If you want to be one of the first to get your hands on the Cloud Servers for Windows Beta, sign up at http://rackspacecloud.com/beta.

Microsoft Backed: Cloud Servers for Windows is based on a Microsoft-supported hypervisor that is part of the Server Virtualization Validation Program.

This means that:

• Customers can benefit from the support provided by Microsoft as part of the regular Windows Server technical support framework
• Customers can benefit from the support provided by Microsoft for subsequent service packs
• Customers will enjoy faster time-to-market releases of Windows versions on The Rackspace Cloud

Sign up for the upcoming Cloud Servers for Windows Beta >> http://www.rackspacecloud.com/beta

Anyone that signs up will also get updates on our progress as we move towards our public beta launch in early 2010. Get yourself on the list today!

About The Rackspace Cloud
The Rackspace Cloud provides on-demand scalable website, application and storage hosting backed by Fanatical Support®. Through its suite of cloud solutions, Cloud Sites™, Cloud Files™ and Cloud Servers™, The Rackspace Cloud enables astute developers and IT managers to minimize the hassles, upfront investments and high costs associated with dedicated hardware while offering the ability to easily scale hosting resources. For more information about The Rackspace Cloud, visit www.rackspacecloud.com or call 1-877-934-0409.

About Rackspace Hosting
Rackspace Hosting is the world’s leader in hosting and cloud computing and is ranked #43 on FORTUNE Magazine’s 100 Best Companies to work for in the United States for 2009. Rackspace provides its customers with Fanatical Support ® in delivering their portfolio of hosted IT services, including Managed Hosting, Cloud Computing and Email and Apps. For more information, visit www.rackspace.com.

Link and get your t-shirt now: http://www.rackspacecloud.com/tshirt

Here is a cool customer, Michael Fidler, in his Rackspace Cloud T-shirt!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rackspacecloud/3965141868/

About The Rackspace Cloud
The Rackspace Cloud provides on-demand scalable website, application and storage hosting backed by Fanatical Support®. Through its suite of cloud solutions, Cloud Sites™, Cloud Files™ and Cloud Servers™, The Rackspace Cloud enables astute developers and IT managers to minimize the hassles, upfront investments and high costs associated with dedicated hardware while offering the ability to easily scale hosting resources. For more information about The Rackspace Cloud, visit www.rackspacecloud.com or call 1-877-934-0409.

About Rackspace Hosting
Rackspace Hosting is the world’s leader in hosting and cloud computing and is ranked #43 on FORTUNE Magazine’s 100 Best Companies to work for in the United States for 2009. Rackspace provides its customers with Fanatical Support ® in delivering their portfolio of hosted IT services, including Managed Hosting, Cloud Computing and Email and Apps. For more information, visit www.rackspace.com.

The .com TLD is has always been the king of domain name extensions. The first search we often check to see if our wanted domain name is available is the .com, then likely .net, .org, .info and anything else (probably in that order).

With that, is there any reasonable expectation that we might consider reviving the .com TLD by opening it up to accepting characters other than A-Z and numbers? Introducing symbols into the domain structure would completely open the various extensions for availability again.

We already have clever domains attempting to push the limit of XXX.com

• del.icio.us
• bubbl.us

But imagine if we could take it a step further and do this:

www.p0dca$t.com

I can’t wait for this functionality, and it may actually never come. Does anyone else share the same desires for this as I do?

I rip on Rackspace specifically because I genuinely care for the brand. If I didn’t care, I would leave and find another vendor. I can think of few companies better-poised to take on the challenge of cloud computing better than Rackspace.

In fact, maybe this is where the disconnect is for consumers right now. Not just with Rackspace, but with all vendors claiming to operate their business on cloud architecture. We call it many things, but the common term is “cloud computing”. Are the public’s assumptions in flawless uptime incorrect in that it’s a “distributed processing” model instead.

Cloud technology has already proven itself as a good model for handling larger scale processing for people that need it. Companies like Slicehost (now owned by Rackspace) and Rackspace’s new Cloud Servers platform based on Slicehost’s backend are perfect for this need and you can scale up as needed within minutes. This was only a dream a couple of years ago.

That said, is the public incorrect in equating services like Cloud Sites to Rackspace’s multi-rack load balancing solutions? Such a solution still has a point of failure, although small. The chances of an outage under such a system with two high end servers, each in separate racks with a load balancer in place are incredibly low, in fact, near non-existent. We haven’t seen stability like that on any level with Mosso, Amazon S3 or Media Temple the best of my recollection.

The status page Rackspace has put up for Cloud Files has up confirms there’s an issue with the service today. I contacted support and they confirmed that “the backend is experiencing no problems” and that “this was simply an unanticipated load on the system so we’re adding more hardware to handle the increased traffic”.

My thoughts are consistent with my other posts. The entire point of “cloud” is that your data’s receiving the highest level of uptime possible out there. This hasn’t been proven yet. I’m shocked that the response was that of “we didn’t know about the load we would receive”. This service’s sole existence is so that your data can be under heavy load. That’s why we choose a cloud service over a single point of failure.

Instead, Rackspace has in effect created their own single point of failure. They took a service out of  “beta” prior to scaling their systems up to speed to handle “live” traffic. With the media attention they’ve been attempting to drum up against competitor Amazon (AMZN), a wise business owner would be ready to handle a surge of usage traffic upon the successful launch of a competing product.  You don’t launch a system, and then say: “Whoops. We  got our  competition’s business. Time to scale up”. By then you’re positioned to lose those new clients back to your competitor again.

I’ve said it before. I’m a huge fan of Rackspace as a brand, their technical support ideals and values, etc. But these types of performance issues are amaturish for a company of their age and place in this world. They’re a tech leader in their space and better than this.

