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Its been a little over a month now since I moved my websites to a Rackspace Cloud Server (VPS). I previously had a dedicated server at 1and1. I just want to share my opinion on my new web host. Maybe this will help someone who is shopping around for a server solution.

How I found Rackspace

I had always known about Rackspace as a company but had never tried them out. About a year ago, I started working with a client who was hosted at Rackspace. His application runs on a single server, queries a 50GB MySQL database and gets quite a bit of traffic. So we ran into some issues with stability and server load.

This was my first experience with Rackspace customer service. They helped us iron everything out and actually did it while being very pleasant. (More on their customer service later.) Anyhow, over the last year I got a feel for dealing with Rackspace even though I wasn't officially a customer.

Pricing

I was previously paying $99/month for a dedicated server at 1and1. That was an incredible waste of money for me. I kept thinking "well, if I build an app that goes viral, I'm going to need that power". I never built that "killer app" and I was just throwing money out the window.

I moved to a cloud server at Rackspace with 256MB of RAM and 10GB of storage space included. Now my hosting bill is roughly $11/month depending on the amount of bandwidth that I use. Quite a drastic change in what I'm shelling out per month on hosting and my wallet is thanking me for that.

And don't underestimate 256MB of RAM. I'm running a couple of (low traffic) websites, a few development sandboxes and a full blown mail server with memory to spare.

The nice thing is that if I ever do build that "killer app", its going to be a snap to upgrade my server specs. Rackspace provides a convenient interface to upgrade/downgrade your server specs easily.

Performance

A server is a server. Specs are specs. Computers will work the same regardless of the company (theoretically at least). The one advantage that I have noticed with Rackspace is that their DNS seems to resolve quicker than 1and1. With my old server I would have to wait just a bit while the browser status bar would read "Looking up code621.com...." No such thing with Rackspace so far. And anything that makes my website seem snappier is good in my book.

Easy CDN

Cloud Servers can easily be integrated with another Rackspace product called Cloud Files. Cloud Files can basically be compared to an external hard drive for your web server with (virtually) unlimited space. One of the really cool features is that Cloud Files can be synced to the Limelight Content Delivery Network (CDN). I haven't had a use for this but I'd imagine that if I were serving videos or downloads, this would take the load away from my web server and would be a super snappy way of delivering files.

Customer service

This is where Rackspace shines. Every time I have had an issue I have been amazed at the level of customer service Rackspace provides. Their reps are friendly and very knowledgeable. This is a stark contrast to my experience with 1and1. In the few times that I called for 1and1 support, their reps seemed borderline angry and it seemed as though I was bothering them. I also never felt like they knew what they were talking about technically. So I can certainly appreciate the customer service I have received at Rackspace so far.

Documentation

The Rackspace Cloud Server product is really just a repackaged version of the company they acquired called SliceHost. With that acquisition comes a good library of how-to articles for various flavors of Linux. These are excellent articles have been ported to the Cloud Server wiki at Rackspace.

Since I'm not an experienced Linux system admin, I've found these articles to be extremely help. Though I do recommend viewing them on the SliceHost website directly. Often times the comments included in each article are very helpful when troubleshooting any problems you might run into.

Is the product perfect? Not quite.

As happy as I am with my new web host, nothing is perfect. I have had a few issues with the Rackspace control panel.

When attempting to delete DNS records I often get errors and I have to contact customer service for them to delete it manually.

The ticketing system just doesn't work for me. It won't even load. Ironically, I have opened a ticket for NOT being able to see tickets over the phone. But I can't see the status of that ticket : /

Conclusion

I'm very happy with my move to Rackspace. I'm saving money and yet I haven't lost any functionality. In fact, I have gained some options that I previously didn't have. I would certainly recommend it to anyone shopping around for a new web host. Let's see how long this honeymoon lasts : )

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