The goal of a CDN is to distribute static media to users who are visiting your website. One benefit of using a CDN is the fact that they use a geographical DNS resolution to make sure that your users hit a CDN server closest to their geographic location. By doing this, you can deliver the media content quicker to your users’ browser. I also made a video on this topic as part of our Google+ Wednesday Video series.

There are a couple of WordPress plugins that can connect the media on your site to Rackspace Cloud Files and help leverage the CDN. One of those is CDN Tools – as you upload an image or media file to your site, the plugin will store that file automatically on your Rackspace Cloud Files account so you can benefit from the CDN. Another plugin that supports a large variety of CDNs in addition to Rackspace Cloud Files is W3 Total Cache.

With only a few clicks, you can leverage these plugins to better serve media content to your end users. Not only will they get the content faster, your server will not be over taxed by rendering media files and can focus on delivering the text content of your site.

If you’d like to see a video of Matt talking about how to integrate a CDN into your WordPress Site, head over to our Google+ Page. For the next several weeks, Matt will be providing tips and tricks for WordPress. Last week, Matt talked about the importance of caching your WordPress site. Be sure to check back next week when he explains how to backup both the file system and database of your WordPress Site.

“We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!”  I’d like to send a quick, personal shout-out to all “Real Rackers” everywhere and especially those of you kind enough to endure our storming of The Castle for our story (News 4 WOAI at 6:30).

I can’t tell you how much “job envy” everyone here has after looking at our footage. You should feel very proud of where you “work” and I hope we get across the real vibe of what it’s like to be there every day. It’s pretty entertaining and I’m guessing that more than a few “wanna-be Rackers” will try to join you after seeing our story.  I hope they’re worthy.

Thanks again and RACK ON!

Beamer

Hello Interactive is an agency that was one of the first Cloud Sites customers. It was responsible for hosting the online votes  for the Teen Choice Awards. Hello Interactive is an expert at creating great content and design, but it needed a place to host an online voting application. Cloud Sites was the solution that handled millions of votes leading up to the awards show. Hear about this great story first hand from the cloud founders in this video and check out our other videos with the two founders.

Running a number of businesses, some using the cloud and some not, I’ve seen firsthand the reality of what it takes to move systems from traditional on-premise delivery to the cloud. Whether it’s because of push-back from users, IT department concerns, functional gaps or differences in the way applications are written, the migration is hard. While many would like to suggest the move from on-prem to cloud as being a smooth progression akin to floating down a calm stream, the reality is that often it’s more a case of battling a heaving sea in a little canoe, all the while braving pirates and sea dragons!

A recent post over on GigaOm discussed an infographic released by Cisco that speaks to some of this pain. To quote GigaOm:

The 2012 Cisco Global Cloud Networking Survey queried more than 1,300 people on their feelings and experiences with moving to a cloud computing model. While the majority of respondents expressed relative comfort with the state of their cloud migrations, some took rather extreme negative positions.

While it’s easy to be dubious about these infographics, and the veracity of the data behind them, the post does raise some issues that those in the Ccloud industry, as well as those working within organizations implementing cloud, need to think about. As one commenter said:

Migrating to the cloud is not an easy process but good preparation goes a long way toward making it easier. Many businesses do not have their internal systems in good shape in the first place so migrating them to the cloud in bad condition must be horrendous. It sounds like many of the respondents to the survey need to sort their own end out first before moving to the cloud but do not necessarily have the chance to do so as they are either being told to go into the cloud by CEO/CIOs or they are pretty blindly moving forward without knowing where they’re going. They would be best to simplify their systems as much as they can by getting commonality among internal systems, reining in shadow IT and getting all business units on board.

This is an area that we as cloud evangelists need to front up to. While those of us at the very head of the cloud wave find it easy to shirk off the difficulties of the cloud, and simplistically say that cloud is easier, faster, cheaper and better, that approach is both disrespectful to the real issues that organizations face, and unhelpful if we really want cloud to shine.

Rather we need to look at the issues in their entirety and help organizations embark on a well thought out process as they move to the cloud. It’s one area that I’m noticing developing at the moment as more and more third party cloud providers get founded that have an ethos of truly partnering with their clients and helping them plan a gradual process of migration. I’ve spent a fair amount of time recently with two Australasia-based companies following this model – ProQuest consulting and Trineo both take a view that, from my experience, is more attuned to the realities of their customers.

Part of the reason I created CloudU was to encourage organizations to proactively apprize themselves of the issues they’re likely to face in their move to the cloud. One of the CloudU papers is in fact dedicated to this subject and in it we attempted to draw some general conclusions about where the issues often lie. In fact, later this month I’ll be presenting a workshop at the Cloud Computing Summit that looks at these areas in detail.

