We're often asked how Cloud Servers compare to Amazon EC2. The products are different in a few key areas, and the differences can be important depending on the needs of your application. Here are a few key points to consider.
Cloud Servers
One of the most significant differences between Cloud Servers and EC2 is the persistence of each virtual server. Cloud Servers has access to local, RAID10 disk storage, much like you'd expect in a physical server. This is important because it means your Server has inherent protection against drive failures. If for some reason the host does fail or become degraded, we will restart and/or migrate your Cloud Server for you. A failure doesn’t mean that your Cloud Server goes away.
Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2 instances are transient or ephemeral—if there is a host failure that causes your instance to terminate, all data will be lost.
Cloud Servers
We provide a wide variety of Cloud Server sizes, starting at 256MB going up to 15.5GB. Cloud Servers can be resized to scale up or down without any reinstallation.
Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2 instances start at 2GB so if your workload requires fewer resources, you are stuck paying for much more than you need.
Cloud Servers
Cloud Servers has guaranteed minimum CPU power (relative to the size of the Cloud Server), with free bursting when extra capacity is available on the host.
Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2 instances have a capped CPU. If additional CPU capacity is required, you need to launch another instance.
Cloud Servers
Each Cloud Server comes with the simplicity of a dedicated and persistent public IP address (no NAT) with a second, private IP address for free, low latency bandwidth between your Cloud Servers. Additional public IPs are available upon request and shared IPs can be provided for high availability.
Amazon EC2
With EC2, the IP configuration is more complex. Each instance gets a non-persistent private IP address NATed to a public IP address. When instances terminate and new ones are launched, a new private IP address is assigned which means you need to plan for changing private IPs (although Elastic IPs can be remapped). In addition, only one NATed IP address is available which, for example, does not lend itself to hosting multiple sites via SSL.
Cloud Servers
Cloud Servers has a variety of tools available to make managing each Cloud Server easier:
Amazon EC2
In the ephemeral world of EC2, there is no console access, no rescue mode, and no server level backup capability as these are all useful tools for managing persistent servers. In addition, Amazon offers no authoritative DNS capability which means you need to use an external DNS service or run your own DNS servers for any domains you run in the cloud.
Cloud Servers
Cloud Servers is backed by the legendary Fanatical Support you can only get from Rackspace. Included for free, you'll have access to our forums and online resources.
Amazon EC2
To receive 24x7x365 support for Amazon EC2, you pay the greater of $400 per month or 20% (scaling down) of your EC2 costs. That means your support cost goes up with your EC2 usage and isn’t directly related to the amount of support you use.
Cloud Servers
Depending on your needs, you can get the best of both worlds with a combination of cloud and dedicated servers. Why make a trade when you can have both under one roof from Rackspace?
Amazon EC2
Amazon only offers part of the answer, with just pure cloud solutions.
Check out our API page here.
Interested in building a solution on top of Rackspace's cloud products? Contact us at cloudpartners@rackspacecloud.com.
@elpinturrichio: I tried Rackspace Cloud recently and liked it - flexible, easy, nice customer service
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@chewbocka Go for the Rackspace Cloud .... best hosting. ever.
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YellowLlama i'm gonna be moving all my sites to RackSpace Cloud Sites... had a chat with them now.. quite impressed. good pricing. cheers
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ckeck Helping a friend migrate from his antiquated dedicated server over to Cloud Sites from the Rackspace Cloud / Mosso! No more hassles :)
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satefan The Rackspace Cloud console is awesome. I thought I would prefer command line tools for casual admin tasks, but this is really much better!
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Cloud Sites is used to quickly host very scalable and reliable websites.
Unlike traditional web hosting, this is not a massive amount of customers crammed on one server. Instead, it's a massive amount of servers that power each visit to your web site.
You'll want Cloud Sites if you're looking for web hosting without the hassles of managing a server or the poor performance and reliability common with virtual hosting.
Cloud Files is unlimited online storage for media, files, and backups.
If your web application needs a lot of storage for images or user-generated content, Cloud Files can store it all for pennies per gigabyte.
You'll want Cloud Files if you've ever asked yourself, "How are we going to store all that?" The best part is that you only pay for the online storage and bandwidth you are currently using. Cloud Files is big online storage without the big costs.
Cloud Servers allow technical users to get custom servers in minutes with full root access.
With Cloud Servers get what you want when you need it, Cloud servers are both instant and disposable. Make a new Server for staging and four new Servers for production. Delete one; create three more. You only pay for what's provisioned and Cloud Servers start at under 2 cents an hour!
