I’ve been using the Rackspace Cloud for the past 6 months to power a number of web apps include Write.fm and my soon to launch Poke.fm.  I also use the CDN features to power images on this blog as well as a few other content sites and my private file hosting.

So what is the Rackspace Cloud?

Well Rackspace’s offerings for the cloud come in three different flavours – Cloud Sites, Cloud Servers and Cloud Files.

Cloud Sites is similar to Mediatemple’s Grid Hosting (although one is a grid and the other is a cloud).  No technical experience is necessary and if you’ve ever used a shared hosting account you won’t have any troubles setting up a site on Cloud Sites.   The advantage of running your site on Rackspace Cloud Sites is automatic scaling.  Your site will always have enough resources (bandwidth, ram, cpu) to handle any traffic spike.  If you’ve ever been hit by the Digg effect, you may find Cloud Sites very useful.  It is fairly pricey at $100 a month – you need a fairly large site to justify this cost.

Cloud Servers is my favorite cloud product from Rackspace.  Its just like having your own server or VPS (virtual private server), but in the cloud.  This means you can instantly scale your site with just a couple of clicks.  This is perfect for running web apps on.  You can start out with a small instance when you launch, and as your startup grows you can quickly expand.  A small 256mb (ram) instance will set you back around $11 a month (it’s charge by the hour).

Cloud Files is very similar to Amazon’s S3.  Using an API, you upload files to the Cloud Files and they will be hosted in the cloud.  You can turn on CDN support (with just a click) and your files will be mirrored across to a number of edge locations around the world.  This means your users will have super fast access to your files as they will be served to them from a nearby location.

Why I chose Rackspace Cloud over Amazon

Amazon is very popular with developers, so it was a tough decision to make.  First a foremost, speed was critical.  Looking at various tests, the Rackspace cloud has slightly better performance.  Cost was also an issue.  For small server instances, Rackspace is much, much cheaper (Amazon doesn’t offer a comparable product) which makes developing small web apps dead cheap.  And finally, I see a number of Rackspace employees on Twitter and other social networks.  This makes it feel like a more human company.  I can see a face, so therefore, I’m confident I will get good support.  For me, Amazon feels very impersonal.

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