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back to article Down and dirty in a monster data centre

At 66,000 servers worldwide and counting, it’s hard to remember that 10 years ago Rackspace didn’t exist. Now its customers in its Slough data centre alone include the Ministry of Defence and Lloyds TSB. Use an Oyster card, or buy insurance from Confused.com, and your data is stored on one of the 16,000 Rackspace servers in the …

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  1. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Tim #3
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      pah

      That's not cynical. Now, if you'd tried to link it to the massive cloud failure that hit Amazon a couple of weeks ago then you'd have been more on the ball.

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    2. Ralph B
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      Dead Vulture

      @Nick: Reg Tariff

      I suspect the answer you seek is somewhere in:

      - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/01/22/register_tariff/

      You might need some adjustments for inflation.

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    3. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A Title

      No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money, admittedly.

      But there's no quid pro quo going on here.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What are the scores

    Georgie Dawes

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Not cloud...

    I'm sorry, but that is not cloud, a server with 3 SATA drives in RAID-5 is not cloud, it's a very low spec VPS server. An essential element of cloud computing is the redundancy afforded by multiple nodes and failover between them.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      WTF?

      You seem to be missing something....

      That's just the hypervisor for the Cloud, and here are 5 tonnes of them. It that enough redundancy for you?

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  4. <user />
    Thumb Up

    title

    I just have to say, Rackspace are the most impressive company I have ever worked with. They are one hell of a set up.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
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    I don't mind an honest report/plug

    In my experience (which is admittedly a few years old) Rackspace are indeed offering the kind of support and responsiveness you can only dream about in other setups. I'm OK with El Reg writing that - and they did at least disclose that El Reg runs there too.

    So, fairly realistic. I also doubt El Reg will plug something it isn't convinced about anyway, call it a vote of trust developed over years of indoctrination^W reading good articles.

    Just my two cents..

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  6. BlueGreen

    with the other yea-sayers

    Worked at a company for five months that used rackspace, dealt with them regularly and they were very responsive and very technically knowledgeable.

    Then again at their eyewatering prices they needed to be. But in all, pleasing experience.

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  7. Orv Silver badge

    Only 3.5 kW per rack?

    I'm surprised by the low power density. I work in research computing and it's hard to fill a rack, even with 1U servers, and end up with less than 6 kW. Blade servers are even more power-dense. The colo center we're putting our stuff into provisions 10 kW per rack.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Happy

      RE: Only 3.5 kW per rack?

      > I work in research computing and it's hard to fill a rack, even with

      > 1U servers, and end up with less than 6 kW.

      Where in the article did it say the racks were full?

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  8. Andy 4
    Grenade

    Cloud Shmoud

    Ok for companies with something to sell I guess, not good for some types of establishment (schools for one) where if, or more likely when, the net connection fails, the entire reason for existing ceases.

    Basically, I wish they'd stop selling it as a solution for everyone because it really isn't.

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    fanatical?

    Far too often when I post a ticket, I get a very quick response to say someone's will look at it. This is particularly true when I want any kind of change done to firewalls or load balancers, and in one case it took weeks to get a load balancer configuration changed. They have admitted staffing shortages.

    I am not impressed, and would not be a customer again if it was my choice.

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    1. Ole Juul
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      Competition is good

      There's always someone that isn't happy for some reason. However, I don't doubt that ElReg and others here have had good service. I think it is the nature of competition. Unlike some other internet services, server space is a global market where there are lots of choices.

      I use a company called Superb Internet Corp. and I get a response in minutes and resolution shortly after that. There's certainly no staffing shortages there. If it wasn't that way I'd leave.

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Headache? Hardly.

    "Power and cooling are as much of a headache for Rackspace as for the rest of us. In Slough, each cabinet pulls between 1.5 and 3.5kW."

    That's not a headache. 25kW is a headache.

    3.5kW is kittens and candyfloss.

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