Adobe’s Cloud Photoshop Suggests We May Finally Realize The Dream Of Streamed Computing

 

I’ve been writing about tech for nearly a decade now, and in that time, one thing has always seemed perpetually promising, and yet also ultimately unsatisfying: remote streaming consumer computing. I’m not talking about remotely connecting to your work PC to grab a couple of files, but actually using programs interchangeably with your own local apps, despite some being hosted and run entirely on a server in some data farm nearby. Inevitably, however, this idea has been met with the harsh truths of reality, which has led to situations like the original OnLive flameout, for instance.

Remotely streaming software has huge advantages – it means users don’t have to worry too much about their operating system, hardware specifications, or even necessarily device form factor when they’re choosing software, and that could be very good news for the future of low-cost, modestly specced devices like Google’s Chromebooks.

In the past, any of these solutions that I’ve tried have come with serious downsides, including unreasonable requirements in terms of connection capabilities, up and downstream speeds, and more. They’ve also performed in a manner that while sometimes workable, would not fit anyone’s definition of a ‘pleasant experience.’ Local crashes are one thing, but when your app continually pixelates and refuses to acknowledge input it’s incredibly frustrating.

Lately, legacy companies that have so far stayed mostly away from the fray have gotten into the streamed software game, and that’s a good sign that the market, and the tech behind it is maturing. Two recent examples are Adobe, which started showing off its previously announced version of Photoshop that streams in its entirety to a browser, and Nvidia, which launched its GRID remote gaming service for its Shield devices this past week.

In their rundown of an eyes-on preview of the software, Ars Technica found that Photoshop streamed worked pretty much like the native app, without the usual browser chrome you’d expect from web content, and without taxing your system resources. It’s still early in terms of a schedule for general public availability, but Adobe is making sure to get things right with at least six more months of limited testing before a broader roll out – and caution is the watchword when it comes to any kind of virtualized app deployment.

 

Nvidia’s Grid underwent a similar lengthy testing program, and its debut is initially limited to North American users only before it makes its way to others. And the testing paid off; Grid’s reliability and performance are rock solid so far, besting competitors like the recently-launched PlayStation Now service and others, with performance that you’d expect from a high-end gaming PC, but running on your tablet with resolution that seems impossible given it’s a streamed signal.

High-bandwidth connections are much more available than they ever were before, and devices can manage high-speed, dependable wireless transfer much more easily than before, both of which help explain why this is much more possible today than it was five years ago.

The big immediate benefit here is to Google and the Chromebook, which could continue its trend of taking over the education market easily if it can move past the current restriction of local software. Ultimately, though, it’s a shift that would democratize digital production on a grand scale – Google, Facebook and others are already trying to connect the world with usable data connections, but also providing them access to powerful, modern day software on low-end or older used hardware would be offering up a full, refined toolkit, not just a lone large hammer.

There are still many barriers in the way of a fully-streamed computing environment, but more of them drop day-by-day. Opposition to net neutrality, and the price of efficient, high-bandwidth connections might be the last thing standing in the way of ubiquitous, high-functioning local computing, but it’s no longer just the province of pioneering startups taking big risks on a market that’s not even real enough to be called “emerging.”

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Industry voice: Types of cloud services

Cloud guide

The cloud is the biggest buzzword on the Internet, but there are all sorts of myths and fears which any user needs to understand.

Of course it's not as simple as that. Cloud is a very broad term used to describe a resilient, scalable system providing services for a business. It actually breaks down into four types: public, private, community and hybrid and the security levels vary.

Public cloud is usually a large shared environment, which is often free to use, but expandable for a premium, e.g. Dropbox, Soundcloud and Evernote. Your account can be secured with two-step verification (a password and secure code received in a text) and is often protected by SSL encryption. However, the security is not usually sufficient to comply with industry standards, such as ISO27001.

Private cloud is dedicated to, or operated by a single organisation. This is much more secure; can be hosted internally, or in a data centre; and can be managed in either instance by a third party. When hosted within the office (and correctly firewalled) only staff can access this system. If hosted by a data centre, a dedicated connection to your office ensures maximum security against a breach. Access is also usually restricted to the data floor without prior authorisation and identification on entrance.