As I see it, we can break the issues down into three distinct categories:

• Technical considerations (languages, scale, security, performance, migration)
• External business considerations (costs, vendor lock-in, vendor choice)
• Internal business considerations (the changing IT role, cultural issues)

Over the next few weeks I’ll be looking at these areas in detail as a way of giving organizations looking to move to the cloud something of a step-by-step plan to begin the process. I’d be keen to hear people’s thoughts about my suggestions, and about the issues generally.

Only big companies use Exchange. Actually, many Exchange users are SMBs that tap Exchange from the cloud to avoid heavy infrastructure investments and ongoing maintenance costs.

We don’t have the budget for Exchange. To stand up a full Exchange deployment onsite is an expensive and challenging proposition. With hosted Exchange, businesses can take that huge CAPEX and turn it into a fixed, monthly fee.

Hosted Exchange isn’t secure. In reality, a hosted Exchange provider’s profits and reputation depend on its ability to secure its customer’s data. Often the security measures taken by a hosted Exchange provider are far more stringent than a standard, onsite deployment.

If you’re looking for a full-featured, scalable email solution, we don’t want you to fall prey to the myths, so we made a fun, short video to address these and other myths around Exchange.

The three-legged stool is a staple in many homes today. It’s easy to use, requires no adjustments and anyone can set it up. The three legs allow it to work on most flat surfaces and almost always stay level.

Using the analogy of a simple piece of household furniture makes it easy to explain the imbalance in most cloud providers today. Today’s clouds are tuned for maximum network and server performance. With load balancers, numerous web servers and application servers offering core after core and GBs of memory, one would think that the cloud is in balance. But nothing is further from the truth.

While networking and servers have been well designed into the cloud, storage is a bit of an afterthought. You can either choose your block storage using ephemeral devices in the servers or decide on object and file storage through other services. High performance persistent block storage entirely in the cloud is not available. To continue with the analogy we have a very short leg in the stool. Customers understand this all too well. I’ve been following a cloud blog that simply asks “In one word, what is the biggest challenge facing Cloud Computing in 2012?

The top 10 are security, learning, change, performance, connectivity, confidence, control, SLAs, ROI/TCO and regulations.

Let’s look at these from the perception of storage.  In the top 10 we have several concepts that have been fixed with a no-compromise yet affordable storage solution in the cloud. At Zadara Storage we have developed a product called VPSA (Virtual Private Storage Array). It encompasses many of the challenges most cloud users have today. I can easily explain VPSA in four words; control, performance, security and flexibility.

Let’s build a Virtual Private Storage Array here on the spot and explain the benefits.

Control: With a few clicks you have selected a four-core, 8GB cache RAID controller; five SAS drives in RAID5; and created 20 20GB Volumes (LUNS). That took five minutes.

Performance: This RAID controller is yours and yours only. There is no sharing of cores, cache, spindles or network resources. You have no noisy neighbors.

Security: Using iSCSI CHAP secret; VPNs; encryption in flight and at rest; and, again, no sharing of spindles, you have the most secure storage environment out there today.

Flexibility: VPSA was built from the ground up specifically for the cloud. It’s like having your on-premise array in the cloud. The difference is that you may keep it for one hour, one day, one week or so on. If you need a faster controller, increase it at will. You can then reduce it when the need passes.

It offers cloud economics with all the attributes you wouldn’t compromise with on-premise storage.

VPSA is available via partnerships with Rackspace and Zadara Storage. To help you test your very own VPSA we have a free trial program. Simply go to www.zadarastorage.com and click on Free Trial or Sign-Up

At Zadara Storage, we have fixed the wobbly three-legged stool and have made your storage run a whole lot faster, securely and with more control.  The cloud is once again in balance.

Here it is here (click to enlarge):

I wrote the CloudDB Client for Rackspace Cloud Databases – now available in an Early Access program —  to grow the audience of users that require a UI.

Right now, the CloudDB Client exposes browsing, create and delete functionality, and if there’s a demand, more functionality will be added.

Since this is something I built, I am more than happy to provide basic support as time allows. As with anything, there may be bugs, so please reach out if you encounter one. Since I made this, it is not a Rackspace-supported product.

Now for a quick disclaimer: You should know that this extension exposes capabilities that could, in rare cases, result in the loss of data, and I will not be held responsible for loss of data incurred by using this extension, whether it’s accidental or intentional.

If that sounds good to you and you’re looking for a user interface extension for the Rackspace Cloud Database API service, feel free to dive right in and download the CloudDB Client now, and pretty soon the source code will be made available via github.

