| > * Lets provision as quickly as VMs (as opposed to 1hr+ on SL) How many Rackspace customers need a full machine in under an hour? > * Lets engineer hardware to deliver maximum uptime via no-moving-parts design (as opposed to vanilla SuperMicro on SL) So just replace spinning disk with SSDs. Unless you're replacing the last moving parts (CPU, PSU, Chassis Fans) with something solid state. > * Lets design hardware to deliver maximum unit of work per dollar (like DB transactions/second per dollar, or requests/second/dollar) as opposed to average value elsewhere. This is fair for RAM intensive workloads. Everyone else is already giving you instance SSD access. > * Deriving from the above, lets just give RAM away nearly for free, and put dual 10Gig network in place, because modern apps should be mostly RAM-based. Again, perfect for RAM intensive workloads. > * Lets adopt standard OpenStack provisioning API, with myriad of pre-existing tools, community and ecosystem (like auto-scaling, orchestration, etc) as opposed to proprietary API. Also another fair point. OpenStack (and its open platform design) is all Rackspace has to compete against AWS and Google. I don't want to say OnMetal is their "Hail Mary", but Rackspace is exploring their options in the marketplace with regards to an acquisition: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-15/rackspace-hires-mor... |
1. Anybody with $10K+ monthly hosting spend would love to get a "full server" in under an hour. Actually sub-second provisioning would be nice too.
2. You are right, and yes, we've moved power and cooling away from the servers to externally serviceable redundant arrangement. They're truly no-moving-parts. And we've put something way better than SSDs into them.