Rackspace OpenStack vs. Red Hat OpenStack Platform

Need to get an application up and running, then I would say the open stack is a great place to test it out. Why spend time setting things up when you can let them do it for you? Many people also have experience with using Rackspace in some capacity so its an easier learning curve for many people.

Incentivized

Best suited for - any organization where you have people who already have expertise on OpenStack, Linux & IP networking. Otherwise, the maintenance & operations will be difficult. When the number of deployed VMs reaches its capacity, it becomes very difficult to manage Red Hat OpenStack because there are no in-built fault management & performance management tools available within Red Hat OpenStack. Not suited for - Organizations where people have a culture of working on automated GUI-based tools. Here VMware wins over Red Hat OpenStack. Also where you have mission-critical applications where downtime cannot be tolerated.

Incentivized

• Quick uptime
• Simple Signup
• Lots of options on what you need
• Rackspace is a known company (not some unknown startup)

Incentivized

• Scaling of application components (VMs).
• Managing the networking between virtual machines.
• Management of VNFs & the underlying infrastructure.
• Availability & uptime of VMs because of features like VM migration & evacuation.

Incentivized

• Support does not seem to be what it use to be, use to be a solid 10 when dealing with them, now more like an 8
• Pricing can be tricky to figure out
• For some people too many options.

Incentivized

• User management really needs improvement - when compared to AWS or GCP.
• Security of the overall platform needs to be improved.
• The whole architecture needs to be modular which is not. Ex - Upgrading any particular component (nova, neutron, cinder) should be possible without upgrading the whole Red Hat OpenStack version.
• The creation of HEAT templates for complex applications is still a challenge & has a dependency on external tools.
• Stack creation still requires parameters modification at controllers & compute because of the complex nova-scheduler algorithm.

Incentivized

I looked into going with Amazon EC2, was very comparable in pricing, services, options, etc. and a bit cheaper too. Why I did not go with Amazon mainly has to do with knowing Rackspace and being familiar with them. It was easier for me to use a Rackspace product then go with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

Incentivized

Only because of low cost & zero licensing of Red Hat OpenStack

Incentivized

• Quick setup allowed me to work on the application not setup of where it was going to run
• Expand ability with a few clicks was a great help, no worrying about if I needed more "power", few clicks and I had it.
• Tech support is hit or miss so that can be problematic and that was cause for concern and took time away from development

Incentivized

• Saved CAPEX for sure (I can't quote a figure).
• Saved Opex also - because a large support community is already available.
• Increased complexity of system setup though.

Incentivized