Comments on: An Open Letter to Rackspace Cloud Hosting

By: Twitter Fail

Twitter Fail — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:30:01 +0000

Wow. I found this because I was researching the breach last week that caused 7 of my blogs to be hacked. I've been with them for years, and have put up with stuff like this over and over because I thought it was probably my fault and didn't look to see how many other people were affected. It's time to say goodbye to Rackspace. They just don't seem to have what it takes to manage their cloud properly.

By: ZanderChance

ZanderChance — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 07:52:05 +0000

Good to hear.. I also had to get creative with my caching, I'm very particular about our plug-in usage, and utilize a few other techniques to get my compute cycle usage under control. It's a pain sometimes (especially when I'm managing 40+ sites), but I guess that's life in the cloud.

I come close to the 10K/mo line each month, but I haven't crossed it in probably 6 months now! I've been asking for better tools to monitor cycle usage since I signed up, but that's a losing battle.

Glad to hear things are better now.. Thanks.

By: snipe

snipe — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 05:24:45 +0000

Hi Zander – it's definitely better now than it was. Overall, my uptime and stabilitiy is improving, to the point where I probably won't move just yet. After implementing a LOT of caching, my bill is back under control, but the black box that is their billing still irks me. If it wasn't such a colossal pain in the ass to move 100 sites, I'd probably have given up already. Really though, it's the frustration of not having SSH/log files. Since the beginning of the year, I have had to fix at least 20 websites that were hacked, and doing any kind of forensics in that situation is damn near impossible. I've been looking at managed dedicated/managed VPS solutions, just to I know what my options are if I end up having to leave. Hopefully I won't.

By: ZanderChance

ZanderChance — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 01:21:00 +0000

Snipe, sorry to hear about this.. You're actually the one that convinced me to make the switch from my dedicated box to Mosso last April. I've also had my fair share of issues with them (including one month where my bill was nearly $400!), but aside from that and a few outages, it's been ok overall. I'm willing to let a few things slide, as long as I don't have to deal with the sysadmin work anymore!

I saw your more recent post “The cloud is a lie”.. If you happen to come across a better solution, please let me know. Thanks!

By: BJ

BJ — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 05:37:31 +0000

I am glad I am not the only one. I have noticed more and more of our WordPress websites having issues. I just asked via chat and was told to keep the WordPress up-to-date and file permissions set to 775 and 777. I just fixed one where it was the latest and the file permissions were fine. I am wondering, are you still with Rackspace? I am starting to look at other options to see if it would make sense to move hosting companies, but is there one out there that is better or is this just par for the course. Like you, I have yet to find a good solution and up to now, I had thought Rackspace Cloud might be it. I feel just as you, I like mostly everything about the Rackspace cloud, but this issue. Your post and letter to them is spot on!

By: snipe

snipe — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 21:37:58 +0000

Hi Devon – I actually still have a dedicated server in a colo in San Diego. I had moved everything off that server because I was tired of having to manage my own box. I've been managing my own box for over 10 years, and it's just too time-consuming. I work full-time, commute 4.5 hours a day and run a non-profit org. It was just getting to be too much. I have heard good things about their Servers product, and we have several regular dedicated boxes at Rackspace, so it seems like it's the Cloud product that's still green and struggling. I have been dealing with Rackspace for one reason or another for years, and their support really is good. I would recommend them any day, just not the Cloud product.

By: Devon Lambert

Devon Lambert — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:18:44 +0000

Hey Snipe,

How come you don't give the Rackspace Servers option a go around? From what I can gather by reading the specs, it appears to provide root access. Did you not want to manage the whole server. I'm partially asking this question because I myself am in the middle of making the decision between Rackspace and Amazon EC2. When I stumbled upon your post it made me completely question Rackspace and has now thrown me in favor of Amazon's Cloud. That being said I was also wondering if they had made some false claim on their site regarding support as well as Cloud Server options?

Thanks for the great post and please do update and let us know how this all turned out?

By: sympathizer

sympathizer — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 22:25:05 +0000

it's the new Server Beach. it shouldn't have the Rackspace name on it and I see your point, you are correct, it is an issue. when it was still SliceHost, the target audience was people like yourself – informed professionals who were willing to learn from the forums, etc. but who also had a clue – NOT everyone should be in the Cloud.

By: Matthew Turland

Matthew Turland — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:32:59 +0000

I don't think it's unreasonable at all for customers of web hosting providers, “cloud” or no, to expect that they include access to web server logs as part of their services. From what I can tell, that's the main thing that Alison is asking for here: not security advice or automated patching of software, but simple log access. She's not claiming that WP itself hasn't or doesn't have security issues and she's not expecting RS to fix them for her, she just wants access to logs so she has some means to investigate the issues herself. She's already mentioned that any provider that gives access to cPanel, horrible as it is, provides this. To say that RS CS doesn't and should isn't whining, it's a perfectly valid point. If RS CS isn't intended to be an enterprise solution, I'd have to ask exactly what it *is* intended to be. Certainly not a service for the web developers at whom its marketing was aimed, and “internal issues” is an all too nice way of describing this shortcoming and the customer response to it.

By: snipe

snipe — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:10:08 +0000

Okay, so perhaps you read them, but missed it somehow. My point was that IF we're not going to have the tools available to us (such as ssh, real-time logs, etc), then they SHOULD step up their game for helping us with security, since we're not ABLE to do it ourselves. I moved from a dedicated box (which I still have in a colo in San Diego) specifically because this was sold to me as a solution that would work out well for devs.

If you're going to cripple me, you at least need to help me up the stairs.