A Community cloud is larger and usually hosted by a data centre, which is shared between a group of companies with mutual interests and standards, e.g. healthcare or finance organisations. Users would connect to the system via a secure, encrypted Virtual Private Network (VPN) to prevent a security breach.

Hybrid clouds are a mixture two or more of the above models, linked together for data and application portability, but remaining separate entities. An example of hybrid cloud would be running business applications and storing data within a private cloud, but holding non-mission critical archives or shared storage in a public cloud to cut costs.

Many people consider cloud as virtual servers hosted 'somewhere'. To an extent this is right as 'somewhere' denotes a group of geographically diverse data centres located around the UK, or across the planet, and linked together with superfast, secure connections. However, virtual servers are not always a good fit for applications and sometimes physical servers are necessary.

For example, if you are running database software, such as Microsoft SQL Server or MySQL, they require a high amount of resource to run. In a virtual environment, this would often mean that busy database servers would require a dedicated hypervisor, and separate physical disks from the other virtual machines.

In this instance, physical servers are included in the infrastructure, but are not hosting virtual machines. Instead, these servers are dedicated to the task of hosting the database and providing all the physical resource required to run smoothly and efficiently.

Some virtualisation management packages such as OnApp can even manage physical servers in a group. For resilience, data on these physical servers would be replicated to other physical servers in diverse data centres to ensure maximum integrity across the Cloud platform.

You can use a mixture of vendors, both public and private, for maximum availability, scaling, load balancing and disaster recovery.

Although one vendor can offer multiple data centres and diverse network connections with multiple providers, you can add redundancy by using more than one vendor, or hosting an environment at your office, which replicates the one in the data centre.

There are many possible configurations of cloud using single or multiple vendors and varying levels of security and cost. Deciding where your data needs to be and how securely it needs to be stored can help when designing your system and choosing suppliers. Deciding how many vendors you wish to involve will then be based on your design as well as assessing the financial risk if you experience downtime.

There are many misconceptions in the industry putting people off moving to cloud. Hopefully this article has helped bust some of those myths and given you more confidence in the technology.
Comment here or on Twitter via (https://twitter.com/jackbp_4d) @JackBP_4D with #CloudMyths.

Jack Bedell-Pearce has over 12 years of commercial, operational and technical experience. He is responsible for the day-to-day running of 4D Data Centres, a colocation and connectivity supplier for SMEs in the South East.

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Salesforce’s Service Cloud 1 Is A Wearable Technology Trojan Horse

Editor’s note: Justin Foster is the West U.S. GM at Mobiquity leading the firm’s Western operations from sales through client delivery and advises a range of clients on how to adopt new technologies.

Imagine a scenario in which an oil rig worker suddenly hears an alarm sound from somewhere on the rig. The adrenaline rush begins and the worker knows he has to move fast. The sound of the siren is not a clear signal as to where the trouble is, but the smartwatch on his wrist indicates exactly where to go and what needs to be done to fix the problem. As he works to fix it, each step is photographed with his heads-up display for documentation and organizational learning.

If you’re thinking this scenario is far off in the future, think again. It’s actually a lot closer than you might think. At the Dreamforce conference earlier this month, Salesforce rolled out an updated version of Service Cloud 1 — its wearables “Trojan Horse” — which I believe is about to take over as the industry leader in wearable technologies.

In the demonstrations of the new ServiceCloud 1, Honeywell showed off its Lyric Thermostat; the company is banking that homeowners will move from paying for “security monitoring” to paying for a broader set of “home monitoring.” Are these advances in Service Cloud 1 and the mobile development platforms a Trojan Horse for mobile, wearables and the Internet of Things in customer and field service?

While wearables represent a quickly growing category of devices from a variety of vendors – and across a variety of industries – they’re still looking for a long-term home.

In case you’re keeping score, wearables today are struggling a bit in the consumer world. The density and complexity of the fitness tracker space specifically is massive. There are a growing number of smartwatches like the Moto 360 and the upcoming – and much anticipated – Apple Watch, and even new hybrid, all-in-one wearables like will.i.am’s recently announced Puls. Then there are the fashionably awkward heads-up display (HUDs) devices to choose from, including Google Glass and Oculus Rift. And just this month, we started talking about “hearables.” I suspect this is just the beginning.

