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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Feb 2005
    Posts
    299

    Cachefly or Rackspace?

    Hello,

    We need about 500GB of bandwidth and 1GB of storage to host static content. We currently use Cachefly and are happy with their network, but not so much with their pricing. Rackspace is much cheaper and uses Akamai's network.

    Cachefly: $189/m
    Rackspace: $90/m

    Should we make the switch to Rackspace? Is anyone using them?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Jax, FL
    Posts
    2,707
    I used the Rackspace CDN for a couple of months and just recently canceled... Within the span of a few months, they had a handful of total outages.

    When it worked, it worked well, but I do not feel their CDN is ready for prime time.

    -Daniel

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Feb 2005
    Posts
    299
    Quote Originally Posted by SC-Daniel View Post
    I used the Rackspace CDN for a couple of months and just recently canceled... Within the span of a few months, they had a handful of total outages.

    When it worked, it worked well, but I do not feel their CDN is ready for prime time.

    -Daniel
    Who do you use now?

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Jax, FL
    Posts
    2,707
    Quote Originally Posted by zymic View Post
    Who do you use now?
    No one right now, serving my own content. I haven't had a chance to go in search for a new provider.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Feb 2005
    Posts
    299
    I see, well if our CDN provider goes down, all of our images, CSS and Javascript will too, rendering our website useless. Though we have made it so we can switch back to self hosted files in the event of CDN downtime.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Jax, FL
    Posts
    2,707
    Quote Originally Posted by zymic View Post
    I see, well if our CDN provider goes down, all of our images, CSS and Javascript will too, rendering our website useless.
    Yep, which is exactly why I went back to local content for the time being.

    We used Rackspace CDN on our website and control panel, until the last 4+ hour outage.

    They claimed the last outage was a 'control panel & api' outage, however, when their control panel and api is down, Akamai cannot pull content from them, and all currently cached data also refuses to load (oddly enough).

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by zymic View Post
    I see, well if our CDN provider goes down, all of our images, CSS and Javascript will too, rendering our website useless. Though we have made it so we can switch back to self hosted files in the event of CDN downtime.
    Or you could use CloudFlare and if they go down, they reroute back to your servers.
    My personal blog -- rubiverse.net

  8. #8
    Yeah I was going to say the same thing, have your website hosted somewhere reliable and then simply place CloudFlare infront of it - that would certainly help keep your costs down

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by SC-Daniel View Post
    Yep, which is exactly why I went back to local content for the time being.

    We used Rackspace CDN on our website and control panel, until the last 4+ hour outage.

    They claimed the last outage was a 'control panel & api' outage, however, when their control panel and api is down, Akamai cannot pull content from them, and all currently cached data also refuses to load (oddly enough).
    Now that is rather odd. I too saw the outage notice, but that specific time we had not deployed the site and were just testing and I got the errors with the test site, didn't think much of it though at the moment.

    I used just-pings to check one of their distribution URLs and Asian POPs don't seem to be active. I have an open ticket them to look into why all POPs are not active.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Jun 2007
    Location
    Australia
    Posts
    820
    Quote Originally Posted by zymic View Post
    Hello,

    We need about 500GB of bandwidth and 1GB of storage to host static content. We currently use Cachefly and are happy with their network, but not so much with their pricing. Rackspace is much cheaper and uses Akamai's network.

    Cachefly: $189/m
    Rackspace: $90/m

    Should we make the switch to Rackspace? Is anyone using them?
    Have you considered EdgeCast's network? We have had no downtime using EdgeCast's CDN network. They aren't the cheapest, but they certainly are a quality CDN provider.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Feb 2005
    Posts
    299
    So I tried Rackspace but I have no idea how to create folders inside of containers. We have lots of folders for our website to organize the location of images. Creating a new container for a new folder is far from ideal. Am I being stupid, or can you create folders? The idea is to simply specify the static CDN network in our HTML (using a centralized PHP file) for all CSS and .js paths, so we can easily switch back to our local image/css/js copies if needed.

  12. #12
    Have you looked at MaxCDN? They're the cheapest CDN that I've found. Great performance too.

  13. #13
    MaxCDN 1Tb at signup $40, then 1Tb for $99, pay as you go I believe. This is the one I'm planning to sign up for. Trying to find the speed comparison link that I had earlier where you can actually measure the download speed of all the CDN from your location. Maxcdn was in the top 3 and the other two were 2-4x the price if I remember right. I'll try to find that link.

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Apr 2002
    Location
    Seattle, WA
    Posts
    955
    Another vote for MaxCDN here, best combination of bandwidth/cost.
    I <3 Linux Clusters

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