support to their end customers.
Sep 08, 2014
This year’s research confirms that downtime is still causing headaches for end-users and IT professionals. However, in addition to the frustration caused by outages, it’s also costing businesses more than ever. Take a look in the How Downtime Impacts the Bottom Line 2014 infographic.
Sep 05, 2014
This week, we geared up for Rackspace::Solve New York; heard how noHold, Inc. uses the Managed Cloud; highlighted how infoplum-AFP handled billions of web requests during the World Cup; and much more. Check out all that and more in the weekly digest.
Sep 04, 2014
At Rackspace::Solve New York on September 18, SumAll will discuss how it uses ObjectRocket and Rackspace to solve the challenges of big data and scale. Here's a sneak peek from SumAll and registration information for Rackspace::Solve New York.
Sep 04, 2014
The Rackspace Cloud Sites team helped infoplum - AFP handle a major traffic crunch of soccer fanatics looking for real-time match info during the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The infoplum application was embedded on 161 websites, which were served to a worldwide audience in more than 20 countries and in more than 15 languages throughout the entire 32-day global soccer phenomenon. This resulted in 4.1 billion web requests, or 153 million hits per day and over 100 million pageviews.
Sep 04, 2014
Rackspace Startup Program member Flickflyer has used the Rackspace Managed Cloud to build an app that allows users to create and post video advertisements for items they're selling.
Sep 03, 2014
Bot protection is key if you want to protect your website and your business.
Sep 03, 2014
At Rackspace::Solve New York (Thursday, September 18 at The Cipriani Wall Street), an exciting roster of cutting-edge companies will discuss about how they use technologies like virtualization, ecommerce, big data, DevOps and cloud architectures to drive real results and overcome technology challenges. Register now.
Sep 03, 2014
We asked Dan Ross, Security Risk Manger at Rackspace, to address common security and compliance questions that enterprise customers have around migration of virtualized workloads.
Sep 02, 2014
Artificial Intelligence provider noHold chose Rackspace Managed Cloud to deliver a world-class hybrid solution that combines the security and data integrity that its customers demand with the human touch of Rackspace Fanatical Support.
Sep 02, 2014
There’s a debate raging in IT about what steps established organizations should take to move their older traditional applications to the cloud.
Aug 29, 2014
This week, we unveiled a downloadable DevOps e-book, talked more about DevOps adoption and the CALMS framework, gave an update on Cloud Metrics and much more. Take a look in this week’s digest.
Aug 28, 2014
In the emerging business world, concepts like Disaster Recovery are often swept under the rug due to the added cost, but the reality is that downtime is a far worse consequence and the price of a modest Disaster Recovery plan in the cloud is marginal compared to what that downtime could cost your business.
Aug 28, 2014
Within the startup movement, there are plenty of events happening globally in September 2014. The Rackspace Startup Program is here to keep you up to date with valuable information on events and happenings inside the global startup community. Here is a partial list of global startup events complied by the contributors of StartupDigest.
Aug 27, 2014
An important part of Rackspace's monitoring pipeline is the metrics that we gather in the process. We have a small team called Cloud Metrics that is dedicated to these metrics. We are otherwise known as the Blueflood team since we authored the blueflood.io project, which is the technology at the heart of our Cloud Metrics service. We've been hard at work improving this part of our business and some changes are underway that I think are worth sharing.
Aug 27, 2014
While it may seem that migration would require significant changes, selecting the right service provider and platforms can dramatically minimize the risk of operational disruption. This is particularly true for organizations seeking to migrate workloads to hosted VMware environments.
Aug 26, 2014
Last week, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and a consortium of researchers announced funding for two cloud testbeds, named “Chameleon” and “CloudLab,” that will power academic research. Rackspace is participating in the Chameleon testbed.
Aug 26, 2014
StreetLight offers its customers dynamic analytics for marketing, location planning and more that help them better understand who visits certain areas and when, and the company uses the Rackspace Managed Cloud, including Cloud Block Storage, to quickly deliver that data.
Aug 25, 2014
The goals of DevOps may sound beneficial, but how does all this play out in the real world? The Rackspace-sponsored, free downloadable e-book, The DevOps Mindset, answers this question by featuring interviews with tech professionals who are putting DevOps into action. Each discussion focuses on essential components of the approach, the challenges of getting started and recommendations for other companies.
Aug 25, 2014
DevOps doesn't need a 400-page operating manual, but at minimum it needs a scaffold to hold together key components and concepts so you can assess your capability, compare yourself to your peers and build clear programs to manage deficits. This framework already exists in the community in the acronym we know as CALMS.
Aug 22, 2014
At the Gartner Catalyst Conference last week, Rackspace CTO John Engates spoke about the challenges of a commodity cloud, the changing expectations of cloud consumers and the power of Managed Cloud. Here's video of the full presentation.
Aug 22, 2014
This week, we showcased our vision for hybrid cloud powered VMware solutions, got ready for VMworld, opened up a new developer contest and more. Check it out in the weekly digest.
Aug 21, 2014
Fanchimp is a fast and easy social media marketing tool for small and medium businesses that is built on Rackspace Managed Cloud.
Aug 21, 2014
In this video blog series, we give you an inside look at the story behind OnMetal, our new API-driven instantly provisioned bare metal servers. Here, the OnMetal team talks about why we’re so excited about OnMetal.
Aug 21, 2014
Rackspace is one of the select VMware Service Providers in the Premier tier of the recently rebranded VMware vCloud Air Network, which fosters a stronger alliance and go-to-market strategy to better serve our customers through VMware technology building blocks. Rackspace and VMware collaborate to create a shared ecosystem of the brightest technical talent for VMware solutions with more than a decade of expertise in managed hosting and world class Fanatical Support.
Aug 20, 2014
More data and higher stakes are adding to the pressure to maintain bulletproof application security. Rackspace Managed Cloud can help you meet your application security goals faster and gain a competitive edge.
Aug 20, 2014
Web bots can influence your KPIs and negatively impact your company’s bottom line.
Aug 19, 2014
The NoSQL Mobile App Challenge opened this month, giving developers across the US and Canada the chance to build a mobile app that showcases their creativity and innovation without the pain of managing their infrastructure. To help you get started, we created ObjectRocket and Rackspace accounts tailored specifically to the needs of contestants. The only requirement for each app entered is that it must use ObjectRocket NoSQL data services with either MongoDB or Redis.
Aug 19, 2014
There’s a lot of talk in the cloud market about the differences between managed and unmanaged clouds. I look at it this way: comparing unmanaged and managed clouds is like comparing a motorcycle to an SUV. Both will get you from point A to point B relatively quickly – but that’s pretty much where the functional similarities end.
Aug 18, 2014
We are only half way through 2014, and I can already state with confidence that the number of security breaches making headlines this year will continue to increase. More than 50 percent of all breaches will be caused by an application-layer breach, and the most common form of application-layer breach is an attack on a website.
Aug 18, 2014
Rackspace VMware experts will be out in full force next week at VMworld 2014, as we take to San Francisco’s Moscone Center to showcase how Rackspace manages all the things through Managed Virtualization, Managed OpenStack and Managed Cloud.
Aug 15, 2014
This week, we launched our DevOps Advisory Service; ObjectRocket unveiled a fully-managed Redis service; we heard more from Rackspace::Solve San Francisco presenters; and we got a glimpse at some coming attractions in MongoDB. And that’s not all. Check out what you may have missed in the weekly digest.
Aug 14, 2014
CoreOS is a Linux-based operating system for massive server deployments. Its goal is to enable warehouse-scale computing on top of a minimal, modern operating system. Rackspace::Solve San Francisco, CoreOS CEO Alex Polvi said, “we’re all trying to build warehouse scale machines,” and CoreOS enables that. Here's video of Polvi's presentation.
Aug 14, 2014
John Courtney, CEO and founder of Endao, a platform for building Business Process Management (BPM) software, talked to the Rackspace Startup Program about the lessons he learned building a startup.
Aug 14, 2014
In this video blog series, we give you an inside look at the story behind OnMetal, our new API-driven instantly provisioned bare metal servers. Here, the OnMetal team talks about the benefits that OnMetal customers should expect at scale.
Aug 14, 2014
Using the same principles we apply to our fully-managed MongoDB service, our ObjectRocket team now offers full automation, support and management of Redis so developers can focus on their applications and not maintaining their databases.
Aug 13, 2014
Zulily is one of the world’s fastest growing ecommerce sites. The company must be able to navigate massive, event-driven traffic spikes and make intelligent technology choices to ensure flexibility and scale. At Rackspace::Solve San Francisco, Zulily and Avail Partners talked about solving for the coming tidal wave of choices. Here's full video of that presentation.
Aug 13, 2014
Because both virtualization and cloud can provide significant benefits, the best way for any team to evaluate both options is to think about what they want from their infrastructure using five key questions.
Aug 12, 2014
SunPower is a leader in global solar innovation. Solar power ties into what SunPower CIO Richard Robinson calls “the internet of everything." In this video from Rackspace::Solve San Francisco, Robinson talks with Rackers Robert Scoble and John Engates about the internet of everything.
Aug 12, 2014
Rackspace customer Mark Cuban Companies relies on Rackspace Managed Cloud to power many of its businesses and recommends it to a number of its startups to help them avoid being swallowed up by the Shark Tank Effect.
Aug 12, 2014
Rackspace DevOps Advisory Service is a one-time service where Rackspace DevOps specialists advise you on how to adopt a DevOps model and be more agile with infrastructure.
Aug 11, 2014
Chartboost runs one of the largest MongoDB databases in the world, and writes to a database of one billion objects. At Rackspace::Solve San Francisco, Chartboost Co-Founder and CTO Sean Fannan talked about how Chartboost manages scale and growth. Here's full video of that conversation.
Aug 11, 2014
I spend most of my days hacking on MongoDB environments, so it's easy for me to get pumped about new features when I hear about them. And there are a few recent MongoDB updates and announcements that have me particularly excited.
Aug 11, 2014
We changed the database business in June when we offered free backups to anybody using MongoDB. We share our expansive disk infrastructure with the community to help folks get backed up, so they can sleep easy. It’s not an add-on. It’s not an upcharge. You don’t even have to be an ObjectRocket customer to benefit from these backups.
Aug 08, 2014
As an intern in the Rackspace Blacksburg office, I had my first experience with continuous integration (CI), and I wanted to learn more about it. I believe that the best way to learn is through hands-on experience, so I picked up a story that involved experimenting with the CI infrastructure.
Aug 08, 2014
In this week’s digest, we hear from DDP Yoga about how it prepped its website ahead of a Shark Tank appearance; we explain where IaaS fits in the Rackspace Managed Cloud; we showcase some of the great content from Rackspace::Solve San Francisco; and much more.
Aug 07, 2014
HelpSocial, a Rackspace Startup Program member founded by two former Rackers, is building its social customer service app on the Rackspace Managed Cloud.
Aug 07, 2014
Lew Cirne, CEO of New Relic, a software analytics company, took the stage at Rackspace::Solve San Francisco to give attendees advice on harnessing the power of big data in the Managed Cloud age. Here's video of Cirne's talk.
Aug 07, 2014
In this video blog series, we give you an inside look at the story behind OnMetal, our new API-driven instantly provisioned bare metal servers. Here, the OnMetal team talks about why OnMetal was built on OpenStack software and Open Compute hardware.
Aug 07, 2014
La relevancia de Latinoamérica -y en especial de México- ha aumentado tanto para Rackspace en los últimos años, que actualmente establecemos nuestra primera oficina en la región, ubicada en la Ciudad de México. Con nuestra llegada, queremos acercar a las empresas mexicanas a nuestro Fanatical Support, que desde hace 15 años ha contribuido al crecimiento de negocios de todos los tamaños alrededor del mundo. Arrancando con nuestras primeras actividades locales estaremos presentes en EMC Forum México 2014, hoy, 7 de Agosto, desde el Centro Banamex de la Ciudad de México.
Aug 06, 2014
Infrastructure-as-a-Service is and remains a critical component in the Rackspace Managed Cloud. Think of it this way: our IaaS by default comes with service; we no longer offer raw, unmanaged infrastructure.
Aug 06, 2014
At Rackspace::Solve San Francisco, Alex and Ani Vice President of Digital Strategy, Ryan Bonifacino, took the stage to discuss how the company’s digital strategy helped accommodate revenue growth that skyrocketed from $80 million in 2012 to $230 million a year later. Here's full video of the conversation.
Aug 06, 2014
To better protect your site from web bots, it’s important to understand how these malicious programs operate.
Aug 05, 2014
At Rackspace::Solve San Francisco, Bill Clerico, CEO of Rackspace customer WePay, talked about how WePay solved for rapid customer growth and scale through DevOps and gained a competitive edge. Check out the full video of Clerico’s on-stage conversation.
Aug 05, 2014
When DDP Yoga got a call from Shark Tank, Rackspace helped ensure our website could stand up to the onslaught of traffic known as "the Shark Tank effect."
Aug 04, 2014
For mature enterprises, the cloud represents a way to get out from under the constraints of traditional IT. Unlike businesses born in the cloud, the existing systems and business processes in these organizations present unique challenges to cloud adoption. The company examples below offer three different stories of traditional IT teams growing into the cloud with measurable success.
Aug 04, 2014
At Rackspace::Solve San Francisco last week, Docker CEO Ben Golub took the stage to discuss the future of applications. Here is video of Golub’s full Rackspace::Solve presentation.
Aug 04, 2014
As development makes changes to the software, operations has to manually install the new virtual code and tweak the configurations manually every time they create a new server. Equally problematic, virtual server instances proliferate unchecked, leading to thousands of dollars in unexpected charges from the cloud service provider. This leads to a slash-and-burn server destruction scramble that accidentally takes down the production platform and disgruntles many of those new users. Heavy sighs emanate from the CTO’s office. What’s to be done?
Aug 01, 2014
This week, we held our first of three Rackspace::Solve events; launched Rackspace developer+; updated Cloud Databases; heard from Managed Cloud customer Rip Curl; and much more.
Aug 01, 2014
Voting is open now for proposed presentations for OpenStack Summit Paris (November 3 through November 7). Here are proposed speaking sessions that Rackers have submitted. Voting closes on Wednesday, August 6.
Jul 31, 2014
In this video blog series, we give you an inside look at the story behind OnMetal, our new API-driven instantly provisioned bare metal servers. Here, the OnMetal team talks about the motivation behind building OnMetal.
Jul 31, 2014
Today, enterprise IT is expected to do much more with fewer resources. Here are four alternatives to traditional outsourcing that enterprise IT departments can use to extend their capabilities.
Jul 31, 2014
Within the startup movement, there are plenty of events happening globally in August 2014. The Rackspace Startup Program is here to keep you up to date with valuable information on events and happenings inside the global startup community. Here is a partial list of global startup events complied by the contributors of StartupDigest.
Jul 30, 2014
Small IT departments that don’t have enterprise budgets at their disposal are often squeezed for resources without being able to easily outsource their work. Here are four alternatives to traditional outsourcing that small IT departments can use to extend their capabilities without throwing enterprise-level cash at the problem.
Jul 30, 2014
The Managed Operations service level within our Managed Cloud includes two different approaches: System Administration or DevOps Automation. Here, we would like to help you understand how each of these offerings can help meet the needs of your cloud workloads and ultimately your business.
Jul 30, 2014
Rackspace developer+ is a monthly infrastructure credit and more that, combined with our new competitive infrastructure prices, helps provide developers the core of almost any scalable cloud application you want to build.
Jul 29, 2014
At Appreciation Engine we help businesses better understand who their customers are. Our engine parses social signal generated by a brand's customers. This is a hefty operation for any software product, so we rely on Rackspace Cloud Databases to handle our data and to scale our platform in a cost-effective manner while addressing our constantly growing data needs.
Jul 29, 2014
To help its customers capture and analyze surf data, Rip Curl built the Rip Curl SearchGPS Watch, web site, mobile app and social network, powered by the Rackspace Managed Cloud and ObjectRocket MongoDB Database-as-a-Service.
Jul 29, 2014
Here is a brief video with highlights from Rackspace::Solve San Francisco.
Jul 29, 2014
At Rackspace::Solve San Francisco, cutting-edge companies shared how they overcome pressing business challenges with innovative solutions that help them increase their speed, flexibility and scale.
Jul 28, 2014
Today, we launch significant updates to Cloud Databases, including support for new database types like MySQL 5.6, Percona Server 5.6 and MariaDB 10; larger flavors; and more storage.
Jul 25, 2014
This week, with launched the general availability of OnMetal; OpenStack turned four; and Rackspace was named EMC’s 2014 Service Provider of the Year for Innovation. Check out all that, plus some more goodness, in this week’s digest.
Jul 25, 2014
At Rackspace::Solve, Ryan Bonifacino, Vice President of Digital Strategy, Alex and Ani, will show how the ecommerce giant scales for massive growth.
Jul 24, 2014
What a difference a year makes! We published the first mobile ecommerce infographic last year. Since then, all the stats suggest that mobile has continued its meteoric rise as an ecommerce powerhouse. View the updated infographic here.
Jul 24, 2014
Artifact Uprising, a Rackspace Startup Program member, makes tangible, eco-friendly products for digital photos, and it's building its business on the Rackspace managed cloud.
Jul 24, 2014
Since we launched the limited availability of OnMetal™ Cloud Servers – single-tenant bare-metal servers provisioned quickly via the cloud – last month, our customers are intrigued by our promise of “elasticity of the cloud, plus economy of colocation” - particularly the economy side of it. Today, OnMetal moves into general availability and we unveil its pricing. We also show you how it performed in a series of benchmark tests.
Jul 23, 2014
At Rackspace::Solve San Francisco, CoreOS CEO Alex Polvi will present 'Solving For What's Next' and highlight how CoreOS enables warehouse-scale computing on top of a minimal, modern operating system.
Jul 23, 2014
Regardless of what business you’re in, mobile will touch the way you work and do business. We’ve seen the growing impact of mobile and have written extensively on the topic. Here’s a list of our top mobile articles that dig into managing the mobile experience inside (infrastructure) and out (design).
Jul 23, 2014
Web bots are a serious issue that every website owner needs to be aware of.
Jul 22, 2014
We recently hosted a webinar, The Rise of the Remote Workforce: How to Better Communicate and Collaborate Across Area Codes. Here, you can listen to a full recording of the webinar.
Jul 22, 2014
Knowledge base provider HelpIQ is growing quickly and is using Rackspace Cloud Databases and Performance Cloud Servers to help it scale.
Jul 21, 2014
Rackspace has been named EMC’s 2014 Service Provider of the Year for Innovation, an achievement that recognizes Rackspace for demonstrating a commitment to developing innovative solutions that allow our customers to maximize the value of their digital data.
Jul 21, 2014
OpenStack is four. This is huge. In just four years, the community and the project have come a long way. And OpenStack's fifth year is an important one.
Jul 18, 2014
It can be overwhelming to manage all of the notifications from a cloud monitoring system, so we built an LAD notification system for cloud monitoring alerts. Here, we walk you through how to make one of your own.
Jul 18, 2014
This week, we officially launched Rackspace managed cloud; took leaders positions in two Gartner Magic Quadrants for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting; prepped for OSCON; and partnered with AvePoint for SharePoint data protection and control. Check out all this and more in this week’s digest.
Jul 17, 2014
Picture It Settled, a Geekdom startup and a member of the Rackspace Startup Program, is building negotiation-modeling software for the legal field.
Jul 17, 2014
Rackspace has been named a leader in the 2014 Gartner Magic Quadrants for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting for North America and Europe based on our ability to execute and completeness of vision. These Magic Quadrants focus on the service layer on top of cloud infrastructure, rather than solely on the infrastructure itself. That’s where our managed cloud focus fits perfectly.
Jul 17, 2014
For many organizations, Microsoft SharePoint is a dynamic set of workspaces with a constant inflow and modification of user generated content. But managing all of that content can be a daunting task for administrators.
Jul 16, 2014
We’ve heard your feedback: you want to apply preferred configurations across your entire environment, and you want it to be fast. You want to save and iterate on your favored set-up and use it as a template that can be shared. You want to update configurations in mere seconds. Server-side Configuration gives you what you’ve been asking for: configuration files that can be easily updated, shared, and used with automation tools.
Jul 16, 2014
By combining the industry expertise provided by Rackspace’s SharePoint team with the confidence of AvePoint’s award-winning DocAve Software Platform for data protection, management and reporting, we’ve developed one of the most secure and manageable hosted SharePoint experiences around.
Jul 16, 2014
OSCON 2014 is upon is. We’ll have a number of Rackspace specialists on-hand throughout the event talking about all things open source. We’re pumped to head to Portland to highlight the projects we’ve contributed to and collaborate and innovate with the open source community. Here's what we're up to at OSCON 2014.
Jul 15, 2014
In this video, Rackspace Chairman, Co-Founder and CEO Graham Weston discusses the launch of Rackspace managed cloud.
Jul 15, 2014
With a managed cloud, DigitalFilm Tree knew it was covered when it had questions about its television and film collaboration software at 4 a.m. during pilot season.
Jul 15, 2014
Today, we define a new industry category - managed cloud. We’re targeting businesses and developers who want to tap the power of the cloud without the pain of running everything themselves — and the expense of recruiting or contracting with experts in dozens of complex technologies. To do that, we're launching two enhanced service levels for public cloud customers, restructuring our pricing model, creating a developer+ program and updating our SLAs.
Jul 15, 2014
In this video, Rackspace President Taylor Rhodes and some Rackspace customers highlight the benefits of a managed cloud built on Fanatical Support.
Jul 14, 2014
So you wanna learn you some Hadoop, eh? Well, get ready to drink from the firehose, because the Hadoop ecosystem is crammed full of software, much of which duplicates efforts, and much of which is named so similarly that it's very confusing for newcomers. In the second piece of this two-part series, I cover more peripheral or optional features.
Jul 14, 2014
With a useful OpenStack lab up and running, it’s time to take advantage of some more advanced features. The first that I want to look at is adding the OpenStack Networking LBaaS (Load Balancer) to my Rackspace Private Cloud.
Jul 14, 2014
The new partnership between AvePoint and Rackspace - which we launched this week from the electrified halls of Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2014 in Washington, DC - provides Rackspace customers the ability to access enhanced hybrid and cloud-based environments.
Jul 11, 2014
My StartupBus journey led to me eventually becoming a Racker. What an awesome ride.
Jul 11, 2014
In 2011, I first rode the StartupBus. That led to my career at Rackspace (and my StartupBus tattoo).
Jul 11, 2014
In this week's digest, we look ahead to Rackspace::Solve San Francisco, examine the Patriot Act and your data, add support for Microsoft Private Cloud and much more.
Jul 10, 2014
This infographic highlights some of the better-known enterprise web content management solutions. Listed are the strengths and some current customers for each option, along with suggested next steps to consider if you’re planning a CMS implementation for your enterprise.
Jul 10, 2014
Today, Rackspace adds support for Microsoft Private Clouds, which gives you more choice in which type of Private Cloud environment powers your business.
Jul 10, 2014
Rackspace Startup Program member Ember offers an online video advertising platform that offers its customers an alternative to TV ads to enable them to optimize ad spend.
Jul 09, 2014
How can DevOps free up my developers? How can I scale MongoDB? How can I ensure my ecommerce site doesn’t crumble under massive growth? These questions and many more are at the heart of a series of one-day summits Rackspace is hosting called Rackspace::Solve. The first is Monday, July 28 at the St. Regis in San Francisco.
Jul 09, 2014
Bank of England CIO Peter Finch issued a misinformed warning in a recent article, telling companies that if your cloud provider is an “American company, it is likely that your data and processing is now subject to the American Patriot Act. And, if it is integrated to your infrastructure, it is likely that all your services are subject to the Patriot Act.” Such advice not only misinterprets and misrepresents US law, it misleadingly implies that US cloud providers are somehow both unable and unwilling to protect the data entrusted with them by their customers from US law enforcement agencies. Finch’s statement is inaccurate. Here, I’ll highlight what you need to know about your data and the Patriot Act.
Jul 08, 2014
In his keynote address at the O'Reilly Velocity conference in Santa Clara, Calif., Rackspace Senior Product Manager James Colgan explained how growing companies can get better performance by moving past mere infrastructure automation and toward self-adaptive and autonomous infrastructure. Check out video of James’ Velocity keynote.
Jul 08, 2014
Later this week, we’re releasing a new feature that allows you to easily attach files directly from your Dropbox into Rackspace Webmail. This means that after a quick 'account sync,' all of your Dropbox files are just a click away.
Jul 08, 2014
At Rackspace::Solve San Francisco on July 28, payment services company WePay will showcase how it uses Rackspace Managed Cloud and DevOps Automation Service to accommodate swift growth and scale. Here's a sneak peek from WePay and registration information for Rackspace::Solve.
Jul 07, 2014
So you wanna learn you some Hadoop, eh? Well, get ready to drink from the firehose, because the Hadoop ecosystem is crammed full of software, much of which duplicates efforts, and much of which is named so similarly that it's very confusing for newcomers. In the first of this two-part series, I cover the most common and core pieces of functionality.
Jul 07, 2014
In this post, I'll outline the steps to go from Rackspace Private Cloud v4.2.1 to v4.2.2 using the Rackspace Private Cloud Chef Recipes.