Certainly, these devices are designed to attract consumers, particularly early adopters like myself. Depending on the situation, these wearables can come in handy. For example, smartwatches have notification features that help me avoid getting distracted by my smartphone. On the other end of the spectrum, wearable HUD technology remains largely unused because there are no “killer apps” that make them must-have tools. These devices look silly, and people ultimately know they are providing the wearer no real value.

Why invest in a wearable that can’t leave the house? Not to mention, vendors have not yet married the fashion and technology elements; in order to be worn by the mainstream consumer audience, wearables have to look good.

I believe the breakthrough and mass adoption opportunity for HUDs and other wearables lies in the customer and field-service world. There are hundreds of examples of where this emerging technology of wearables could quickly come into play across many industries and applications:

Airlines checking in customers with HUDs upon arrival and then delivering seat-back ordered food and drinks (no more carts in aisles).Field service reps scheduling and rerouting to high priority jobs.  Will your next plumber or repairman be dispatched via wearable technology and have access to the specifications of your particular equipment via a heads-up display?Healthcare workers improving patient care and accuracy through proper identification and medication dosage.High-risk workers in manufacturing and engineering roles monitoring safety and best practices through exactly location based wearables.

The use of real productivity tools for field-service workers is the next logical step, and by introducing tools around wearables and mobile enablement, Salesforce will soon be infiltrating the world of customer service with wearable technologies. After all, hundreds of thousands of Salesforce customers across each of these verticals and many others are already using their ServiceCloud 1 technology.

So it seems no small coincidence that the company is pushing hard on wearables through marketing, innovation and new development tool sets. This Trojan Horse is about to burst open, and it will change the entire industry in a very positive way.

Featured Image: Bryce Durbin

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Google cuts cloud compute prices by 10%

How cheap can cloud get?

Google has cut cloud compute prices by 10% effective immediately, the company said. The move represents an opportunity for Google to edge itself into the cloud leadership position ahead of competitors Amazon and Microsoft.

Today’s announcement applies to all Google Compute Engine instances across all regions.

Earlier this year, Google dropped its cloud storage prices 68%. The same week, Amazon and Microsoft cut storage prices 10 to 68% and up to 20%, respectively.

Today’s price cuts are possible largely because of cloud computing itself, which reduces hardware costs and improves data center operability.

Although these price cuts, and the ones instituted by Amazon and Microsoft, represent an opportunity for enterprises, it could also create challenges for the service providers. Just ask Rackspace, which went from being the second-most used cloud service to looking for a purchaser after several failed price-cutting attempts.

More than five million businesses currently leverage Google's enterprise tools - which the company rebranded “Google for Work” last month - including 64% of the Fortune 500.

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Moving business applications to the cloud: a case study

We've been busy assessing every aspect of the cloud on TechRadar Pro recently, with a particular focus on how SMBs can best harness the technology.

One obvious way of tapping into the cloud is transferring business applications away from a traditional desktop environment and instead adopting services like Microsoft's Office 365 and Google Apps. To get a first-hand account of what it takes to make such a move, we grilled Emma Davies, ?marketing and PR manager at digital agency I-COM, in this Q&A.

TechRadar Pro: What were the drivers behind your decision to move away from desktop applications to hosted services such as Office 365 or Google Docs?

Emma Davies: We were initially slightly concerned about the move to hosted business services. As a business this is a huge decision and would have a big affect on everyone. We thought about it for quite a while and always came back to the same conclusion: Going Google was right for us.

This was initially because of the manageability and scalability of the hosted services but also because we knew we were delaying the inevitable, and at some point the services would become so popular and robust we would have to move, so why not do it now and reap the rewards sooner?

Other drivers for us included easy email management, improved shared calendars and document collaboration and streamlined services throughout the business. All of these together ultimately save us time and money, so a big driver for an SMB.

TRP: Can you outline the key advantages your business has gained by moving away from desktop applications?

