Web Hosting Panel : rackspace

State of Cloud Storage – Azure Ousts Amazon S3

'Net Features : wm-webhosting — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 18:15:00 GMT

So who’s the best cloud storage provider – Azure, Amazon, Google, HP, Rackspace? Enterprise storage provider Nasuni released results from its latest State of Cloud Storage Report and found that Microsoft Windows Azure (Blob) Storage outperformed last year’s leader, Amazon S3. Surprised? Nasuni tested the speed ( write/read/delete ), availability and scalability of the top five public cloud storage providers and found that Microsoft Azure surpassed Amazon in every single category that was examined. Azure was 56 percent faster in write speed than Amazon, and 39 percent faster at reading files than HP in read speed. The average response time for Azure was 25 percent faster than Amazon S3. With Amazon cloud troubles over the past year, Web developers might ultimately find they’re using more Azure and less S3 in the future. "Microsoft's investment in its second generation cloud storage, which it made available to customers last year, has clearly paid off," said Andres Rodriguez, CEO of Nasuni. "With Amazon S3 and Microsoft Windows Azure, the cloud storage industry clearly has two strong players to choose from. Even more encouraging, however, was the marked performance improvement across the board. As CSPs continue to mature, competition among top quality providers can only benefit enterprise IT."...(read more)

Remote Support for Private Clouds from RackSpace

'Net Features : wm-webhosting — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 19:15:00 GMT

The open cloud company Rackspace ranks high among major players like Amazon and Windows in the cloud computing industry, which is an impressive feat. But the company isn’t about to rest on its laurels, as it just announced a slew of new features and enhanced support offerings for its Rackspace Private Cloud Software. Rackspace just launched Private Cloud Software in August and already thousands of businesses and organizations from more than 125 different countries have downloaded it. These new additions have been collectively named “Alamo” and incorporate “Folsom,” the latest release of the OpenStack Cloud Software platform that came out in September and included nearly 200 new features. This is the same platform that powers the Rackspace Cloud. Alamo has allowed Rackspace to extend its service portfolio for the Rackspace Private Cloud, particularly with a new support level – Core Software Support – that includes remote access support for the Private Cloud Software stack all day long and every day of the year. Core Software Support will allow the cloud company’s engineers login to a customer’s private cloud environment to install, configure, patch and troubleshoot, as needed. Some other new features are highly scalable Block Storage that turns external storage into an additional storage volume and Object Storage powered by OpenStack Swift that allows customers to create “massively scalable” storage resource pools...(read more)

Percona Offered by Big Hosting Companies

'Net Features : wm-webhosting — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 18:30:00 GMT

High performance is, obviously, the ultimate goal of any Web hosting company worth its salt. Perhaps that is why so many notable names in the hosting industry have been turning to Percona , the enterprise-level MySQL support, consulting, training and development services provider. Basically, Percona works to make MySQL faster and more reliable for its clients, and as of late, it’s being seeing “rapid and increasing adoption” by hosting providers, some of which are pretty huge names, including RackSpace, Blue Host, HP, Joyent, Crucial Web Hosting and SpeedySparrow. These providers are all making available to their customers the latest release of Percona’s enhanced drop-in replacement for MySQL, known as Percona Server version 5.5.28-29.1. In fact, Percona Server is actually one of the top three most deployed MySQL alternatives around, according to a report from 451 Research. And it’s no surprise why, as Percona Server offers hosting providers advanced features that can speed up their searches and increase security, as well as giving administrators more control over their server environments. Plus, it’s a free, open source solution that provides breakthrough performance, scalability, features and instrumentation, in addition to self-tuning algorithms and support for high-performance hardware. Not too shabby....(read more)

Rackspace Acquisition Improves SharePoint Capabilities

Michael Garrity — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 23:00:00 GMT

One of the world's most prominent cloud computing companies, Rackspace, just acquired SharePoint911, a SharePoint consulting, training and "JumpStart" service.

The move is an important because Rackspace customers will now be able to take better advantage of SharePoint hosting solutions in addtion to the company's expert services in the enterprise market.

Rackspace initially ventured into the managed SharePoint market back in 2008 by providing a special service helping customers deal with the perceived complexities of managing a SharePoint environment. The service caught on and was a success for Rackspace, which immediately understood the value of working with SharePoint but also realized that such a powerful solution necessitated the aid of a trusted advisor who knew how to best manage and use the software. This reasoning was the catalyst to the acquisiton of SharePoint911.

"For several years, Rackspace has focused on providing managed SharePoint infrastructure," says Rackspace chief technology officer John Engates. "We are thrilled to have the world-class expertise of SharePoint911 on our team to give us greater application delivery service capabilities. SharePoint911 will add the talent and expertise to our teams to make SharePoint deployments easier for our customers while increasing their scalability and performance through better integration of the workload and infrastructure."

SharePoint911 has been around for eight years and has long been lauded for its technical excellence and leadership in the SharePoint community.

Connect Cloud and Hosting with Rackspace

Website Magazine : web hosting — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:23:00 GMT

Ah, the ever-evolving world of cloud computing. It can be easy to forget that the cloud is still an emerging technology, mostly because the hype surrounding it already has it pegged as the future of the Web, but that is also precisely why every advancement...(read more)

Rackspace Offers Hosted Virtual Desktop Platform in EU

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 20:53:00 GMT

Rackspace(R) Hosting launched a new Hosted Virtual Desktop platform, a service which enables customers to host their virtual desktops on a choice of dedicated and/or cloud-based infrastructures by leveraging desktop virtualisation technologies from Citrix, NetApp and other Rackspace solution partners.

The Rackspace Hosted Virtual Desktop (HVD) platform combines compute platforms with scalable and efficient NetApp(R) storage to enable the provisioning of virtual desktops quickly through desktop cloning. By using the new service to host desktop virtualisation solutions, such as Citrix XenDesktop(R) and Citrix XenApp(TM), companies benefit from on-demand virtual desktops and applications on almost any device, including PCs, smartphones and even tablets.

"We're tapping our community of partners and their networks to provide our European customers with a hosted virtual desktop platform that offers them choices," said David Kelly, UK MD and SVP of International, Rackspace. "Providing Fanatical Support on top of our solutions portfolio produces exceptional business outcomes for our customers and that is what we do best. By working with partners such as Citrix and its network of nearly 9,000 global partners, enterprises now have instant access to the infrastructure they need, whether it's a dedicated environment for virtual desktop infrastructure or for shared hosted desktops."

Rackspace Hosted Email Offering Growth

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 04:30:00 GMT

Hosting and cloud computing provider Rackspace this week announced the company has more than two million paid users of its hosted email offerings, including its proprietary Rackspace® Email, hosted Microsoft® Exchange and a hybrid offering of the two services.

What's the takeaway? Focus on what the users need and want. According to a statement from Rackspace, the company attributes the growth to its "reputation for helping businesses take advantage of a full portfolio of cloud offerings, its award winning Fanatical Support®, the cost savings that can be realized through its unique Hybrid offering, and the preference to use robust and familiar features like Microsoft Outlook®, Email Archiving and smartphone access in a business setting."

“We wanted to take advantage of a business class cloud-based email system that many providers couldn’t offer. Many of our users wanted the same user experience as Microsoft Outlook and access on mobile device,” said Kevin Durawa, IT Manager, RealtyUSA.com. “We are pleased with the ability to mix traditional Web and POP/IMAP clients with exchange depending upon the needs of our users. Rackspace has made transitioning over 2200 email accounts from our in house system to Rackspace seamless! Their continued support has been outstanding as well.”