Today, Rackspace partner AvePoint, announced that they had enabled their award winning DocAve suite of products to be able to use Rackspace Cloud Files as a repository for SharePoint data.  This is exciting as it enables the use of a highly available, redundant storage location for SharePoint data outside of SQL server.  Once you download their software and setup a Cloud Files account – all you have to do is configure Cloud Files as a data repository in the DocAve Manager.  After that, data is seamlessly transferred to the Rackspace cloud but still managed and accessed from SharePoint.

Below you will find two videos that show a farm being restored from the Rackspace cloud and also files being stored in the Rackspace cloud but being access from within SharePoint.

Restore From Cloud

Extension Archiver

If you have any further question, feel free to contact me via email: jeff.deverter@rackspace.com

Looks like quite a few people are digging what we’re doing here @Rackcloud.

Recently, the web research shop InfiniBase wanted to know who the leader of the pack was in cloud providers.  The numbers hadn’t been run yet, so they examined more than 500,000 sites to discern what companies are in the cloud and which companies host them.   We are stoked that Rackspace is a “dominant” force in the cloud market.  The full article can be found here.

Fred Reichheld, Baine fellow and author of The Ultimate Question, is an expert on measuring customer loyalty. He’s also a member of the Rackspace Board of Directors. We were fortunate to catch Fred as he left our annual board meeting – here, he talks about how customer loyalty impacts profitability and how companies can measure loyalty using the Net Promoter Score.

Those of  you who know Rackspace, know that we strive to be the best service company in the world. One way of improving on that was our implementation of the Net Promoter Score, created by Mr. Reichheld. You can read more about that in his book, The Ultimate Question.

Last week we briefed some key partners and customers on our view of the emerging world of on- demand computing, including some plans around our offers. 

We want to share with you some highlights. 

We firmly believe the era of on-demand computing is upon us.  Over the next decade, we predict the de facto model of consuming computing will not be from an in-house server farm but over the web via on-demand computing providers.  Why?  Well, given the new tools and services associated with cloud hosting  and more mature models like dedicated hosting and SaaS (software as a service), the options to get all your computing over the web have become vastly more affordable and flexible than in-house alternatives.  We encourage you to examine the benefits of a “no servers” approach to your business, instead opting to get computing services as you need them. 

Over the coming months, you will see a lot from Rackspace to help make this transition super compelling.

We gave a sneak preview of a few focus areas: 
1. We are moving all our services under the Rackspace brand.  We will continue to have 3 distinct service areas:  Managed Hosting, Cloud Hosting and Email and Apps.  We have focused, dedicated teams working to build out the best of breed offerings in each of these areas, but we believe that most companies will want to use services across all 3 computing services.  Different workloads require different tools and we want to bring you the best for all your core computing needs.  While full integration does not exist across all 3 offers, we will be moving in that direction over time.  But, you can be assured you are dealing with Rackspace and our trademark Fanatical Support® standard will be a part of each offer.

2. The first area of integration surrounds what we call Hybrid Hosting.  Imagine having core systems in a managed environment with dedicated equipment and firewalls for security, but behind the firewall access to unlimited cloud resources on-demand for your web and application tiers.  Or private connections to the cloud to offload data for warehousing and computational work.   Well, it is coming.  Stay tuned.

3. We are also very focused on advancing our Cloud Servers product quickly.  We have had great traction on an offer that includes persistent storage, DNS services, auto resizes and other easy to use tools.  But, we are a missing a few things.  One is API’s: As you may know, we’ve recently released the API spec for public comment – after all, the people using the spec should define it. We’ve received great feedback on it already (thanks!). It will be released to the public in July and you can expect a lot of cool partner tools quickly. Two, what about Windows?  Half the market simply cannot use Cloud Servers.  Well, Windows for Cloud Servers is officially coming.  Our plans include offering fully supported Windows.  We want to offer high performance Windows that supports the latest OS and database builds and also meets Microsoft’s supportability standards.  Achieving this high bar comes with some complications which is causing our longer timelines.  But, the work is underway.

4. Finally, we have big plans for our Apps and Email division.  We are currently supporting over 1.2 million business class email seats.  We continue to build out the best Exchange-IMAP hybrid email system that brings huge saving to our customers.  But, we are also moving on to the next core IT problem.  We want to help businesses solve their basic storage issues.  So in the coming months you will see a few new offers from us.  One, an advanced, but low cost mail archiving offer.  So whether you are sick of managing large PSTs or need a compliance tool, giving your employees unlimited archiving will soon be an affordable option.  Next, we plan to offer a variety of tools to help with basic collaboration and backup.  Every business needs a basic fileshare.  A centrally managed, infinitely scalable fileshare is on the way.  And, want to offer your employees an automated PC backup and web access tool?  Stick around. 

We are very excited about these and many other projects in the works.  We hope this collection of on-demand services will help you say no to your next server purchase.  We plan to remove the burdens of technology lock in, slow lead times, expensive build-outs, and unsupported technologies.  We are just getting started.  Keep the feedback coming!

Over the past two years, Rackspace Hosting® has witnessed some exciting times. We went public at a time when no one thought any company could do it. We launched The Rackspace Cloud, and our Cloud Strategy. We also acquired three companies, including Mailtrust , Slicehost and Jungle Disk all focused on providing solutions complimentary to the Rackspace vision.

