Are Rackspace’s Cloud Servers really cloud hosting

cloud computingrackspace-cloudvirtualization

I may be confused about what cloud hosting really is…

I asked Rackspace how its Cloud Server (CS) 256MB/10GB compares to Slicehost's 256slice VPS, and they said it's exactly the same (only different billing and BW). I know they are the same company.

So, why do they call it Cloud Server? Isn't it just a collection of VPS (virtual private servers)?

For me, cloud hosting would be: if I need any additional horsepower at any given time, the cloud would automatically stack more VPS and then charge me at the end of the month for the surplus of resources. Reading Rackspace's info, it looks like it's for me to decide when to stack more CS and that its Cloud Servers don't AUTOMATICLY scale up.

Am I confusing things?

Best Answer

Mnn, you're not really confusing things, or at least you're not more confused than many other people are about "cloud computing". Cloud computing (CC) has become one of those trend-words, fashionable words that get used in lots of different circumstances.

To me, cloud computing just implies a service somewhere between Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service. (Themselves also 2 very abused words with many different interpretations.)

For me, auto-scaling with demand is not a required part of cloud computing. If you look at it, neither Amazon AWS nor Windows Azure had auto-scaling as part of their initial offering. Only Google AppEngine had this, and initially at the expense of other severe limitations on the run-time environment.

Clearly auto-scaling is desirable, and AWS has had it for some time through Rightscale and other 3rd party providers. But it's not the only differentiator between plain VPS and Cloud Computing.

Some of the key differentiators between VPS and Cloud Computing for me are:

  • Management interface that is optimized for a fleet of VPS's and not just 1-5 VPS's.
  • Presence of load balancing services and similar network-level services.
  • A business model that prices storage, compute and bandwith differently, and allows a great deal of flexibility in the consumption of these.
  • Sheer size. To me, if you can provision 10-100 virtual machines with short warning, then you're a VPS provider. If you can provision 100 - 10.000 VPS servers with short warning, then you're a cloud computing provider.
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