Jul 03, 2014
Rackspace Startup Program member RunLastMan, an Ireland-based fundraising site through which clubs, organizations and charities raise money through sports betting, is growing quickly on the Rackspace Cloud.
Jul 03, 2014
Every year, Alert Logic publishes a Cloud Security Report. In it, we analyze real-world security data aggregated from the 2,200-plus customers that use Alert Logic solutions in cloud, hosted and on-premises environments. Based on our latest research, here are five things that we think everyone should know about cloud security in 2014.
Jul 02, 2014
The tech industry is buzzing with the term DevOps. Here, I want to focus on the thought process to get to a DevOps State of Mind.
Jul 02, 2014
The bulk of our screen time is shifting to mobile devices. It’s gone from laptops and desktops to smartphones and tablets. In the midst of this change, companies need to consider the differences in developing for on-the-go devices as opposed to those used at a desk.
Jul 02, 2014
If you run an ecommerce site, email is critical to your business. In this blog series, we dig deeper into some of the areas ecommerce sites should consider when working with email. Here, we examine marketing emails.
Jul 01, 2014
In an upcoming webinar (Thursday, July 10 at 11 a.m. CDT) we'll share eight tips to make mobile work for your business - and we'll share some of those tips here too.
Jul 01, 2014
The ability to create machine instances using OpenStack APIs on physical hardware, with the speed and ease we’ve come to expect for cloud deployments is a huge advancement in infrastructure technology. And it’s made possible by Rackspace OnMetal. And paring OnMetal with CoreOS, a lightweight Linux distribution for massive server deployments, will help you squeeze the maximum value from your hardware.
Jun 30, 2014
Federated and interoperable OpenStack clouds are on the horizon, as code development work, led by a CERN research fellow sponsored by Rackspace as part of a CERN openlab project, has been included in the latest OpenStack release, Icehouse.
Jun 27, 2014
I just came aboard as a summer intern here at Rackspace, and immediately, I’m getting my hands dirty on some pretty cool projects. The first of which is Loadscale, a little tool that has a simple function: ping an Autoscaling group’s load balancer and see if servers need to be added or removed from the load balancer. This little project was to run alongside the load balancer and Autoscaling (codename: otter) team’s projects.
Jun 27, 2014
The OpenStack Technical Committee recently decided to incubate Designate, an authoritative multi-tenant DNS-as-a-Service for OpenStack that features a command line client, REST API and integrates with Nova, Neutron and Keystone.
Jun 27, 2014
From outlining the differences between commodity cloud providers and managed cloud specialists to hearing how Pantheon uses Rackspace OnMetal, this week was chock full of news. Check out all of that – and more – in this week’s digest.
Jun 26, 2014
If your business has yet to tap into the cloud’s full potential, here are some workloads you should consider moving to the cloud.
Jun 26, 2014
Within the startup movement, there are plenty of events happening globally in July 2014. The Rackspace Startup Program is here to keep you up to date with valuable information on events and happenings inside the global startup community. Here is a partial list of global startup events complied by the contributors of StartupDigest.
Jun 26, 2014
If you type “cloud computing + commodity” into a search engine, you’ll see that in recent months, the two have become seen as virtually synonymous. Many industry pundits now sweepingly assert that all cloud services are akin to red durum wheat or West Texas crude. All are identical. All prices and profits will be pushed lower and lower and the biggest players will drive everyone else out of business.
Jun 25, 2014
ObjectRocket now offers free daily backups for any MongoDB instance, of any size, running anywhere.
Jun 25, 2014
Have you ever missed an important instant message when you were out for lunch? Or spent 10 minutes searching emails for a conversation with a colleague only to remember it was over IM? Have you ever thought a conversation would go smoother if only we were face to face? Today, Rackspace is launching Microsoft Lync, a unified communications tool that solves these problems for you and your colleagues
Jun 25, 2014
In a recent guest post entitled “Performance at Scale: SSDs, Silver Bullets and Serialization” for High Scalability, Aaron Sullivan, a Principal Engineer at Rackspace, took a close look at the problem of trying to increase performance across software and hardware systems.
Jun 25, 2014
If you run an ecommerce site, email is critical to your business. In this blog series, we dig deeper into some of the areas ecommerce sites should consider when working with email. Here, we examine transactional email.
Jun 24, 2014
Docker Inc. recently unveiled an exciting new open source project called Libswarm designed to make the using containers in the public cloud a lot easier. Rackspace has been working closely with both Docker and core Docker contributors to make this project possible and accelerate users’ ability to confidently put their containers in the cloud.
Jun 24, 2014
When you’re a digital agency working for ecommerce customers, you have to stay nimble and on top of the latest technologies. At Gracious Studios, we rely heavily on open source and open standards, including the Rackspace Hybrid Cloud.
Jun 24, 2014
In the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, companies are hungry for speed and reliability. Simply put: Performance is key. Starting today, our customers in the APAC region can benefit from the speed, reliability and affordability of Performance Cloud Servers
Jun 24, 2014
We’ve all been trained to think of 'The Cloud' as generic virtual machines on demand à la EC2. At Pantheon we believe this VM-centric compute model will be supplanted by a simpler, vastly more efficient model of cloud computing: containers running on bare-metal infrastructure provisioned via API.
Jun 23, 2014
Have you heard of MapReduce? How about Data Lake or petabytes? If you’ve heard these big data terms before and weren’t sure exactly what they meant, it’s time to find out. CloudU today is launching its “Bigger is Better” Big Data Massive Open Online Course (MOOC).
Jun 23, 2014
Rackspace and ObjectRocket want to inspire developers around the globe to be creative. We want to help them build applications that solve pressing problems – both today and in the future. With that in mind, we’re launching the NoSQL Mobile App Challenge – a new contest through which Rackspace and ObjectRocket will provide the tools that empower developers to build user-friendly, sophisticated mobile apps that have real world impact.
Jun 20, 2014
In this week's digest, we dig into OnMetal, hear from Kabbee about the managed cloud, add chat to Rackspace Webmail and much more.
Jun 19, 2014
Rackspace President Taylor Rhodes took the stage at GigaOm Structure to deliver a keynote on the right (and wrong) way to scale. During his presentation, Taylor unveiled OnMetal. See video of Taylor's keynote here.
Jun 19, 2014
Rackspace Startup Program member Tricky is using the Rackspace Cloud to enable skateboarders to record and share video clips of their tricks.
Jun 19, 2014
Today, Rackspace is waging war on complexity. We want to offer a simpler way to scale. We do this with a new product line called OnMetal.
Jun 19, 2014
When it comes to IT, companies that are operating at scale have been telling us for years that they wish they could get the agility of the multi-tenant public cloud, along with the simplicity, consistent performance, and predictable cost of single-tenant servers. Well, I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to choose between the two anymore. Rackspace today is announcing the early availability of a new product that will change the way the world thinks about scaling production applications. It’s called OnMetal — and it delivers elastic computing that you don’t have to share.
Jun 18, 2014
If you run an ecommerce site, email is critical to your business. In this blog series, we dig deeper into some of the areas ecommerce sites should consider when working with email. Here, we examine managing your reputation.
Jun 17, 2014
Here is a guide of the measures your Cloud Sites team takes in an effort to provide the smoothest transition during a high traffic event.
Jun 17, 2014
London-based Kabbee got fed up with the lack of support it received from its previous hosting provider. It turned to Rackspace for a managed cloud partner to share its journey.
Jun 16, 2014
In this video series, we hear straight from some of OpenStack’s community members from Rackspace about how the fast-growing open source project has evolved, what it needs to continue thriving and what it means to them personally. Here, we talk to Software Developer Craig Vyvial.
Jun 16, 2014
Instant Messaging is almost as critical a business communication tool as email or the telephone. Our Rackspace Email customers have made this clear to us in recent months - and we’ve listened. So please join us in welcoming newest member of the Rackspace Webmail application suite: Chat.
Jun 13, 2014
This week, we share how you can make the most out of your ecommerce email programs, hear from our customer VitusVet.com and let you in on the secrets behind technology mega trend adoption.
Jun 13, 2014
Installing Rackspace Private Cloud is pretty straightforward, but it’s even faster if you have a helpful guide to walk you through installation, basic usage and a few specific use cases. It’s my pleasure to introduce RPC Insights – a new series of blog posts and webinars that will help you build, develop and manage Rackspace Private Cloud deployments.
Jun 12, 2014
When navigating the Rackspace Marketplace for the right solution, I put myself in the customer’s position and try to satisfy their requirements as if they were my own. Here is some advice on navigating the Rackspace Marketplace.
Jun 12, 2014
Daniel Menard, CEO of Double Stallion Games, took the time to talk with the Rackspace Startup Program about what’s at the core of his company’s culture, team cohesion and building a community around customers and product. What follows are Daniel’s thoughts on bringing arcade style games to mobile.
Jun 12, 2014
Let’s be honest, food rarely tastes as good when you make it yourself at home as it does when it’s prepared in a restaurant by a professional chef. It’s one of the reasons that people go out to dinner. You should think of your cloud the same way: you can do it all yourself, or you can trust the experts and use a managed cloud.
Jun 11, 2014
Whose responsibility is it to ensure that Australia's (and the world's) big businesses are embracing technology mega trends?
Jun 11, 2014
If you run an ecommerce site, email is critical to your business. In this blog series, we'll dig deeper into some of the areas ecommerce sites should consider when working with email.
Jun 10, 2014
In his keynote at DockerCon in San Francisco, Rackspace CTO John Engates showcased how Rackspace is working with Docker to develop native cloud support for Docker that will work with any cloud. Here's video from the talk.
Jun 10, 2014
This infographic visualizes some of the latest research on customer buying behaviors, and the stages customers pass through while deciding to purchase.
Jun 10, 2014
Designing scalability, availability and fault-tolerance into applications and databases from the very start is the new imperative. Cloud computing has enabled a technology boom. However, many companies still struggle to keep their heads above water when it comes to database scalability
Jun 10, 2014
When you’re launching a startup, you have to trust that your cloud provider is going to prepare you for success. Support and confidence are imperative. When we launched VitusVet.com earlier this year, choosing Rackspace as our cloud provider was a no-brainer. I had been a Rackspace customer since 2005 and was well versed in the power of Fanatical Support. There was no other provider I would trust to help launch my new venture.
Jun 09, 2014
Docker is the next generation of virtualization and we’re proud to be on the cutting edge of one of the major transformations in IT. We have been working in close partnership with core Docker contributors for more than four months to make the code stronger. Our hope is that the Docker open source project will be a key component of a planet scale cloud.
Jun 09, 2014
After nearly a year of discussion, the OpenStack board launched the DefCore process with 10 principles that set us on path towards a validated interoperability standard. We created the concept of “designated sections” to address concerns that using API tests to determine core would undermine commercial and community investment in a working, shared upstream implementation.
Jun 09, 2014
Cloud Foundry Summit kicks off today in San Francisco. At the event, I will be co-presenting about integration between Cloud Foundry and OpenStack.
Jun 06, 2014
This week, we share our definition of managed cloud, hear from our customer mShopper, get ready for IRCE and much more.
Jun 06, 2014
The OpenStack Summit is about relationships. As developers, we meet up twice a year at the Summit and then return home and resume communication via IRC and email. Spending time in person with other members of the community gives you the opportunity to form a bond and, more importantly, build trust – a community without trust can’t thrive. Over the past few weeks, I’ve had time to reflect on OpenStack Summit Atlanta. Here, I’d like to share some of my thoughts.
Jun 05, 2014
IRCE is one of the largest ecommerce events in the world, and 2014 looks like it will prove to be bigger than ever. IRCE is celebrating 10 years of bringing digital retailers together, and Rackspace will be representing in style.
Jun 05, 2014
Rackspace Startup Program member Global Material Exchange (GMEX) has built its online marketplace for industrial metals on the Rackspace Managed Cloud.
Jun 05, 2014
Data processing platforms do not exist in siloes. That is why it is increasingly important for Rackspace to provide interoperability between datastores. This enables customers to choose the best technology for their data processing needs, without being restricted to a single tool. For this post, we will look at two of our most popular data platforms: our ObjectRocket MongoDB service and our Hadoop-based Cloud Big Data Platform service.
Jun 04, 2014
Are you still clinging to your trusty old server that’s gracefully aging towards obsolescence? Perhaps you are still running important applications on older servers with old operating systems because they’re “good enough” and still “work fine.” In many respects, your old server is like a trusty old car. You know where the kinks are and it gets you where you need to go. But lurking below the surface of that trusty old car, and your old server, can be hidden risks that can result in very big problems, even dangers, usually when least expected.
Jun 04, 2014
At some point, most busy, successful people — and busy, successful businesses — find it wise to focus on what they do best and let specialists do the rest. That’s a big part of the appeal of what we at Rackspace call managed cloud.
Jun 03, 2014
Big data is here! And as we head to Hadoop Summit this week, here are three things we're excited to talk to the community about.
Jun 03, 2014
mShopper, a Rackspace customer, greatly improved page load times and saved money doing it on the Rackspace Cloud.
Jun 02, 2014
Here, I address one of the common questions I get from customers: How do I use Rackspace Auto Scale to enable a number of servers to increase and shrink based on load?
Jun 02, 2014
CommVault, a Rackspace Marketplace partner, recently attended Rackspace PartnerPalooza 2. Here are some of our takeaways.
May 30, 2014
The push for patent validity is having a direct impact on how patent trolls do business. This is evidenced by Erich Spangenberg announcing that he will step down as head of IPNav, a well-known patent troll with which Rackspace has battled for years.
May 30, 2014
Traditionally, April and May mark the busiest months of year for our Sustainability team, which is part of our Corporate Social Responsibility Team (CSR). Yes, there is the obvious Earth Day celebration that takes place during that time, but I want to share some of the highlights from the last six weeks on what the team is working on here at Rackspace.
May 30, 2014
This week, sustainability shines, Engagency talks about its Sitecore business, we welcome the dawn of managed cloud and much more. Check it out in this week’s digest.
May 29, 2014
It’s still early days, but there is a fast growing segment of cloud customers who want a partner to do the heavy lifting for them. They want someone to manage the day-to-day operations that keep their workloads and their businesses running. They want a managed cloud.
May 29, 2014
Within the startup movement, there are plenty of events happening globally in June 2014. The Rackspace Startup Program is here to keep you up to date with valuable information on events and happenings inside the global startup community. Here is a partial list of global startup events complied by the contributors of StartupDigest.
May 29, 2014
This infographic helps decipher some of the key differences between three of the most popular open source CMS platforms: WordPress, Drupal and Joomla.
May 28, 2014
In this video series, we hear straight from some of OpenStack’s community members from Rackspace about how the fast-growing open source project has evolved, what it needs to continue thriving and what it means to them personally. Here, we talk to Software Developer Diane Fleming.
May 28, 2014
So you’ve made up your mind that you’re going to move workloads onto a service provider’s infrastructure. Now you’re faced with a big question: should I rebuild my environment while migrating to avoid more disruption later? Here are eight pros and a few cons to consider when making your decision.
May 27, 2014
Many companies that came to prominence in the age of the internet understand that their brands exists both on and offline. However, more traditional brick and mortar companies—those that sold goods when a shopping cart was something you physically pushed in a store— may find themselves struggling with creating their online brand. Here are three considerations for those companies as they look to ramp up their online presence.
May 27, 2014
Having a dedicated team of Rackspace Sitecore hosting specialists a phone call away means that Engagency can stay focused on what we do best. Freeing up those cycles lets us please our customers by providing a level of support that would have been impossible otherwise, while at the same time letting us focus on accelerating Engagency's success as a business.
May 23, 2014
At the OpenStack Summit Atlanta, thousands of developers, operators and users got together for five days to discuss and share the incredible strides made possible in their world due to OpenStack. Here are some of the themes that I heard over and over again during conversations and presentations
May 23, 2014
In this week's digest we warn about unmanaged clouds, hear from Alex and Ani about scale, highlight a bad day for patent reform and much more.
May 22, 2014
Geekdom-based startup ParLevel Systems is looking to disrupt the vending machine industry with a plug and play monitoring and management system.
May 22, 2014
Business is no longer just nine-to-five. It doesn’t wait for you to be at your desk. Heck, in today’s world of fast-paced business transactions and telecommuting, you may not even have a desk. Your employees need access to their email – it’s the lifeline of business communication, anytime, anywhere. With Rackspace Hosted Exchange you can access synced mail, contacts, calendars, tasks and notes from your desktop, browser, tablet and mobile device. Let’s take a brief look at each.
May 22, 2014
Join me (Rackspace CTO John Engates) Wednesday, May 28 at 2:00 p.m. EDT for a webcast during which I'll preview new trends in virtualization and provide insight into the challenges and payoffs of moving from virtualization to hybrid cloud.
May 22, 2014
This week, Rackspace UK placed sixth on the Great Place To Work Institute’s UK’s Best Workplaces list (we were recognised in the large category of companies with 500-plus employees). And while that recognition was enough to elate us all; we also achieved Master Status, which is awarded to companies that have been on the list for 10 consecutive years. Rackspace is just the fourth organisation to achieve Master Status.
May 21, 2014
Score one for the patent trolls. It is beyond disappointing to write this, but the Senate Democratic Leadership today shelved the patent litigation reform legislation that could have dealt a major blow to patent trolls.
May 21, 2014
You’ve heard it before: information security isn’t easy. There’s no perfect security policy or piece of technology that will protect your business from all attacks. However, security is a process and processes can always be improved. Last month, the great folks at Accruent invited me to talk about this topic at the annual Accruent Insights 2014 conference held in Austin, Texas. Its users wanted to know more about the Target breach and the Heartbleed attack, as well as strategies for strengthening their security safeguards against unknown threats.
May 21, 2014
On this Thursday's Office Hours Hangout (1 p.m. CDT Thursday, May 22), we'll discuss mobile strategy and how to focus your company's mobile efforts.
May 21, 2014
Most system administrators are not only concerned with improving IT capabilities, but also how to best transition to a new environment. 'How do I get my app, website, database,or development environment onto a new infrastructure, with the least amount of hassle?' Every day, Rackspace assists our customers with hundreds of migrations from websites, to applications, to databases. Here are some of our key best practices for a successful migration.
May 20, 2014
Last week I attended my first OpenStack Summit, which was hugely successful in helping me get up-to-speed on the latest developments in open source. But during my dozens of conversations with some of technology’s top thinkers, I couldn’t help but wonder: Where are all the women?
May 20, 2014
For a hyper-growth multi-channel retailer like Alex and Ani, it’s all about scale. We have to be ready for the peak moments, and our ecommerce platform has to be prepped to handle whatever comes our way.
May 20, 2014
Cloud computing is an ever more powerful business tool, when properly managed. But the unmanaged clouds that most vendors are selling come with a dark side that is seldom disclosed. If they were consumer appliances or prescription drugs, these clouds would be tagged with a list of warnings.
May 19, 2014
Abandoned shopping carts are the bane of ecommerce stores. Here are three reasons customers abandon their shopping carts without purchase, and some steps you can take to address them.
May 19, 2014
Historically, IT managers and leaders have relied on tools like TCO, or “Total Cost of Ownership,” to analyze and stack rank various projects and IT priorities. This approach works well when the types of application services being delivered aren’t changing much; it’s simply a cost comparison. Unfortunately, this approach does not account for leveraging cloud technologies with utility fee models or service provider expertise.
May 16, 2014
At the OpenStack “Juno” Summit in Atlanta this week, more than 4,500 people packed the convention center to learn, share and experience the awesome that is the OpenStack community. Here are my three key observations from OpenStack Summit Atlanta.
May 16, 2014
This week, we took OpenStack Summit by storm; shared our stance on the cloud price war; and heard about the power of human support from an ecommerce customer. Check out all that and more this week in the Rackspace digest.
May 15, 2014
DigitalFilm Tree, a Rackspace customer, talks about its OpenStack journey as it builds more of its pre- and post-production business on OpenStack and Rackspace.
May 15, 2014
I recently attended the CIO Europe Summit, hosted by CDM Media. There was a first for me at this event: a CTO for a major global bank gave a 30-minute talk on DevOps to his peers.
May 15, 2014
Rackspace Startup Program member Bon Affair put a new twist on wine spritzer, and Rackspace specialists helped it pop on Shark Tank.
May 14, 2014
OpenStack Summit Atlanta this week crushed any doubt about whether people are taking OpenStack and doing great things with it. The Atlanta Summit – the largest so far with roughly 4,700 attendees – was concrete proof that OpenStack and the community around it are maturing and adoption is increasing at a tremendous clip.
May 14, 2014
Rackspace Lead Cloud Evangelist Scott Sanchez (@scottsanchez) and I (Niki Acosta, Rackspace Cloud Evangelista (@nikiacosta)) sat down with SiliconANGLE’s theCUBE this week at OpenStack Summit Atlanta to talk about OpenStack today and OpenStack’s future.
May 13, 2014
If you want to be an OpenStack contributor, where do you begin? A trio of Rackers explained it best in a breakout session at OpenStack Summit Atlanta.
May 13, 2014
Last week, the Federal Circuit overturned the District Court judgment in Oracle v. Google, finding that the Java API is copyrightable. This move overturns the expectations of businesses and developers and is likely to negatively impact how they leverage APIs going forward.
May 13, 2014
At OpenStack Summit Atlanta, a new breed of OpenStack user was introduced: the superuser. These superusers turned to OpenStack for speed.
May 13, 2014
Dafiti is the fastest growing fashion operator in Brazil. Our ecommerce sites need to perform at their best, which is why we trust Rackspace.
May 13, 2014
In his keynote presentation this week at OpenStack Summit Atlanta, Rackspace Cloud Architect Troy Toman called on the community to build bridges between operators and developers and to work together to co-create the future of cloud computing. Here is full video of Troy’s keynote.
May 12, 2014
In the spirit of creating a truly open ecosystem for clouds of all kinds, the OpenStack Marketplace lets interested users and developers browse products, services, applications, consultants and training solutions. It also lets users compare different OpenStack providers to choose the right service or get the tools they need to build and host it themselves.
May 12, 2014
As we go into this week of work together at OpenStack Summit Atlanta I want people to remember that what we are doing is no small thing. It requires real coordination, cooperation and sustained effort to build this interoperable cloud operating system, real conviction to create the foundation on which the future will be built.
May 12, 2014
There’s been a lot of talk lately about cloud pricing. The perception seems to be that to tap the power of the cloud you need only acquire some low-cost infrastructure and you’re good to go. This is a false premise.
May 09, 2014
Trove is a Database/Datastore as a service and is the newest integrated OpenStack project. You’re sure to hear more about Trove at OpenStack Summit Atlanta next week, but today I’d like to take a walk down memory lane with Trove, and talk about how it went from a small project started within Rackspace to the treasure it is today.
May 09, 2014
This week we prepare for OpenStack Summit Atlanta, highlight our activities at EMC World, hear from DevOps customer Ranker and much more.
May 08, 2014
Today we’ve made two key updates to our Cloud Big Data Platform powered by Apache Hadoop, including support for the latest Apache Hadoop distribution from Hortonworks (Version 2.1) for deployment on Cloud Big Data Platform.
May 08, 2014
In April, the OpenStack Foundation released Icehouse, the ninth release of the OpenStack cloud platform. The general consensus seems to be that while Icehouse has some compelling new features, the focus of this version of OpenStack is on enterprise-grade readiness. Here's a look at what makes Icehouse enterprise-grade.
May 08, 2014
Rackspace's sponsorship of ZeroVM runs deep. The company has formed a three-year partnership with the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) to undertake advanced research projects that investigate how to make cloud computing with ZeroVM more valuable for everyone.
May 08, 2014
I’ve gotten a lot of questions about hybrid cloud. What’s the right approach? How long does migration take? What needs to be done in preparation? What benefits can our organization expect to receive? Today, I thought it might be valuable to share some answers, which I did recently at EMC World.
May 08, 2014
Rackspace Startup Program member TrintMe makes a social app that lets you share your true feelings with your friends without the fear of rejection.
May 07, 2014
Need to kick start your ecommerce platform? Looking to sharpen your digital strategy? Rackspace will have a team of experts on hand next week at the 2014 Magento Imagine eCommerce Worldwide Conference in Las Vegas. The event, for which Rackspace is a Diamond sponsor, runs Monday, May 12 through Wednesday, May 14.
May 07, 2014
When I became an infrastructure architect at a large, privately owned consumer-goods store, I was so excited to be on the technology leading edge, a thought leader, and a trendsetter. I imagined all of the cool, new things I’d get to use, build, design, and possibly deploy. It was like playing with Legos or Lincoln Logs, except this was the real world and people were going to consume solutions that I designed so I knew they had better be good.
May 07, 2014
In this video series, we hear straight from some of OpenStack’s community members from Rackspace about how the fast-growing open source project has evolved, what it needs to continue thriving and what it means to them personally. Here, we talk to Software Developer Anne Gentle.
May 07, 2014
Performance issues are at the heart of why many apps don’t meet user expectations and die a slow death. Here are five performance weaknesses that impact the end user experience of any app.
May 06, 2014
As CloudU continues to extend its reach beyond its online presence, the program will sponsor the first ever Open BigCloud and Open Compute Project (OCP) Workshop at The University of Texas in San Antonio (UTSA). The event will take place Wednesday, May 7 and Thursday, May 8 on the UTSA campus.