And, if this extension takes off, I’ll work on exposing more of the Cloud Database API functionality.

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about the process of getting started with SharePoint and how to best move forward.  In most cases you will see information that leads you to think of Governance as being the starting point for all things SharePoint.  And while I agree with this, I think the better thing to do is to evaluate your goals as an organization. No matter if you are the smallest of companies or the largest of companies, you have goals and a direction in which you are moving.

As you look at SharePoint and determine if it will become part of your organization, you will want to ensure that it all starts with the overall direction of the company.  By starting here you can really align the value found within SharePoint to the core of your organization.  SharePoint, after all, is just a tool that you can use to build solutions that make your organization better.  But the focus should never be on the tool or what the tool is doing.  The focus should always remain on the business.  By doing this you will be able to really align your solutions to the heartbeat of the company and will be able to ensure a broader user adoption.  After all, if we are building tools that make the company better and align with the direction of the company, why wouldn’t people use them?  At times I know that all of this sounds great in theory, but can often be hard to incorporate into everyday practice.  So in this post I want to share with you some of the ways that I think you can be sure to incorporate these ideas into your work.

A Tool Is Just A Tool

The first thing that I think we should focus on is the fact that SharePoint is just a tool.  If you were to build a birdhouse, the focus would be on the actual constructed object and not on the wood, nails and hammer used to build it!  The idea is the same with SharePoint.  There are many, many different options available to be used within our solutions, but at the end of the day, if we are using Workflows, Lists or Forms they are all just tools that are used to make up a complete solution.  The important thing is that we are providing an easy way for users to submit expense reports or that we are tracking project data.  If the focus becomes we need to use InfoPath for this and Lists for that we run the risk of having a focus on the technology and not on the business.  The technology is great and it can empower us to do some really awesome things within the organization, but if we lose focus on the business goals we are entering into really risky territory.

Understanding The Audience

The next thing I want to highlight is the audience and the importance of knowing it!  When you start to look at potential solutions that can be built in SharePoint, knowing your audience is a key success criteria.  If you build the most complex solution you can build using all the advanced tools but no one actually uses the solution, then what value does the solution have?  Every time we look at a new process or idea to implement in SharePoint we need to look at our audience and we need to build a solution that aligns with its needs.  By doing this we are helping to ensure that our solutions are going to bring immediate value to the organization.  And the beauty of this approach is that as our audience matures and develops the types of solutions we build will likely also develop into more complex, detailed solutions.  By taking this approach we can mature our solutions as our audience matures.  This allows us to make the most of the moment while still planning for the most in the future.

Just Get Started!

The next thing I want to point out is the importance of getting started.  I have a phrase that you will often hear me repeat over and over, which is “Think Big, Start Small & Keep Growing.”  You definitely want to look at the big picture when you start to think about how SharePoint can be used within your organization to solve business problems, but you don’t want to get caught up in the analysis phase to the point that you are never able to really get started.  So I encourage you to spend some time looking at the big picture, but if you find an area that you don’t have all the information determined or that you know things are changing, I encourage you to identify it and plan to the best of your ability, but still keep moving!

Know What Is Available

The final thing that I want to point out is the importance of learning the tool.  You may not know exactly how to configure advanced versioning for a document library, but it is important to understand what versioning is.  By at least having an understanding of the concept you will be able to more easily identify locations in your business or problems that those tools can address.  This part can get tricky because there is really no end to the learning!  But that’s ok, because you can take it in steps and continue to learn new skills over time.  I get asked a lot how to get started, so I created a blog post around my thoughts.  If you are looking for more information in this area I encourage you to check it out!

Final Thoughts

SharePoint is a powerful tool to have in your environment, but like most things it can also bring harm if not looked at correctly.  By always looking to the business you will force yourself to align your solutions with the overall strategy and direction of the company.  By keeping the technical solutions aligned with the company and built for the internal audience, you will find that you have a much greater opportunity for user adoption.  Hopefully you will find these tips helpful as you look at how you can begin using SharePoint within your organization.

So how does the startup figure into all this?

Trying to establish and grow a business has been extremely difficult during this time. Balancing work, personal and startup pressures is a lot, and I haven’t done this quite as effectively as I would have liked. Here are some things that I have found helpful in dealing with the stresses of work and a couple of major life events, and I would love to hear from readers and entrepreneurs on how you best handle the stresses of a day job, personal life and starting a business.

1. Have A Plan Before The Storm

My partner and I were able to see the tsunami coming before it got here. There definitive moving and wedding dates on the horizon. We both had experiences moving before, and I have been in enough weddings to know the craziness associated with that. We made a mistake by just accepting that there would be downtime during this busy period, but we would try to do as much as possible.

