The vRouter is a software-based router that runs on server hardware, so it can do other things — routing (duh) or acting as a virtual private network (VPN) gateway, for instance. The attraction to the firewall piece is that cloud customers previously had been building things like firewalls out of Linux components, says John Engates, Rackspace’s CTO.
Tag Archives: rackspace
Get An Inside Look At The Rackspace ‘Castle’ Via Google Street View
Recently, we had a photographer come out to create an inside Google Street View of our HQ so our customers, friends and family – anyone, really – can get a virtual feel for what it is like to work at Rackspace. There’s a ton to see.
via Get An Inside Look At The Rackspace ‘Castle’ Via Google Street View – The Official Rackspace Blog.
Rackspace goes on offense against second patent troll in two weeks
Rackspace is being sued over its Rackspace Cloud Notes app for iOS, in a lawsuit that also includes claims again several other Texas companies, including Petroleum Geo-Services, PlainsCapital Bank, Texas Instruments, Schlumberger Technologies, and energy giant TXU. All of those companies have iOS apps which, apparently, rotate their screens.
via Rackspace goes on offense against second patent troll in two weeks | Ars Technica.
Rackspace sues “most notorious patent troll in America”
Rackspace’s dispute is with an IP Nav unit called Parallel Iron, which says it has three patents that cover the open source Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). But remarkably, Rackspace didn’t even know that at first; IP Nav contacted Rackspace and told the company it infringed some patents while refusing to even reveal the numbers or the owners of the patents, unless Rackspace signed a “forbearance agreement” to not sue first. (Sometimes companies threatened by patent trolls can file a “declaratory judgment” lawsuit, which can help them win a more favorable venue.)
via Rackspace sues “most notorious patent troll in America” | Ars Technica.
Rackspace, Red Hat Win Decisive Patent Victory
Uniloc USA, Inc. filed the complaint against Rackspace in June 2012 in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas. The complaint alleged that the processing of floating point numbers by the Linux operating system violated U.S. Patent 5,892,697. Rackspace and Red Hat immediately moved to dismiss the case prior to filing an answer. In dismissing the case, Chief Judge Leonard Davis found that Uniloc’s claim was unpatentable under Supreme Court case law that prohibits the patenting of mathematical algorithms. This is the first reported instance in which the Eastern District of Texas has granted an early motion to dismiss finding a patent invalid because it claimed unpatentable subject matter. In the ruling released today, Judge Davis wrote that the asserted claim “is a mathematical formula that is unpatentable under Section 101.”
via Rackspace, Red Hat Win Decisive Patent Victory (NYSE:RHT).
Cloud Computing Needs to Embrace the Linux Model
While a portion of the OpenStack community is committed to the “free” software model, numerous developers have embraced the software with the intention of using it as the foundation for a proprietary platform. While that could lead to some tension between those developers with differing philosophies, Engates views that as better than the alternative. “Is it better to have a proprietary stack with no alternative?” he asked. “Or is it better to have an open-source platform here everyone has the source code at some level?”
via Cloud Computing Needs to Embrace the Linux Model: Rackspace CTO.
Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay!
Rackspace has been subjected to yet another patent lawsuit by a patent troll looking for a settlement. In this case, the plaintiff is called PersonalWeb Technologies. This particular lawsuit is not much different than the others, except that it highlights why software patent litigation suppresses innovation, and why Congress and the courts need to improve the system. If it wasn’t such a serious issue we might want to laugh at the irony of it all.
via The Official Rackspace Blog – Patent Trolls: Make Them Pay!.
In fact, GitHub is a perfect example of a company that is built to foster and enhance innovation. The GitHub repository service for software development projects has achieved legendary status among open source developers all over the world. GitHub has over 2.1 million users hosting over 3.7 million repositories. They are a paragon of innovation. Yet PersonalWeb has the audacity to file a lawsuit which alleges that “Rackspace Cloud Servers and GitHub Code Hosting Service” infringe some obscure patent from 1999 that has nothing to do with Rackspace and GitHub. Who is truly innovating here, PersonalWeb or Rackspace and GitHub?
Here‘s a list of their patents. My favorite:
8,099,420 Accessing Data In A Data Processing System
Google Compute Engine rocks the cloud
Google took its sweet time entering this corner of the cloud. While Amazon, Rackspace, and others started off with pay-as-you-go Linux boxes and other “infrastructure” services, Google began with the Google App Engine, a nice stack of Python that held your hand and did much of the work for you. Now Google is heading in the more general direction and renting raw machines too. The standard distro is Ubuntu 12.04, but CentOS instances are also available. And you can store away your own custom image once you configure it.
via Review: Google Compute Engine rocks the cloud | Cloud Computing – InfoWorld.
Is 5.3 cents per GCEU a good deal? It depends upon what you want to do with your machine. Rackspace prices its machines by the amount of RAM you get. It has stopped selling the anemic 256MB RAM VMs, but rents its 512MB boxes at only 2.2 cents per hour or $16.06 per month. If you want a machine with 4GB from Rackspace, it will cost you 24 cents each hour, about $175 per month.
And one more tidbit that needs emphasizing however this entire article is loaded with the ins and outs of renting servers in the cloud.
Keep in mind that the file system that comes with your cloud computer — be it on Amazon, Rackspace, or Google — is not backed up in any way unless you code some backup routines yourself. You can run MySQL on your cloud box, but the database won’t survive the failure of your machine, so you better find a way to keep a copy somewhere else too.
Very interesting. Here is more about pricing.
How Open Compute is a Win for Rackspace
Rackspace is one of the fastest-growing cloud computing providers. The San Antonio company spent $202 million on servers and storage for customers over the past year, adding more than 12,000 servers in its data centers.
via How Open Compute is a Win for Rackspace » Data Center Knowledge.
To put this in perspective, Amazon EC2 has over 450,000 servers according to this article.
At the Open Compute Summit earlier this month in San Antonio, both Dell and HP showed off server hardware that will work with the new Open Rack design, which features 21-inch wide equipment slots rather than the traditional 19 inches. Roenigk says Open Rack will play a key role in Rackspace’s cloud computing infrastructure in its next-generation data center design.
Cloud mega-uploads aren’t easy
Google and Microsoft don’t offer formal data ingestion services to help users get lots of data into the cloud, and neither seems set to do so anytime soon. Quite how would-be users take advantage of the hundreds of terabytes both offer in the cloud is therefore a bit of a mystery.
via Cloud mega-uploads aren’t easy • The Register.
I also have been wondering about this for my measly 2gigs I want to upload to a cyberlocker. My upload speed is more or less 30KBytes/s or ~100M/hour. Therefore 2G upload would take 20 some hours which is kind of impractical. The article covers import/export services of various cloud providers. I’m interested in Rackspace…
Rackspace offers a similar service, dubbed Cloud Files Bulk Import. Optus, the Australian arm of telecoms giant Singtel, will happily offer a similar service. Australian cloud Ninefold does likewise, branding it “Sneakernet”.
Good old sneakernet is back. That brings the memories.