Cloud Networks

You can now attach and detach networks from a live Cloud Server. You no longer need to create a snapshot of the server, and then build a new server from that image to attach or detach a network to/from a server.

We know that the public internet can be a scary place for servers. Log files of servers attached to public addresses show regular port scans and URL snooping and are a constant reminder that your hosts are one misconfiguration away from catastrophe.

I’ve been thrilled at the response from our customers to the launch of Cloud Networks. I’ve talked to many customers who are excited to begin using this new network power in their solutions. I also spoke last week at Cloud Expo in Santa Clara, Calif., and it was exciting to see the response from the heart of the Silicon Valley. Many of the attendees were from local tech firms and they were surprised that we had implemented software-defined networks at this scale so early in the life of the technology.

Wow! 2012 has been a great year for the open cloud at Rackspace. Actually, it’s been the year of the open cloud for us and our customers. Over the past few months, our vision of what the open cloud can mean has really gained momentum — we’ve launched Cloud Databases, Cloud Servers powered by OpenStack, Cloud Monitoring and a new Cloud Control Panel. Also, just last week, we made Cloud Block Storage available to all of our customers. And we’re not done yet.