Rackspace Launches Developer Discount

WHAT THE HELL, RACKSPACE?!<p>You emailed me just because I semi-filled in your form? I didn&#x27;t even click SUBMIT! o_O<p>Why would you assume that if I semi-filled a form I would probably go ahead and register? Maybe I don&#x27;t want to register at this very moment?<p>Did you even consider that my NOT submitting the form was a conscious decision? Maybe I realized halfway through filling the form that my skill-set wasn&#x27;t good enough to make me want to sign up now? Or my finances wouldn&#x27;t allow me to maintain an account on your platform after six months? Or maybe, just maybe, I just didn&#x27;t want to sign up right now?<p>Why would you take my email ID from a non-submit-clicked form and NOT tell me that you had taken it? Why? o_O<p>Even worse, why would you email me asking &#x27;did I forget to take my cloud&#x27;? How do I know you are not going to spam me with your promotional offers in the future? How do Iknow you are not going to sell (or worse, &#x27;inadvertently leak&#x27;) my email address to some third party?

We&#x27;re not a competitor and are not in this space, so I hope it&#x27;s not untoward to note that we (rsync.net) also have a FOSS&#x2F;.edu&#x2F;dev&#x2F;HN discount:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5640700" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=5640700</a><p>... so after you&#x27;ve got your environment up and running at rackspace (or wherever) you can get a similar discount for offsite backups.

Pretty nifty.<p>One thing, while I have the ears of you Rackspace people: offer more documentation maybe? Kind of like how Linode does: <a href="https://library.linode.com/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;library.linode.com&#x2F;</a> Common things like how to run a mail server, how to get a LAMP&#x2F;LEMP&#x2F;LNPP&#x2F;$XYZ setup going on, etc. Not full books or anything, just stuff to get things off the ground more easily when playing around. This is one of the reasons why I was so attracted to Linode, the docs, and the support whenever I&#x27;d join their IRC channel. It was good stuff, to get things running even though this is not my field by trade.

The article mentions Salt and Ansible - if you&#x27;re interested in these new generation config management tools, check out my book which launches tomorrow: &quot;Taste Test: Puppet, Chef, Salt, Ansible&quot;<p><a href="http://devopsu.com/books/taste-test-puppet-chef-salt-stack-ansible.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;devopsu.com&#x2F;books&#x2F;taste-test-puppet-chef-salt-stack-a...</a><p>In the book, I implement an identical project with each tool so you can see what each one is like to work with.<p>I definitely had some big surprises when writing the book. Spoiler: Ansible was by far the simplest, easiest to understand, and quickest to get up and going.<p>To get a discount for the book release, just sign up on the mailing list: <a href="http://devopsu.com/books/taste-test-puppet-chef-salt-stack-ansible.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;devopsu.com&#x2F;books&#x2F;taste-test-puppet-chef-salt-stack-a...</a>

I use Azure VMs but this post got me to check out your pricing again. You&#x27;re not as expensive as I remember. In fact you look right in line with Azure and EC2.<p>Looks like with this program you can get a free 1 GB Linux or almost free 1 GB Windows server for 6 months anyway. Thanks for the program - it put you back on my radar.

I have to say here that I&#x27;ve been impressed with both the price and performance of Cloudfiles.<p>I was using S3+Cloudfront for a long time and with cloudfiles my bills pretty much HALVED.<p>What made the difference ? GET request pricing. Amazon S3 charges for each get request on an object, so with millions of requests on small objects, you get hit pretty hard.<p>Also, Akamai seems to be really fast :)

And like always: I&#x27;m around to answer questions.

6 months&#x2F;$300 credit - similar to the AWS 1 year free usage <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/free/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;aws.amazon.com&#x2F;free&#x2F;</a>. Rackspace needs to upgrade their underlying years old AMD 4170&#x2F;2374 hardware for cloud servers. This is a limitation for vertical scaling, and doesn&#x27;t compare well to EC2&#x2F;GCE&#x2F;HP.

What are the odds on making a very low power machine, in the 96-128 MB of RAM, for say, $1-$3&#x2F;month? I like RS (have been a customer since 2008) but the minimum service is still overkill for what I like to do. I use other services like buyvm.net for low-cost machines.

Our student group has been in the Rackspace Startup Program, where it receives a similar discount every month. Looking at the billing records, I want to point out that the way Rackspace runs the accounting is a bit oddly - they charge my credit card the full amount, then issue a refund a few days later. On my statement, it surprised me to see a charge- keep this in mind, especially if you intend to stay under $50&#x2F;month and do not anticipate charges.

Only US and UK at the moment, any chance to showing us devs down under in Australia some love?<p>Edit: Especially since there are now .au Rackspace data centres!

Is this Discount available for a limited time only or on all future signups?<p>I&#x27;m about to finish a project and travel for a couple of weeks so I don&#x27;t anticipate myself using it anytime within the next month. As a result, if this discount is not expiring, I&#x27;d prefer delaying the signup by a month =)

The discount says it doesn&#x27;t apply to cloud sites or managed cloud, but on the signup page I only see options for cloud account or managed cloud. If I select Cloud Account, will the discount still apply?

No support for the North? Sad to see Canada not included.

Do you have instructions or a guide on how to migrate an existing Windows VM from Amazon to your cloud?

:( credit card required

rackspace ripped me off