May 06, 2014
VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager is used to orchestrate the failover of a group of virtual machines (VMs) from one location to another. It’s a really useful tool to have in your arsenal to tackle the daunting task of disaster recovery (DR), especially if you take a little time to plan for how and when it will be used.
May 06, 2014
Development is all about context. To have engineers digging into server issues and bouncing back and forth between developing and server management results in a huge loss of context. Developers require concentration and jumping from coding to fighting fires sets back progress. With Rackspace DevOps Automation Service, our developers can focus on code.
May 06, 2014
Rackspace will be out in full force at OpenStack Summit Atlanta next week. Throughout the week we're hosting a number of speaking sessions, a keynote presentation from Troy Toman and a bunch of other awesome events. Here's what we'll be up to in Atlanta.
May 05, 2014
Six months ago we launched our most powerful model of cloud servers that are designed to provide an unparalleled level of application performance—and starting 13 May, our Australian customers can also leverage the reliability of Rackspace Performance Cloud Servers, from our Sydney data centre along with our US and UK data centres.
May 05, 2014
The right hosted email partner can be a game changer for business by helping to maintain email accessibility and performance while keeping employees focused on the high-value tasks that drive a competitive advantage. This infographic highlights some mind-boggling numbers related to business email.
May 02, 2014
For an upcoming webinar, “Challenges in Operating an OpenStack Private Cloud,” we’ve gathered a trio of experts who have spent their careers in Rackspace support and now specialize in supporting customers in our Rackspace Private Cloud organization.
May 02, 2014
This week, fans slung drinks to Scoble with Slingr, we showcased our plans for EMC World, we shared a Project Solum update and much more. Check it all out in this week’s digest.
May 01, 2014
In this video series, we hear straight from some of OpenStack’s top contributors from Rackspace about how the fast-growing open source project has evolved, what it needs to continue thriving, what it means to them personally, and why they are active contributors. Here, we talk to Software Development Manager Glen Campbell.
May 01, 2014
Rackspace empowers Startup Program member Slingr, a location-based gifting app, to focus on its product, venues and users without worrying about infrastructure. See it in action in this video featuring Robert Scoble.
May 01, 2014
Within the startup movement, there are plenty of events happening globally in May 2014. The Rackspace Startup Program is here to keep you up to date with valuable information on events and happenings inside the global startup community. Here is a partial list of global startup events complied by the contributors of StartupDigest.
Apr 30, 2014
A customer approached us recently with a new NoSQL-data requirement for an instrumentation system we had helped them with before. Here's how we helped them migrate from Redis to MongoDB.
Apr 30, 2014
In a recent webinar, we showcased how to embrace big data in your business. Here, you can view the webinar in full.
Apr 30, 2014
At EMC World next week, Rackspace and EMC will showcase our partnership and highlight how together, we build best-in-class hybrid cloud and enterprise storage solutions that are a best fit for our customers.
Apr 29, 2014
After extensive testing earlier this year and learning what we did about Rackspace’s Performance Cloud Servers, we decided it was high time to put our own recommendations to the test. So we approached a long-time common Clustrix-Rackspace customer about consolidation and migration of their production social network gaming environment.
Apr 29, 2014
In this video series, we hear straight from some of OpenStack’s top contributors from Rackspace about how the fast-growing open source project has evolved, what it needs to continue thriving, what it means to them personally, and why they are active contributors. Here, we talk to Principal Engineer Chuck Thier.
Apr 29, 2014
In this guest post, Rackspace customer Kurtosys highlights what drew it to a hybrid cloud architecture powered by Rackspace specialists.
Apr 28, 2014
After less than six months in development, Project Solum has accomplished the first development milestone (Milestone 1). This important event allows deployment of code from Github via Heat to generate a running app deployed to Docker containers using a generalized (Heroku) build pack for the app stack.
Apr 28, 2014
Over the last three years, we’ve seen the emergence of hosted hybrid clouds as a great alternative for enterprises looking for a balance between the agility and flexibility public clouds provide and the security and control of private clouds. As a result, the way enterprises think about support needs to change.
Apr 28, 2014
EMC World 2014 kicks off next week in Las Vegas and Rackspace will be there in full force highlighting our decade-long partnership with EMC and discussing how we’re working together to redefine the hybrid cloud. Here’s a look at what we’re up to as EMC World rocks the Venetian Monday, May 5 through Thursday, May 8.
Apr 25, 2014
Rackspace Training for OpenStack recently headed to Palo Alto, Calif. to give Stanford University students and professors hands-on experience with the OpenStack cloud project. Check out this video to hear what the Stanford community has to say about OpenStack.
Apr 25, 2014
This week, we highlighted how we helped customers through Heartbleed, showed you how to use Cloud Monitoring on Rackspace Private Cloud, prepped for the Big Data revolution and much more. Take a look at all that and more in this week’s digest.
Apr 24, 2014
We have a saying in Texas: Bigger is better. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that CloudU, based in San Antonio, Texas, is getting bigger, too. To kick-off CloudU Big Data Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) activities, we’ve asked Dave Feinleib to be the featured author of this learning series.
Apr 24, 2014
Rackspace Startup Program member StudyOnBoard leverages the Rackspace Cloud to build it's platform for online group study rooms.
Apr 24, 2014
Here we walk you through what's required to set up Cloud Monitoring on Rackspace Private Cloud.
Apr 23, 2014
It is no accident that we have recently seen a surge in the amount of interest in big data. Businesses are faced with unprecedented opportunities to understand their customers, achieve efficiencies and predict future trends thanks to the convergence of a number of technologies. Businesses need to take every opportunity to store everything they can. Lost data represents lost opportunities to understand customer behaviour and interests, drivers for efficiency and industry trends.
Apr 23, 2014
My last post talked about the benefits of Object Storage today. My next few posts will talk about the future direction of Object Storage technology, and the upcoming features that you should be aware of. Today, I will talk about Erasure Coding. Once again, this post will be Swift-centric, but many of these concepts will likely be embraced by other platforms as well.
Apr 23, 2014
Here are five questions you should ask before starting a migration to Rackspace (or any other hosting provider). We'll also be holding a Google+ Hangout out on Thursday, April 24 with other Rackers to discuss these questions in more detail.
Apr 23, 2014
Last week, we gave you a sneak peek at the instant messaging and video calling capabilities that are coming in Hosted Microsoft Lync at Rackspace. Today, Hosted Microsoft Lync is available through an Early Access program (beta).
Apr 22, 2014
At the Percona MySQL conference, Rackspace sat down with SiliconANGLE’s 'The Cube' to discuss the conference, the community and the work Rackspace is doing in the data space. Here is the full video and some key takeaways about open source databases and the cloud.
Apr 22, 2014
How can you make sure the information in your email remains private and only accessible to the intended recipients? Can you risk hours or even days of email downtime due to a virus that employees unknowingly spread?
Apr 22, 2014
In this video series, we hear straight from some of OpenStack’s top contributors from Rackspace about how the fast-growing open source project has evolved, what it needs to continue thriving, what it means to them personally, and why they are active contributors. Here, we talk to Software Developer Ed Leafe.
Apr 21, 2014
It’s time for online businesses and retailers to put an emphasis on mobile development rather than treating it as an afterthought.
Apr 21, 2014
Strategising for spikes in your online business is really important yet, astonishingly, many organizations, namely some here in Australia, are still not doing it effectively. I believe that ineffective preparation for online spikes is inexcusable with the technology available today.
Apr 21, 2014
Rackers throughout the company worked long hours to provide expertise and service at scale to help our customers combat the Heartbleed OpenSSL vulnerability.
Apr 18, 2014
This week we hear from Performance Cloud Servers customers, get Cloud Databases monitoring in the Control Panel, break up with an online store and much more.
Apr 17, 2014
“Big Data” is one of the biggest buzzwords in the technology industry today – you can’t read the tech press or look at social media without seeing it. But what do we mean by Big Data, and what’s wrong with our old friend “little data” that has served us well for 30 odd years.
Apr 17, 2014
Rackspace Startup Program member WayScout uses the Rackspace Cloud to power its app that empowers users to create and share localized mobile guides of cities.
Apr 17, 2014
Since releasing Performance Cloud Servers late last year, we've been thrilled by the response from customers. We knew that enhancing speed, throughput, reliability and scalability would be embraced, but it's still heartening to hear about the measurable impact directly from customers. Here, we highlight some of the most tangible performance gains we’ve seen and heard about.
Apr 16, 2014
In this post, I will discuss what benefits Object Storage can provide for you today. As there are a variety of solutions to choose from, each offering different pros, cons and price-points, I will focus on OpenStack Swift, the open-source Object Storage component of OpenStack, as it is vendor-agnostic and freely available to everyone.
Apr 16, 2014
Cloud Databases instances are already preconfigured with a default set of metrics, including CPU, memory, disk usage, average load, network and MySQL specific metrics. You can monitor both real-time statistics and historical trends in usage using our API and our CLI. However, you have told us that you want that capability with a friendly user interface too. Today we extend monitoring of Cloud Databases into our Control Panel.
Apr 16, 2014
Recent activity with the Heartbleed vulnerability has the industry reeling and re-evaluating their security controls. We recently posted about the Rackspace response to this event, but while security is top-of-mind we'd like to share a new white paper on the topic of "Cloud Security in an Agile World."
Apr 15, 2014
It’s estimated that 80 percent to 90 percent of businesses use some type of instant messaging to connect and collaborate with colleagues and customers. But using third-party instant messaging that does not integrate with your Outlook and Exchange can be cumbersome and a waste of valuable time and resources. This is where Hosted Lync by Rackspace can help.
Apr 15, 2014
In this video series, we hear straight from some of OpenStack’s top contributors from Rackspace about how the fast-growing open source project has evolved, what it needs to continue thriving, what it means to them personally, and why they are active contributors. Here, we talk to Product Manager Jarret Raim.
Apr 15, 2014
On April 16, we'll host "Stop the bleeding: How to patch Heartbleed at scale," a live Google+ Hangout where Rackspace security and operations specialists will join me to discuss the unique challenges presented by the Heartbleed vulnerability and how Rackspace proactively responded.
Apr 15, 2014
Rackspace helped the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) move to a fully optimized cloud platform built on open standards and we now run the majority of our external online services in the Rackspace Cloud.
Apr 14, 2014
Over the past 12 months, I have spoken with a number of companies that are currently conducting OpenStack evaluations or using it in small projects. Almost all of these users are current VMware customers with legacy application workloads that understand that OpenStack is not something they can ignore, but they often struggle to understand its true value and how it should impact their current vSphere deployments.
Apr 14, 2014
Hello Website Owner, We have something we need to talk about. It's not you, it’s not me, it’s your website. Consider me one of the legions of disgruntled web shoppers who’ve had it up to their https with underperforming sites. But in the interest of fairness, I wanted to let you in on the top five offenses—all of which you are guilty of.
Apr 13, 2014
Updated April 12, 2014: Part of our Fanatical Support promise is ensuring the security and health of your solution, and our Rackspace infrastructure and internal systems. When the entire Linux Community, including Rackspace, was notified of the “Heartbleed” vulnerability within OpenSSL (the encryption software found in many Linux systems), we immediately took action to audit, identify, and remediate any customer devices, and Rackspace systems and infrastructure that may have been exposed to this vulnerability.
Apr 11, 2014
In this week's digest we help you battle the 'Heartbleed' vulnerability, talk about why we craft OpenStack, get ready for ChefConf and much more.
Apr 10, 2014
In this edition of Straight Up Startup we talk to Clayton Selby, founder of SocialREST, a tool that uses conversion metrics information to close the referral loop on social media.
Apr 10, 2014
What happens when it’s time to send that $1 million proposal that could take your business to the next level, and your email is down? To ensure your email works as promised, Rackspace Hosted Exchange offers an unmatched, financially-backed 100 percent uptime guarantee.
Apr 09, 2014
Part of our Fanatical Support promise is to ensure the security and health of your systems. So when the entire Linux Community, including Rackspace, was notified yesterday of the 'Heartbleed' vulnerability within OpenSSL, we began plans to proactively patch your affected servers where we could.
Apr 09, 2014
At ChefConf 2014, we'll talk about how Rackspace uses DevOps and Chef.
Apr 09, 2014
Rackspace and our team of DevOps Automation specialists are headed to San Francisco next week for ChefConf 2014! Be sure to drop by booth #126 to find out more about our DevOps Automation Service and managed support for DevOps tools to help automate the process of deploying and scaling applications.
Apr 09, 2014
In this video series, we hear straight from some of OpenStack’s top contributors from Rackspace about how the fast-growing open source project has evolved, what it needs to continue thriving, what it means to them personally, and why they are active contributors. Here, we talk to Principal Architect Kurt Griffiths.
Apr 08, 2014
In this guest post, Rackspace ecommerce customer Digital Options highlights how Performance Cloud Servers helped its website perform five to eight times faster.
Apr 08, 2014
Whether you are developing a new app, looking to move Exchange or SharePoint or building/moving your website into a hosted environment, the one question we consistently get here at Rackspace is: “Exactly what infrastructure do I need to meet my specific requirements?” To help answer that we’ve built an easy to use online tool designed to help you determine the infrastructure architecture and set of products you need to get started.
Apr 07, 2014
Responsive web design—where the same HTML is styled according to the end user’s device—is one way to improve engagement on mobile screens, which is especially necessary for ecommerce shops that risk losing a sale if their mobile site isn’t up to snuff.
Apr 07, 2014
2014 is a big year for our Partner Network as we sharpen our partners’ expertise in the hybrid cloud to assist them in becoming cloud specialists. To do that, we’re refreshing and simplifying our Partner Network to make it more competitive and providing more opportunities to learn the latest cloud and hybrid technologies.
Apr 06, 2014
Out of the many community programs that Rackspace lends it time and talent, one particular student program that has received targeted mentoring is the CyberPatriot competition, a nationwide high school cyber security challenge created by the Air Force Academy.
Apr 04, 2014
This week's digest features product updates, webinar recaps, customer stories and much more.
Apr 04, 2014
PyCon 2014 kicks off Wednesday in Montreal, and a cadre of Rackspace specialists will be on hand hosting informative workshops, speaking sessions and demonstrations. Be sure to find us at the show. Here's a list of what we're up to at PyCon 2014.
Apr 03, 2014
Querium, a Rackspace Startup Program member, offers a mobile learning software platform that delivers personalized, bite-sized lessons to help students master critical skills to prepare them for college and beyond.
Apr 03, 2014
Cloud Sites backups are the No. 1 feature you've requested. Today, the wait for backups is over with CodeGuard.
Apr 03, 2014
In a recent webinar, we showcased “Using DevOps Tools to Achieve Continuous Integration.” A full recording of that webinar and the presentation slides are available now.
Apr 02, 2014
If a person posts a bad comment or negative experience with your company, and it goes viral, is anyone in your company monitoring for it? How about if it’s in a foreign language? Is anyone at your company equipped to quickly respond to this urgent situation if it’s not in your native tongue?
Apr 02, 2014
This week we’re bringing you Cloud Images, a cool new feature powered by OpenStack that opens up the cloud even more. The free service allows you to import, export and share images with other users.
Apr 01, 2014
Today we launched suppressions in Cloud Monitoring. Suppressions add the ability to schedule a time wherein a specified set of notifications will be muted.
Apr 01, 2014
In this guest post, Rackspace customer Troux Technologies highlights how a hybrid cloud and trust in its cloud provider help it succeed.
Apr 01, 2014
Starting today you can customize configuration settings for Cloud Databases instances using the API or Trove command line tool. This capability allows you to optimize configuration settings based on the needs of your workload.
Mar 31, 2014
Today is an important day in the fight against patent trolls. I urge you to contact your senators and have your voice heard.
Mar 31, 2014
Last week, we hosted a live webinar, “Making Choices: What Kind of Relationship are you Seeking with your Database?,” in which we dug into the options available for the database tier of modern applications, particularly in the cloud. Check out the full webinar and slide presentation here.
Mar 28, 2014
We’ve had an incredible week at Rackspace, from launching ObjectRocket in our Hong Kong data center to celebrating the first anniversary of the Open Cloud Academy, our educational training program based in downtown San Antonio. Read all about it in this week’s edition of the weekly digest.
Mar 28, 2014
Last week, I attended the one year anniversary party of the Open Cloud Academy, a Rackspace-sponsored educational organization designed to arm students with affordable IT training and industry standard certifications. Tucked away in the same building as Geekdom in downtown San Antonio, this hands-on program is the perfect solution for people who love technology but […]
Mar 27, 2014
Within the startup movement, there are plenty of events happening globally in April 2014. The Rackspace Startup Program is here to keep you up to date with valuable information on events and happenings inside the global startup community. Here is a partial list of global startup events complied by the contributors of StartupDigest.
Mar 27, 2014
In this blog post, we show you how to set up a new user with Role-Based Access Control and apply container-level access control with Cloud Files Access Control Lists.
Mar 26, 2014
At Rackspace, one of the key components of our focus on service and Fanatical Support is to help guide you through the best solutions for your specific environment. To do this, we have a team of Rackspace Cloud Specialists at the ready.
Mar 26, 2014
Just 13 months after we acquired industrial strength MongoDB Data-as-a-Service ObjectRocket, the service is now available in our Hong Kong data center. This follows the launch of ObjectRocket in the UK earlier this year.
Mar 26, 2014
Rackspace would not be able to innovate faster or operate at massive level of scale without a DevOps culture and we're continuing to deepen our DevOps expertise. With DevOps Automation Service our DevOps specialists share what we've learned with you.
Mar 25, 2014
Performing at the top of your game is key. That’s true for everything: from running a marathon to running a business – performing your best drives success. Here, Rackspace customer MapMyFitness talks about how a hybrid cloud helps it achieve peak performance.
Mar 24, 2014
While it may be difficult to predict the weather, predicting how the weather impacts consumer purchases is becoming easier. During a SXSW panel, Vikram Somaya, General Manager of the WeatherFX division at The Weather Company, discussed the influence of weather on sales.
Mar 24, 2014
At the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit 2014, Rackspace and Acquity Group will co-present "Bridging the Digital Divide with Enterprise Digital Platform."
Mar 21, 2014
In this week's digest we hear from SumAll, a Rackspace customer; highlight a new Cloud Block Storage feature; discuss end-of-life for Windows Server 2003; and much more.
Mar 21, 2014
Maintaining host files on standard *nix system has been traditionally done by hand. This becomes a challenge as the number of systems grows and is more true in the cloud model, where you might add/delete servers at a higher rate. One solution would be to use DNS and use a local zone to store your host name to IP mapping. If you are using Chef for automation, here is another example on how to automatically generate the host file entries.
Mar 20, 2014
Rackspace is sponsoring the 2014 eCommerce Expo March 26 and March 27 at Australia’s Melbourne Conference & Exhibition Centre. Arrian Mehis, Director of Technical Services at Rackspace, will present 'Leveraging the Cloud for Seasonal Peaks.'
Mar 20, 2014
In this startup spotlight we look at Xtrant, a cloud-based project platform built on the Rackspace Cloud.
Mar 20, 2014
At DeveloperWeek Conference & Festival 2014, Rackspace Director of Training and Education Tony Campbell showcased how to develop on OpenStack. Here are his presentation slides.
Mar 19, 2014
Five early-stage startups will showcase what they’ve built this Friday at Spartups Demo Day 2014 at Rackspace San Francisco (SFO). The startups will highlight what they’ve created during the Spartups program, a four-month mentorship-driven accelerator program.
Mar 19, 2014
Here, Rackspace Marketplace partner VictorOps discusses making remote engagement a reality for DevOps teams.
Mar 19, 2014
Starting today you can create copies of existing Cloud Block Storage volumes from the Control Panel with Volume Cloning.
Mar 19, 2014
I had the privilege of co-hosting a workshop on how to think about designing the right thing. During our presentation at Mind the Product 2013, we talked about how our teams use four practical tools to execute product design: Desired Outcomes, Product Box, Back Planning, and Requests and Agreements.
Mar 18, 2014
Windows Server 2003 is fast approaching its end-of-life. Microsoft has announced the official date for end-of-life support as July 14, 2015. While many administrators are well aware of this fact, there are still nearly a million servers across the globe currently running live applications on Windows Server 2003.
Mar 18, 2014
In this guest post, Rackspace customer SumAll showcases the scale, performance and cost improvements it achieved when moving its MongoDB from AWS to ObjectRocket by Rackspace.
Mar 17, 2014
For the last several weeks I’ve been explaining the setup of my home Rackspace Private Cloud and OpenStack lab. We've gone from bare-metal to a seven-node cloud. Here's a recap of what we've done so far.
Mar 17, 2014
We had dozens of Rackspace specialists on the scene at SXSW in Austin last week. Throughout the festival we had a full schedule of events, sessions and talks. We also had Rackers covering the latest and greatest tech news and insights. Here’s what we covered before, during and after SXSW 2014.
Mar 14, 2014
In this week's digest, Rackspace specialists head to SXSW; discuss our DevOps tools; highlight the differences between Cloud Foundry and Solum; and much more.
Mar 13, 2014
Held during SXSW, the Slashathon hackathon was like none other - developers had just a half-day to assemble teams, dream up an idea focusing on musical artists and develop a prototype using myriad sponsored technologies available. Then, they had to present it to a panel of judges including rock star and guitar hall-of-famer Slash.
Mar 13, 2014
In recent years, the days before, during and after SXSW have become a playground for announcing new products, from Foursquare in 2009 to Flavors.me in 2010 and TOMS sunglasses in 2011. This year, the spotlight was trained on initiatives and programs designed to help more women build careers in technical and management positions.
Mar 13, 2014
TrueAbility is a Rackspace Startup Program member and Geekdom company building a technical assessment platform on the Rackspace Cloud.
Mar 13, 2014
In less than a month I will become a father. At SXSW this year, I had two particular panels circled in my schedule—Hacking Princess Culture: Girls, Games & Science and Leaning Out: How Online Dads Raise Kids Offline.
Mar 13, 2014
Rackspace recently participated in a CodeDay event during which high school students developed cool projects and got excited about code.
Mar 12, 2014
Today we are releasing the Cloud Orchestration API to help configure and deploy your cloud stack topologies and applications.
Mar 12, 2014
Transmission II: Domelandia, an exclusive SXSW party, was streamed live online by Rackspace customer Blastro Networks and the Rackspace Cloud powered the broadcast.
Mar 12, 2014
At SXSW we unveiled our newest program designed specifically for women who are interested in pursuing technology careers, specifically in Linux. The program is called 'Linux for Ladies.'
Mar 12, 2014
This Thursday at 11 a.m. CDT, join Rackspace customer Troux Technologies and Rackspace for a live webinar during which they’ll tell the Troux hybrid journey story.
Mar 12, 2014
Our Rackspace DevOps engineers are specialists in a number DevOps tools and use them to automate your environment through our DevOps Automation Service. Here’s a quick cheat sheet highlighting tools we support.
Mar 11, 2014
Getting an application designed, tested and running, then updating and improving it is no easy task. There is a continuing quest for tooling that delivers automation of this work to allow more focus on what matters most: fast, efficient development. This tooling is often referred to as application “Platform-as-a-Service” or “PaaS.” Unfortunately, this term tends to mask a distinction we’ve found in two types of customer needs leading to different preferred approaches to use of a platform service layer.
Mar 11, 2014
The Rackspace Developer Conference, dubbed 'Rax.io,' is an opportunity for the brilliant technical minds inside our company to engage, educate and empower each other to continue solving really tough problems for customers.
Mar 11, 2014
Microsoft is ending support for Exchange 2003 in just a few weeks. In this infographic, we outline some options to help you determine your next move.
Mar 11, 2014
In this post, Gutensite, a Rackspace customer and Rackspace Marketplace partner highlights how it saved money and increased performance on the Rackspace Cloud.
Mar 11, 2014
With the launch of Rackspace Digital last week at the W Hotel, we introduced our team of digital specialists laser focused on content, commerce and mobile. Over the weekend, as more of SXSW 2014 came alive, Rackspace deployed additional teams of specialists on the ground to engage with event goers at festival venues inside the Austin city limits.
Mar 08, 2014
In the Startup Village at SXSW we've set up a studio to interview startups. One of the first to drop by was Felt, an iPad app that takes the pain out of buying and sending greeting cards.
Mar 08, 2014
At SXSW, Rackspace officially launched Rackspace Digital, a new practice built around our expertise in content, commerce and mobile. Here, we talk to partners about Rackspace Digital.
Mar 08, 2014
This week, we took the patent trolls conversation to SXSW, where Rackspace Special Counsel Alan Schoenbaum joined an all-star lineup of panelists to discuss how we can protect ourselves from the tsunami of patent lawsuits.
Mar 08, 2014
Author, angel investor and brand strategist Gary Vaynerchuk kicked off day one of SXSW Interactive with a blueprint on how to navigate the madness of sensory overload that is SXSW.
Mar 07, 2014
SXSW started off with a crawl - the Startup Crawl, that is - but soon it will be in full swing.
Mar 07, 2014
In this week's digest, SXSW, StartupBus, Windows deployments, NoSQL, a new social support app and much more.
