With Microsoft’s Azure service still very much in its early development phase, Rackspace is setting out to eat some of its lunch. The hosting company has launched a new Windows-specific service called Cloud Servers for Windows.
The primary market at which Rackspace is aiming is the small to medium business community, though it is also looking at current Rackspace customers and larger businesses with resource-hungry .NET developers and system administrators. The objective is to offer them a highly scalable environment for Windows-based hosting services and supporting the high levels of traffic, as well as testing and developing applications.
Rackspace is offering a range of Windows Server images, ranging from the well-established Server 2003 R2 32-bit, through to Server 2008 R2, 64-bit. Custom configurations with full administrator access are possible, and the service offers the ability to upgrade server size on-demand and add or delete servers on the fly. Management of the service is via the Rackspace Cloud Control Panel and the Cloud Servers API, though the all-important ability to backup and take server snapshots to the company’s Cloud Files service is a part of the package that is still at the `coming soon’ stage. Of particular interest to users looking for a cloud-bursting service, a pay-per-use, utility payment model with hourly billing, no contracts, or upfront costs is available, via a sign-up page on the Rackspace website.
Although this is a competitor for Microsoft’s Azure service, it is also a benefit for Microsoft itself, as John Zanni, general manager of Worldwide Hosting for the Communications Sector at Microsoft has acknowledged. The two companies are long-standing partners and Microsoft is keen to see service providers with a Microsoft-centric customer base out in the market delivering, not least because it should help to grow the Windows-based cloud services market and make the `lunch’ bigger for both parties.
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