One of the key elements to delivering on this mission is software development. Behind the scenes of almost everything we do here at Rackspace, and the services we provide to our customers, is lots of software.As a technology company we embrace software development as a way for us to deliver a better service experience for our customers. Take just a few minutes and watch this video to get a glimpse into our development world here at Rackspace.

Oh and yes, were’ hiring – click here to see a full list of job openings.

Software Development Matters at Rackspace from Rackspace Hosting on Vimeo.

Scalr is software that auto-scales web applications by provisioning and configuring resources like servers, storage, and IP addresses. These resources are taken from the cloud, like EC2 and now Rackspace Cloud.

Hi folks, I’m Sebastian, co-founder of Scalr, which is part of the Rackspace Cloud Tools program, available for use with Cloud Servers.

When we started Scalr, all we wanted it to do was provide auto-scaling on EC2. This was to be done in simple form: load goes up, add more servers. Load goes down, remove a few.

But then we discovered that there was more to auto-scaling than just adding more servers of the same type. We needed to make sure that load was balanced properly. That no server termination caused users to be cut off. That dysfunctional servers were replaced. That servers were always kept 55 minutes into the hour. And for databases, that data was replicated between nodes.

We also discovered that an intuitive, fast UI was important for our users to get their job done. Same for our hosted DNS. Same for our service config tool. And as we make Scalr the best auto-scaling platform out there, people have knocked on our door asking for us to add auto-scaling to Rackspace Cloud. Over, and over, again. So we did.

Let me say that Rackspace Cloud is a great home to any web app. Not only is it close to feature parity with EC2, it also has some useful abilities of its own, like server Resizing. Server resizing is great for a particular use case: scaling your master database to handle more write transactions. This avoids all sorts of brittle fancywork, and provides a simple solution to the single largest bottleneck in web apps today.

You also get Fanatical Support, the fitting name Rackspace gives to its support team. This is very useful when using Cloud infrastructure for the first time.
Oh, and by the way; since we started working on supporting Rackspace Cloud, we’ve joined OpenStack under the sexy name openstack-platform-php. Yay!

For more information, check out scalr.net or register to attend this webinar. Documentation is found at wiki.scalr.net, and source code at code.google.com/p/scalr. Enjoy!

Click here to register for webinar.

AcceloWeb was very excited for the opportunity to participate and present, with our Rackspace partner colleagues, how our cloud service speeds the performance of cloud based websites and cloud hosted web enabled applications. Click here to view the recorded the presentation.

Enterprises of all sizes are transitioning their mission critical on-line presences to on-demand cloud based infrastructure for scale and flexibility. As these on-line presences have become more dynamic in nature, the performance impact to the user/visitor experience must be consistently high in order to maximize productivity as measured against every key business metric.

AcceloWeb’s advanced software based optimization technology speeds the render of websites and web based applications to near instant delivering the best user experience. Performance mirrors and exceeds present day alternatives and delivers its value on the Rackspace Cloud as a SaaS service at an unprecedented TCO level.

Key Points Covered:

Thanks to everyone for participating in the Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner webinar on deploying a video platform in minutes. Click here to view the presentation.

As many of you know, building a video platform to manage and deliver video for web and mobile consumption can be very daunting and expensive. But, it doesn’t have to be.

In this webinar presented by Jeff Malkin and Gregg Heil from Encoding.com, you will learn how to deploy a super-simple and very cost effective video platform enabling you to store and serve video to anyone on any device. Leveraging the Rackspace Cloud and encoding presets from Encoding.com, you’ll be up and running in minutes with a solution that will have your CTO and your CFO smiling.

Key Points we discussed in the presentation include:

WHY?

If you’ve ever built, managed and scaled email infrastructure to support your application, you probably noticed one common theme throughout the experience — email is really difficult!

If you haven’t experienced this first hand, then (1) consider yourself lucky, and (2) check out these tweets from people who have:

So, why is John so anxious to be done with mail servers and Rachel so darn thankful? Because they no longer have to deal with this stuff:

WHAT?

SendGrid was built with developers like John and Rachel in mind. With the help of dedicated and cloud instances from Rackspace, we replace your email infrastructure and provide everything you need to operate a reliable and scalable email system. Our service improves deliverability, scales on demand, and provides stats on all your email.

But wait, there’s more…

Divide and Conquer

Back in the day, everyone rode a horse, but not everyone was a blacksmith. If you were the cobbler and you needed to re-shoe your horse, you went to the expert!

The same idea applies today.

Everyone depends on email, but not everyone should need to develop an expertise in email. At SendGrid we have one goal: to be the experts and to let everyone else focus on building much sexier applications.

Now that our friends at Rackspace have invited us to become a cloud partner, we’re happy to help accelerate the development of all the awesome apps and businesses built on the Rackspace Cloud.