Mar 07, 2014
The StartupBus finals were held this week at Rackspace. More than 30 startups - formed in 72 hours on a cross-country bus trip - competed. Check out which startup won.
Mar 05, 2014
StartupBus revved to Rackspace headquarters this morning in the name of innovation. On each of the seven buses, teams had 72 hours to design, build and launch applications while traveling 60 miles per hour. Check out the arrival of StartupBus and the list of semi-finalists.
Mar 05, 2014
Rackspace is a sponsor of next week's Geeklist-powered Slashathon, a music-focused hackathon founded by former Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash.
Mar 05, 2014
The goal, no matter how complex your application, is to allow anyone on your team to deploy in one step.
Mar 05, 2014
When you're looking for an email hosting provider, it's important to look for one that focuses on business email, not consumer email. There is a difference. Business email is the lifeline of your business. You need a business email hosting provider that understands the mission-critical nature of email for business.
Mar 04, 2014
NoSQL datastores are thriving. This infographic examines the NoSQL landscape and looks at MongoDB, Redis and CouchDB.
Mar 04, 2014
In this post, UK-based charity Help for Heroes highlights how a hybrid cloud provides resilience and security and the ability to scale.
Mar 04, 2014
We're co-sponsoring an Austin Women in Tech networking event on Tuesday, March 6 during SXSW.
Mar 03, 2014
After following the first three posts, we now have a Rackspace Private Cloud powered by OpenStack running with two Controllers (HA) and three Computes. So now what? Well the first thing we need to do is get our hands dirty with the OpenStack Networking component, Neutron, and create a network that our instances can be spun up on.
Mar 03, 2014
Rackspace has created a new team that brings together the experience we have built over the last 14 years supporting the digital engagement platforms for some of the world’s leading brands. This new initiative is called Rackspace Digital.
Feb 28, 2014
In this week's digest, we prepare for SXSW, take home another Stevie Award, take OpenStack for a spin, advance the open cloud movement and much more.
Feb 27, 2014
Rackspace plans to have a massive presence next week at SXSW Interactive – the Austin conference where top tech titans discuss everything from the latest in robotics to the best way to run your websites. Here's a full list of events and happenings and where you can find our Rackspace specialists throughout SXSW.
Feb 27, 2014
Within the startup movement, there are plenty of events happening globally in March 2014. The Rackspace Startup Program is here to keep you up to date with valuable information on events and happenings inside the global startup community. Here is a partial list of global startup events complied by the contributors of StartupDigest.
Feb 27, 2014
In this infographic, we visualize some of the biggest—and most intriguing—sources of data in the world, some from our own customers.
Feb 26, 2014
In this post, I walk though a high-level setup of the Rackspace Private Cloud Sandbox.
Feb 26, 2014
As data evolves and becomes more complex it begs the question, 'What type of relationship are you seeking with your database?'
Feb 26, 2014
How is Rackspace different? It’s a question that I get all the time. When I answer it, I highlight the Rackspace philosophy and focus on our values. Sometimes, showcasing why Rackspace does things a certain way is more effective than talking about what Rackspace does.
Feb 25, 2014
If you want to tap into our SharePoint expertise, we’ve got a deal for you: for $1 million all six of our SharePoint MVPs will work directly with your company, on-site (U.S. only, please!) for a full month.
Feb 25, 2014
Every business wants to execute better; and adopting a DevOps makes better execution possible.
Feb 25, 2014
This week, we’re helping advance the open cloud movement by joining a new open source project – Pivotal’s Cloud Foundry Foundation - as a Platinum sponsor.
Feb 25, 2014
In this guest post, Rackspace Customer TeamSourcing discusses how it uses the Rackspace Cloud and OpenStack to develop and deploy swiftly.
Feb 24, 2014
In the first two posts I covered the basics: what hardware is involved and the basic network services that form the basis of my Rackspace Private Cloud install. In this post, I set up Rackspace Private Cloud to give an OpenStack environment consisting of highly available Controllers running as a pair with services such as the OpenStack APIs, Neutron, Glance and Keystone and three compute servers allowing me flexibility to do some testing.
Feb 24, 2014
The Rackspace Community Team took home a silver award for Best Use of Technology in Customer Service – Computer Services at the eighth annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. This marks Rackspace’s fourth Stevie Award in two years.
Feb 24, 2014
On April 8, 2014, Microsoft will end support for Exchange 2003. What does this mean for you and your business? Here, we discuss your options.
Feb 21, 2014
Voting is now open for sessions at OpenStack Summit Atlanta (May 12 through May 16). Here's a roundup of proposed speaking sessions from Rackspace OpenStack experts. Voting closes Sunday, March 2.
Feb 21, 2014
This week, we prep for SCALE 12x; look at a new partnership to help manage cloud spend; dive into one Racker's home lab; explain some of the differences between OpenStack as a project, product and service; and much more.
Feb 20, 2014
Rackspace Startup Program member Endao is a platform for building Business Process Management (BPM) software with the goal of improving the design and deployment experience.
Feb 20, 2014
Today, Rackspace and Cloud Cruiser are partnering to offer integrated, intelligent financial management software for the Rackspace Private Cloud (RPC).
Feb 19, 2014
M-commerce is not just a buzzword; it's for real. And is worth learning about. Why? Because it can make you money.
Feb 19, 2014
Tomorrow at noon Central, join Rackspace Cloud Evangelists Scott Sanchez and I for “Innovate or Die: Changing Your Mindset About Cloud.” During the live webcast we’ll discuss the mindset shift from traditional IT to DevOps and automation, and highlight why some companies are turning to OpenStack-powered private clouds to fuel innovation.
Feb 19, 2014
Today we break ground on our new UK data centre, which was designed from the ground up to be green.
Feb 18, 2014
To make it easier to manage your cloud on the go, we’ve added some seriously powerful monitoring information to the Rackspace Mobile App for iOS and Android devices.
Feb 18, 2014
There are often questions about the differences between the various OpenStack distributions and offerings. I answer whenever possible by drawing the distinction between OpenStack as the open source project and as the products and services available to help make it a production-ready cloud platform.
Feb 18, 2014
Here, Rackspace customer Appboy highlights how it leverages the Rackspace Hybrid Cloud to scale its leading mobile relationship management platform.
Feb 17, 2014
The 12th Annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE 12x) kicks off Friday at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport, and Rackspace will be there hosting informative workshops and holding a contest to see if you’ve got what it takes to fix a broken server.
Feb 17, 2014
In the first part of this series, I introduced the kit that makes up my home lab. There’s nothing unusual or special in the kit list, but it certainly is affordable and makes entry into an OpenStack world very accessible. This post explains some more basics of my networking: DHCP, DNS, Proxy and TFTP.
Feb 14, 2014
In this week's digest, we hear how Glassdoor uses the Rackspace Hybrid Cloud; dig into solutions design with Cinder; say goodbye to our retiring CEO; and more.
Feb 13, 2014
In this edition of Straight Up Startup, we feature Naruby Schlenker, co-founder of Ordoro, a web app that empowers ecommerce stores to manage orders, inventory and shipping.
Feb 13, 2014
This week, we hosted a live webinar during which two ObjectRocket by Rackspace customers, Appboy and Untappd, highlighted how they use MongoDB and other data services on the cloud. Here is a full video recording of the webinar.
Feb 13, 2014
Here, I review some reference architectures and design principles for building OpenStack Cinder solutions using both commodity-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware as well as third-party storage solutions.
Feb 12, 2014
Last weekend, a group of Harvard Women in Computer Science students put on an amazing technical women's conference called WECode (WE = Women Engineers). Rackspace also participated in this excitement
Feb 12, 2014
2013 was a big year for Rackspace email hosting services. How big? Let’s take a look at the numbers and the updates.
Feb 12, 2014
In this guest post, Rackspace Cloud Tools partner Chartio discusses data analytics on Rackspace Cloud Databases with Chartio.
Feb 11, 2014
At this year’s O’Reilly Strata event we will showcase our support of the newest genesis of the Hortonworks Data Platform (2.0), a release that we believe represents a paradigm shift in the perception of what you can use Hadoop to accomplish.
Feb 11, 2014
Cloud Intelligence helped Glassdoor pinpoint a network I/O issue in a NoSQL cluster, and moving that cluster to Performance Cloud Servers nearly doubled network performance.
Feb 10, 2014
By now, many of you have read that Lanham Napier is retiring as CEO of Rackspace, after 14 years with the company. This is a bittersweet day — not just for him, but for all the Rackers and customers and partners and shareholders who have worked with him and have been inspired by him over the years.
Feb 10, 2014
I’m retiring from Rackspace. Our co-founder and executive chairman, Graham Weston, will step in to replace me as CEO, and will run the company in partnership with our president, Taylor Rhodes, while the board conducts a careful search for a long-term CEO, among internal and external candidates.
Feb 10, 2014
Over the past year I’ve been using a home lab for quick, hands-on testing of OpenStack and Rackspace Private Cloud. This post is about the tech involved and how it is set up.
Feb 10, 2014
Rackspace Training for OpenStack is continuing its tour of colleges and universities this year with stops in Berkeley and the University of Portland, with more to come.
Feb 10, 2014
Here are some ways you can showcase the advantages of MongoDB to your Ops team as you look to use it as the database for a production app or site.
Feb 07, 2014
Rackspace Hosted Exchange 2013, which is now in general availability, adds a host of features that make dealing with email less of a hassle, while maintaining the capabilities that make it a breeze.
Feb 07, 2014
In this week's digest, we discuss our policy on contributing to open source; welcome back CloudU; take a look at the new Open Compute Lab at UTSA; and much more.
Feb 06, 2014
Knowji, a Rackspace Startup Program member, is using the Rackspace Cloud to build apps that combine education and technology to help people quickly learn vocabulary and languages.
Feb 06, 2014
This is one of a collection of posts I've written recently to provide a high-level introduction to all of the products and services available within a Rackspace Cloud Account. Here, I provide an introduction to Cloud Monitoring.
Feb 05, 2014
In this video, I show you how the Cloud Launch Team uses some fundamentals of cloud architecture to help you eliminate technical debt from your cloud configuration and prepare you for success in the future.
Feb 04, 2014
The Open Compute Certification and Solution Laboratory at UTSA is the only one in the U.S. and one of only two in the world. It will create exiting new opportunities for collaboration and the adoption of open source hardware.
Feb 04, 2014
We've relaunched Cloud University (CloudU), our social learning management system (LMS) designed to help you sharpen your cloud knowledge.
Feb 04, 2014
In this guest post, Rackspace customer Jordan Lawrence showcases how it leverages Rackspace technologies to help its clients overcome the challenges of records retention and privacy regulations.
Feb 03, 2014
Last week, we hosted 'Behind the Curtain: Operating an OpenStack Powered Private Cloud,' a webinar during which we dug into the components that allow Rackspace to offer and operate Rackspace Private Cloud Software in an as-a-Service model. Here's video of the webinar.
Feb 03, 2014
In this guest post, Rackspace customer LoveCoups.com highlights how Rackspace Performance Cloud Servers help it scale its dynamic website for Valentine's Day traffic spikes while saving money and improving performance.
Jan 31, 2014
We’re changing Rackspace policy so that Rackers are free to contribute to and participate in any public open source project of their choice that has an established open source license.
Jan 31, 2014
Super Bowl-driven traffic, patent trolls, Open Compute, Geeklist and more in this week's digest.
Jan 30, 2014
Within the startup movement, there are plenty of events happening globally in February 2014. The Rackspace Startup Program is here to keep you up to date with valuable information on events and happenings inside the global startup community. Here is a partial list of global startup events complied by the contributors of StartupDigest.
Jan 30, 2014
There’s a philosophy shift happening in hardware and at the fifth Open Compute Summit this week in San Jose the Open Compute Project gathered more steam.
Jan 30, 2014
This is one of a collection of posts I've written recently to provide a high-level introduction to all of the products and services available within a Rackspace Cloud Account. Here, I provide an introduction to Cloud Backup.
Jan 29, 2014
In his State of the Union Address last night, President Obama called for Congress to take action against patent trolls.
Jan 29, 2014
Here, we walk you through how to sign up for Rackspace Cloud Servers and detail some things to keep in mind during the signup process.
Jan 29, 2014
Project Heat, which was recently introduced in OpenStack Havana. Heat is available as a technology preview with the latest release of the Rackspace Private Cloud. Here, I talk about Heat and we will say Hello to Heat with a simple 'Hello Heat' exercise.
Jan 28, 2014
The Open Compute Project (OCP) this week established North America’s first Open Compute Certification and Solution Laboratory at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). The news was shared at the Open Compute Summit in San Jose.
Jan 28, 2014
Here, Geeklist, a social collaboration platform for developers, discusses its move to the Rackspace Cloud from a trio of disparate providers and how it's upping its geek cred in 2014.
Jan 28, 2014
At its core, hybrid cloud is about flexibility and choice. It's with that in mind that we at Rackspace support Cisco’s vision for InterCloud,
Jan 27, 2014
Super Bowl Sunday is fast approaching. Companies pay millions of dollars to get that coveted 30 second commercial spot. For many big name companies, Super Bowl Sunday breeds big traffic numbers. It’s imperative that their websites and apps can stand up to the traffic blitz that this global event implies.
Jan 27, 2014
For the second consecutive year, Rackspace has been named an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Green Power Partner and featured on the Top 30 Tech & Telecom List.
Jan 27, 2014
From making UPS deliveries more fuel efficient to reducing the dropout rate in Alabama schools, these creative initiatives use the power of data to make a difference. The initiatives highlighted in the 'Making Data Matter' slideshow have one thing in common: they’re multi-pronged, data-driven approaches to solve old problems with new data-driven insights.
Jan 24, 2014
Join us Thursday, January 30 at 10 a.m. for a webinar in which we'll discuss how you can operate an OpenStack powered private cloud.
Jan 24, 2014
In this week's digest, we check in with the ZeroVM Design Summit; hear from a customer using the cloud to save Hollywood; discuss a new Cloud Databases feature; and much more.
Jan 24, 2014
Yesterday, during day two of the ZeroVM Design Summit, we examined integration with other technologies, particularly OpenStack Swift (the technology behind Rackspace Cloud Files).
Jan 23, 2014
In this spotlight, we talk to Double Stallion Games, a Rackspace Startup Program member that is building mobile, arcade-style games on the Rackspace Cloud.
Jan 23, 2014
This is one of a collection of posts I've written recently to provide a high-level introduction to all of the products and services available within a Rackspace Cloud Account. Here, I provide an introduction to Cloud Load Balancers.
Jan 23, 2014
A couple months ago we acquired the team behind ZeroVM, the lightweight open source application hypervisor. At that time we promised that more was coming soon – and now we have started to say what some of the plans are for this new technology. This week was our coming-out party at the first ever ZeroVM Design Summit at the University of Texas at San Antonio
Jan 22, 2014
Mobile web traffic is expected to eclipse fixed traffic by 2016. For startups, a mobile strategy should be a top priority.
Jan 22, 2014
One OpenStack project that seems to get less attention than others, such as Nova and Neutron, is the Cinder block storage service project. I though it may be helpful if I wrote a series of blog posts that dive into the Cinder project. I'll start, in this post, by walking through the basics.
Jan 21, 2014
In this post, Rackspace Cloud Tools partner CloudFlare highlights how to product web sites from attack with rapidly deployed WAF rules.
Jan 21, 2014
You can now create and manage your backups in Rackspace Cloud Databases directly from the Control Panel with a simple user interface.
Jan 20, 2014
Here, DigitalFilm Tree CTO Guillaume Aubuchon discusses how his company is using Rackspace Performance Cloud Servers and OpenStack to disrupt how Hollywood studios collaborate.
Jan 20, 2014
If you have a site that is served over https only, you might be interested in a “hidden” feature of Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers.
Jan 17, 2014
At linux.conf.au and the miniconf that kicked off the event, OpenStack was a main topic of discussion.
Jan 17, 2014
In this week's digest, we announce a new President for Rackspace, earn a spot on FORTUNE's 100 Best Companies to Work For, launch Cloud Big Data Platform into limited availability; and much more.
Jan 16, 2014
In this startup spotlight we talk to Sportybird, a member of the Rackspace Startup Program and a Geekdom company that is building software for youth soccer coaches and parents.
Feb 11, 2012
Our culture has made Rackspace one of Fortune’s top places to work, and Racker Dave Sims decided to take his camera around to showcase a day in the life at the Castle (what we affectionately call our headquarters). Dave took on a personal challenge to film, produce and edit a video in just a single...
Feb 10, 2012
In little over 10 years, Rackspace has grown to be over 4000 employees. This growth is attributed to significant milestones like spinning up the Cloud business (what was Mosso) and acquiring Webmail (Rackspace Email & Apps). Our blog has been a reflection of this significant growth. We’ve used the blog to communicate product development updates,...
Feb 09, 2012
One question that I commonly get is, “So how exactly does Managed Cloud support my business.” There is a lot of documentation on our service level and what we actually do, however, for this post I wanted to give a very high level analogy of how Managed Cloud delivers support to you and your organization....
Feb 09, 2012
Connecting with startups is priority #1 for the Rackspace Startup Program. We spend so much of our lives connecting with people online that we forget the value of tangible interactions that happen in the real world. Now, there is a new way to connect with the people you follow and find interesting. Quarterly.co allows anyone...
Feb 09, 2012
Since 1933, The International Rescue Committee (IRC) has served the needs of refugees around the world. This philanthropic work brings IRC to some of the most remote and challenging parts of the globe where environmental and technical issues often prevent these heroes from accessing email and other mission critical applications. IRC wanted to evaluate cloud...
Feb 09, 2012
Perhaps you sell roses by the dozen. Or your restaurant touts a lovely prix-fixe Valentine’s Day dinner. Or you sell love-centric gifts. Which days are big days depends on your business. And whether that’s V-Day or every day, Rackspace can help you prepare your site for whatever customers come your way. So if you’re expecting...
Feb 09, 2012
This is a guest post written and contributed by Tanya Bragin, Lead Product Manager at ExtraHop Networks, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. ExtraHop provides application performance management (APM) solutions to help ensure business-critical transactions do not fail. Companies have a number of reasons to deploy their applications in the cloud: scalability, simpler management, and cost-efficiency...
Feb 07, 2012
Cloud computing helps businesses get off the ground with little upfront investment and operate on a shoestring while accessing technology and applications traditionally reserved for big businesses. Services like web hosting, hosted storage, and email hosting take the financial strain and workload off of business so they can focus on their core competencies. Take a...
Feb 07, 2012
CloudU Notebooks is a weekly blog series that explores topics from the CloudU certificate program in bite sized chunks, written by me, Ben Kepes, curator of CloudU. How-to’s, interviews with industry giants, and the occasional opinion piece are what you can expect to find. If that’s your cup of tea, you can subscribe here. An...
Feb 06, 2012
Today Nicira announced it’s Network Virtualization Platform. Nicira’s product and industry contributions with OpenStack are tightly aligned with our strategy to bring together the most innovative and open technology with our own Fanatical Support™. Together we are bringing enterprise private networking to the Cloud.
Feb 03, 2012
San Antonio is known for its TexMex and margaritas, yet something that many people overlook is our technology scene. This is quickly changing. Mashable published an infographic by Acuity Group that shows San Antonio as one of the strongest markets for technology hiring in 2012. The Alamo City is turning into a tech hotbed; not...
Feb 02, 2012
The game industry today offers plenty of development engines to choose from. Unfortunately, there is no technology that allows all devices to plug into the same game server in real time. Almost 69 million Americans will be playing social games in 2012, according to analysis firm eMarketer. Within the Rackspace Startup Program there are several...
Feb 02, 2012
Recently, the General Services Administration (GSA) solicited bids to take care of their massive email system. They embarked on a process many businesses are familiar with – finding the right fit of features, security, and cost to support their users. The GSA selected hosted email to serve remote offices, streamline administration, and reduce future investments....
Feb 01, 2012
This is a guest post written and contributed by Alexander Negrash, Marketing Manager at CloudBerry Lab, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. CloudBerry Lab provides file manager and backup utility in order to help Rackspace users leverage the cloud storage (Cloud Files). CloudBerry Explorer freeware is an FTP-like file manager that allows you to connect to...
Jan 31, 2012
CloudU Notebooks is a weekly blog series that explores topics from the CloudU certificate program in bite sized chunks, written by me, Ben Kepes, curator of CloudU. How-to’s, interviews with industry giants, and the occasional opinion piece are what you can expect to find. If that’s your cup of tea, you can subscribe here. The...
Jan 26, 2012
Many times we know a small business in need of recommendations and business help. Business owners almost always ask, “Am I the most efficient and profitable company I can be?” Perhaps they are a one or two employee shop and often wonder, “What tools can I use to help determine these cost-saving opportunities?” As businesses...
Jan 26, 2012
This is a guest post written and contributed by Fred van den Bosch at Librato, Inc., a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. Librato is the creator of Metrics, a time series data platform that provides uniform monitoring and alerting for your operation. Would you consider building your own Database Management System? Probably not. While talking with...
Jan 26, 2012
You’re watching the big game; your favorite player shoots the ball, and…nothing. That’s what happened to University of Connecticut women’s basketball fans last year when Connecticut Public Broadcasting Network’s (CPBN) servers buckled under unexpectedly heavy traffic while broadcasting an intense, live game online. Because alumni and fans depend on the feed to watch games from...
Jan 25, 2012
The increase in user-generated content, regulatory requirements, digital entertainment, social media, and mobile usage demands more storage resources to manage growing volumes of data. The hardware and systems needed to stay ahead of that growth can be confusing and costly. Taking advantage of the elastic nature and utility pricing model of cloud computing helps businesses...
Jan 25, 2012
The coming year will likely see unprecedented growth in cloud computing, especially as people become more comfortable with the interaction of the interfaces and security becomes more stable. One of the things that drive people to the cloud is scalability. The ability to scale up or down at a moment’s notice is one of the...
Jan 24, 2012
Can your website handle a sudden spike in activity? When LoveBook Online, an online retailer of custom books, made their first national television appearance, their site wasn’t ready to handle the ensuing traffic and crashed. When their second national television appearance rolled around, they had Managed Cloud and Cloud Files on their side and traffic flowed smoothly. (Click here...
Jan 24, 2012
You just aired a commercial during the Big Game and are about to get blitzed with traffic to your website. John and Jerry give you play-by-play analysis on how to make sure your web config scores a touchdown. For more in depth information, be sure to check out our previous post that details the importance...
Jan 24, 2012
CloudU Notebooks is a weekly blog series that explores topics from the CloudU certificate program in bite sized chunks, written by me, Ben Kepes, curator of CloudU. How-to’s, interviews with industry giants, and the occasional opinion piece are what you can expect to find. If that’s your cup of tea, you can subscribe here. It seems...
Jan 23, 2012
Those tasked with managing a business’s website know that even when something small looks amiss on the site, you’ll hear about it in triplicate from everyone – the CEO all the way down to the janitor. Reduce the risk of hearing about site anomalies, like broken images, slow load times, and shopping cart hiccups, with...
Jan 23, 2012
Last year, over 188 billion emails circulated compared to 60 million Facebook updates and 1.4 million tweets. Email and social media are great for staying in touch with friends and family. Businesses are even using some of these same free social platforms and consumer-level email services to ramp up quickly and cheaply. But, are they...
Jan 20, 2012
What will you do when your server needs outgrow your server room? Before you start knocking out walls to make more room, the Cloud Avengers are here to help you make the move to cloud. By transferring functions like website hosting, business email, and file storage to the cloud, you save space, cut power consumption,...
Jan 19, 2012
The Cloud was built to provide an environment that can dynamically scale to accommodate an influx of traffic. There is one scenario that pushes the Cloud to the limit – the Super Bowl. The Wall Street Journal has reported that businesses are paying a record $3.5 million for a 30 second spot. To continue the...
Jan 19, 2012
With the Cloud, many developers and companies can now afford to have a true test and development configuration to ensure that their code deployments will work properly in the production environment. Setting up these types of environments is valuable because not only can the development team determine if their code works, they also can discover...
Jan 19, 2012
The Rackspace Startup Program is fortunate in the fact that we get to help entrepreneurs make their dreams come true daily. We have a wealth of world class accelerators as strategic partners who provide us with the cream of the crop startups for our program. It’s exciting to us when a world class accelerator comes...
Jan 19, 2012
Software bugs or other malicious vermin attacking your businesses’ productivity? Call on the Cloud Avengers to eliminate the bugs so you can get back to work. With cloud computing, systems are centrally managed, patched, and updated to give you access the latest software versions, virus updates, and spam protection without worrying about unwanted intruders ruining...
Jan 19, 2012
This is a guest post written and contributed by Matthew Prince, Co-Founder & CEO at CloudFlare, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. CloudFlare makes it easy for any site to be as fast and secure as the Internet giants. CloudFlare is a web performance and security company. We have thousands of Rackspace customers, so we were...
Jan 19, 2012
When LoveBook, an online retailer of personalized gift books, experienced server crashes due to a spike in web traffic after a national television appearance, they turned to Rackspace Managed Cloud service. Using Managed Cloud combined with Cloud Files, Cloud Load Balancers, Rackspace Email, and Rackspace Hosted SharePoint helps them achieve cost-effective scaling, manage user-generated content, and...
