NOTE: This article is written for our Classic Cloud Control Panel. A version of this article is also available for our New Cloud Control Panel.

After Cloud Servers and Cloud Load Balancers, another way you can make hosting on the Rackspace Cloud easy is to use the Cloud Files application to store your web content and other files.  Some reasons you would want to use Cloud Files would be; if you had more content to serve than you had available Hard Disk space for your server, or if you had large media files that you needed to serve on the Content Delivery Network (CDN).

What is the CDN?

Using Akamai’s service, Cloud Files brings you a powerful and easy way to publish content over a world-class, industry leading CDN.  Customers automatically get access to this network included in the cost of using the Cloud Files service.  The way it works is by distributing the content that you upload to Cloud Files across a global network of edge servers.  What this means is that when someone is viewing content from your site, your CDN-enabled content will be served to them from the closest geographic edge server to their location.  This feature dramatically inreases the speed at which websites can load, no matter where your viewer is located.  This can be a great advantage when hosting content for an international audience. 

Though you can also use the API to upload content to Cloud Files, another way is to use the File Manager interface in the Control Panel.  

To store content on Cloud Files, you start by creating a Container for your content.   The container name should have no breaks or spaces, and unlike a folder or directory, a Container cannot have sub-directories.  All your content will be at one level below the Container name.  

• Login to the Control Panel and navigate to Hosting -> Cloud Files.

• Click the button to Add a Container and give your container a name.

• Find your container by its name in the Container List, and click on it to select it.

• Below in the CDN & Metadata frame, you will notice that your container is not Published to the CDN by default.  In order to use the CDN, click the check box while your container is selected.  When published to the CDN, you should see a brief pop-up window notification in the lower-right corner letting you know that the Operation Succeeded.

• Now double-click on your container name to enter the container.  Click on File Upload from the menu.

• Click Browse to select files from your local machine.  Select the file or files that you want to upload.  You can use Shift+Select or Control+Select to upload multiple files fom the same directory on your local machine.  Click Open to queue the selected files for upload.

• Click Upload to begin, and monitor the progress of the upload.
   

• Once all files have been uploaded, close the status window, and you will see your files within the container.  To get the CDN URL for your file, click into the container and then on the individual file to select it.  Now copy the CDN URL that is now displayed in the CDN & Metadata pane.

This was just a brief overview of how to operate with Cloud Files through the File Manager interface in the Control Panel, but it just barely scratches the surface of what you can do with Cloud Files.  To learn more about how to operate with Cloud Files through the API, read this article and read the API Developer Guides. 

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