All amazing activities in a very short amount time, no matter how you look at it. Many of you may be asking why? Or wonder what Rackspace is up to and where the company is headed?

Well, I can’t answer all of those questions today, but I hope to provide you a glimpse into where we are headed. There are some changes you may have seen on Rackspace.com and additional changes regarding our product branding.

I am excited to announce as of today, all of our Managed, Cloud and Email hosted offerings will now live under the Rackspace brand. So moving forward Rackspace’s core brands will include Rackspace Managed Hosting, The Rackspace Cloud (Mosso) and Rackspace Email (formerly known as Mailtrust), all of which are of course backed by Fanatical Support.  

We have also integrated the navigation of our Web properties to make it easier for our customers to find the specific information relevant to their business needs. As you look over our web site, we hope you will find it easier to navigate and that information is presented in a more cohesive look and feel. We would love to hear your feedback.

While the brands are moving under one umbrella, we continue to believe in the power of small entrepreneurial teams focused on building world class offers, while also leveraging the resources and brain trust of the larger Rackspace community.  While total integration is not complete, we will be working to enhance that over time.

You will be hearing more from Rackspace in the coming weeks as we provide more details about our future. Keep an eye out for more on Rackspace.

Please feel free to provide us with your feedback and ask any questions you may have. We will take your feedback seriously and answer your questions promptly.

Last week, we launched the availability of Dell’s new 11g server, the PowerEdge R710. We don’t normally launch products the same day they become available to the market because we want to ensure that they’re ready and we’re able to provide our customers with the support and service they’ve come to expect from Rackspace. We’re confident with the R710, we can. The R710 is the replacement for the 2950 MK III. From our perspective, it’s a premium server that is ideally suited for virtualized environments. The capability it can provide proved compelling enough to launch with Dell and Intel.

With the introduction of Intel’s Nehalem architecture and DDR3 memory with a maximum capacity of 144 GB of memory, our customers will be able to get more value out of a single server. And the more our customers get out of their servers, the more we get out of our datacenter.

Erik Carlin wrote a great post on the Mosso blog comparing the cloud storage offerings from Rackspace (Cloud Files) and Amazon (S3). Here’s a quick excerpt:

The cloud is advantageous for many reasons and both Rackspace/Mosso and Amazon offer cloud storage solutions.  We are frequently asked to compare Cloud Files enabled with Limelight’s CDN with S3 and CloudFront.  Many of the questions we are asked revolve around cost and performance (particularly CDN).  These are very quantifiable metrics so I thought I’d share with you the results of some comparative analysis we’ve done.

Read the entire post here: A Quantitative Comparison of Rackspace and Amazon Cloud Storage Solutions

The Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) requires that if you accept, transmit or store credit cardholder data you must meet the requirements contained within the standard. The problem is that many people don’t know what that means. If you deal with credit cards and are required to meet the PCI DSS, my advice is to find a way to limit the scope of your compliance as much as possible. Rackspace recently concluded a two-year effort to receive our PCI Service Provider Report on Compliance (ROC) as a Compliant Level 1 Service Provider from Visa USA.

Rackspace pursued this compliance so that we can provide a PCI Compliant Hosting Infrastructure for its customers. Infrastructure, in this case, includes:

(read more…)

DNS or Domain Name System is a service most commonly used to translate Domain Names (URL’s, websites, call them what you will) into IP Addresses. Realistically, IP Addresses are the true identifiers of how to locate things/places on the Internet, however DNS makes it much simpler to “surf” by only having to reference Domain Names that are much easier to remember. DNS functions in a hierarchical structure

Rackspace uses an implementation strategy called AnyCast with our Authoritative DNS. This technology allows us to announce the same DNS IP space from 3 different (or as many as desired) datacenters via the BGP protocol we run with our Internet Service Providers. The purpose of this is multi-fold in that it not only allows us to have active/active DR type redundancy, but it also allows us to serve customer requests from the closest DNS infrastructure possible, which typically means the best response time too. Additionally, it allows for the ease of maintenance, upgrades, and expansion our our DNS infrastructure with no customer impact.

This is the same kind of underlying technology that the Root Nameservers of the Internet run off of, and many other companies that specialize in DNS as a service.

Order by phone or online?  Pickup or delivery?  Generally speaking, there isn’t one way of doing things.  We all have preferences and priorities. This is something lots of us have thought about over the years at Rackspace.  How do each of our customers want to be supported?  Does it depend on the situation they’re in? 

From my experience, each customer defines Fanatical Support a little different.  For some it’s about being able to call at 3am and have a team of Linux experts eager to troubleshoot an unusual Apache error.  For others it’s about having the power to go into the MyRackspace customer portal to create a snapshot of their virtual server. This is one of the beautiful things about Fanatical Support; it represents many things to many customers.  And so, having options is very important.

We’ve heard consistently from customers that while they love having a team of Rackers available to support them around the clock, many prefer to just take care of some things themselves. Self-service matters at Rackspace! Self-service is about offering choices that make hosting easier and more efficient.  If a customer has the expertise and would prefer to just knock out a quick change themselves, then they should have the tools available to easily make this change.  This is something we understand and have a fleet of folks working to deliver. (read more…)