Jan 18, 2012
Tired of system emergencies interfering with your sleep, disturbing your weekend, or interfering with your vacation? The Cloud Avengers hear your call and are on the way with the power of redundancy. Whether it’s pesky badgers or lack of compute resources causing crashes and outages, tapping the cloud for long term or temporary resource bumps...
Jan 17, 2012
Email is a primary entry point for viruses and hacker attacks. When evaluating the many email options available, some businesses choose to jump on free email services. These services may relieve the budget pressure, but they aren’t built to stand up to the demands of business use – especially where security is concerned. Take a...
Jan 17, 2012
Dealing with unrealistic demands to move at the speed of light without the resources or support you need? Never fear. Call on Cloud Avengers, a team of superheroes wielding the power of cloud computing to alleviate common business challenges. In this edition, we find Cloud Speed using Cloud Files to save the day for a...
Jan 17, 2012
In just a few short years, cloud computing has transformed from an interesting buzzword into the future of the Internet. Rackspace has been on the leading edge of the cloud computing revolution, helping businesses and professionals get real value from the promise of the cloud. We’ve put together this Top 10 list of the most...
Jan 17, 2012
CloudU Notebooks is a weekly blog series that explores topics from the CloudU certificate program in bite sized chunks, written by me, Ben Kepes, curator of CloudU. How-to’s, interviews with industry giants, and the occasional opinion piece are what you can expect to find. If that’s your cup of tea, you can subscribe here. Ever since launching the...
Jan 11, 2012
Los Angeles is a world center of business, international trade, entertainment, culture, media, fashion, science, sports, technology and education. Nicknamed “The City of Angels,” it is the second largest city in the United States, and LA is ranked the third richest and fifth most powerful and influential city in the world. Los Angeles is now...
Jan 11, 2012
The post originally appeared on Racker Hacker, Major’s blog, and with his permission we have reposted it here. Standard email etiquette is pretty obvious to most of us and if you’re good at it, you’ll get your point across more often without stepping on toes or causing unneeded confusion. Simple things like identifying yourself well,...
Jan 11, 2012
Music has played a significant role in the increase of cloud computing usage. In 2010, digital music revenues accounted for nearly half of record company revenues. This shift to the cloud is changing the face of how we buy and listen to music. How much of an impact? We did a little research and looked...
Jan 10, 2012
This is a guest post written and contributed by James Strayer, VP of Product Management at Racemi, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. Racemi Cloud Path quickly and easily migrates your existing physical, virtual, or cloud applications to Rackspace Cloud Server instances. Any company adopting public cloud computing as part of their IT service delivery strategy is...
Jan 10, 2012
This post originally appeared on Paul Querna’s blog and we have reposted it here with his permission. Earlier we announced a new product: Rackspace Cloud Monitoring. It is just starting as a (free) private beta, so if you want to try it out, be sure to sign up via the survey here. Transition from Cloudkick...
Jan 10, 2012
Good, well functioning websites don’t happen by accident. They are the result of a lot of behind the scenes work – developing an idea, writing code to handle all of the different tasks and making sure everything runs smoothly on every page. Above all, the website needs to be sturdy enough to handle heavy traffic....
Jan 10, 2012
CloudU Notebooks is a weekly blog series that explores topics from the CloudU certificate program in bite sized chunks, written by me, Ben Kepes, curator of CloudU. How-to’s, interviews with industry giants, and the occasional opinion piece are what you can expect to find. If that’s your cup of tea, you can subscribe here. Krish wrote a post...
Jan 09, 2012
This post was written and contributed by Robert McGarvey who has been a busy freelance writer for 30 years, writing for many leading publications. Robert blogs via Contently.com. Have you ever said, “I’ll take care of it when I get back to the office” while you were talking on your smartphone? That was a mistake...
Jan 05, 2012
At Rackspace we pride ourselves on Fanatical Support in all we do. The public face of Fanatical Support is having knowledgeable people ready to help customers when they need it. But behind the scenes, Fanatical Support means leveraging technology to improve every aspect of the customer experience. The Rackspace Cloud Monitoring team has been working...
Jan 05, 2012
Travel is a key priority for the Rackspace Startup Program. We are constantly on the go visiting with startups and key partners. Keeping track of and using frequent flyer miles to save the company in travel expenses can be confusing at times. The Space Cowboys would like to introduce you to GoMiles.com who helps travelers...
Jan 05, 2012
As your business adds servers across many different environments, the management of those servers can become quite difficult. ScaleXtreme, a Rackspace Cloud Tools partner, can help alleviate this burden by providing server management products delivered as a cloud service. ScaleXtreme’s cloud operating system gives you powerful tools to launch, manage, and control your Rackspace servers,...
Jan 04, 2012
Cloud Files is the storage home to thousands of customers and it can benefit you, too. To learn how, check out the latest Cloud Files resources and news at the brand-new Cloud Files Resource Center. There, you’ll find videos, blog posts, customer case studies, whitepapers, data sheets and more—all about Cloud Files. Here are just...
Jan 04, 2012
Before cloud computing, only the biggest and richest companies could afford complex, multi-server environments to meet their IT needs. These types of tiered configurations provided increased performance, stability, and redundancy along with luxuries like separate staging environments for testing. The essence of the cloud revolution is making these options accessible to all organizations, without forcing...
Jan 04, 2012
This is a guest post was written and contributed by Evan Fromberg, Sr. Director of Channel Sales and Business Development at Veracode, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. As we look back at 2011, we see a meteoric rise in mobile and web applications development across all of our customers. At Veracode, we work with many...
Jan 03, 2012
Excuse the slightly cataclysmic title of this post, but the first post for 2012 in the CloudU notebook series is one which hopefully will get you thinking about your career and the changes it is going to undergo over the years to come. One of the drivers for the CloudU program, and especially the CloudU...
Dec 30, 2011
After staying up late this December 31st and counting down to midnight, it will soon be time to start in on your New Year’s resolutions. Here are a couple of resolutions that the Cloud can help out with so that you don’t have to rely on eating black-eyed peas (or your fortuitous food of choice)...
Dec 29, 2011
It’s no secret that Rackspace loves startups! Enough so that the company launched the Rackspace Startup Program this year and we’re committed to helping entrepreneurs drive the next generation of businesses by providing Cloud Computing hosting and coaching through select incubators, accelerators, investors and others who share our passion for startups. We are now over...
Dec 28, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by Aaron Mandelbaum, Director of Marketing at OpenLogic, Inc., a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. OpenLogic provides enterprise open source solutions for the cloud and data center. Companies are looking for ways to leverage cloud computing to increase flexibility and speed-to-market and lower costs. Many organizations want to...
Dec 28, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by Aaron Mandelbaum, Director of Marketing at OpenLogic, Inc., a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. OpenLogic provides enterprise open source solutions for the cloud and data center. Companies are looking for ways to leverage cloud computing to increase flexibility and speed-to-market and lower costs. Many organizations want to...
Dec 27, 2011
With LinkedIn being the world’s largest professional network on the Internet, with more than 135 million members in over 200 countries and territories, you probably have an account yourself. But have you spent the necessary time to maximize the effectiveness of your profile? Watch this video to learn how to make your LinkedIn profile shine....
Dec 27, 2011
Frank Jara is a Sales Consultant talking with customers on a daily basis. Recently he sent us an email to tell us how impressed he was with the material which he’s been using with his customers, partners and colleagues. I wanted to find out what it was about CloudU that Frank was really impressed with...
Dec 26, 2011
You opened your presents and were ecstatic to get the iPhone 4S. Of course you’re going to download Facebook, Instagram and Words with Friends, but after the wrapping paper has been discarded and all the eggnog has been served, what other apps should you get? Here are a few suggestions to get you started with...
Dec 24, 2011
The bill now before Congress would do more harm than good. We’re working to get it amended, so it can target online thieves without hurting innocent users of the Internet.
Dec 22, 2011
Rackspace employees took it upon themselves to spread some holiday cheer. Happy Holidays! ? Related articles Sexy Sax Man Pays Rackspace a Visit | The Official Rackspace Blog (rackspace.com) Rackspace On Glassdoor’s List of Top 50 Best Places to Work in 2012 (rackspace.com) Rackspace Opens Doors in San Francisco (rackspace.com)
Dec 22, 2011
PayPerks is an educational rewards platform for the financially underserved and part of the Rackspace Startup Program. Their patent-pending rewards model fuses online education with sweepstakes-based incentives in order to fuel positive behavior changes among the lower and middle income segment. Users can earn PayPerks points through a variety of actions such as taking PayPerks’...
Dec 21, 2011
This is a guest post by Marc Gaffan, Co-Founder of Incapsula, a Rackspace Cloud Tools partner. Incapsula offers state-of-the-art security and performance to any size websites. Protecting your website can seem like a daunting task to small and medium businesses who, until now, have relied on the old standby’s of a firewall and anti-virus software...
Dec 20, 2011
There has been a lot of conversation recently about large companies implementing “zero email” policies. At first blush, this sounds great! No more emails about the bathroom on the third floor in the Australian office being closed on Saturday (I work in the US)? No more global emails that the QRC group is having a...
Dec 20, 2011
Over twelve months ago I came up with the crazy sounding idea of a vendor neutral education program that would see Mom and Pop businesses (along with regular IT folks) gain a resource with which they could build their knowledge of Cloud Computing. Luckily there were some incredibly progressive folks at Rackspace who saw the...
Dec 19, 2011
Are you considering switching from a PC to a Mac? You might have an iPhone™, iPod™ or iPad™ and are ready to take the plunge on switching out your home computer. You’re not alone. As of November 2011, Apple’s Mac has reached 5.2% of worldwide computer sales, and in the home segment, Mac’s growth was...
Dec 16, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by John Weinschenk, President & CEO at Cenzic, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. Cenzic provides software and SaaS offerings to help protect websites from hacker attacks. Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Cenzic provides software and SaaS products to protect websites from hacker attacks. With over...
Dec 15, 2011
I am pleased to announce that today we begin taking applicants for the Rackspace Cloud Monitoring Private Beta. This is especially exciting because we will be offering technology created and integrated post-acquisition of Cloudkick joining the Rackspace family. From the inception of Cloudkick, we’ve followed one paramount goal: make the lives of system administrator easier. ...
Dec 15, 2011
Building and operating a backend is really hard and time consuming. The Rackspace Startup Program is proud to introduce you to Kinvey, the first Backend as a Service (BaaS) that makes it ridiculously easy for developers to setup and operate a Cloud backend for their mobile apps. At Kinvey, they are motivated to take something...
Dec 14, 2011
The survey results are in for Glassdoor’s Employees’ Choice Awards and Rackspace has been honored as one of the top 50 “Best Places to Work” in 2012. Rackspace (at #12) ranked high on the list along with companies such as Facebook, Google, Apple and Salesforce.com. It’s clear that the investments Rackspace is making in its...
Dec 13, 2011
Last week we talked about what a few big-name service companies would be without their commitment to service. When you think of hosting providers, service might not be the first thing that comes to mind. But if you experience a failure, you quickly realize the value of service. In the cloud computing world, we constantly...
Dec 13, 2011
In my travels speaking with organizations looking to move to the Cloud, I’m often confronted by folks who have an innate distrust of all things Cloud. These folks are easy to deals with; I respect their opinion (despite entirely disagreeing with it) and am happy enough to leave them alone to (eventually) come to rational...
Dec 08, 2011
On Thursday, December 1st Rackspace celebrated the grand opening of its San Francisco office and the Space Cowboys from the Rackspace Startup Program were there to witness. It was a grand affair hosted by Robert Scoble, technology evangelist, and Chief Learning Officer at Rackspace Hosting, who is building a new community of people fanatical about...
Dec 07, 2011
There have been many developments undergoing to further enhance Cloud Servers. We’ve recently made available 30GB instances, MSSQL 2008 R2 Web Edition for Windows Cloud Servers and added four new Linux operating system distributions. Now Offering 30GB Instances The 30GB instance comes with 1.2TB of disk and is targeted at customers that have database nodes...
Dec 07, 2011
The holidays brings an increase in an online shopping and consequently brings an increase in cloud usage. We found it interesting to look at the numbers from the holiday shopping season released by comScore, Deloitte and Google Trend data. We’ve taken some of these numbers and published them in the following infographic – we hope...
Dec 06, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by Jesse Kliza, Director of Marketing at Apprenda, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. Apprenda provides an Open Platform as a Service (PaaS) software stack for .NET that enables any organization to deploy their own self-service PaaS on any infrastructure. Platform as a Service gets quite a bit...
Dec 06, 2011
In a recent CloudU report we talked about the fact that a lack of formal cloud computing qualifications is something of a barrier to organizations adopting the Cloud. It’s something we’re trying, in some small way, to address with the CloudU certificate, but nonetheless the fact remains that when it comes to cloud computing, many...
Dec 05, 2011
Rackspace knows cloud hosting is a service business. Each client is running a unique operation with very different cloud needs, which will adapt over time based on how the client’s operations change. It is from this perspective the promise to provide clients with Fanatical Support is made. Of course, cloud hosting isn’t the only business...
Dec 02, 2011
We’ve all had the experience of being “on hold,” and are too familiar with the robotic voice that says, “the average wait time is… thirty… nine…minutes,” followed by monotonous on-hold music and endless marketing pitches for a product that has your blood pressure peaking. FastCustomer makes customer service and sales calls feel better for everyone involved by...
Dec 01, 2011
Today is the day. Our Rackspace San Francisco office is opening its doors today to friends, family and the local San Francisco community. A year ago Rackspace acquired Cloudkick, a Y Combinator startup known for its cloud monitoring software, and shortly after Anso Labs, the group behind the NASA Nebula Cloud and experts on OpenStack....
Dec 01, 2011
Today we’re pleased to announce the Rackspace MySQL Cloud Database Private Beta for US customers by invitation only. Overview & Features Historically, customers running relational databases in the cloud have suffered from poor and inconsistent performance as a result of the limitations inherited from the underlying hardware virtualization platform. These constraints are common across most...
Dec 01, 2011
Today is a big day at Rackspace. We’re celebrating the long-awaited opening of our new San Francisco office and announcing a new initiative we’re calling Small Teams Big Impact. It wasn’t that long ago that Rackspace was just three guys and an idea. Now we want to recognize, encourage, celebrate and assist the small teams...
Nov 30, 2011
Mark Interrante, VP of Product and Troy Toman, Director of Engineering for Cloud Compute, talk about the new developments of OpenStack (the collaborative software project among several big players in the cloud computing space, designed to create freely available code, badly-needed standards, and common ground for the benefit of both cloud providers and cloud customers).
Nov 29, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by Nicos Vekiarides, CEO of Twinstrata, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. Whether your applications are hosted in the Rackspace cloud or reside on-premise, there are a number of reasons to use a cloud storage gateway (e.g., TwinStrata CloudArray) to seamlessly and efficiently extend your storage capacity using...
Nov 29, 2011
In a recent CloudU report, we talked at length about how an organization should approach a move to the Cloud and which applications they should pick as initial prospects for migrating. In the report we advised organizations to look at applications that; • Have significant interaction with external applications or services • Are not a...
Nov 28, 2011
Discover how other developers and designers are getting more time for what they love with Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2010 and Cloud Servers for Windows® from Rackspace® – all while building cutting-edge solutions without sacrificing quality. Microsoft Visual Studio is a powerful Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that ensures quality code throughout the entire application life cycle,...
Nov 28, 2011
This post was written and contributed by Sue Poremba, a freelance writer focusing primarily on security and technology issues. Sue blogs via Contently.com. Application developers and IT operations managers have historically been in separate camps within enterprise. What could bring the two entities together? The DevOps movement. Working Together DevOps envisions a world where these...
Nov 23, 2011
The Rackspace Startup Program introduces Mailgun, an Email Service Provider (ESP) for developers which allow them to target on innovation elsewhere. The main focus is to make developers’ lives easier and allow them to build applications more efficiently. Mailgun enables developers to tightly integrate email into their apps, giving real email mailboxes to their users,...
Nov 23, 2011
A favorite saying of someone I know in this industry is that “It’s not the big that eat the small, it’s the fast that eat the slow”. It’s a recurrent theme as terms like “pivot”, “lean”, “agile” and “minimum viable product” become the lingua franca of startups. We’ve moved rapidly from a culture of throwing...
Nov 22, 2011
The 2011 holiday shopping season is here. We’ve saved you some time and put together your very own online shopping guide with best practices on how to avoid identity theft when shopping online, best coupon sites, some cool shopping apps and best days to shop. Take a look. Click image below for larger version. Embed...
Nov 22, 2011
As I travel around talking to organizations and the decision makers within them about Cloud Computing, I find myself enumerating a list of benefits that many of us believe come with Cloud Computing. The list includes scalability, economic benefits, the ability to focus on core business, etc. I must have watched hundreds of presentations over...
Nov 21, 2011
Simit Patel is a trader, writer, and technology entrepreneur. Simit blogs via Contently.com. One bright spot that has persisted amidst our current troubled global economy is growth of Internet services. And fortunately, it seems as though there are still great growth opportunities online; as global Internet penetration rate is still just barely above 30%, we...
Nov 18, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by Mike Raab, VP of Business Development at CopperEgg, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. CopperEgg provides RevealCloud, Cloud Monitoring, which provides easy to understand and fast to implement Unified Server Monitoring. Many folks that I talk with are not only using Rackspace Cloud as a source of...
Nov 18, 2011
Chris Spencer is a Product Manager in our Platform Product Line We’re pleased to announce some updates for our Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers product. New features that are now available include: Added Node Query parameter – Allows API users to provide an IP address and get back a list of load balancers where that IP is currently configured...
Nov 17, 2011
What happens when you bring 40 aspiring entrepreneurs together over a weekend, create a space for ideas to flow, load in cases of caffeinated beverages, mix in three squares a day, and provide mentoring from some of the brightest in the business who have built successful startups? The entrepreneurial exploits of 3 Day Startup, where...
Nov 17, 2011
Cloud outages get an inordinate amount of attention – it’s always interesting watching the tweet stream and feed reader after I hear the first inkling of a Cloud outage – all of a sudden my world is filled with people saying that this particular outage really marks the death-knell for Cloud Computing. I’m lucky, not...
Nov 15, 2011
Simit Patel is a trader, writer, and technology entrepreneur. Simit blogs via Contently.com. Over the past several years, few Internet technologies have garnered more attention and praise than cloud computing. It’s been heralded primarily for its ability to drive down the cost of running an Internet business, helped entrepreneurs create low-cost startups, and has helped...
Nov 15, 2011
When I first spoke with Rackspace over a year ago about CloudU, the basis of the concept was that as someone who has seen first hand the benefits Cloud Computing can bring to an organization, I wanted to tackle a project that saw more people understand what Cloud is and, in doing so, to enable...
Nov 14, 2011
It may be only November, but if you’re involved in online retail, then you may be already busy with the holiday season. The holiday rush can cause a welcomed increase in traffic on your website. But it’s important to take steps to optimize your site, so you can handle all of your customers with ease....
Nov 14, 2011
The holidays are right around the corner and by now, you should be prepared for the seasonal surge of traffic that is about to hit the web. We recently did a Scaling for the Holidays blog post series on how to prepare for scaling traffic: Scaling Horizontally or Vertically?, Caching, Web Server Tuning and Load...
Nov 10, 2011
A tutor is defined as ‘a person charged with the instruction and guidance of another’. The Rackspace Startup Program is a group of Cloud Computing professionals charged with providing instruction and guidance for entrepreneurs and their startups. Keeping students focused, engaged and motivated to learn, while connecting them with teachers and grad students who can...
Nov 10, 2011
Tomaz Muraus, a Rackspace developer, is the project chair and developer/committer to Libcloud. This week, Apache Libcloud 0.6.1 was released. Apache Libcloud is a Python library that creates a standard interface for managing multiple cloud providers, including Rackspace. Cloudkick, acquired by Rackspace last year, originally developed the project that joined the Apache incubator in 2009....
Nov 10, 2011
The advent of the Internet (actually the advent of software used by the general populace) has create an entire new bunch of folks with ulcers caused by the worries around password management. Passwords it seem are both the bane of our existence and, apparently, the most important thing in our lives. Unfortunately the Cloud doesn’t...
Nov 08, 2011
This is a guest post written by Zohar Alon, Co-Founder and CEO of Dome9 Security, a Rackspace Cloud Tools partner. Dome9 provides the first-ever automated cloud firewall management service to secure your Rackspace Cloud. ? ? You wouldn’t leave your car unlocked in a public parking lot…don’t leave your server unlocked in Rackspace Cloud. Today,...
Nov 08, 2011
The mobile computing landscape is drastically changing. More functionality and adoption means more hackers are targeting mobile devices. This year marks the first year smartphones will out sell all other computers combined, including mainframe computers, desktops, laptops, and tablet PCs. Take a look at this infographic to learn more about the latest mobile security trends...
Nov 07, 2011
This is Part 4 of our Holiday Scaling Series. Click here to view Part 1: To Scale Horizontally or Vertically and click here to view Part 2: Take Advantage of Caching and click here to view Part 3: Web Server Tuning. In Part 1 of our Scaling for the Holidays series, we touched on load...
Nov 04, 2011
Most readers will know that over the past year I have been very busy running CloudU, a broad-based Cloud education program that I created with the support of Rackspace. The program has met with amazing support – the whitepapers have been extensively read, the webinars well patronized and the initial eBook has met with positivity. The natural next step was...
Nov 03, 2011
Way back in 1992, long before the inception of the Rackspace Startup Program, rock & roll storyteller Bruce Springsteen wrote “Man came by to hook up my cable TV…We settled in for the night my baby and me…We switched ’round and ’round ’til half-past dawn…There was 57 channels and nothing on.” Today there are 500+...
Nov 03, 2011
I often hear how Cloud is insecure from people who claim that unauthorized access is a real and significant risk for users of Cloud Computing. It always kind of frustrates me as, in my (admittedly somewhat biased) view, Cloud is as secure, if not more so, than traditional IT. In our Cloud security whitepaper on...
Nov 02, 2011
Mike Mayo is the lead iOS developer for Rackspace. The release of iOS 5 — the latest update to Apple’s mobile operating system, which powers both the iPhone and the iPad — is chock full of shortcuts that empower users with easier to access some of the system’s core functions. Below is list of the...
Nov 01, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by James Brown, CTO, StillSecure, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. Practically everyone knows that security is the number one issue with moving more of an organization’s data and applications to the cloud. While the cloud is open and elastic – it creates a whole new set of...
Oct 31, 2011
This is Part 3 of our Holiday Scaling Series. Click here to view Part 1: To Scale Horizontally or Vertically and click here to view Part 2: Take Advantage of Caching. Happy Halloween! With Halloween already here, your web traffic will continue to ramp up through the rest of the year. These tips can help...
Oct 27, 2011
The Space Cowboys from the Rackspace Startup Program are on the road most of the time visiting with startups over the globe. Finding the best travel deals and booking them can be time consuming and frustrating. Are you frustrated with booking travel online? Introducing myTab, an online travel gift card where you can create trips...
Oct 26, 2011
Back in July, we announced the public beta of our Cloud DNS API. Based on customer feedback and hundreds of active public beta participants, we have made continuous improvements to ensure the API is production ready. Today we are excited to announce the general availability of Rackspace Cloud DNS API to all US and UK...
Oct 26, 2011
Cloud Computing, like marriage, is an example of a situation needing ongoing work from both parties to make for success. It was the over-arching theme of the CloudU report we published recently which took a deep look at Cloud Security. In the report we reflected on the fact that, rather than the traditionally held view...
Oct 24, 2011
This is Part 2 of our Scaling for the Holiday Series. Click here to read Part 1: To Scale Vertically or Horizontally? Caching is an easy way to speed up your application or website. Figure out what data you access frequently, and cache it in memory for repeated high-speed access to it. Whether your application...
Oct 20, 2011
The demand for developers in the startup world is huge. Many startup companies within the Rackspace Startup Program ask the question, “How can we find a dev for our project?” Our immediate response to that question is a referral to Masterbranch, which brings software developers the next generation of online professional profiles by letting their...
Oct 20, 2011
In the CloudU report we recently published looking at Cloud Security, we were at pains to point out that security in the Cloud is very much a partnership between vendors and customers – with both sides having a responsibility to “do their part.” One example of vendors doing there part is the Cloud Security Alliance, an...
Oct 18, 2011
Neiman Marcus is known for their luxury specialty retail but you wouldn’t know it until you walked in the door and purchased an item. Lexus is known for their smooth, luxurious ride but until you have had the privilege of driving one, you won’t be able to experience it. And Rackspace is known for our...
Oct 18, 2011
Simit Patel is a trader, writer, and technology entrepreneur. Simit blogs via Contently.com. The biggest economic impact the Internet has had thus far is in enabling a greater degree of data-driven decision-making, which has been shown to increase productivity. The result? Companies heavily invested in the infrastructure for Internet-based data transmission and storage – like...
Oct 17, 2011
When developing your application from the ground up, keep scalability in mind. Your application may run perfectly on your desktop or even after you’ve launched on the Cloud, but how will it run when you receive a swarm of visitors trying to access your application at the same time? You can always upgrade on the...