Not having an explicit plan made us feel like we were treading water instead of progressing. Indeed, we made some progress, however, we didn’t make as much as we would have liked. No matter how small, we should have defined tangible goals that could have been achieved during this period so we would have mile markers to judge our progress.

2. Dedicate Time To The Startup

This might sound silly, but you have to schedule time. Saying that you will work on the startup if you have any free time will mean that you will never work on your startup. Schedule a day and time to work, and spend the time working – not thinking about what else you have going on. I had more time than I thought. However, if you don’t actually write down when you are going to work, you will let the other things in your life pull you away.

If you have extraneous things that you enjoy, now is probably the time to give them up – or at least put them on hold — and focus on what is important: your job, the major shift in your personal life and your startup. This has been extremely hard for me to do. I like doing a lot of different things and have my thumb in a lot of pies.

Letting go of posting on my personal blog, strict adherence to reading a book a month, watching sports and dabbling with iPhone app development has been difficult. But it had to be done. All those things are great when you have time, but the moment it impacts one of the major things you want to focus on, it is time to cut the cords.

4. Surround Yourself With Solid People

There is no way that I could have worked on this startup during this hectic time without two very understanding people – my fiancé and my business partner. Planning a wedding takes a lot; in fact, my previous role was as a technical project manager in the cloud and none of my major projects have compared to planning a wedding. It takes a lot of time. In spite of this, my fiancé has encouraged me to work on the startup, and has really understood when I needed to take some time off and work.

My business partner has been equally solid. I am fortunate that he is a patient person who realizes that this is a particularly hectic time in my life. Instead of begrudging me for spending a lot of time on these personal matters, he has understood that this is something important and has even helped me out with the move. Furthermore, he has really been keeping the lights on and innovating on the product.

5. Get Rested So You Can Hit It Hard

In little over a week, I will be married. We are moved into our house and in the process of unboxing. We have found tenants for the old places. The videos at work are in postproduction and a lot of the articles are ready to go for when I’m out on the honeymoon. I guess I am finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but right now I am a little burned out. It’s time for a little rest and relaxation over the next several weeks. I’m looking forward to coming back refreshed and in the mindset to hit it hard again.

Starting Up (Is Hard to Do) is a weekly series published every Friday on the Rackspace Blog from a guy who is in the trenches of starting up a business while working a day job. Garrett’s going to running off to get hitched then travelling the country on a honeymoon, so there won’t be a post in this series over the next couple of weeks. Check out Garrett’s previous post that talked about locations where you can work on your startup along with the backlog of all his posts while he is out.

Xeround Cloud Database, the zero-management database-as-a-service for MySQL applications, is now available in Rackspace’s UK datacenter, enabling cloud users running their apps in Rackspace’s UK datacenter to create their Xeround DB instances in the same datacenter and enjoy Xeround’s no-downtime guarantee and true elasticity.

Xeround Cloud Database, which has run in Rackspace’s U.S. datacenter for more than a year, ensures high-availability and unlimited scalability of your database in the cloud with just one click – eliminating the need for extensive configuration, management overhead or code changes on your part. You simply create your cloud database, connect your application and you’re good to go!

Xeround’s service includes:

• Auto scaling – your database scales up or out across multiple nodes when more capacity or throughput are required and shrinks back down when it is underutilized.
• No downtime SLA guarantee – Xeround’s built-in replicas and auto-healing architecture ensure your database is always available.
• Scheduled backups
• Unlimited throughput
• Phone, email and web support
• Zero maintenance
• No code changes to your app!

The first 30 days of using Xeround on Rackspace are free! No credit card is required.

• Sign up today to create your cloud database on Rackspace
• Watch the short Product Tour (1:30 minutes) to see how Xeround works on Rackspace

Not Just The Database: Learn The Benefits Of An All-Cloud-Services Strategy

We believe that developers should focus on their code and not on the IT/operations side of things. And we’re not the only ones who believe that.

As more and more applications are being migrated to the cloud, developers are choosing to integrate best-of-breed managed cloud services with their applications rather than develop the components themselves or (worse yet) be bothered with the infrastructure hassles like in the past.

Read this case study of Blue-Saki Online, a Xeround customer running on Rackspace who chose an all-cloud-services strategy to develop its video marketing platform.

By examining the reasons for choosing only cloud services – from application server and load balancers, to database service, CDN, email delivery, load testing, monitoring, financial services and more - we can see how the cloud helps developers cut down on development and operational costs, enable faster time-to-deployment and improve reliability for mission-critical applications.