ClearDATA vs. Rackspace Fabric

ClearDATA recognized their challenges and made efforts to resolve them. However, they learned DR was not their forte. Instead, they turned their focus towards cloud application and data hosting. Considering the relationships built, I would try their services again, especially with some of our applications needing to be moved into a legacy format.

Incentivized

I am highly likely to recommend Rackspace Cloud Monitoring to a colleague. This is assuming they have a decent background in working on cloud servers. If you don't mind digging in yourself to solve problems, then this is a great resource. If you are just learning how to set up servers on your own, then I recommend at least hiring someone to help you use the service. With that being said, Rackspace makes it easy for people you may hire to seamlessly work within your account. They get their own separate developer account.

Incentivized

• Leadership is very attentive, working hard to forge interpersonal relationships

Incentivized

• Immediate email notifications: In case a service is down on our servers, we get immediate email notifications via rackspace cloud monitoring service. This helps us to know about the issues and we get in contact with support team to get it resolved.
• Configuration on specific services: We can configure this monitoring on specific services. So for example if i don't want to get notified if MySQL concurrent users limit reached, then I do not need to configure this monitoring for MySQL. I can just use it whenever needed for defined services.
• Group emails and technical contacts emails: The monitoring service can send email alerts to a number of email addresses. Primarily the ones who are added as a technical contact. It helps all people get notified about any issue.
• Auto ticket management: Rackspace automatically creates a support ticket when a service is down and is notified by their monitoring service.

Incentivized

• Support was a challenge. Often tickets would sit until escalated.
• Clear expectations on both sides caused communication challenges.
• Data stored in the cloud was over 7 days old, and if there was a need to restore the data, business continuity would be greatly affected.

Incentivized

• It would be nice if there were more templates so that beginners could easily create complex monitors
• I seemed to stumble upon the cloud monitoring service after having Rackspace for a while

Incentivized

Zadara: This is our current provider. We have a SaaS (Storage as a Service) solution coupled with cloud disaster recovery. So far, this service has been exemplary.

Incentivized

I also used Monitis as a monitoring service for our server. Rackspace'S monitoring sends immediate notifications while Monitis might take a couple minutes to understand if a service is down. Since Rackspace has their monitoring integrated with their support system, it helps us a lot and we don't need to call support all the time.

Incentivized

• Hard to say as we never really tested the data recovery, even though it was part of the scope of the project.
• Considering the challenges, I would say we paid for something we didn't receive. However, when escalated we got somewhere.
• From a customer service standpoint, it was 50/50.

Incentivized

• I have overpaid in the past for services I didn't need
• The steepish learning curve might slow things down at first
• I have learned a lot using Rackspace Cloud Monitoring!

Incentivized