From the command line, you'll find that Cloud Servers™ look and act much like the traditional servers you may be using now. However, some key technologies make Cloud Servers™ much more flexible than hardware devices.
Each Cloud Server is a virtual machine abstracted from the hardware. We use a software hypervisor with proven performance, reliability, scalability, and security. Launching a new Cloud Server happens in minutes since we only need to start up a virtual machine on already running hardware. Virtualization also allows Cloud Servers™ to be moved easily or even resized for more CPU and memory.
All Cloud Servers™ come with a certain amount of guaranteed CPU power based on the size of the servers you create. However, at times when there's extra CPU power available from the host hardware, we take advantage of it, providing your workloads extra processing power without any additional cost to you.
Scaling up your Cloud Server is simple–you don't need to reinstall anything. With the click of a mouse or simple API call, your Cloud Server is momentarily taken offline, the RAM, disk space and CPU allotment are adjusted, and the server is restarted. The entire process is automated and takes just a few minutes.
| Linux Distributions | Windows Images |
|---|---|
| Arch 2010.05 | Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise 64-bit |
| CentOS 5.5 | Windows Server 2008 SP2 Enterprise 64-bit |
| CentOS 5.4 | Windows Server 2008 SP2 Enterprise 32-bit |
| Debian 5.0 (Lenny) | Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 Enterprise 64-bit |
| Fedora 13 (Goddard) | Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 Enterprise 32-bit |
| Fedora 12 (Constantine) | |
| Gentoo 10.1 | |
| Oracle EL R5U4 | |
| Oracle EL R5U3 JEOS | |
| Red Hat EL 5.4 | |
| Red Hat EL 5.3 | |
| Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) | |
| Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) | |
| Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) | |
| Ubuntu 8.04.2 LTS (Hardy Heron) |
Jay Kuri wrote an interesting blog post comparing Rackspace Cloud Servers™ and Amazon's EC2 service. For the most common workloads, he concludes:
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