Likelihood to Recommend I think it's great for giving any/all users the ability to deploy servers for whatever they want. It's also great for scaling up/down large quantities of servers. It also has some pretty good plugins and "orchestration actions" that you can write for yourself. I don't think it would be best suited if you want to set and forget it. It needs some TLC, and the interface and initial setup [are] not the most user-friendly. So if you're planning on using it for some complex tasks, make sure you have someone dedicated to it, at least for the initial setup. And make sure you have monitoring on it.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Pros Create configuration with Microsoft endpoints. Support complex globally distributed multi-domains. Create and remove dynamic OU. Allows for static text in combination with dynamic content. Read full review 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. Read full review Cons Support could be improved on a >tier 1 level Logging could be more descriptive/specific Stability of the actual server Read full review 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 Read full review Alternatives Considered We selected SovLabs Microsoft Active Directory because is one of the best automation tools for Active Directory. The tool offers a lot of features that we use. Good support from the vendor and a good community. I strongly recommend SovLabs Microsoft Active Directory for automation. The tools does a great job.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Return on Investment We have invested countless man hours to troubleshooting and being support's QA. Most of our teams have saved an invaluable amount of time by being able to automate their deployments. After the initial time you spend [understanding] all the nuances, the configuring of groups, permissions, etc., does make administering it easier. Read full review 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! Read full review ScreenShots