AWS EC2 or RackSpace

Question

I am planning go for an instance on AWS EC 2 for my clients , should I go with AWS EC 2 or Rackspace CS , seems like the rack space have some different features like fanatical support but sla seems to be not transparent(100% guarentee excluding the mainatanence downtime), where as in AWS has Migration option (which happens only in real cloud) while on downtime.I need options on this ... pls.......!! so that I can plan by clients bussiness acordingly.

Answer 1

Did you read http://www.rackspacecloud.com/cloud_hosting_products/servers/compare?
I'm using Rackspace Cloud Servers and Files for 4 months, and there wasn't any downtime and service outages for this time. Support is great. One thing is valuable: Amazon offers his cloud services in Europe too (Ireland), when Rackspace is based USA only.

UPDATE:
Now Rackspace offers Europe-based cloud hosting (servers located at UK): http://www.rackspacecloud.com/blog/2011/01/19/rackspace-launches-cloud-infrastructure-in-europe/

Answer 2

Both of these should be able to fit the needs of your client. If for any reason they need something a bit more custom based as in no shared equipment due to compliance regulations or performance measures and in some instances considering of hybrid clouds to fit the needs of an application then other things would open up which I can recommend.

Answer 3

You may want to see if a cloud provider is really needed, as you often can get a shared VPS for much cheaper than what is offered by Amazon or Rackspace. I wrote a blog post about the differences between VPS/VM, Dedicated, and Cloud Servers and recommend you also look at other mid-range providers like Superb.Net instead of just Amazon or Rackspace.

Answer 4

Im my opinion:

1. If your thinking that you know the number of users that will access the server and that the number of users is predictable and static, then go with your own Rackspace server.

2. If you think the number of users accessing your server is unpredictable or could grow in an unknown fashion, unpredictably, then Elastic Beanstalk is the way to go.