The ReliaCloud Difference: Built for the enterprise, but available to anyone. Great, but how does one compare different cloud providers? It's no easy task. Trying to evaluate various cloud server pricing models alone is like comparing pomegranates to kiwi fruit. Every provider bills for cloud infrastructure a little differently. But at ReliaCloud, we worked hard to make our pricing model as transparent as possible. We've priced our ReliaCloud services to compete with any of the commodity cloud providers on the market. We encourage you to compare ReliaCloud features such as our enterprise-grade reliability and security with other cloud providers.
| Feature | ReliaCloud | Amazon | Rackspace |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Windows Software Templates | Yes | Yes | No |
| Persistent Servers & Storage | Yes | No | Yes |
| High Availability | Yes | No | No |
| Hardware based firewall | Yes | No | No |
| Free inbound traffic | Yes | No | No |
| Free load balancing | Yes | No | No |
| Guaranteed location of customer data | Yes | No | No |
| SAS 70 compliant | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Unlimited public IP addresses | Yes | No | No |
| NAT routing | Yes | No | No |
| Application Programming Interface (API) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Persistence & High Availability
One of the biggest differences between ReliaCloud and other cloud providers is that our cloud servers are completely persistent and highly available. If the computing node that hosts your Cloud Server fails, it will restart on another node within our cloud environment. Enterprise customers using virtualization technology such as VMware HA are familiar with this type of high availability. With cloud providers like Amazon EC2, your cloud instance is transient. If Amazon experiences a host failure, your virtual instance disappears and doesn’t come back. Other providers like Rackspace offer cloud server persistence, but all your data is stored on the local computing node. If Rackspace’s computing node fails, it must restore your data and migrate you to a new server – and that can take several hours. With ReliaCloud, your Cloud Server data is stored on network storage nodes and they will restart automatically within minutes if there is any sort of computing node failure.
Real Firewall Security
Every one of our Cloud Servers is hosted behind Cisco hardware firewall systems. These are the same type of firewall systems that the world’s largest enterprises rely on for their security needs. Our hardware security perimeter provides a level of assurance that most other cloud providers simply do not provide. And you can manage your cloud network security rules using our ReliaCloud Portal web site.
Enterprise-Grade Data Centers
Our data centers are certified to the highest security standards in the industry: SAS 70 Type II. You know where to find us and, most importantly, your data. You may have a hard time finding where your data is located with other cloud providers. We know that organizations need to understand where their data is located, who is managing their cloud infrastructure, and what type of security credentials their cloud provider has.
Elasticity
You can select from a variety of different sized Cloud Server models, depending on your computing requirements. If you outgrow the resources of your Cloud Server, you can upgrade your model at any time. Greater choice means you don’t pay for more than you need.
Public IP Addresses
We’ve made connecting your cloud servers to the Internet simple – yet secure -- by creating a cloud network architecture that every IT administrator will instantly recognize. Every one of our Cloud Servers has a private IP address located in a private network. You can map one or many public IP addresses to your Cloud Servers. Unlike Amazon EC2, all your private IPs are persistent, and you can use multiple public IPs. Unlike Rackspace, we don’t require you to assign a public IP address to every cloud server. You wouldn’t do that in your own enterprise, so why should you have to do that in the cloud? We also don’t limit the number of public IPs that you can map to any individual Cloud Server.
Web Portal & API Management
We offer one of the easiest cloud web portals in the industry to manage your Cloud Servers. If you don’t want to use our portal, you can use our API. Anything you can do in the portal, you can do with our API. Some cloud providers treat the cloud web portal as an afterthought. We know that most of the early cloud computing adopters are savvy technologists, but we designed ReliaCloud to meets the needs of everyone – whether you're a new IT administrator or an experienced web application developer.
Support
When you have a problem or question, we're ready to help -- 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Our FREE live-chat support means you don’t have to wait until the next business day for an answer. Some providers offer no free support – you have to pay hundreds of dollars per month to talk to someone. Other providers offer limited support by telling you to check out FAQs or online forums. At ReliaCloud, we're known for our parent company's strong reputation for Five Star Support™, and have every intention of maintaining that reputation.