Their speeds may be twice that of Amazon S3, but I think Amazon has a more stable service. All of the big ones have been hit at one time or another, that’s not the complaint. I have been using Rackspace’s Cloud Sites service for 6+ months and it’s had many issues with their supposedly stable cloud. Every time I think a vendor has nailed it, something like this goes and happens to have me questioning “cloud” and what it means again.

Sadly, I don’t think we’ve made it yet. At best my data is safe. But uptime isn’t something I’d bet my life savings on if you’re shopping for it on Cloud. It’s overpriced data storage and has never proven itself to be as “stable” as any of my cPanel linux builds to this day.

Am I the only one out there that feels this way? I’m not mad. I’m disappointed.

However, Mosso has claimed to have accomplished this feat for the past two years. For the most part, this has been true. I’ve pinged and tested websites hosted with Mosso, finding that while they are not necessarily the fastest host out there, I’ve chosen them to be able to withstand nearly any load we can throw at it.

But issues like today I am at a loss for words for. It’s nothing new either. I’ve called in, fully understanding that there’s an issue they’re experiencing, and simply need an “estimated time of resolution”. I’m not asking for anything definitive, but the generic run-around that I typically get reminds me of experiences from early web hosts (who shall be nameless for the time being). This is not typical Rackspace behavior and I think should be treated differently. You don’t put the reseller of your services on the back burner and play the silent game. It sets a bad precedent for your reputation handling customers.

The post from today in the Mosso status area.

So obviously I’m concerned about where Mosso is headed. I was quite literally about to rant about how amazed I am at their Cloud Files offering, however, it’s hard to praise and rant on the same day most of our websites are down. We pay a premium price for shared hosting which is supposed to be redundant enough that these types of embarrasing outages are 

I love the Rackspace brand, company, people, services…everything about it. But Mosso’s starting to test my patience and I’m beginning to doubt if their Cloud Sites service will ever be truly stable and ready for prime time. To compare, I have had a single processor server without issues live at The Planet for nearly a year and a half, not once down. If my little server beats out Mosso’s uptime hands down, why pay the extra buck for a service that hasn’t proven itself?

I’ve ranted about the “cloud” idea for a while in relation to Media Temple and Amazon S3. This post wasn’t originally intended to be a Mosso bashing. I’m a huge Rackspace fan. But they’re not proving themselves bulletproof in terms of uptime so far. Many issues have arisen, and I’m not sold on them as the most stable option for my hosting needs.

Bruce Runyan is the chief uptime officer for Mosso. I’d be interested to get a public statement posted here explaining why things like this happen when the idea behind this type of hosting is so that this doesn’t happen in the first place. To simply avoid calling clients that actually noticed the outage and not provide helpful information other than “We’re working on it” isn’t the answer paying clients are looking for.

So let’s extend this to other hosting situations beyond just Mosso with a few questions.

1. Are you with a host that doesn’t give the full picture?
2. How have you experienced uptime with them?
3. Is uptime or load processing more important?
4. Has the “cloud” idea disappointed you?
5. When will we finally be ready to trust it?

For the record, I’ve been overall blown away with SliceHost (although not Rackspace’s original idea), whome Rackspace aquired recently, and their uptime. I haven’t experienced a single issue with them and I was picky as hell when I contacted the owners out of skepticism a month ago. SliceHost technology will soon become Rackspace’s Cloud Servers offering.

Other related information:
Mosso.com – Information Thread on WebHostingTalk
Rackspace appoints chief uptime officer at Mosso

I have serious doubts about the “cloud” computing concept recently and that it’s a failed concept.  We have yet to see a successful execution of the cloud hosting idea to the point where there is a stable solution in place with such a level of redundancy that applications and websites are not down for any reason.  I’ve experienced outages with Mosso lately that I’ve become discontent with.  The reasoning behind choosing a company like Media Temple, Mosso or Amazon EC2 services is so that you are not experiencing downtime…ever.  

I’m stuck in a difficult place, because I realize the outage discovery phase’s necessity in determining a cause of failure, however, it’s been hours and nobody’s found anything…that sorta causes you to wonder if the idea of cloud computing really works (or at least if it’s been implemented correctly at the datacenter layer).  I know that things don’t just break on their own typically, and so I’m curious if someone rolled out an update that went bad, a switch dead (hey, hardware fails – I get it).  My next question would be: “why did they roll it out before testing in a beta environment?”.

I have optimistically waited for stability in the Mosso cloud hosting service that we’re unfortunately realizing is not there.  Maybe someday down the line it will be, but we’re faced with a scenario where I spoke up for Mosso to sell it to us internally since I have long-favored the Rackspace brand.  I figured that with Rackspace’s financial and infrastructure backing, that it might come with the same types of safety nets we’ve become used to with Rackspace in terms of high availability application hosting.

I’m not normally one to pull the plug inadvertently, but this has become somewhat habitual (8 incidents within the past 7-day week).  Those aren’t exactly excellent percentages.  I think instead of the SliceHost purchase and rolling out of the CloudFS service, Rackspace should be focusing on the stability of the current idea/concept of cloud hosting to make it rock solid before presuming to add more services to a foundation that hasn’t proven itself as 100% stable.

I have a lot of love for the Rackspace family and have been working with their teams both directly and indirectly for 7+ years.  I don’t intend to bow out completely, but I’m not sure it’s logical for us to continue to place trust in Mosso with the types of outages this past 3-6 months.

Maybe I have an incorrect view of what cloud hosting actually is supposed to be.  I imagine that if one piece of the equation is unavailable, that the others failover pieces are are able to serve content, justifying that the services are never really offline to the end user requesting the content.  In my opinion, no services can come offline using this method.  The idea that there is an infrastructure so robust in place behind the scenes is one that will execute this properly.

What do you think?