Oct 17, 2011
Businesses come to the Cloud with a variety of workloads including hosting rich media sites, corporate websites, ecommerce sites or test and development environments. With these workloads, businesses have a variety of challenges like how to best migrate data to the Cloud, how to optimize their applications for our cloud platform, or how to marry...
Oct 13, 2011
Within the real estate industry, technology is replacing the old tried and not-so-true method of print advertising when marketing residential rentals. Within the Rackspace Startup Program we have seen a rise in the number of startups focusing on Software as a Service (SaaS) applications for real estate. One such startup is Y Combinator alumni YouGotListings...
Oct 13, 2011
Click here to download these 10 Questions in PDF format. Enterprises are finding more and more reasons to consider the cloud for storage and other data retention purposes. Often, CIO’s point to performance optimization, risk reduction, and cost efficiency as major drivers for considering the cloud. If you’re exploring the cloud for data storage, here...
Oct 11, 2011
When Apple makes big announcements, the tech world seems to stand still. Or rather, it’s tech workers’ productivity that slows to a crawl, as they seek out live blogs of those lucky enough to be in the room at 1 Infinite Loop. For the tech press that handle such up-to-the-minute info, it’s predictable chaos—last Wednesday,...
Oct 11, 2011
A few months ago, finally sufficiently sick of the abysmal customer service and reliability delivered by my ISP, I decided to move the hosting of my blog to another provider. I reached out on Twitter and a buddy of mine (thanks Robot) pointed me in the direction of ZippyKid. Now ZippyKid is a great story...
Oct 07, 2011
Chris is a developer, writer, tech enthusiast, and husband. He blogs about productivity and technology at Lifehack.org. Christopher blogs via Contently.com. I remember taking my first SQL course in college. I knew a little SQL just from messing around with WordPress and Drupal installations but mostly just understood SELECT statements and very simple JOINS. Anything...
Oct 04, 2011
A consistent theme in our CloudU reports is the fact that with Cloud Computing, organizations have access to the highest level of technology, at simple utility pricing levels. One of the areas that has seen a lot of technical innovation of late, and one where that innovation tends to cost lots of money, is that...
Oct 04, 2011
Over the summer of 2011, Capital Factory in Austin, Texas was nurturing a group of startup companies including the Rackspace Startup Program sponsored Storymix Media who creates stories from your personal video. They make it easy to create a beautifully edited video as it is to design a photo book. Storymix Media is a great...
Oct 04, 2011
One can only wonder how the world would have been different if we had the technologies we have today back in the day. Modern technology is just that, modern, and ten years from now, we might be wondering how we did it with just our iPads. Technology makes history happen. Check out this fun infographic...
Sep 29, 2011
X.commerce Innovate Developers Conference 2011: An Early Look at the Future of Commerce When developers get together to launch products, trade ideas, and check out each other’s work, it’s like getting a sneak peek at the future. These aren’t just new tools coming down the pike—they’re cloud- and mobile-based capabilities that will soon transform and...
Sep 28, 2011
Jim Battenberg, Rackspace Cloud Evangelist sits down for a cup of coffee and Q&A with Bailey Caldwell at RightScale, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. Let’s start the conversation with Bailey giving us some background on RightScale. Bailey: Thanks for having us today Jim, we’re thrilled to be a Rackspace partner. Let me tell you about...
Sep 27, 2011
Ziad is the Director of Product at Rackspace Last week OpenStack announced the release of the latest version of OpenStack, Diablo (see here how we name releases). As a founder of OpenStack, Rackspace is excited to see the fourth release of the community driven software become a reality. In just over a year the OpenStack...
Sep 27, 2011
On this day in 1983, Richard Stallman wrote the groundbreaking announcement that he intended to write a comparable version of Unix. After experiencing frustration in getting critical changes made in the source code of proprietary software, he set out to champion the idea of returning to the spirit of sharing that existed in the early...
Sep 27, 2011
Green is everywhere these days. It’s in the news, politics, fashion, products, and technology and its here within the Rackspace Startup Program. Introducing ecomom, founded to address the connection between the health of our children and the vitality of our environment. The e-commerce site committed to providing parents with solutions for healthy living. ecomom does...
Sep 27, 2011
Last week we had the latest CloudU webinar, this time looking at the role of Open Standards in Cloud Computing. I was really excited to be joined on the call by Scott Sanchez, someone who is intimately involved with one of the biggest Cloud Open Standards plays, OpenStack. As well as Sanchez, we were joined...
Sep 21, 2011
Today we have released an important update to the Rackspace app for iPhone™, iPod Touch™, and iPad™. This new version gives you the power to manage your Cloud Load Balancers on the go. We have also fixed some bugs and improved performance in many parts of the app. So now you will be able to...
Sep 21, 2011
Apache Cassandra has come a long way since I first started writing about it at Rackspace. Since then, I started DataStax to commercialize Cassandra, we’ve had six major releases, run not one but two summits with hundreds of attendees, and now we’re about to release Cassandra 1.0 on October 8. What’s new in Cassandra 1.0?...
Sep 20, 2011
Last week I wrote about some issues that were raised at a recent CloudCamp I ran in Australia. Last week I looked at the contention (of some) that Software as a Service (SaaS) is no more than the Application Service Provider (ASP) approach of the nineties, albeit with a different name. This week I want to...
Sep 20, 2011
This is a guest post written by Itamar Haber, AVP Ops & Solutions at Xeround, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. Xeround is an elastic, always-on database-as-a-service for MySQL-based applications. As someone who had experienced both working with databases as well as trying to get them to work, I know how labor intensive it can get (and how frustrating...
Sep 20, 2011
Throughout the history of technology there has been a war raging between people pushing for a proprietary approach towards software and those wishing for the world to adopt Open Standards. Cloud Computing is no different and there are a plethora of different initiatives looking to bring “openness” to the Cloud. One only needs to look...
Sep 20, 2011
Rackspace would like to extend a warm Alamo City welcome to startup accelerator TechStars who is launching its first thematically focused program, TechStars Cloud. The inaugural TechStars Cloud program will run from January to April 2012 in San Antonio, Texas, and will be co-organized with Rackspace. The program will center around startups working exclusively on...
Sep 16, 2011
Less than a year ago, General Assembly set off to bring the benefits of collaborative working to New York’s rapidly growing startup scene. From its location in the Flatiron District, GA has become a bastion for tech and innovation in NYC. The Rackspace Startup Program has worked alongside General Assembly since its launch. While we...
Sep 14, 2011
We’re pleased to announce a major feature update for our Cloud Load Balancers product. Priority given to these features was largely based on feedback received from customers through our product feedback site. If you have suggestions on how we can improve this offering further, please let us know. These new features are now available: - ...
Sep 13, 2011
Cloud Files CDN customers often tell us they use Cloud Files and the Akamai CDN to serve their rich media websites by storing images and media files in Cloud Files and serving them fast over the Akamai CDN. Now, customers can stream their video files from Cloud Files via Akamai’s CDN. Video files are typically...
Sep 13, 2011
September 6 – 10, 2011, marked the first Austin Startup Week. The ultimate goal of Startup Week was to create an environment that encourages startups, developers, marketers, college students, investors and tech enthusiasts to check out ATX. Hundreds attended, including the Space Cowboys from the Rackspace Startup Program. During the week of events, startups had...
Sep 13, 2011
A month or so ago I was running a CloudCamp in Australia. As always it was a great event but was made more so by a fascinating exchange between two very different people. On the one hand was Michael Folmer-Hansen from SaaS customer support vendor Zendesk, who was attending his first CloudCamp after Zendesk had...
Sep 09, 2011
One of the most difficult aspects of being a road warrior is finding on short notice things to do in unfamiliar towns. Sure you can always walk into random concert halls, storm unknown venues or try your luck wandering the streets, but the probability of failure is high. Enter Rackspace Startup Program participant Will Call....
Sep 06, 2011
Recently the Rackspace Startup Program had the opportunity to visit the International Startup Festival in Montreal. It was here that we found out Canada is fast becoming an epicenter for the startup community. Let’s continue our Canadian journey and venture from the province of Quebec to Ontario and the University of Toronto’s The Next 36...
Sep 06, 2011
In a recent CloudU report – I made an effort to explain the Cloud Computing stack to non-technical, Mom and Pop businesses. As I reflected upon last week, the triangle metaphor is slightly imperfect for describing what the Cloud is. One of the reasons for this is the high degree of breadth that Platform as...
Sep 02, 2011
Dave McClure brought his startup brood all the way from Mountain View to Manhattan Wednesday night. The 500 Startups team showed off its latest batch at General Assembly (another Rackspace Startup Program partner). The very spacious communal area was standing room only — a standing testament to both the interest in NYC’s growing startup scene...
Sep 01, 2011
Every year, Rackspace gets heavily involved in SXSW and this year will be no different. It’s an event that brings some of the brightest minds in the tech industry into one vibrant city, right up the road from our headquarters. With SXSW 2012 being right around the corner, now is the time to pick the...
Sep 01, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by Joe McCann, Principal Architect of subPrint Interactive and the sole designer and developer of Gunnar, a Rackspace Cloud Tools partner. Gunnar is a drag and drop file uploader for Rackspace Cloud Files™. Not too long ago I found myself constantly having to open my web browser...
Sep 01, 2011
About a year ago, Rackspace, along with 25 other companies launched OpenStack. While it has been an incredible year for the project and deployments are cropping up around the globe, many have asked when Rackspace would put OpenStack into production. Truth be told, we have been running OpenStack Object Storage (code named Swift) in production...
Aug 31, 2011
During the 1960s, computers were large mainframes stored in rooms– what we call a “data center” today. They were costly and businesses could rent out space on the mainframe to fulfill specific functions. During the 1980s, the computer industry experienced the boom of the microcomputer era and computers were being widely used in the office....
Aug 31, 2011
The key to organizing a Rackspace Startup Program event is working with a plethora of people with specific roles in the planning process. How nice would it be to organize everything for your upcoming event to allow your team to focus on creating value for your guests and being responsive to speakers, suppliers, and support...
Aug 31, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by Brad Johnson, VP Product & Channel Marketing at SOASTA, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. SOASTA provides load and performance testing solutions available as on-demand cloud service. What is CloudTest, and what is Cloud Testing? These are questions we’re pretty used to answering at SOASTA, an original...
Aug 30, 2011
For years now those of us who talk Cloud on a daily basis have used variations on a triangle shape as a way to articulate what Cloud actually is and how the various services that make up Cloud can be differentiated. Traditional thinking (if one can have traditional thinking in a space as young as...
Aug 29, 2011
The U.S. doesn’t have an exclusive on this whole startup thing and there are few places where that are more evident than Canada. The country might be known for its fixation on hockey and gravy covered French fries, but it’s not all fun and games for our neighbors to the north. Due in part to...
Aug 23, 2011
Frustrated with trying to buy tickets for a show or sporting event online? The Rackspace Startup Program has a solution for your online ticket buying blues. Introducing SeatGeek, an online ticket search engine founded by Jack Groetzinger and Russ D’Souza at DreamIt Ventures, an accelerator program in Philadelphia. “We are consumer advocates. SeatGeek was founded...
Aug 23, 2011
? In my travels running CloudCamps all over the place, I’m always surprised how often the “how do you define Cloud” question comes up. Spending so much time in the rarefied atmosphere of the twitterverse, it’s easy to just assume that everyone else “gets it” and that we can leave behind such base level definitional discussions...
Aug 22, 2011
Jordan Goodyear is a Microsoft Certified Windows Tech for Managed on Cloud Servers. Our team is constantly looking for ways to improve the customer experience which includes finding ways to get web environments up and ready to go in a shorter amount of time. The Managed on Cloud Servers Windows team here has frequently used...
Aug 17, 2011
The most important day of an up-and-coming startup is Demo Day. What does that mean? It means product readiness, business development, and oh yeah, the opportunity to pitch in front of the press and investors. The Rackspace Startup Program had a chance to witness how they do just that at 500 Startups in Mountain View,...
Aug 16, 2011
We recently had the pleasure of one of our Rackspace Startup Program companies’ visit us here at the Rackspace headquarters in San Antonio. My Health on the Go based in Phoenix, Arizona, is a self-funded Bootstrap venture offering a free online wellness community, My Healthy Place, promoting personalized, proactive, preventative wellness to small businesses and...
Aug 16, 2011
I’ve been reading a copy of Do More Faster recently. Do More Faster is a kind of an entrepreneurs guide book written by two well known authors; Brad Feld, founder and investor of the Foundry and co-founder of the TechStars startup accelerator and David Cohen, co-founder and CEO of TechStars. Do More Faster is a...
Aug 12, 2011
The 2011 class of TechStars Boulder emerged from its bunker last week to do what startups in accelerators do: Rock their demo day. Like TechStars Boston, which we covered earlier this summer, the Boulder class consisted of 12 hot young startups that are likely to get a lot of attention over the coming months. Those...
Aug 11, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by Mark Floisand, VP of Marketing at ScaleXtreme, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. Enterprise data centers are evolving: most are using virtualized servers; many have private cloud deployments, and some are running a combination of public and private cloud infrastructure resources. As you have to keep track...
Aug 10, 2011
Forecast is the latest app from Hurricane Party, Inc., formed in May of 2010 in Austin, Texas. Hurricane Party was one of only five companies selected that year from a pool of several hundred for Capital Factory’s prestigious seed accelerator. At SXSW 2011 the Hurricane Party app was launched. It was in that same timeframe...
Aug 09, 2011
The term “hybrid” can hold a different meaning from industry to industry. Generally speaking, it describes the combination of two things to make one. In the cloud computing industry, there are a series of technologies you can use to run your web environments, from cloud to dedicated. Users can have a hybrid environment at Rackspace...
Aug 09, 2011
A lot of discussion round the traps has occurred around the fork lifting of legacy applications onto the Cloud. Recently I interview Christian Reilly about this, and other issues – his feeling was that the reality is that there simply isn’t the budget within organizations with legacy applications to spend the time to forklift those...
Aug 04, 2011
Hart Hoover is Linux Technician for Cloud Servers with a Managed Service Level. Click here to follow him on Twitter. Our customers come to us with all kinds of applications, from CMSs like Drupal and Joomla to eCommerce applications like Magento and everything in between. I’d like to discuss one of the most popular applications...
Aug 03, 2011
Today we’re happy to announce an exciting new update to the Rackspace Android app. While myself and the mobile team have been fully dedicated to building the next big update to our iOS app, we have not neglected the Android app. Adam Menz, a summer intern from the University of Texas, has stepped up to...
Aug 02, 2011
While in Montreal for the International Startup Festival, I got to go on a Dishcrawl. The concept will be familiar to anyone who has ever been on a pub-crawl. Instead of guzzling gallons of booze at multiple bars, you eat copious quantities of food at a number of restaurants. Dishcrawl, a Rackspace Startup Program participant,...
Aug 02, 2011
Not long ago I was alerted to a humorous, if somewhat jarring file. This pdf (read it and weep) is the price list for the Fusion series of applications from Oracle. The list has a couple of pages of product items, a bunch of different modules, minimum numbers of seats that need to be purchased per module and different...
Jul 29, 2011
In honor of SysAdminDay, we put together this creative to show our love for SysAdmins. Click image below for larger version. Embed This Graphic – Copy Source Code Below: Cloud
Jul 28, 2011
Jeff is the Rackspace Startup Program Manager. Follow him on Twitter. We foster growth and the Rackspace Startup Program continues to grow as we help startup companies succeed. Everyday, we meet these great startups that join the program and we have found key partners in the community to align with as well. With all of...
Jul 28, 2011
A part of what we do everyday is tied to the cloud. Whether it’s uploading photos, sending email or updating your status on various social media channels. Using the cloud to run your everyday business activities is growing tremendously as well. The Business Problem To do business, you have to write proposals and sign contracts....
Jul 26, 2011
A few weeks ago I took part in a really interesting roundtable discussion on focus.com. The roundtable was entitled “Enterprise Cloud Adoption – Defining (and Easing) the Barriers” and it bought together some of my favorite folks from around the Cloud space. On the roundtable we had; • Sam Johnstone- resident “say it how it...
Jul 25, 2011
We’ve been doing a lot of IPv6 communication since the end of last year and recently launched IPv6 for most Rackspace products, excluding Cloud Servers. Many of you are familiar with IPv6 but what do you say when you’re trying to explain this change to someone like your mom or dad? We made a fun...
Jul 20, 2011
This is a guest post by Rackspace customer, Robert Bates, a Senior Developer for Cool Blue Interactive in Atlanta, GA. Drupal has irrefutably become one of the major players in the content management system (CMS) market, and has one of the largest installed bases of any open source CMS. As Drupal has steadily moved from...
Jul 20, 2011
According to Gartner in 2010, 47% of enterprise survey respondents ranked data growth in their top three challenges. The steady growth in the pace of file creation and systems to save all of those files shows no hint of a slowdown. In 1986, only 1% of data was stored digitally. In 2007, it was 94%....
Jul 19, 2011
It is truly amazing that it has just been one year since we at Rackspace, along with NASA and 25 other organizations, officially announced the launch of OpenStack. From day one we have been shocked by the interest, engagement and momentum of the community launched to build the de facto open standard cloud operating system. Turns...
Jul 19, 2011
Today marks the 1 year anniversary of OpenStack. Check out the below timeline that details the milestones made along the way. Click image below for larger version. Embed This Graphic – Copy Source Code Below: openstack
Jul 19, 2011
I’ve spent a bunch of time arguing with people about the economics of Cloud Computing. While I don’t deny that the per-unit price of computing will come down because of Cloud Computing, I believe that focusing on cost in isolation misses the whole point of the Cloud. My contention is that Cloud Computing, as the...
Jul 19, 2011
En·tre·pre·neur – A person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk. Do you have the entrepreneurial spirit deep within yourself to create a startup? The Rackspace Startup Program team knows a startup business can be an exciting, challenging, rewarding and very stressful experience all rolled into one....
Jul 19, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by Ed Bellis, co-founder and CEO of HoneyApps, Inc., a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. Risk I/O consolidates all of your security, vulnerability information, reporting and management into a single place. Security applications are often used to monitor a company’s network, applications and servers: they detect and send...
Jul 14, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by Erin Swanson, Senior Director at Cenzic, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. Cenzic provides software and SaaS offerings to help protect websites from hacker attacks. Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Cenzic provides software and SaaS products to protect websites from hacker attacks. With over 250...
Jul 14, 2011
If you play in a volleyball summer league with coworkers or run your child’s soccer team, you know there’s a lot of coordinating involved to keep the team running. TeamSnap, Rackspace Cloud customer, helps you with all that coordination including online registration, game scheduling, and communication tools. It’s a web-based and mobile solution tool that...
Jul 13, 2011
A recurring theme of mine is that Cloud Computing constitutes an opportunity for small and medium businesses to “punch above their weight”. For a multitude of reasons that we’ve been articulating over the past six months or so with the CloudU series, Cloud Computing is a paradigm shift that gives SMBs the opportunity to obtain...
Jul 13, 2011
Major is the Lead Ops Engineer for Rackspace Cloud Servers. Click here to follow him on Twitter. Kernels are often overlooked but they’re one of the most critical pieces of software – if not the most critical piece – on a Linux system. At Rackspace, we’ve traditionally kept this simple for you by maintaining kernels...
Jul 12, 2011
Jacek Artymiak is a Rackspace customer and author of the latest ebook, “Managing Rackspace Cloud Servers.” This is my first post on the Rackspace blog so I owe you a short introduction. I wrote a book called “Managing Rackspace Cloud Servers”, which caught the attention of Angela, Anne, and Richie @ Rackspace and was favorably...
Jul 12, 2011
You can now subscribe to blog posts by Ben Kepes. Scroll to the bottom of the article and click on “Subscribe to all posts by Ben Kepes.” A few weeks ago I was in San Francisco attending NetSuite’s SuiteWorld conference. It was a great event – lots of user stories, lots of exciting applications on...
Jul 11, 2011
This post was originally posted on Robert Collazo’s blog here. With the release of Rackspace DNSaaS (blog post here), I thought I would put together some examples of using curl with the service. With this release, you now have programmatic access to DNS via the API where you can set TTLs, create and delete various...
Jul 11, 2011
Anne works on the community documentation for OpenStack as a Content Stacker. She is also the author of Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation. Do you remember technical manuals stored in several three-ring binders precariously balanced on a shelf, rakishly leaning, and collecting dust? We’re here to change that. All of the documentation...
Jul 07, 2011
Daniel Morris is the Sr. Product Manager for Platform Back in March, we announced that we are actively developing a Cloud DNS solution and that we were seeking customers to participate in our Cloud DNS private beta phase. Since then, our engineers and our private beta customers have been evaluating and testing the Rackspace Cloud...
Jul 07, 2011
Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers Available in the UK We’re excited to announce that Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers offering is now available as a fully supported product in the UK, featuring an aggressive service level agreement. Customers of our US Cloud have been able to enjoy this functionality for a while now, and following some rigorous...
Jul 05, 2011
Recently a couple of announcements caught my eye that really speak to our contention that Cloud Computing democratizes IT. As we said in a previous CloudU report, Cloud Computing is facilitating a seismic shift in terms of business development. Formerly, entrepreneurs who wished to start a business had to invest significant capital into hardware and...
Jul 05, 2011
Having a place to do test and development work is needed just as much as a production environment. However, many businesses don’t invest the time and money to build and manage a test/development environment due to the expense and headache of managing that infrastructure. With a cloud environment, it’s actually quite simple to set up...
Jun 28, 2011
Over the past six months we’ve been taking a deep dive into Cloud education with the CloudU education series. For those who haven’t yet seen it, CloudU is a concept I came up with awhile ago after running about 20 CloudCamps and other events and witnessing similar questions coming up again and again. I approached...
Jun 28, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by Craig Irwin, Chief Operating Officer at Apica, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. Apica allows clients to achieve excellence in cloud performance providing them with a complete cloud testing solution. Located in Silicon Valley, Apica is a performance load testing company. Some might say we’re the new...
Jun 28, 2011
Cloud computing is quickly evolving. At Rackspace, we naturally embrace change by continuously evolving our products and services to support the unique needs of our customers. Cloud Sites is not an exception. We’re fully committed to the Cloud Sites product and are in the process of expanding the team dedicated to the ongoing development. In...
Jun 27, 2011
At Rackspace, we’ve been busy for the last 6 months getting ready for IPv6. We’ve spoken to our customers and our partners about industry impact and what it means to be IPv6-ready. We’ve collaborated across network, product, IT, security, monitoring, supply chain, sales and support teams to make sure we’ve covered all aspects of the...
Jun 23, 2011
Mobile traffic to rackspace.com has grown by 133% over the past 18 months and smart phone sales have grown exponentially. With this increasing trend, we’re pleased to announce a mobile optimized version of our company website – m.rackspace.com. This initial launch consists of a micro version of rackspace.com and is geared towards improving the mobile...
Jun 23, 2011
Lew Moorman moderated a panel at GigaOM’s Structure 2011, “The Economics of Open Everything,” where leaders from VMware, Facebook and Dell talk about the open cloud movement. Significant events have occurred over the course of one year with the launch of OpenStack, OpenCompute and Cloud Foundry and they discuss what this means for the cloud...
Jun 23, 2011
After a few months in Beta, we’re pleased to announce the launch of the new Rackspace Knowledge Center. This new Knowledge Center is an integration of Cloud Hosting (Cloud Servers, Cloud Files, Cloud Sites) support articles and articles from our Hosting Knowledge center. The content you will find here will be specific how to articles...
Jun 22, 2011
Data stored in the cloud from social networks, email, web applications, and smart phones have many of the same vulnerabilities and require the same due diligence as if you’re running your information in your house. If you make the decision to put your data in the cloud, you definitely have a role in keeping your...
Jun 21, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by Mathias Biilmann, co-founder of Webpop, a Rackspace Cloud Tools partner. As the co-founder of Webpop, I am pleased to join the Rackspace Cloud Tools program. Webpop is a fully hosted CMS for web designers and their clients, built to make it easy for a web professional...
Jun 17, 2011
The dozen TechStars startups had their big reveal on Wednesday to a packed crowd during a Demo Day at Boston’s Royale Nightclub. Diversity is probably the best word to describe the group. Participating startups included everything from gaming to SaaS to medical services and devices. The Rackspace Startup Program was on hand when Demo Day...
Jun 17, 2011
With an e-commerce site, you want to ensure your door is open at all times so consumers can buy on their schedule, not yours. We have the privilege of hosting many e-commerce sites with our cloud solutions and understand the needs of these e-commerce sites; scalability and flexibility being a few of them. We invite...
Jun 16, 2011
At the end of April 2011, the Rackspace Startup Program was invited to the 3 Day Startup event held at our Rackspace headquarters here in San Antonio, TX. Five teams participated in the caffeine-fueled program including helloworld.im, a concept developed by Alex Manelis and designed by Alex Baldwin, which provides a simple profile for developers...
Jun 14, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by Ray Nugent, CEO of Smartscale, a Rackspace Cloud Tools partner. The Smartscale unified management platform allows companies to deploy, monitor and manage their cloud infrastructure through one single pane of glass. Since the dawn of the computer era complex hardware and software systems have been plagued...
Jun 13, 2011
Contributed by Product Managers Rob Jackson and Ed Conzel. We want to keep our entire customer base as informed as possible about IPv6, so we will be posting Q&As and announcements both here and on the Rackspace IPv6 Deployment & Readiness Headquarters site. From the time we initially started talking about IPv6, to our last...
