Rackspace Cloud Sites Versus Rackspace Managed Cloud Servers

Rackspace Cloud Sites Versus Rackspace Managed Cloud Servers is quite debating topic to many so called naive Cloud Gurus. It is Rackspace who has defined Cloud Computing. We jokingly wrote in excerpt that, even Rackspace themselves will fail to give the aspects we can provide you. That is needless to say, is not the truth. I personally fought with two third class web host;, for more than a year since we have moved to Rackspace, my only thought about the websites is, whether our Internet connection will be up or not; i.e. to publish a post according to need or to manage something other. There is practically no need to think about downtimes. By the word Rackspace in this article we are pointing towards managed configurations. Unmanaged Rackspace Cloud Servers are too risk for security reasons for a serious website – you have to keep a person who will hourly check any kind loop holes; that is basically not much of fun to the wallet. Technology wise, Unmanaged Rackspace Cloud Servers are quite good, probably the best for the starters who wants quality. For us, they are good for writing a guide or to spin up a server for a different reason an destroy it. I set the hourly announcement on Mac while the spin up, to be honest.

The only viable alternative option is HP Cloud, which has the exactly the same technology (Open Stack Cloud Compute software) and exactly the same rate (read copy pasted chart). HP however lacks the good quality managed support. We said about WordPress VIP before, its a solid rip off. Probably it was TechCruch, who published an article as testimonial, mourning for the wrong decision to move from Rackspace Managed Cloud to WordPress VIP. WordPress is great but WordPress VIP is really pathetic. The other probable good option is Media Template, the Cloud Computing of Media Template is also based on OpenStack. So after a bit looking here and there, back to the topic – Rackspace Cloud Sites Versus Rackspace Managed Cloud Servers.

Rackspace Cloud Sites Versus Rackspace Managed Cloud Servers : Advantages and Disadvantages of Rackspace Cloud Sites

Rackspace Cloud Sites aka former Mosso is a perfect solution as a miniature version of Rackspace Managed Cloud Servers. You can check an comparison chart :

From my calculation, for the exact setup like Rackspace Cloud Sites, Rackspace Managed Cloud Servers will cost more than the officially quoted price. Plus there is not the great yummy, easy to use Control panel, you have to use Plesk. The disadvantages are actually technical – you can not have the shell access, the IP is shared etc. For a medium size blog or a bunch of blogs or an e-commerce site of medium size, Rackspace Cloud Sites is probably the best choice at that price with a managed level.
The upgrade becomes an obvious next step when your compute cycles will be like this within 15 days :

The colors are probably looking bad, because the monitor is new and is not calibrated ! Anyway, with WordPress, it is very easy to cross that limit if your website’s condition is not good, needs a repair and has nearly 10K page views per day. At optimum condition, 20K pageviews per day (for WordPress) with Cloud Files, WP Super Cache, it will just touch the 10K compute cycle per month bundle. It is an estimate from practical experience from various accounts of others and ours. All have Genesis as Theme Framework, if the Theme is badly coded, 3K page views per day is enough to suck the compute cycles.

Rackspace Cloud Sites Versus Rackspace Managed Cloud Servers : Advantages of Rackspace Managed Cloud Servers

Basically there is no practical disadvantage for using Rackspace Managed Cloud Servers, if your budget fits fine. Probably it was better if there was some in between plan on the pricing side of Rackspace Cloud Sites and Rackspace Managed Cloud Servers. People will tell you, you can run Rackspace Managed Cloud Servers at lesser cost by cutting down the virtual RAM or load balancers. That is up to you and fully depends on Rackspace’s direct opinion based on the kind and visitor behavior. For the most, the actual cost will become half or less than the comparison chart as actually most CMS do not need such huge resource. The premium is for two main things – root access and a white labeled IP. Plus, you will actually not need to calculate the compute cycles in that way. Rackspace Managed Cloud Servers is definitely the best option, but actually Rackspace Cloud Sites is quite economic option if you do not have a huge traffic. Shared IP actually does not matter, you can change the name-server to your own, that itself tells Google bots the story.