ED: By far the best advantage for us is the constant improvements. With desktop services we only had the budget to upgrade our systems every three years but with Google Apps the updates are regular and easily adaptable. The drip feed affect helps us to consume each feature easily, whereas before we would get all the new features at once, with most of us only using a handful of them.

The other key advantage to Google Apps is it puts us on a level playing field with tech rich companies and enables us to compete with them. With desktop services our systems weren't advanced enough to do this and we didn't have the same level of investment to compete.

The hosted services also put us in a good position with clients - we're seen as moving with the times and in some cases ahead of the times, which is perfect for a digital agency.

Finally, the smooth transition through devices is excellent and a huge advantage for us. We can move from desktop to phone to laptop and back seamlessly allowing you to work on the move and be more efficient.

TRP: What is your advice to business owners who are thinking of moving their office suites online and also embracing other hosted business services?

ED: First and foremost they need to invest in good internet connectivity. We had to invest a lot more into this and make sure we have all the fail-safes in place.

Secondly, each company needs to make the right choice between Office 365 and Google Apps - some companies will not be suited to the style of Google Apps and the mindset of their staff will determine this.

Google Apps seems to be a natural fit for us as an agency as we're constantly improving and always looking for innovative ways to make us ahead of competitors, whereas larger corporates, who have always used Microsoft Office, will be better suited to Office 365 and the way it works.

They also need to make sure staff are communicated to throughout regarding the changes ahead, and asked to take a positive approach to the move. Without the staff on board it becomes very difficult. There are many hiccups in the beginning so everyone needs to be aware of this.

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Industry voice: Is your organization ready for the cloud?

Today the IT world is undergoing a dramatic shift due to the cloud and mobile revolutions that directly impact how employees create, access, and manage data. In response, many organizations have implemented cloud-based solutions to improve and secure the processes through which their mobile and cloud users now live and work.

Market analyst firm IHS Research has projected that cloud-related spending will hit $235 Billion by 2018, tripling in size from 2011. However, for many organizations there remains uncertainties about deploying cloud technologies or if their current infrastructures will support them.

How do you know if your organization is ready to join the Cloud Age? Allow me to help clear up some of today's cloud confusion and provide insight into how you can upgrade your traditional infrastructure to lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and drive productivity gains.

First, it’s important to understand the differences between various clouds. There are private clouds, where organizations own their own infrastructure, deploy applications, and manage the infrastructure themselves. Typically these are very expensive to build and maintain.

There are virtual private clouds, where the organization is provisioned a logically isolated part of a public cloud service where 100% of the data and computing lives behind a customer-defined and customer-managed VPN and subnet.

And then there is SaaS, where your company is provided an account on a centrally managed, multi-tenant application upon which many users co-exist in an environment logically managed by the SaaS solution provider.

But which is right for your organization? It depends on the organization, naturally. We found through research earlier this year that enterprises overwhelmingly (by a ratio of 2:1) prefer to use cloud storage applications on infrastructure they control, whether private clouds or “virtual private” clouds.

Rather than adopt SaaS solutions, these organizations are driven by concerns over security and data governance. Why is security a concern with the traditional SaaS model? Very often SaaS vendors enjoy access to all of their customers’ data - even when encrypted, by sharing encryption keys with customers - and this leaves environments inherently more vulnerable to data leakage.

But for companies not 100% cloud-ready, a hybrid model that combines private and virtual private clouds can help ease the transition. This approach allows companies to choose to put some types of data on virtual private clouds - less sensitive data, for example - while keeping other types of data in a private cloud.

Other reasons for using virtual private clouds include extended geographical reach, pressure to reduce CAPEX, speed of deployment and lack of in-house expertise. It’s now clear that the private vs. public cloud debate is a false dichotomy: it’s not a question of either/or; for many enterprises, especially the larger ones, it will be both.

Whichever approach you choose, the cloud can help your organization implement innovative and integrated technologies that can drive down costs while improving employee access and collaboration. Take the mobile employee use case, for example.

If you are utilizing traditional file servers in your primary location and/or branch office, your mobile/off-site employees might struggle with the rigidity of these legacy systems that hinder their productivity. They then turn to unsanctioned cloud storage services (Dropbox is a well-known example) that can greatly compromise corporate data security. Your IT department could try to counteract these measures by purchasing external file services, but there are additional costs and complexities in synchronizing internal and external sources.

