July 14, 2009 — Expanding the power of its Cloud, hosting services provider Rackspace Hosting (www.rackspace.com) has launched the public beta of its Cloud Servers API, offering users more control and flexibility over their “Infrastructure as a Service,” as well as providing automation features such as mobile Cloud management with a new iPhone application.
A key part of Rackspace’s portfolio of cloud services, Cloud Servers provides inexpensive compute capacity that can be scaled instantly, allowing businesses to pay only for what it uses as needed. According to Rackspace’s Tuesday announcement, the open, standards-based API lets Rackspace Cloud customers manage their cloud infrastructure with greater control and flexibility. For instance, the API lets users write code that detects load and scales the number of server instances up and down, enabling various elastic scenarios.
“With the launch of our API, we’re looking forward to working with our partners and the developer community to create a powerful cloud ecosystem which we believe will generate new tools and applications to make cloud hosting even easier and more efficient,” Rackspace Cloud general manager Emil Sayegh said in a statement. “We see programmatic control as essential for igniting an ecosystem around the Rackspace Cloud. It’s a key tool for generating the ‘next big thing’ in cloud because it gives developers the power and control to bring their great ideas to fruition.”
Before the Cloud Servers API, customers could only interact with Cloud Servers via the Rackspace Cloud Control Panel.
Thanks to a new application built off the APIs by developer Michael Mayo, Rackspace Cloud customers will be able to manage their Cloud Servers or Cloud Files accounts instantly on their iPhones. The application is set to hit the App Store within a month.
“It’s been a great experience to collaborate with the Rackspace Cloud team on the development of the Cloud Servers API,” stated Michael Mayo, iPhone application developer. “Working together with the Rackspace team enabled me to develop my application much more quickly. I’m very pleased with the open feedback process as it makes my work a lot easier.”
Launched earlier this year, Cloud Servers provides server capacity to businesses of all sizes, leveraging key technology developed by virtualization hosting provider Slicehost, which Rackspace bought in October 2008.
Aside from its technical advances, Rackspace was also recently thrust into the spotlight when part of its Dallas-Fort Worth data center was hit by a 45 minute outage at the end of June, which attracted the attention of not only tech pundits and bloggers, but also more traditional celebrities including pop singer Justin Timberlake, who posted a Twitter message about the web hosting outage. A week later, Rackspace had another power outage at the same data center, leaving customers without network access for only a brief period of time.