Jun 10, 2011
Hosting rich media is not optional anymore but a requirement as a means to engage your audience and although video was made for the web, not all websites were made for video. Hosting rich media has its unique challenges such as delivering a flawless user experience, keeping up with the ever-expanding amounts of user-generated content...
Jun 09, 2011
Since its founding in 1989, The Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), a nonprofit unit of The University of Texas at Austin has been dedicated to adding value to technology startups. Over the years, ATI has evolved its incubation model as Austin’s tech economy has grown and developed focusing on Information Technology, Wireless Telecommunications, Bioscience and Clean...
Jun 09, 2011
Our very own President, Lanham Napier, was interviewed on CNN to talk about the technology shift to cloud computing. He was asked how Rackspace is able to compete in an industry where we’re the smaller company and he says it comes down to “agility, innovation and our customers.” Take a look.
Jun 09, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by Chris Brenton, Cloud Security Architect for CloudPassage, a Rackspace Cloud Tools partner. CloudPassage Halo is the first fully elastic, portable security solution for protecting Cloud Servers. Hello cloud owners! I’m Chris Brenton, Cloud Security Architect at CloudPassage. Our flagship product is called Halo, and through the...
Jun 08, 2011
Though open source refers to the sharing of source code of computer programs, the philosophy behind open source has existed before the time of computers. It’s about innovation through collaboration and sharing of knowledge. We’ve illustrated below the history of open source, the impact open source has been on the world and where open source...
Jun 07, 2011
We’re almost at the halfway mark in this first year of the CloudU series and everyone will now have a firm enough understanding of Cloud Computing basics for us to move on to some more details and practical papers. First up in this “how to” section is a paper that looks at some of the tips and tricks you...
Jun 07, 2011
Your website is the front door to your business, so every visit counts. We’re hosting a webinar that will help you make sure your website can handle big successes, like being mentioned on National TV, stay a success by scaling with the traffic rather than breaking down on you in the middle of your limelight....
Jun 07, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by Tyler Roberts, President and founder of Lemon Words SEO Tools, a Rackspace Cloud Tools partner. My experience in the start-up industry as a business minded Internet developer gives me a unique view on search engine optimization and building usable tools for the web. I launched LemonWords.com...
Jun 02, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by Jason Levitt, Director of Developer Network and Partner Integrations for Kaltura, a Rackspace Cloud Tools partner. Kaltura has an expansive and popular SaaS (Software as a Service) offering that lets our customers host and manage hundreds of thousands of videos, images, audio files, and documents. But one...
Jun 01, 2011
“Our nation’s economic recovery is picking up speed, and we are beginning to see stronger job growth” said Thomas J. Donohue, President and CEO of US Chamber of Commerce in his welcoming speech at America’s Small Business Summit held in Washington DC and hosted by the US Chamber of Commerce. And the Space Cowboys from...
May 31, 2011
If you’re interested in taking a look at the OpenStack dashboard, check out this recent video from Anthony Young of Rackspace Cloud Builders, as he demos the OpenStack dashboard. To learn more about the OpenStack dashboard, click here. With Cloud Builders, Rackspace will help you design your cloud, train your people, and provide full support...
May 27, 2011
Alex Polvi is Co-Founder of Cloudkick, a Rackspace company. Follow Alex on Twitter. Apache Libcloud is a Python library, which provides a standard interface for talking to different cloud providers. The team is proud to announce that this week Libcloud has graduated from the Apache Incubator to a Top Level Project. This puts Libcloud on...
May 26, 2011
Matt Wilbanks is a Cloud Specialist for Rackspace. Follow him on Twitter. Last Saturday I woke up to the most challenging day I’ve ever had. By the end of that day I had finished the Ironman Texas – a triathlon consisting of a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride and a 26.2 mile run...
May 26, 2011
One of the powerful things about the Internet is how quickly a controversial comment can go viral from the second it is published, reaching millions of people around the world within minutes. It’s what we’ve historically have called the “Oprah Effect.” This was the situation Rackspace Cloud customer, Rise, an Orlando web design agency, faced...
May 26, 2011
Today Rackspace is extending to the UK the new cloud category we defined here in the states last December – Managed Cloud. Cloud Servers with a managed service level marries our industry-leading 24×7 managed service on dedicated hosting with our highly scalable on-demand Cloud Servers. The end result is a premier offering allowing your business...
May 25, 2011
We launched our very own Rackspace Hosted Virtual Desktop (HVD) platform this week at the Citrix Summit 2011. Rackspace HVD brings together our hosting services with desktop virtualization solutions from Citrix and joint channel partners. With HVD, you have the flexibility of using Dedicated, Cloud, or RackConnect™ and can reduce deployment times of upgrades and...
May 25, 2011
Mark is the VP of Marketing and Business Development, Rackspace Cloud Builders. Follow Mark on Twitter. When we founded OpenStack nine months ago, we could not imagine how quickly the code would advance and community would grow. We also could not predict the enterprise demand for an open source cloud alternative. But many enterprises looking...
May 24, 2011
There’s an elephant in the room that most people try and skirt around when talking about Cloud Computing. That elephant is security. It’s one of those big hairy problems that, maybe due to huge amounts of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) by traditional vendors, gets blown out of proportion. The fact is that security in...
May 24, 2011
Sean Michael Kerner of Internetnews.com, recently interviewed Jonathan Bryce regarding the future of OpenStack and why Ubuntu Linux chose OpenStack. Bryce talks about how OpenStack is a once in a lifetime opportunity – it’s something that doesn’t occur every 6 months or every year. Read Kerner’s original post here.
May 24, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by Yovel Badash, Managing Director of IS Tools, a Rackspace Cloud Tools partner. IS Tools allows non-developers to quickly and easily build, provision and maintain on-demand enterprise applications and provides a flexible multi-tenant platform for IT pros to effectively consolidate, integrate and manage custom applications. So called...
May 24, 2011
Catalyst Resources, Rackspace customer, provides comprehensive strategy, user interface and rapid application design and development for mission critical software applications. Rackspace VP of Enterprise Strategy, Andy Schroepfer, and Catalyst Lead Architect, Paul Giurata, lead a webinar last week that covered the fundamental technical and infrastructure issues that need to be addressed when migrating your software...
May 20, 2011
Authored by Jeff Lamboy, Rackspace Startup Program. Contact him to learn more. Well the Space Cowboys at the Rackspace Startup Program made it to Interop in Las Vegas for Round Two of the King of the Apps. The May 10th showdown was the main event at the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay. In this...
May 19, 2011
Authored by Robert McAden, Email & Apps Senior Product Manager One of the things that I’ve enjoyed most about my job is talking to customers and hearing how our hosted Rackspace Email and hosted Microsoft Exchange product offerings have relieved them of the headache of hosting their own email servers and having to worry about...
May 18, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by Jon Dahl, CEO of Zencoder, a Rackspace Cloud Tools partner. Zencoder is happy to announce that we have added native support for Rackspace Cloud Files storage. Zencoder is the performance leader in scalable, fast, high-quality cloud-based video transcoding. It was launched in 2010 to solve the...
May 17, 2011
Authored By John McKenna, Rackspace Startup Program ? “While entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes, they all share the drive to do things that have never been done before, the belief that they can accomplish anything they put their minds to, and the need to get everything done as fast as they can. For...
May 17, 2011
All the cloud applications you use on the Internet today are written in a specific computer language. What you see as a nice icon on the front end looks like a bunch of code on the back end. It’s interesting to see where computer languages started and how they have evolved over time. There are...
May 17, 2011
This post was written by Brian Doll, Application Performance Engineer at New Relic, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner A short time ago we announced that Rackspace is giving away free New Relic to its customers. We’d like to follow up with some fantastic news that I think you’ll be excited to hear about. Today, New Relic...
May 16, 2011
Catalyst Resources, Rackspace customer, provides comprehensive strategy, user interface and rapid application design and development for mission critical software applications. Everyone knows that there are fundamental technical and infrastructure issues that need to be addressed when you migrate your software from on-premise to multi-tenant SaaS. But there are also application UI and design issues that...
May 11, 2011
As we mentioned in an April blog post, one of our recent Cloud Files improvements allows us to quickly add support for additional headers. We can turn around your requests for new headers much faster. Based on your feedback, we not only added the suite of CORS headers but also added support for Content-Disposition. Here...
May 10, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by Vid Luther, Founder of ZippyKid, a Rackspace Cloud Tools partner. We’ve all seen the stats, WordPress powers 13% of the web, or 22,000,000 websites. There’s no question that WordPress is more than just a blogging tool now, companies have been adapting it as a CMS for...
May 09, 2011
Are in Las Vegas for Interop? Come mingle with Rackers and Interop attendees as the King of the Apps finalists present their apps, built on Rackspace Cloud Files. The evening continues with networking and an opportunity to learn more about the Rackspace Cloud and OpenStack. Networking will be accompanied by a DJ, free food and...
May 05, 2011
If you are a space enthusiast, you’ve probably landed on the Spacevidcast website at one point in time. Racker, Robert (Robot) Taylor, recently interviewed Benjamin Higginbothom, founder of Spacedvidcast at the NASA tweetup for STS-133, the final discovery launch. “We do things like cover space shuttle launches in high definition, something that even NASA doesn’t...
May 04, 2011
Authored by John McKenna, the Rackspace Startup Program We love helping startups and we love helping students. The Rackspace Startup Program reaches out to students across the country with raw ideas as they evolve into entrepreneurial startups. By providing the foundation of Cloud hosting, Rackspace helps them get up and running in the right direction...
May 04, 2011
This post was contributed by Zachary Schneider, RHCE, System Engineer for the Rackspace Cloud. What is Redis? Redis is an open source, in-memory, persistent, advanced key-value data store. It has also been referred to as a data structure server since keys can contain not only strings, but also hashes, lists, sets and sorted sets. Redis...
May 03, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by Matthew Fowler, CTO for CloudTran, a Rackspace Cloud Tools partner. The exciting thing about the cloud – for application architects – is the jump in scale: some applications now serve millions of online users in fractions of a second with information refined from huge amounts of...
May 03, 2011
This HTML Evolution infographic takes a look at the transformation of web pages over the past 20 years, from HTML 1.0 to HTML 5.0. Prior to then, we’re just going to assume everyone played pong Please upgrade your browser To view the enlarged version, click here. ? 1991 • HTML 1.0 debuts as a hybrid...
Apr 29, 2011
Fiesta is over. Easter is over. But the Cascarone lives on – on your iPhone or iPad. Not sure what a Cascarone is? It’s the shell of an egg filled with confetti, painted in bright colors and closed with a piece of tissue paper. It’s a hefty task to make Cascarones that only end up...
Apr 28, 2011
Authored by Blake Robinson, Rackspace Startup Program. Follow Blake on Twitter. ? Did you know that Rackspace Cloud Files features a robust application programming interface (API) to help you create killer apps? It can be used to: • Upload files programmatically for tight integration with your app • Enable Cloud Files CDN integration on any...
Apr 27, 2011
Sam’s startup adventure finally meets the light at the end of the tunnel. With the release of CNAME support for Cloud Files, Sam was able to further develop his app. From initial success to a few failures, Sam pushed forward and focused in on the needs of his users. Read how Sam concludes his adventure....
Apr 27, 2011
The Rackspace Cloud Files team is pleased to announce support for CNAMEs for CDN enabled content. CNAME records are used to map your long and ugly CDN URLs (e.g. c012345.r00.s34.rackcdn.com) to something shorter, branded, and exactly what you want (e.g. product.megan.com). Our customers have been asking us for this feature and we’re thrilled to finally...
Apr 26, 2011
Sam’s startup adventure has been filled with ups and downs. After all the hardwork his developers put into Barronbook, he didn’t take home the prize for the King of the Apps contest. Sam faces new challenges including an upset investor. He goes back to the drawing board and thinks about what he can do to...
Apr 26, 2011
This is a guest post written and contributed by John Alessi, founder of SocketLabs, a Rackspace Cloud Tools partner. For the past 14 years, my team and I have been helping companies large and small successfully send transactional and marketing email. Things have really changed through the years and gone are the days when you...
Apr 25, 2011
One of the arguments opponents use against a move towards outsourced technology is the contention that it’s just as easy to build infrastructure within an organization. In the latest CloudU report, we take a deep dive into what goes on, both physically and virtually, to create a world-class data center; and use this explanation to...
Apr 21, 2011
Sam continues his startup adventure by hiring 3 developers to work on version 2.0 of his masterpiece, Barronbook, using the new VC funding he receives. He’s anxious for the next round of the King of the Apps contest. He keeps on his developers to ensure they are taking advantage of the newly released Cloud Files...
Apr 21, 2011
A lot has happened since I introduced myself to you here. We’re continuing to listen to our customers and we have accelerated our product releases and geographic coverage in response. Just since January, we’ve launched Cloud in the UK, Cloud Load Balancers, Akamai CDN to all of our Cloud Files customers, new iPhone and iPad...
Apr 21, 2011
Nine months ago, we joined forces with NASA and 20 leading tech companies to launch OpenStack, the open source project and community devoted to building the cloud operating system. What a ride it has been! Not only has community engagement exceeded our wildest dreams, but support for an open approach to the cloud has spread...
Apr 21, 2011
Authored by Blake Robinson, Rackspace Startup Program. Follow Blake on Twitter. ? Facebook yesterday played host to President Barack Obama in a town hall interview conducted live through the social network. The “Shared Responsibility and Shared Prosperity” interview focused heavily on the economy and, beyond serving as a watershed moment for social media, could be one...
Apr 20, 2011
As Sam’s startup adventure continues, his big day finally arrives. He is getting ready to present to the crowds his new idea. His unique idea of combining social network and business is attributed to the fact that Cloud Files released their SSL delivery feature. SSL delivery, or https, encrypts your data in transit as it...
Apr 19, 2011
In Part I of our story, we met Sam, a steampunk developer with dreams of fame and fortune. Sam set out to pursue those dreams by entering the Rackspace King of the Apps contest. He receives breaking news that Cloud Files rolls out the feature CDN Edge Purge which allows users to quickly edit or...
Apr 19, 2011
In February, we announced a beta for the Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers product. Since this announcement, we have steadily made minor adjustments to the offering and intensely monitored customer feedback based on hundreds of customers that participated in our beta offering. As of today, we’re excited to announce that the Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers offering...
Apr 19, 2011
This post was written and contributed by Ron Laughton, co-founder of Rank Ace Internet Marketing SEO Tools, a Rackspace Cloud Tools partner. ? A few years back, I built a website, Spreety TV Online, a television guide for the Internet, and nobody showed up. So, I set about learning traffic tactics to get millions of...
Apr 18, 2011
This is the third in a five-part series for webinars with GigaOM Pro on the future of the business and enterprise cloud. If you’re like other IT managers, you’re probably ready to embrace the power of cloud computing but still need to evaluate which cloud architecture is right for your business. To help you get...
Apr 18, 2011
Thanks to our new partnership with Akamai, Cloud Files has rolled out features at a faster pace than ever before and the features are still coming, with something big just around the corner. With these new features, Cloud Files users have the opportunity to build new applications in the Cloud. To illustrate how these new...
Apr 15, 2011
Living, as I do, in the middle of a country famed for its wilderness and clean green environment, I’ve always had an interest in environmental issues. Working within an industry that is one of the single biggest consumers of energy has made me interested in learning how that consumption can be made more efficient. And...
Apr 15, 2011
We’ve been releasing a lot of new Cloud Files features over the past few months. One of those improvements allows us to quickly add support for additional headers. What does this mean for you? Simply put, we can turn around your requests for new headers much faster. Here’s your assignment: 1) Add a comment on...
Apr 15, 2011
There are many cloud comparisons floating around on the Internet – something we’re certainly accustomed to seeing. We actually love the enthusiasm and encourage users to do their own benchmarks. That’s the beauty of the cloud, it’s easy to test various clouds because it’s cheap and takes minutes to get started. Influential tech blogger, Dave...
Apr 13, 2011
Robert Scoble interviews Rackspace Cloud customer, Trey Ratcliff, founder of stuckincustoms.com – the #1 travel blog on the Internet. If you haven’t visited stuckincustoms.com, you need to. Trey travels all over the world to take amazing photos where he tries his best to capture the environment he is in. He is especially known for pioneering...
Apr 12, 2011
This is a guest post written b y Itamar Haber, AVP Ops & Solutions at Xeround, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. Xeround is an elastic, always-on database-as-a-service for MySQL-based applications built on Rackspace Cloud Servers. Having spent most of my career around databases and the applications that use them, I can attest from experience that...
Apr 11, 2011
Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner, enStratus is hosting a free 30 minute overview and demo of their cloud management solution on April 26th. During this webinar you will learn best-practices in security, controls and automation across all leading public and private clouds including Rackspace. Topics to be covered: • Apply security policies into your public cloud...
Apr 08, 2011
Enterprise IT organizations are under pressure to change—to become more agile, responsive and cost-effective service providers. Key to this transformation is cloud computing—public clouds, private clouds and hybrid clouds. But, today, there are as many questions as answers: • How do I make sense of the options—public, private, hybrid? • What are the entry points...
Apr 08, 2011
Authored by Blake Robinson, Rackspace Startup Program. Follow Blake on Twitter. ? Rackspace is proud to announce Round Two of King of the Apps! The question is, are you ready to claim the cape and crown of your own? Oh and if capes and crowns aren’t big enough motivators, there’s also $10,000 in cash and...
Apr 08, 2011
Yesterday, we announced our participation in the Open Compute Project, an open-source community that will accelerate the innovation of next-generation data center infrastructure and hardware. To kick-start the project, Facebook is contributing their specifications and designs for an impressive new energy-efficient data center. This project will enable innovative collaboration in the areas of infrastructure efficiency,...
Apr 07, 2011
This post was written by David Kocher, Creator of Cyberduck, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. Cyberduck, the premier cloud storage client that debuted on the Mac, is now also available on Windows and allows you to connect to Rackspace Cloud Files or any OpenStack compliant storage provider. It features a browser to download, upload and...
Apr 07, 2011
If you have an Internet connection at home, you probably don’t think twice about streaming a video, uploading photos or sending email. Most consumers assume that with their monthly paid subscription, they have unlimited bandwidth. In reality, there has always been a silent bandwidth cap, however, most don’t surpass that limit. As technologies advance, the...
Apr 05, 2011
Authored by Eric Day, open source developer at Rackspace. This post was initially published on Eric’s Blog. ? OpenStack currently consists of three main components: Nova (Compute), Swift (Object Storage), and Glance (Image Service). There are some other projects such as a dashboard and mobile apps as well. You can see the full list here....
Apr 04, 2011
Rackspace will be attending a shower of events this April. We’ll be traveling across the US to talk to with customers and prospects alike about cloud computing, OpenStack, our new Startup Program and all things tech. If we’re in a city near you, we’d love to connect with you. Below are a few events we’ll...
Apr 01, 2011
Are you deploying apps on the Rackspace Cloud? You’ll want to check out the recorded webinar, “Managing Apps in the Rackspace Cloud” lead by New Relic, a Rackspace Cloud Tools partner. Rackspace has teamed up with New Relic, the leading provider of application management tools for Ruby, PHP, Java and .NET web apps, to make...
Mar 31, 2011
This is a guest post written by Will Shulman, CEO of ObjectLab. ObjectLab has created MongoLab, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. I’m very excited to talk to Rackspace customers about our new cloud database solution called MongoLab, currently in beta. First off why MongoDB? When I try to explain the benefits of MongoDB I like...
Mar 31, 2011
Our users have spoken and we have heard loud and clear! We have extended our limits for TTL (Time to Live) for objects on the content delivery network (CDN). We have moved our limit up from 72 hours to 50 years. TTL is a limit that you can set on how long you would like...
Mar 28, 2011
Mike Mayo is the mobile apps developer for Rackspace. If you’re interested in joining his team, click here. In the first update to the Rackspace Cloud 2.0 iOS app, we have some nice improvements. Bug Fixes First, we’ve fixed some bugs. Some you may not notice, but one is pretty important. There were a few...
Mar 25, 2011
The Rackspace Cloud Files team is pleased to announce that we now support extremely large file sizes by allowing customers to use multipart uploads. I really do mean extremely large files. In very simple terms, we accomplish this by having users segment their large files and upload a manifest file that maps their segments. The...
Mar 22, 2011
This guest post was written by James Tauber, CEO of Eldarion, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. Eldarion was founded in early 2009 to build and host great websites using Django and to help others do the same. Our overarching mission has been to create tools to help us and our clients get from idea to realization more...
Mar 21, 2011
Today we’re pleased to announce the Rackspace Cloud Domain Name Service (DNS) API Private Beta to US and UK Cloud Customers by invitation only. This service will allow customers to programmatically create and manage their DNS records. Currently, the operations available through the API include: • List, add, modify, and remove domains • List, add,...
Mar 18, 2011
The Rackspace Cloud Files team is pleased to announce our support for custom container metadata. Metadata can be attached to objects and now containers in order to categorize them and mark them with any sort of data. If you’re new to Cloud Files, let me recap a few basic definitions. An object is the basic...
Mar 17, 2011
This post was authored by Andrew Hutchings, Drizzle Developer at Rackspace. Click here to read more about him. This week, we launched the first GA release of the Drizzle project, a microkernel fork of MySQL aimed at the web and cloud. I want to go over what Drizzle isn’t, what it is and what some...
Mar 16, 2011
Rackspace and Zendesk work together in more ways than one. Zendesk, a web-based help desk software provider, is what we use as our primary ticketing system to support Rackspace Cloud Servers, Cloud Sites and Cloud Files customers. Customer support is crucial to our business and Zendesk provides a platform where we can elevate that customer experience....
Mar 15, 2011
This post was authored by Lizetta Staplefoote, Creative Writer at Rackspace. Many of us don’t remember a time when e-filing didn’t exist. However, there was a time when big corporations had to deliver huge paper returns via 18-wheeler and the only option for your refund was a paper check in the mail - months after...
Mar 14, 2011
Issac Roth, co-Founder and CEO of Makara, a Rackspace Cloud tools partner, will be leading a technical webinar on how to deploy scalable applications on Rackspace Cloud Servers using Makara. In this webinar, he will cover: 1. Step-by-step using Makara’s Cloud Application Platform 2. How to move new and existing PHP and Java applications on...
Mar 11, 2011
It’s no secret that Rackspace loves startups – we were one not too long ago. We are still committed to helping entrepreneurs succeed and drive the next generation of businesses through cloud innovation. Now, with the Rackspace Startup Program, we’ll be providing one-on-one guidance and Cloud Compute resources to help power these startups to success. ...
Mar 11, 2011
Mike Mayo is the mobile apps developer for Rackspace. If you’re interested in joining his team, click here. Today I’m excited to announce the release of Rackspace Cloud 2.0 for for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch – something I’ve been working hard on to build. This app is a complete rewrite of our existing...
Mar 10, 2011
This post was written and contributed by Allen MacCannell, VP Sales & Marketing at Web CEO, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. The importance of having a website optimized for search engines cannot be underestimated. Web CEO has been producing search engine optimization (SEO) software since 2000 and recently gathered fresh data over a two year...
Mar 10, 2011
Aren’t those “This site has unsecure content…” popups annoying? I bet your users think so. Rackspace Cloud Files is pleased to announce the support of SSL delivery over the Akamai content distribution network (CDN). SSL delivery, or https, encrypts your data in transit as it goes through the CDN. Your content remains encrypted all the...
Mar 09, 2011
Ben is the founder and managing director of Diversity Limited, a consultancy specializing in cloud computing/SaaS, collaboration, business strategy and user-centric design. In my travels running CloudCamps and other events, I’m surprised by how often people have questions around the definition of Cloud Computing – those of us who “talk the Cloud” every ay sometimes forget...
Mar 08, 2011
In only 8 months, the OpenStack™ community has grown to more than 50 organizations and 1,000 individuals to help influence and build the open cloud standard. With such great progress and our recent acquisition of Anso Labs, a service company that has helped large business and government organizations deploy and operate OpenStack clouds, the timing...
Mar 08, 2011
They heard the call and they brought it! Rackspace is proud to announce the finalists for King of the Apps, Round One. Congratulations to Ray Perea – SnapWebmanager and Cody Harris & Brock Holzer – SnapAppointments! Announcing the main event: Two apps ready to battle at SXSW in Austin on March 12, 2011. In this...
Mar 07, 2011
Do you have a friend or colleague interested in learning more about Rackspace Cloud products and services? Tell them to sign up for a live demo where a Cloud expert will cover the following: Benefits of Cloud Hosting Review of Cloud Servers, Cloud Sites and Cloud Files Demo on how to get started (and how...
Mar 04, 2011
Distributing your files over a content distribution network (CDN) is all about increasing speed and expanding your global footprint. The Cloud Files team is dedicated to making sure our CDN is up to date with technologies that can increase that performance whenever possible. We are pleased to announce the launch of HTTP Compression on the...
Mar 01, 2011
Today we’re pleased to announce an improved Rackspace Partner Program. Enhancements include: *The unification of our four programs into one global partner experience *Access to a broad range of additional hosted services *A centralized portal for relationship management *An integrated compensation structure and tiered benefits for various program levels This is an initiative that our...