What is a SAS70 Type II report?

SAS70 (known as Type II Audit after 2010) is a widely recognized auditing standard that showcases how a service organization has performed, based on an in-depth audit of their control objectives and activities. The control objectives and activities are determined by the organization, and are based on established policies and procedures within the organization.

For example, at Rackspace, we have a control around our password protections. We require that all Racker (employee) passwords for our Active Directory and eDirectory be changed at least every 90 days. The Type II report for that objective will reflect whether, and how well, we’ve followed our established procedures. We value the SAS 70 Type II report because it assures our customers that we are doing what we say we will do.

Our compliance team led us through this process and will continue to pursue other industry certifications as necessary, to verify our commitment to being a secure, world-class cloud computing provider.

If you are a customer and would like to receive a full copy of this report, please contact us.

This post was written and contributed by Siva Devaki,
Founder of Mansa Systems, a Rackspace Cloud Tools Partner

Salesforce is the No 1 CRM in the industry today, and what enhances its acceptability is that it allows you to customize its features to any extent with a Force.com platform. Advent of cloud computing refers to the ground basic that all business data and files need to be stored safely with selective access.

Salesforce obviously has an answer to all your file storage needs but it is an expensive one. Bridging the requirement of our clients and in fact all Salesforce users, Mansa Systems has developed Cloud Drop application, an inexpensive, easy to use file management system. Cloud Drop is useful wherever there is a growing need for adequate file storage and it is crucial to efficiently and reliably store and retrieve large files, which need to be accessed and shared globally.

Nevertheless this Cloud Drop app comes with the reliability of Rackspace Cloud Files on the backend. Cloud Drop allows not only storage, but storage in complex hierarchies with metadata functionality that’s unique. Mansa Systems has been known for its fast and swift Salesforce consulting services and committed support to its clients looks forward to offer special offer on Cloud Drop during Dreamforce 2010.

Cloud Drop makes its big launch at Dreamforce 2010, on Dec 6^th - 9^th at Moscone Center, San Francisco.

Meet us at Booth# 1209 for an exclusive product demo and tech discussion, book a slot with us or contact Team Mansa at: info@mansasys.com
+1 (415) 293 8297 (US) | +91-9811.98.77.99 (India)

View Cloud Drop Appexchange Listing.
Learn more about Mansa Systems.

• Static Content- For the best performance, we recommend migrating all static media files (images, video, audio, flash, etc.) to the CDN (Content Delivery Network) of your choice. This means your customers will have shorter wait times when accessing media, since the content is cached and served by servers closest to their physical location.  For more information about using Rackspace Cloud Files please visit the Cloud Files knowledge base and this getting started video.

• Database Optimization – Many sites leverage the use of databases. For busy websites, databases can become a choke point if not properly optimized.  Creating indexes and fine tuning all queries (and the engine type, too, if you’re using MySQL) are all good ways of optimizing your database. If you are unfamiliar with database optimization, it may be best to consult with a professional DBA (Database Administrator).

• SSL – SSL may be right for you, but it should be used only when necessary. SSL traffic is encrypted and causes additional server processing time. We encourage you to pass only the traffic that needs to be secure to the SSL servers as the non-SSL clusters are more robust and are better equipped to handle traffic spikes. To accomplish this, create a sub-domain (e.g., secure.example.com) and enable SSL for the sub-domain only, through which secure transactions will be processed.  This allows SSL traffic to pass through a separate location and provides customers with a visual cue that they are on a secure site.  Click here for information on setting up a sub-domain on the Rackspace Cloud. For details on adding SSL to a site, visit this knowledgebase article.

• Coding - The final piece of the puzzle is the code itself. Efficient code will always yield a better-performing site.  This is especially true when the site is very busy.  Issues that aren’t evident during normal usage come to light when the site is busy.  Reducing the number of external calls your code makes, reducing includes, reducing database queries, and making sure to verify any errors greatly helps.

For additional, application-specific information on the Rackspace Cloud please see the links at the bottom of this knowledge base article.

If you have more questions about scaling cloud applications, please engage a Rackspace Cloud expert at 1.877.934.0409.

All business track and general sessions are being video taped for publication to the OpenStack website after the event. Technical sessions are being live audio-streamed and are open to anyone wishing to participate. Watch the OpenStack blog  or follow OpenStack on twitter (@openstack) for more event details before, during, and after the event.

Interested in getting involved?

You can obtain the latest OpenStack software, code named Austin, at http://openstack.org/projects and for documentation go to http://wiki.openstack.org.  The community also has several mailing lists in place for members to stay informed, the complete list is at http://wiki.openstack.org/MailingLists.

If you have more specific questions on this event or the OpenStack community, please contact Stephen Spector, the OpenStack Community Manager.

