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Rackspace adds Windows Server support to its cloud

By | November 12, 2009, 2:15am PST

Rackspace has launched a beta for Windows Server 2003 and Server 2008 cloud computing services.

The offering, which was hinted at a few months back in an interview, will be fully supported by Microsoft. In a nutshell, Microsoft will allow its Windows customers to get the same technical support for Windows Servers in Rackspace’s cloud as they would in a physical environment.

The program is currently under beta.

Here’s a look at the pricing.

Rackspace’s Windows effort comes amid a flurry of news for the company of late. On Monday, Rackspace reported third quarter net income of $7.6 million, or 6 cents a share. Revenue for the quarter was $162.4 million, up 17.4 percent from a year ago. The results were in line with expectations.

According to Rackspace, the bulk of that revenue derived from managed hosting services. Cloud revenue accounted for 10 percent of total revenue.

Meanwhile, Rackspace ended the quarter with 80,994 customers, up from 70,803 in the second quarter. In addition, Rackspace announced that its cloud would power the Posterous blog platform.

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Topics

Rackspace, Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft Windows, Web Hosting, Managed Hosting, Operational Accounting, It Services, Servers, Operating Systems, Software, Internet, Finance, Hardware, Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

Disclosure

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan has nothing to disclose. He doesn’t hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Biography

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

For daily updates, follow Larry on Twitter.

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RE: Rackspace adds Windows Server support to its cloud
makrekdw1201-24353653463772049262880148686797 5th Nov
ucnhbu,good post!
View in thread
0 Votes
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Rackspace adds Windows Server support to its cloud
Loverock Davidson 12th Nov 2009
That is pretty awesome. Just goes to show how viable of a platform Microsoft Windows really is. Its a very robust operating system and scales well.
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RE: Rackspace adds Windows Server support to its cloud
pblanchard@... 12th Nov 2009
I see 3 possibilities in this; which one do you think this is?

1. RackSpace has received from Microsoft their support and agreement to share the "Azure" cloud software with them

2. RackSpace has developed its OWN Cloud software, capable of clustering and managing many, many Windows servers with a multi-tenants environment

3. RackSpace is using Windows Servers and a third-party Cloud software running on Windows, which Microsoft has accepted to support

So 1, 2 or 3?
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RE: Rackspace adds Windows Server support to its cloud
chandlervaughn 13th Nov 2009
Hi pblanchard -

Thanks for the post. The closest answer is #3, but not quite 100%. The Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP) helps certify virtualization technologies in supporting Windows. And, there are only a handful of technologies and vendors certified currently. Beyond our relationship with Microsoft, we also have a strategic partner in this that is one of the vendors on the SVVP list.

Let me put it this way, it?s no secret that we use a customized version of open source *Xen* for Cloud Servers for Linux. It?s not a stretch to figure out a logical hypervisor path from there for Cloud Servers for Windows. Just go to the SVVP vendor list and it will probably be perfectly clear.

http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/results.aspx?&bCatID=1521&cpID=0&avc=0&ava=0&avq=0&OR=1&PGS=25

Chandler
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RE: Rackspace adds Windows Server support to its cloud
makrekdw1201-24353653463772049262880148686797 5th Nov
ucnhbu,good post!

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