Over the past year Rackspace has successfully migrated customers out of 2 temporary Rackspace data centres (LON2 and LONB) into our own new facility in Slough (LON3). This afternoon shortly before 16.00 BST as LON2 was decommissioned, we experienced a loss of network connectivity for some of our customers within in our LON3 and LON1 facilities which lasted 15 minutes.

Although Rackspace checked that there was no traffic running through LON2, regrettably, there were devices responsible for Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) announcements for a small range of IPs. As a result, the BGP routing advertisement for this range was withdrawn from our internet peers and quickly became unreachable.

Once we were alerted to the problem Rackspace Backbone Engineers immediately configured the IP block in Rackspace’s other UK data centres facilities which resolved the problem.

The LON2 facility is now disconnected from the network and no further disruption is expected.

We sincerely apologise to those customers affected and the inconvenience this may have caused

Many companies are far from sure about adopting new cloud hosting in their business. Resistance to the cloud comes primarily from IT professionals who are used to managing their own hardware and business executives who fear the cloud as an unknown and insecure world with no safeguards.

However the cloud is already recognised as a great alternative for Internet sites, hosted e-mail, scalable storage and on-demand computing needs. Those who have embraced the cloud for these purposes say it offers exactly the kind of computing they need, when they need it and at a reasonable price with no commitments.

But is the cloud really ready for everything? In all honesty it probably isn’t, but it is ready for everyone. The cloud certainly is ready for some portion of your applications and IT infrastructure needs. One important thing to remember about cloud computing is that it doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. It can be a component of a larger IT infrastructure strategy that may include in-house data centres, co-location or managed hosting.

Experts are therefore now advising that companies ‘try it’ by opting for a hybrid service rather than going all out at the initial stages. The hybrid combination of cloud plus traditional infrastructure is probably the best answer for most companies. A hybrid approach can provide you the costs savings, the scalable on-demand infrastructure and the security you need with very few tradeoffs. Read full article on Network World by Rackspace CTO, John Engates

piece of cake

There has been quite a few complaints about the unreliability of ‘The Cloud’ but to a certain extent this shouldn’t come as a surprise.  Cheap and reliable? It would be like having your cake and eating it.  Both cheap and reliable is still a fair way off, as with all products when in the early adopter phase there are teething problems during the testing process to get a product to ‘take to market’ or ‘crossing the chasm’ to quote the infamous Geoffrey Moore .  We are still in that phase in the development of cloud technology.  Of course  The Cloud has its uses already, it makes sense to use it for high bandwidth peaks for example.  This has tremendous cost savings of not having to have a whole dedicated environment sitting there unused most of the time, off load it onto the Cloud and only pay for what you use, why wouldn’t you?   Equally it’s a shared infrastructure and so it’s not going to be as secure or reliable as your own dedicated environment.

 So how do you get the best of both world’s?  You want to tap into the scalability of The Cloud and only pay for what you use, but  at the same time have 100% uptime.  The simple answer is to have a hybrid hosting solution.  A dedicated server for your mission critical  elements e.g. ecommerce functionality, with cloud hosting for the less essential elements e.g. to cope with peaks in bandwidth, staging sites that aren’t mission critical or simply for storage.  Cloud certainly has many great uses, but when using it, it makes sense to remember nothing is perfect especially in the early years of development!  The future is certainly Cloud Computing  but it is unlikely dedicated hosting environments will disappear completely especially in the near future, and so it is most likely hybrid hosting means you can have your cake and eat it!

Whilst most hosting providers strive to have excellent track records and minimise downtime for customers to just planned maintenance downtime, sometimes things break unexpectedly.

Over the 11 years of Rackspace history we have in the main part had an excellent record for downtime.  In fact we had a five year period where we had no unscheduled downtime.  However outages have happened and when they have, we  like to think the way we have reacted and how quickly we have got things fixed is testament to our spirit and in Fanatical Support.  A recent blog by ServInt, a competitor of ours, was in agreement of just that sentiment http://blog.servint.net/2009/07/08/why-servint-stands-beside-rackspace-and-you-should-too/ one quote from them states “From the beginning and throughout the ordeal, Rackspace was communicative, forthright, and responsive about the entire process on their corporate blog as well as on Twitter.”

This is what sets companies apart, we didn’t bury our heads in the sand and say nothing, it is in our culture to be open, honest and transparent.  We therefore told our customers exactly what the issue was and what steps we were taking to rectify it as soon as possible.  We hope that whilst they are understandably upset, they also appreciate that we did everything we could, as quickly as we could to get our customers back on line as quickly as possible.

We have to thank social media for their part in helping us communicate more effectively with our customers, this now enables us to reach customers instantly in terms of updating them on what is going on, and directing them to more detailed information on our website and blog.

Please see the latest blog from our CEO Lanham Napier

A new report from Datamonitor (independent market analyst)  titled “Can Green IT Bloom in an Economic Downturn?” suggests reduced IT budgets around the world has impacted the adoption of green IT practices - companies are being driven to cut costs as well as adhere to legal compliances, as such, they are turning to IT solutions that are green as well as cheap.

This suggests that companies will not consider paying more for greener electricity for example however will look at energy saving initiatives such as power saving and cuts.  How is your business coping with  juggling cost savings with green IT?

TotalKiss.com

Rackspace Hosting, the world’s leader in hosting, announced TotalKiss.com, the UK’s top commercial radio station website, has moved into the Rackspace Cloud. This deal will see 10 websites, including Kiss 100, Kiss 101 and Kiss 105-108, hosted and managed in the cloud.  TotalKiss.com was looking for a cloud solution that could add flexibility to their infrastructure and support surges in demand. The contract includes the TotalKiss.com interface to listen live, listen again (KISS Kube) and initiatives such as Kiss Does Summer.

High demands are placed on the site from blogs, forums and comment boxes, as well as the capability for users to ‘kisstomise’ the homepage. Regular competitions and advertising campaigns also cause spikes in demand, along with the fast paced nature of the media environment, with tight and often last minute deadlines. Kiss felt that the Rackspace Cloud could scale as its business grew and cope with huge spikes in demand caused by visitor volumes and advertising initiatives.

Read full press release

To understand how you can benefit from cloud computing, please visit www.rackspace.co.uk/cloud-clinic