Feb 28, 2011
GigaOm Pro and Rackspace are kicking off a 5-part webinar series starting Thursday, March 3rd that will examine some of the most important topics in cloud computing. The topic for this Thursday is “Taking the Pulse of the Business Cloud.” This webinar will discuss current perceptions among CIOs and enterprise IT departments about the state...
Feb 25, 2011
We’re pleased to announce that Rackspace Cloud Files now supports Edge Purge via the Cloud Files API. This feature allows customers to quickly edit or delete content on the edge server. When an object is CDN enabled and requested from an end user, the object is cached at the edge. That object remains unchanged, untouched,...
Feb 24, 2011
Josh Odom leads the Platform Product Line Last November, we announced that we were actively developing a high-performance, on-demand cloud load balancing solution and were seeking customers to participate in our cloud load balancers private beta phase. Since then, our engineers and our private beta customers have been evaluating and testing our cloud load balancers...
Feb 24, 2011
This post was written by Brian Doll, Application Performance Engineer at New Relic, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner Deploying apps on the Rackspace Cloud? Read on–we’ve got some great news for you. We are very pleased to announce today a new partnership with Rackspace that makes New Relic’s SaaS-based application management tool available to Rackspace...
Feb 23, 2011
More and more businesses are shifting from using cloud computing solely for testing and development to extending pieces of their production environments into the cloud. With this shift, IT decision makers are now faced with a whole new set of considerations. If downtime in your internal infrastructure or core product offerings negatively impacts your bottom...
Feb 22, 2011
The amount of data stored on the Internet today has reached astronomical numbers. From Bytes to Petabytes to Exabytes – online data storage continues to rocket. What’s really in a byte? It’s hard to imagine what a terabyte of storage really equates to. If you took the average number of bytes per Flickr photo and...
Feb 18, 2011
Rackspace is proud to announce that all Cloud Files customers have now been migrated to Akamai. This means that all Cloud Files customers, both in the US and UK are now being served via Akamai’s expansive content distribution network. Our next step in this transition is to begin implementing new URLs. Legacy URLs will still...
Feb 14, 2011
This article was originally posted on the Rackspace Hosting Blog. Written by Jason Ackley, a Network Architect at Rackspace in the Backbone Engineering department. Jason’s primary focus is on global IPv6 deployment for Rackspace and IPv6 evangelization. There have been some exciting developments in the Internet industry since our last IPv6 blog post in December...
Feb 14, 2011
Here at Rackspace we have designed and built our company behind one underlying mission: to be regarded as one of the world’s great service companies. As you can imagine for us to deliver on this mission there are a lot of things that we have to do right. One of the key elements to delivering...
Feb 12, 2011
Here on the Cloud, we’re looking for a few good apps. And not just good—we’re searching for the best app in the land that uses Rackspace Cloud Files. At SXSW, we’re going to crown the King of the Apps. We’re looking for apps that exhibit that rare blend of innovation and creativity, solid usability, and...
Feb 11, 2011
I spend a lot of time traveling all around the world talking about Cloud Computing. Often I end up talking to IT and financial folks who want to have a discussion about cost, usually it goes along the lines of “But cloud WILL save me money won’t it?” I’m kind of against these sort of...
Feb 10, 2011
Many developers may not be getting enough out of the database tools they currently use. Several others are paying too much for the ones that do deliver. PremiumSoft is here to combat this problem with Navicat, a unique and easy-to-use database administration tool. What is Navicat? Navicat is a highly rated database tool designed to...
Feb 09, 2011
This post was composed by Issac Roth, Director of Product Marketing – Cloud Solutions at Red Hat Red Hat’s Makara team is pleased to announce the availability of the Makara Cloud Application Platform for use with The Rackspace Cloud. Makara is a Platform-as-a-Service that allows you to deploy, manage, monitor and auto-scale your new or...
Feb 09, 2011
This post was composed by Issac Roth, Director of Product Marketing – Cloud Solutions at Red Hat Red Hat’s Makara team is pleased to announce the availability of the Makara Cloud Application Platform for use with The Rackspace Cloud. Makara is a Platform-as-a-Service that allows you to deploy, manage, monitor and auto-scale your new or...
Feb 08, 2011
Scalr is software that auto-scales web applications by provisioning and configuring resources like servers, storage, and IP addresses. These resources are taken from the cloud, like EC2 and now Rackspace Cloud. Hi folks, I’m Sebastian, co-founder of Scalr, which is part of the Rackspace Cloud Tools program, available for use with Cloud Servers. When we...
Feb 08, 2011
Scalr is software that auto-scales web applications by provisioning and configuring resources like servers, storage, and IP addresses. These resources are taken from the cloud, like EC2 and now Rackspace Cloud. Hi folks, I’m Sebastian, co-founder of Scalr, which is part of the Rackspace Cloud Tools program, available for use with Cloud Servers. When we...
Feb 07, 2011
Focus is putting together a Cloud Computing roundtable with Ben Kepes as moderator and panelists, Christian Reilly, Jim Battenberg (Product Marketing, Rackspace Cloud) and John Taschek (Strategy, Salesforce.com). Topics include: 1) Is hybrid cloud merely a stepping stone? 2) Will the world really be completely cloudy one day? 3) When will we stop talking about reduced...
Feb 07, 2011
Focus is putting together a Cloud Computing roundtable with Ben Kepes as moderator and panelists, Christian Reilly, Jim Battenberg (Product Marketing, Rackspace Cloud) and John Taschek (Strategy, Salesforce.com). Topics include: 1) Is hybrid cloud merely a stepping stone? 2) Will the world really be completely cloudy one day? 3) When will we stop talking about reduced...
Feb 04, 2011
Building a Multi-channel Distribution Strategy For SaaS, Web App, and Cloud companies the “if you build it they will come” assumption is not just wrong, but can be costly. While Cloud adoption and excitement have dramatically expanded the market for SaaS applications, there is a downside; the signal to noise ratio is decreasing making it...
Feb 04, 2011
Building a Multi-channel Distribution Strategy For SaaS, Web App, and Cloud companies the “if you build it they will come” assumption is not just wrong, but can be costly. While Cloud adoption and excitement have dramatically expanded the market for SaaS applications, there is a downside; the signal to noise ratio is decreasing making it...
Feb 04, 2011
Rackspace Cloud Files is proud to announce that we will no longer be charging for requests, including Put, Post, and List requests – that’s right, all requests are now FREE! At Rackspace, we’re committed to cutting our costs so we can cut your price, and that’s exactly what’s happened. We know that when you’re storing...
Feb 04, 2011
Rackspace Cloud Files is proud to announce that we will no longer be charging for requests, including Put, Post, and List requests – that’s right, all requests are now FREE! At Rackspace, we’re committed to cutting our costs so we can cut your price, and that’s exactly what’s happened. We know that when you’re storing...
Feb 03, 2011
It’s great to get recognized in whatever industry your company is in, and at Rackspace, we want to be the leader in hosting and cloud computing. One of the many places that track the cloud race is jackofallclouds.com, which started tracking websites hosted on the top cloud providers back in July 2009. In a recent...
Feb 03, 2011
It’s great to get recognized in whatever industry your company is in, and at Rackspace, we want to be the leader in hosting and cloud computing. One of the many places that track the cloud race is jackofallclouds.com, which started tracking websites hosted on the top cloud providers back in July 2009. In a recent...
Feb 02, 2011
This post was written by Cliff Turner, Solutions Architect for Rackspace’s Enterprise Services Division After seven years in San Antonio, Rackspace has sent me on the road to be a bit closer to some of our customers: I’m happy to be part of Rackspace’s new four-member and growing regional New York City team. Over the...
Feb 02, 2011
This post was written by Cliff Turner, Solutions Architect for Rackspace’s Enterprise Services Division After seven years in San Antonio, Rackspace has sent me on the road to be a bit closer to some of our customers: I’m happy to be part of Rackspace’s new four-member and growing regional New York City team. Over the...
Jan 26, 2011
This post was written by Chris Gillan, Co-Founder of Gazzang, Inc., a Rackspace Tools Partner. A friend of mine, the CEO of a small ASP software company, hired a consultant to come in and tweak a few things on a MySQL database. The consultant was in and out in a day, database performance was back...
Jan 26, 2011
This post was written by Chris Gillan, Co-Founder of Gazzang, Inc., a Rackspace Tools Partner. A friend of mine, the CEO of a small ASP software company, hired a consultant to come in and tweak a few things on a MySQL database. The consultant was in and out in a day, database performance was back...
Jan 25, 2011
Rackspace is proud to announce that all new Cloud Files CDN customers will now leverage Akamai’s content delivery network. That means that anyone who signs up today from either the US or UK site can immediately take advantage of Akamai. Earlier this month, we announced our partnership with Akamai Technologies, Inc., the industry’s leader in...
Jan 25, 2011
Rackspace is proud to announce that all new Cloud Files CDN customers will now leverage Akamai’s content delivery network. That means that anyone who signs up today from either the US or UK site can immediately take advantage of Akamai. Earlier this month, we announced our partnership with Akamai Technologies, Inc., the industry’s leader in...
Jan 24, 2011
Ben is the founder and managing director of Diversity Limited, a consultancy specializing in Cloud Computing/SaaS, Collaboration, Business strategy and user-centric design. In 2011, he is curating the CloudU program sponsored by Rackspace. CloudU, the education series I’m hosting with the support of Rackspace, officially launched last week and so far the feedback has been...
Jan 24, 2011
Ben is the founder and managing director of Diversity Limited, a consultancy specializing in Cloud Computing/SaaS, Collaboration, Business strategy and user-centric design. In 2011, he is curating the CloudU program sponsored by Rackspace. CloudU, the education series I’m hosting with the support of Rackspace, officially launched last week and so far the feedback has been...
Jan 20, 2011
Ben is the founder and managing director of Diversity Limited, a consultancy specializing in Cloud Computing/SaaS, Collaboration, Business strategy and user-centric design. In 2011, he is curating the CloudU program sponsored by Rackspace. I’ve spent the last 15 years or so owning and running business in a bunch of different industries – from manufacturing to...
Jan 20, 2011
Ben is the founder and managing director of Diversity Limited, a consultancy specializing in Cloud Computing/SaaS, Collaboration, Business strategy and user-centric design. In 2011, he is curating the CloudU program sponsored by Rackspace. I’ve spent the last 15 years or so owning and running business in a bunch of different industries – from manufacturing to...
Jan 20, 2011
We first announced Ubuntu 10.10 images available for Cloud Servers back in October. Today, we are excited to announce that we are supporting Ubuntu 10.10 on Linux Cloud Servers with a managed service level. Now you can be assured the best support in the cloud on your Ubuntu 10.10 images. When we launched our new...
Jan 20, 2011
We first announced Ubuntu 10.10 images available for Cloud Servers back in October. Today, we are excited to announce that we are supporting Ubuntu 10.10 on Linux Cloud Servers with a managed service level. Now you can be assured the best support in the cloud on your Ubuntu 10.10 images. When we launched our new...
Jan 19, 2011
Today we officially launch our Cloud Infrastructure in the UK and to mark the occasion last night our UK office held an action-packed launch party at the Texas Embassy in Trafalgar Square, London. The event was attended by some of our current cloud customers including Betfair, Pod1 and Netbiscuits and over 20 journalists including the...
Jan 19, 2011
Today we officially launch our Cloud Infrastructure in the UK and to mark the occasion last night our UK office held an action-packed launch party at the Texas Embassy in Trafalgar Square, London. The event was attended by some of our current cloud customers including Betfair, Pod1 and Netbiscuits and over 20 journalists including the...
Jan 18, 2011
To store a gigabyte’s worth of data just 20 years ago required a 500-pound machine the size of a refrigerator. Today, we carry gigabytes of data around in our pockets in our smart phones, mp3 players, and laptops. Click image below for larger version. Embed This Graphic – Copy Source Code Below: Online...
Jan 18, 2011
To store a gigabyte’s worth of data just 20 years ago required a 500-pound machine the size of a refrigerator. Today, we carry gigabytes of data around in our pockets in our smart phones, mp3 players, and laptops. Click image below for larger version. Embed This Graphic – Copy Source Code Below: Online...
Jan 18, 2011
We are excited to celebrate the six-month anniversary of OpenStack this week. Six months ago we decided to open source the software behind our Cloud Computing technology, because we believe a widely adopted, open platform will drive standards. I talked at length about why we did this and the vision we have when it comes...
Jan 18, 2011
We are excited to celebrate the six-month anniversary of OpenStack this week. Six months ago we decided to open source the software behind our Cloud Computing technology, because we believe a widely adopted, open platform will drive standards. I talked at length about why we did this and the vision we have when it comes...
Jan 12, 2011
For those of you who have been waiting patiently for CNAMEs and much faster development of our Cloud Files product, we have some great news! Today we announced that we have entered into an agreement with Akamai Technologies, Inc., the leader in CDN innovation and content delivery. This relationship marks a renewed commitment from our...
Jan 12, 2011
For those of you who have been waiting patiently for CNAMEs and much faster development of our Cloud Files product, we have some great news! Today we announced that we have entered into an agreement with Akamai Technologies, Inc., the leader in CDN innovation and content delivery. This relationship marks a renewed commitment from our...
Jan 11, 2011
Since we delivered our first Cloud Servers iPhone app in September 2009, a lot has changed. Tens of millions of iPhones were sold in 2010 and it seemed everyone wanted an iPad for Christmas. Today, we are excited to announce new updates of our popular Rackspace Cloud Application for iPhone/ iPod Touch and Rackspace Cloud Pro...
Jan 11, 2011
Since we delivered our first Cloud Servers iPhone app in September 2009, a lot has changed. Tens of millions of iPhones were sold in 2010 and it seemed everyone wanted an iPad for Christmas. Today, we are excited to announce new updates of our popular Rackspace Cloud Application for iPhone/ iPod Touch and Rackspace Cloud Pro...
Jan 11, 2011
Last week’s webinar, Introduction to Rackspace® Cloud Servers™ with a Managed Service Level, was a topic that garnered much attention. Hosted by Lew Moorman (President‚ Cloud & Chief Strategy Officer), Frederick Mendler (Vice President‚ Sales & Marketing) and Paul Salisbury (Director‚ Managed Service Level‚ Rackspace Cloud), the webinar drew more than 550 attendees. We received...
Jan 06, 2011
We offer two file storage products—Cloud Files™ and Cloud Drive. Even though both offer cloud-based file storage, they are designed for different uses. Let’s take a deeper look . . . Cloud Files Cloud Files is designed for businesses that need unlimited, high performance object storage for your data, with the ability to deliver files...
Jan 05, 2011
This post was written and contributed by Helen Yu, Director of Product Marketing at Zendesk, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. Zendesk is a leading provider of web-based help desk software with elegant support ticket system and a self-service customer support platform. Built upon the idea that customer support software doesn’t have to be costly and...
Jan 04, 2011
AcceloWeb was very excited for the opportunity to participate and present, with our Rackspace partner colleagues, how our cloud service speeds the performance of cloud based websites and cloud hosted web enabled applications. Click here to view the recorded the presentation. Enterprises of all sizes are transitioning their mission critical on-line presences to on-demand cloud...
Jan 03, 2011
This post was written by Ben Kepes Having spent 2010 traveling the world talking Cloud Computing, I’ve long been of the opinion that 2011 is going to be the year that we remember when Cloud Computing reached its own tipping point. Rackspace shares my vision and sees the value in a broad educational program for...
Dec 30, 2010
#10 – Several New OS’s for Cloud Servers Rackspace® Hosting furthered its commitment to having a diverse cloud by adding more Operating Systems this year than most of our competitors. We’re always striving to have the resources your business needs. #9 – Rackspace’s very own Lanham Napier listed as one of Forbes Most Powerful CEOs...
Dec 29, 2010
A few weeks ago Rackspace announced our newest managed service level – on Rackspace Cloud Servers. To follow-up on the benefits and Fanatical Support® offered by this new managed service, we are hosting a webinar which will explore the following topics: How the cloud is revolutionizing IT and what it means for your business Details...
Dec 28, 2010
Thanks to everyone for participating in the Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner webinar on deploying a video platform in minutes. Click here to view the presentation. As many of you know, building a video platform to manage and deliver video for web and mobile consumption can be very daunting and expensive. But, it doesn’t have to...
Dec 27, 2010
This post was written by Ben Kepes. Ben is the founder and managing director of Diversity Limited, a consultancy specializing in Cloud Computing/SaaS, Collaboration, Business strategy and user-centric design. As a cloud computing blogger, analyst and evangelist, I spend much of my time talking to vendors, customers and the general public about cloud computing. I...
Dec 23, 2010
CMS, IaaS, PaaS, CDN and API. You may be familiar with some, or all, of these acronyms, but what exactly do they mean? And how do these acronyms impact developers and decision makers within your organization? A recent post on the Rackspace Email & Apps Blog goes into detail some of the most popular acronyms,...
Dec 22, 2010
Many web entrepreneurs associate the holiday season with shopping, but one clever startup has found a niche in that other wintry rite: parties. Punchbowl.com is the one-stop site that helps smart moms and savvy professionals plan a party from start to finish. Punchbowl offers a modern, effortless way to plan a celebration with party-planning features...
Dec 21, 2010
Over the past year I have had the privilege of managing the Cloud Files™ product line and during that time we have completely re-architected the infrastructure, deployed in 3 datacenters worldwide and migrated all customers off the old system (which numbered in thousands of customers, billions of objects and petabytes of data). We open-sourced our...
Dec 20, 2010
This article was originally posted on the Rackspace Hosting Blog. Written by Jason Ackley, a Network Architect at Rackspace in the Backbone Engineering department. Jason’s primary focus is on global IPv6 deployment for Rackspace and IPv6 evangelization. We’ve been fielding a lot of customer questions on the topic of the dwindling amount of remaining IPv4...
Dec 17, 2010
It is our pleasure to extend a special holiday gift to you that will keep on giving. Effective today, the Rackspace Cloud has lowered its Bandwidth Out pricing from $0.22/GB to $0.18/GB. That is a savings of nearly 20%! This change applies to Cloud Files, Cloud Files (CDN-enabled), Cloud Servers and Managed Cloud. We hope...
Dec 16, 2010
This news is taken from the original post on the Rackspace Blog. Rackspace® Hosting is thrilled to announce the recent acquisition of Cloudkick, an award-winning Web application for easy and efficient cloud server management. Many of you already know the company as a Rackspace partner and leader in the Cloud tools space. For those who...
Dec 14, 2010
Today Rackspace is defining a new category of hosting – Managed Cloud – much as we did a decade ago when we led the way in Managed Hosting. Our first service offering in this new category is Cloud Servers with a managed service level, marrying our industry-leading 24?7 managed service on dedicated hosting with our...
Dec 14, 2010
Today Rackspace is defining a new category of hosting – Managed Cloud – much as we did a decade ago when we led the way in Managed Hosting. Our first service offering in this new category is Cloud Servers with a managed service level, marrying our industry-leading 24?7 managed service on dedicated hosting with our...
Dec 13, 2010
This post composed by Tim Falls, Marketing Specialist at SendGrid, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner. WHY? If you’ve ever built, managed and scaled email infrastructure to support your application, you probably noticed one common theme throughout the experience — email is really difficult! If you haven’t experienced this first hand, then (1) consider yourself lucky,...
Dec 08, 2010
I joined Rackspace a couple of months ago, and I’ve been waiting for this opportunity to introduce myself and speak a little bit about our future path here at the Rackspace Cloud . . . I have been asked to lead our Product & Development efforts for our Cloud services. Previously I led the global...
Dec 07, 2010
There are a lot misconceptions floating around about the cloud. If you’re considering moving to the cloud, here’s some clarity on the top 25 myths surrounding the cloud and the truths behind them.
Myth #1: Cloud computing is just a marketing buzzword.
Truth: The term “cloud” is new, but at its core, the cloud is simply a...
Dec 06, 2010
Web programming and design has experienced quite an evolution this decade, with the Content Management System (CMS) growing in popularity. In recent years, developers have come together to build a flourishing community that offers a host of open-source solutions.
The largest CMS platforms within this free, open-source community are Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress. Each offers room...
Dec 03, 2010
We are proud to announce that we have received our SAS 70 Type II report, which includes Cloud Servers & Cloud Files. This is the first year that our Cloud Servers and Cloud Files segments have received a Type II report, which is in line with other major segments at Rackspace. Also, all of our...
Dec 02, 2010
This post was written and contributed by Siva Devaki,
Founder of Mansa Systems, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner.
Salesforce is the No 1 CRM in the industry today, and what enhances its acceptability is that it allows you to customize its features to any extent with a Force.com platform. Advent of cloud computing refers to the...
Dec 01, 2010
The holidays are almost here, but we have a few more events we’d like to share with you before the New Year. If you’re going to be in attendance, be sure to stop by and chat with us.
Joomla Day 2010
December 4-5, 2010
Anything and everything Joomla. Topics will include template development, Joomla for business, extension...
Dec 01, 2010
Starting today you can launch a fully licensed copy of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition right from your Cloud Server control panel or through the Cloud Servers API.
SQL Server 2008 R2 provides a secure, scalable and highly available information platform that is fully integrated with Microsoft Office, offers industry leading business intelligence capabilities...
Nov 30, 2010
With the advent of cloud computing technology, game-changing companies are getting their ideas up and running in minutes. Entrepreneurs shouldn’t have to slow their momentum, spending time on managing servers. ShopIgniter is one company on the cloud with momentum to spare.
ShopIgniter is an industry leader in social e-commerce solutions: they help companies grow, extend their...
Nov 22, 2010
A record amount of time and money will be spent online this holiday season. Are your cloud websites and web apps ready for the increased traffic that holiday madness brings? We’ve collected some great optimization tips from our resident cloud experts to make your IT holiday season merry and successful!
Static Content- For the best performance, we...
Nov 18, 2010
This post was written and contributed by Nathalie Benoit, VP, Marketing for OneLogin, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner.
Securely access The Rackspace Cloud Control Panel without entering a username and password – one click is all you need. As a pre-integrated application with OneLogin – a single sign-on and identity management provider – The Rackspace...
Nov 18, 2010
Join us at Cloudstock: The Woodstock for Cloud Developers on December 6 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California. We will be hosting the Run it, build it, change it: Open Source in the Cloud session where you can learn why open source in the cloud is important and what you can do using...
Nov 16, 2010
This post was written by Dennis Yang, Director of Product & Marketing of Infochimps, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner.
Twitter has taken the technological world by storm in the past few years. It’s incredible to think that something that only launched a few years ago is on track to hit over 200 million users by the end...
Nov 15, 2010
In celebration of Recycling Day 2010, Rackspace Cloud customer, Ecycler, wrote and contributed the following post.
Businesses have an opportunity to offer their customers more than just a product or service – by making green thinking part of their culture, their customers gain peace of mind knowing that concern for the environment is part of...
Nov 11, 2010
This post was written and contributed by Major Hayden, Linux Systems Engineer for the Rackspace Cloud. He’s also known as “Racker Hacker.”
One of the most common questions that I see in my favorite IRC channel is: “How can I secure sshd on my server?” There’s no single right answer, but most systems administrators combine...
Nov 09, 2010
We are actively developing a high-performance, on-demand load balancing solution–built in the cloud, for the cloud.
Cloud Load Balancing will allow customers to create more robust, scalable, and high availability configurations in the cloud in a matter of seconds. Imagine being able to launch a load balancing solution with the push of a button or via...
Nov 08, 2010
There are some exciting things happening with the OpenStack efforts. The team over there is getting ready to hold their semi-annual Design Summit this week in San Antonio, TX downtown in the Weston Centre from November 9-12. With an expected crowd of over 300 attendees, this event serves as the official kick-off for the next...
Nov 03, 2010
The latest version of the Fedora Linux distribution was released yesterday morning and we’ve made it available for all Cloud Servers customers. While the majority of Fedora 14’s improvements are for desktop users, there are still quite a few improvements for servers as well.
There are significant improvements for customers using varnish to cache data before...
Oct 28, 2010
Rackspace® Hosting will be in Santa Clara, California on November 1-4, 2010 for the Cloud Computing Expo and we would love to visit with you while we’re in town.?? Please join Rackers from across the company as well as our ?OpenStack team for an evening of networking and free food & drinks.
We’ll be here to...
Oct 27, 2010
Rackspace continues to be dedicated to open source software, including contributing resources to the Apache Cassandra project and founding OpenStack, the open-source cloud platform.
The Apache Cassandra team is in the process of rolling up a release candidate for Cassandra 0.7. That makes this a good time to highlight some of the new features and changes...
Oct 26, 2010
This post was written and contributed by Dan Di Spaltro, Founder of Cloudkick, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner.
We were very happy to participate in a webinar with the Rackspace Cloud talking about managing Windows Servers in the Cloud.
Managing infrastructure on the Cloud, or anywhere for that matter, is a tough proposition. Windows infrastructure is no...
Oct 20, 2010
We’re happy to announce that 64-bit Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) images are now available for Cloud Servers users.
In order to take advantage of these images, you can add a new Cloud Server to your account or rebuild an existing one. Keep in mind that the rebuild process will erase any existing data on the cloud...