What's the difference between Rackspace Cloud Servers and Rackspace Cloud Sites?

Question

I'm looking to host a video-centric PHP site. Video will be served from CDN.

What does Cloud Site's $150/mo get you?

[Edit]

Seems like with cloud site you get:

web server that's ready to go
a web-based control panel
50 GB of scalable storage space.
500 GB of monthly bandwidth.
Support

Cloud server you get:

to setup everything yourself
pay-as-you-go bandwidth and storage

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score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 09 '10 at 19:12

1

CloudSites is a shared hosting platform, while CloudServer is a VPS product.

As far as what $150/month on the CloudSites platform gets you, that's readily available on their pricing page.

answered Sep 09 '10 at 19:12

EEAA

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So why pay $150 for shared hosting and a cpanel? – Matt Sep 09 '10 at 19:22
1

Well, for one, many companies don't have the in-house expertise to configure, secure, and maintain a VPS. – EEAA Sep 09 '10 at 19:36
@Matt Please see my detailed response to the question in your comment. – Rob Olmos Sep 10 '10 at 17:43

Rob Olmos · Accepted Answer · 2010-09-11T09:39:33.020

So why pay $150 for shared hosting and a cpanel?

It's actually a cluster of load balanced servers with shared storage served via NFS. The database is on another server which is setup with MySQL replication to a slave for disaster recovery. The email is also served on separate servers. If that isn't enough, there's also a SSL cluster in-front if need be (additional $20/month for SSL I think the rate is). Be aware though, no SSH access and no executables will run either. However, there are cron jobs.

They've recently upgraded the web stats system which has seemed much more stable but of course you can just hook up Google Analytics or process your own logs. Their support is great with about 5-min response (at night) but usually 1-minute response times for their online chat (I haven't used the phone support).

While you're at it, you might as well check out Cloud Files and its CDN ability served via the Limelight Networks.

Check out their wiki/KB if you're looking for more info: http://cloudsites.rackspacecloud.com/ and be sure to compare SLAs and Terms with other shared hosting providers you're considering.

(FYI I don't work for them :P)

What's the difference between Rackspace Cloud Servers and Rackspace Cloud Sites?

2 Answers2