Today, we at Rackspace launched an ambitious project called OpenStack that aims to make this new world a reality.

I want to lay out the thinking that got us here and why we think this moment will change computing forever.

“The cloud” at its most fundamental level is all about a massive supply increase in computing power. The PC era was all about putting a computer on every desk. The cloud era goes a step further, putting the power of supercomputing at the literal fingertips of every individual at anytime. Whether it’s enabling a youth soccer coach to schedule practice across the online calendars of 18 families, or helping a scientist fold proteins to design new cancer drugs, or encouraging a frontline employee to instantly and cheaply test a new marketing campaign, the exponential growth in computing power and applications is changing every corner of our economy and society. And, this era is truly just beginning. We have seen only a tiny fraction of the potential gains that arise from cheap, ubiquitous computing power.

As this landscape has evolved, some have dismissed cloud computing as just a return to the mainframe era. This view is fundamentally wrong. Mainframes were available to only the smartest employees at the richest companies. The cloud is accessible to all, and usable by anyone, at low cost. Its ubiquity is the source of its power.

However, there is one area where mainframe concepts are intruding into the cloud – the vertically integrated technology stack. As hardware and software merge into services, the danger of locked down proprietary software stacks are emerging in the cloud space. The cloud world changes everything, and that is not good to many entrenched interests of the old guard. Core technologies from operating systems to hypervisors to databases are being used to tie cloud customers into an integrated view of the world.

If the web has taught us anything, it is that open systems, portability, and choice drive innovation. The open Linux system brought us a mountain of software and tools to help accomplish almost any task. And, each component, whether a database or a widget could be moved in and out freely based on the job getting done.

We at Rackspace have long talked about an “open” cloud. And as a service provider built on our Fanatical Support difference, we have never had an interest in creating technical walls around our service. But, given that no standards tools have emerged to build massively scalable clouds, we too have had to build custom software that creates some level of wall around our cloud offerings. For months we have debated how to drive greater standards and increase the velocity of cloud technologies in general. We finally converged on the obvious answer: open source our cloud technology.

Today, we announced a new open source project that includes those core technologies: OpenStack. And, we are not alone. As we looked at all the projects that already existed to drive standards we saw that other efforts were underway that complemented what we have done. We saw a ton of promise in the Nebula computing project built by NASA and are making it a core part of the project. Taking the contributions of Rackspace and NASA as a starting point, OpenStack forms a powerful foundation of technologies including, a scalable compute provisioning engine – OpenStack Compute – and a fully distributed storage engine – OpenStack Object Storage.

The community, which we plan to actively support and drive, is live today at openstack.org with code available for download.

Last week we assembled a strong group of cloud community leaders and developers to meet and review the architecture, engage on technology direction and contribute code. The effort attracted more than 100 participants from 25 companies including hosting companies, telecom providers, hardware manufacturers, cloud ecosystem companies and beyond. This enthusiasm and collaboration around OpenStack has laid the foundation for a vibrant and innovative approach to building the core software to power the future cloud world.

What do we expect OpenStack to mean for the cloud community? Some pretty major things. One, anyone will be able to run this cloud and do it anywhere. Enterprises and governments will be able to build private clouds. Service providers will have the same technology used by Rackspace and NASA to build new offers. Choice and portability are inevitable in this world. Two, the whole tech ecosystem can build around this foundation. With wide adoption, there will be a market for new services all around this core engine. From storage systems to monitoring tools to management systems, there is no end to what can be attached to the core project. Three, the cloud will advance faster than ever. Between just NASA and Rackspace, an army of developers are committed to the continued advancement of OpenStack. With our emerging supporters in the project, we expect to dramatically expand that army. Finally, a core set of standards will be freely available and totally open. New technologies can be attached. Better solutions will be driven into the product. And, the use of this powerful technology will not tie you to the use of any other technologies.

For our customers, we think there are many benefits that flow from these community gains. Not only will this help our offers develop faster and more transparently, but our customers can run private editions of our core systems in house or in our managed hosting operation.

We could not be more excited about the launch of this project and the enthusiasm around it. As a company that has invested a great deal in the development of cloud technologies, we did not take the decision to open source lightly. We think this decision will serve our interests and those of our customers. While we at Rackspace hire top developers and engineers to make sure our technology is second to none, seeking a technology advantage has never been our approach. We have our own vision about how to deploy this technology and serve customers – by giving them seamless access to scalable computing with the trusting partnership that comes through Fanatical Support. But, there will be many approaches and winning formulas. We think by welcoming those approaches and driving standards and more rapid innovation we will all win.

We hope you join us in this cause.

We know there are many parties who might want to join us in the effort, please reach out to us. We look forward to updating you as we make progress.