Here are some relevant links as you consider taking advantage of SQL Server 2012 in your Cloud Servers applications:

• SQL Server 2012 General Information
• What’s New in SQL Server 2012
• SQL Server 2012 Edition Comparison

As with existing Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server instances, the pricing model is simple and straightforward. You pay a fixed hourly price depending on the instance size of the server you are using, multiplied by the number of hours a month the instance is in use. Handy pricing calculators are available on the “Create Server” page in the Control Panel, and in various places throughout the Rackspace signup process and website.

For more information on specific pricing for your region, see the following links:

• US: http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/public/servers/pricing/
• UK: http://www.rackspace.co.uk/cloud-servers/

As of today, SQL Server 2012 is available with Windows Server 2012 for both our core and Managed Service Level customers.

Additionally, early access to Windows Server 2012 License and Installation Services is now available for customers with Dedicated Hosting environments at Rackspace (Test Terms apply). This will enable our customers interested in taking advantage of the new features and enhancements on Windows Server 2012 to begin their proof of concept or test and dev efforts.

As always, we look forward to your feedback and can’t wait to see the next generation of solutions that you can build with Microsoft technology, powered by the Rackspace open cloud!

In contrast with the built-in Linux permissions models for files, which are typically “read, write and execute,” SELinux allows for fine-grained policies to be defined for resources. Those resources are not limited to files, but also to network processes, interprocess communications and more.

SELinux support is typically either built into a distribution, such as Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS, or it can be added via packages, in the case of Ubuntu and other distributions.

When using SELinux, there are three basic modes in which it operates:

• Off: Not enabled (or not included by default in distribution)
• Permissive: Logs security concerns/violations but doesn’t enforce any rules
• Enforced: Highest level of security, enforces all policies

At Rackspace, we want to provide our customers with the highest level of security possible, while maintaining as much compatibility and preventing user pain across the broad range of customers using our services.  While the Enforced mode offers the highest level of security out of the box, it can also be confusing for new users and cause problems for certain deployments. In addition, we want our base Linux images to be the distro defaults as much as possible.

To that end, we have decided to enable SELinux in Rackspace images using the following formula:

In short, we use the distro default unless the default is Enforced mode, in which case we will configure the image for Permissive mode. We believe this approach will allow users to get more acquainted with the security features of SELinux without the risk of breaking any existing functionality. For those who wish to move from Permissive to Enforce mode, the Fedora Project (as well as most distributions) have excellent tutorials like this one. Of course, if you are a Managed Cloud customer, you can always contact us and we’d be more than happy to help you through configuring SELinux.

Following the above approach, we have re-released CentOS 5.8, the first image with SELinux enabled (in Permissive mode).  You’ll find the updated image in both first and next generation Cloud Servers, ready for your use today.

In the coming weeks, we will be updating our other Linux distributions to conform to our SELinux guidelines.  These images are:

• Fedora 17 and 16
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.x and 5.x
• CentOS 6.x and 5.x

We plan to stagger updates to the images over the coming months and will have the changes in both first and next generation Cloud Servers completed no later than November 30^th.  All new versions of Linux images going forward will also follow these SELinux guidelines.

Stay tuned to the blog and Control Panel for updates.

Arch Linux 2012.08, Gentoo 12.3
We’ve received a lot of feedback and suggestions about our Arch Linux and Gentoo offerings, and in response we’ve updated both of these distributions in first and next generation Cloud Servers. Effective immediately, Arch Linux 2012.08 and Gentoo 12.3 are now available.

There is no added cost for Windows Server 2012; it is launched and billed exactly the same as our Windows 2008 server images.

For customers who need a Windows Server 2012 + SQL Server image, we have those queued up in the pipeline and will let you know as soon as they are ready.

We look forward to your feedback on using the current, most advanced Windows release on the Rackspace open cloud!

The first is CentOS 6.3, which is the latest version of the popular CentOS 6.x platform. The next is a new operating system offering for Rackspace, FreeBSD 9, which offers customers another powerful choice for their cloud infrastructure, with features like high performance networking, the ZFS filesystem and the strong FreeBSD ports software collection.

CentOS 6.3 and FreeBSD 9 Now Available

CentOS 6.3 is the latest version of the CentOS distribution, and was just released two weeks ago.  We’re doing our best to make these available as quickly as possible after release.  For more information, you can find the CentOS 6.3 release notes here.

FreeBSD support has been a popular request for a while and we are extremely excited to now make it available. To make FreeBSD support possible, we needed to make a couple of fundamental enhancements to Cloud Servers. One such change is support for non-ext3 and NTFS file systems (FreeBSD runs ZFS). For more information, go to http://www.freebsd.org/features.html

To keep things simple for you, Cloud Servers automatically expands and shrinks the file system when launching and resizing servers. Some customers, however, have asked for more control, such as being able to install different file systems, set up multiple partitions, etc. To support both scenarios, we created a new option called Disk Configuration, which allows a filesystem to either automatically expand to the size limits of the instance being created, or to be left alone for manual management by the user. For FreeBSD, Disk Configuration is set to the latter (which means you may see unpartitioned disk space and will need to configure it however you want).

Previously, Disk Configuration was an internal setting that Rackspace used, but we have carried this feature forward into OpenStack and our upcoming Cloud Servers powered by OpenStack offering, which gives you control over this setting. That means you will be able to configure any image for either automatic or manual Disk Configuration. Simplicity or control – you get to choose.

Removal of Fedora 15 and Debian 5

Support has ended for both Fedora 15 and Debian 5. As such, we will remove these images from Cloud Servers on Aug. 27, 2012. We recommend customers consider Fedora 17 and Debian 6 for production servers needing these distributions of Linux.

Update: This post was edited to fix two errors that suggested that FreeBSD was a completely new operating system, and a reference that mixed Linux and FreeBSD terminology.