(NetworkJungle) 1

Hey everyone - I have been looking and shopping around so much it’s making my head spin. I work for a company that requires a good handful of servers never ever go down because of the importance for the company to make revenue. So I am looking for a hosting company that hopefully provides a 5 - 9’s SLA and provides me with a vSphere client that I can deploy and manage my infrastructure but gives me the security and HLA that lets me sleep at night and not run the risk of early heart problems.

Just kinda looking for successful solutions that you may have had - and polite recommendations to avoid not so successful ones.

Thanks all.

@VMware @Rackspace_Technology

7 Spice ups
2

What you want is probably a private cloud. Rackspace would be the obvious place to start.

3

Thanks Scott - I have seen rackspace’s adverts before. Do you have any dealings with them currently or in the past? If so how did you find their uptime and general service?

4

Yes, I’ve worked with Rackspace for years, although only for public, not private, cloud. They have great customer service and uptime.

5

I can vouch for the fact that Rackspace is top notch. They have technicians available at all hours to assist. I was able to login to their Cloud Control Panel and get a support technician via the support chat (almost no wait time - maybe 30-60 seconds) in the middle of the night to have someone reboot a PBX because I could not do it via SSH and had issues from the console. They got me back up and running very fast.

You get full access to the console of your servers within Rackspace’s Cloud Control Panel.

6

I’ve never seen Rackspace go down in all the years that I’ve worked with them, but a private cloud would be its own infrastructure.

I was not a customer during the infamous “Rackspace event” when the tractor trailer plowed through both of their generators. They now have huge barriers to protect against that.

7

He’s talking private cloud, so completely different technology and interfaces than we use on their OpenStack products.

8

Nice… sounds … spicy. lol

Thanks for your tips.

9

I was looking at this

http://www.rackspace.com/managed-virtualization/dedicated-vcenter/

10

Yup, that is the exact product that I was assuming that you would be interested in.

11

I’ll set up a conf call with them later today - thanks for you help.

1 Spice up
12

You bet.

13

Also i don’t know if you know vmware has their own cloud service. We use them to push our web environment to when we are at high loads. It integrates with Vcenter and allows you to push what you need to the cloud and pull it back whenever you want.

14

Yes I did see that - and who best to run VMware then VMware… my problem is I’m scared to ask - anything with the word VMware in it usually destroys my IT budget.

1 Spice up
15

Well they are not a top tier player with Rackspace, Amazon, MS Azure, IBM and Verizon so probably not the best ones to run their own yet.

Aren’t you looking exclusively at VMware though for this project? At least on the technology side?

16

Looking at that link, I don’t see anything stating that VMware is running their own cloud anywhere. They provide the products for everyone else, but I don’t believe that they are providing that service.

17

Yes, I run VMware for all my systems - that’s how I know the cost of using their products. I was looking more for a top tier like you had suggested. VMware Cloud might be good, but I need high SLA with a respectable cost.

18

vCloud is a product, not a service. Rackspace, for example, runs vCloud to provide their private cloud service. Most companies run vCloud internally for themselves.

SLA comes from the host, not the software vendor.

19

vCloud Hybrid service is a hosting solution by vmware.

1 Spice up
20

Yeah, VMware is starting to host their own cloud service offering. I’m not sure its gained a lot of traction yet, but from what I hear it’s geared more toward top tier clients. If you aren’t willing to spend at least 7 figures for it, you probably aren’t going to be on their radar. It’s apparently where vCloud Director went when it disappeared from their product portfolio.