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Unreliable hosting and frequent downtimes are the last things that any company needs. While exploring the depth and breadth of robust cloud-based servers, we undertook a Rackspace cloud sites review. Rackspace is widely considered to be a rockstar in cloud-based hosting solutions, so we had high expectations. Here's how things unfolded.

Ease of setup

To start the Rackspace cloud sites review, we set off commissioning a server for ourselves. The setup is almost instantaneous thereby justifying Rackspace's claim to deliver a "Linux or Windows Server in Minutes". Further, scaling up/ down is just as fast as the original setup.

Rackspace cloud sites is all about simplifying the process of creating and maintaining websites, irrespective of which platform they've been built on - Joomla, Wordpress, .NET Store Front or any other.

The Rackspace cloud sites control panel is easy to use and provides easy access to all controls.

Scalability

We've seen several cloud-based hosting providers falter on the scalability aspect, but our Rackspace cloud sites review confirms this offering can scale dynamically at a moment's notice. Users can choose a server size and start using it within a matter of few minutes.

Users have super administrative privileges and can fully customize the Rackspace cloud server/ site as per their needs.

Support

Excellent online as well as offline support has been of the biggest factors contributing to Rackspace's phenomenal success in the cloud-based hosting segment. It would be unfair to review Rackspace cloud server without acknowledging the stupendous support team they have.

Pricing

While the Cloud server pricing starts at $10.95/month, Cloud Sites is priced $149/month and upwards. The best part is that you pay for what you use and there's no minimum contract/ commitment. There's absolutely no wastage of computing resources and you get optimal resource utilization every single time.

Though there are several lower priced cloud servers and sites solutions, they are no match for Rackspace' feature-packed offerings.

Speed

Rackspace' state-of-the-art technology ensures high speed access to its cloud servers and sites. Despite running high-traffic web applications, we've never observed the Rackspace cloud servers perform sluggishly.

Stability

Stability, without a doubt, was our top most concern during the Rackspace cloud sites review. We never observed low memory/ out of memory or high CPU error warnings even in peak web traffic scenarios. Though the uptime isn't a perfect 100%, it is far better than most other cloud-based servers that we've evaluated for our needs.

Platforms

Rackspace offers a wide variety of operating systems to choose from - including Windows (Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003) and Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, CentOS, Fedora, Arch and Red Hat Enterprise).

Further, support for multiple databases (MySQL 4, MySQL 5, MSSQL and SQL Server) surely stands out as another major positive during our Rackspace cloud sites review.

API Support

Rackspace servers and sites support powerful REST API, thereby allowing developers to build powerful cloud-based applications and websites. It's even possible to start/ stop/ restart the server instance using these API, thereby making it easy to automate routine server administration and maintenance tasks.

Conclusion

We've no doubt that Rackspace' state-of-the-art solutions truly live up to their well-earned reputation in our Rackspace cloud sites review.

About the Author:

Graham Loomis is a seasoned technology professional with nearly a decade of experience in Cloud Computing, Mobile and Web 2.0 technologies. A part of the CloudHostingReviewer team, he is fondly known as the "Jack of all clouds" and loves evaluating and exploring various cloud-based hosting and server solutions. The observations cited in this Rackspace cloud sites review, are his own.

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