Many organizations consider cloud solutions because they deliver more agility at lower costs, and this is doubly true for cloud storage solutions that securely sync data between internal resources and user devices. That employees are used to consuming cloud services on a daily basis as private consumers is a significant factor to consider implementing cloud solutions organizationally. Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS) solutions are a generally cost-effective means of improving the mobile user experience, securing files, and replacing aging FTP servers.

It’s important to note that file sync and share is but one use-case or application where cloud storage can help. “Cloud storage” covers as many use cases as traditional storage, in that there are multiple and divergent needs, and multiple solutions to address those needs. Consider data storage for remote/branch offices (ROBOs).

Again, the limits of traditional storage are apparent: time and expense of file server management, increasing data loads, latency issues, etc. Many organizations have found that the investment in traditional technologies is not worth it, when the cloud delivers huge benefits in security and control over data and users, as well as management capabilities that lead to a lower TCO.

You might not be completely confident with implementing cloud-based solutions for your organization – that’s OK. But I would encourage you to start experimenting new ways to leverage the cloud to simplify your IT infrastructures while at the same time maintaining your IT controls. Today’s organizations face unprecedented demand to deliver data across any number of file services, all while minimizing IT costs and administration overhead. Private and virtual private cloud technologies can solve these challenges with technologies not available with traditional IT infrastructure.

Jeff Denworth is SVP of Marketing at CTERA.

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Western Digital My Cloud Mirror

Western Digital has added a new NAS device to its relatively young lineup of personal cloud storage devices, which include the My Cloud and the My Cloud EX4. Feature-wise, the My Cloud Mirror ($399.99, as tested), falls between the two—it has one more drive than the single-bay My Cloud and two fewer drives than the EX4. The My Cloud is the entry-level storage product for consumers; the EX4 is for business users; and the My Cloud Mirror is targeted at those who want dual-drive mirroring for extra protection of critical data. It's a powerful NAS option for everyday users, although boosting the default memory from 512MB to 1GB would make it even more robust.

Specs
My Cloud Mirror looks identical to the My Cloud, except that it's fatter because it houses an extra drive. The device ships in 4, 6, or 8TB storage configurations. (But mirroring cuts the storage capacity in half.) By default, the drives are set to mirror each other—a configuration known as RAID 1. With mirroring, a complete copy of your data resides on each disk. If one hard drive fails, you still have your all data on the remaining drive. For more on how RAID works, read RAID Levels Explained.

Hardware specs include a 1.2GHz processor and a rather measly 512GB of RAM—one of my few gripes about this NAS. Synology's comparable DS712+ ships with 1GB memory. On the other hand, Synology's NAS is pricier, at $500—and that's without disks.

The My Cloud Mirror has three LEDs on the front panel: one for power and one for each disk's status. The rear panel has a Gigabit Ethernet port and two USB 3.0 ports that support external hard drives (but not printers).

You add hard drives in a fairly unique way: from the top of the device. In most NAS devices, the drives bays sit horizontally and you take them in and out of the back plane from the front of the NAS. With the My Cloud Mirror, on the other hand, you open the drive bay at the top by lightly pressing down a release button. A bracket holds the drives in place. To remove drives, you unscrew the bracket and slide a drive out by a plastic tab attached to each bay. The tabs are a bit flimsy, but they're effective in removing the drives.

The vertical drive setup works well for keeping the device cool. Even after days of uptime during testing, the device and the internal drives were barely warm. It also runs extremely quietly, another plus for users who want to keep the NAS on their desk.

Setup
You get a quick installation guide that shows how to connect the device to a network. It then instructs you to go to a URL to download the setup software to install on a desktop. Mobile users can connect their gadgets to the same network as the NAS and then go directly into the Web-based setup (the URL is also in the guide).

Both methods lead to a wizard-based setup that checks to make sure the NAS is properly connected to your router. The wizard also allows you to set up your personal cloud—a hallmark of Western Digital's NAS products—for making your data accessible from anywhere.

Next, you install the Western Digital My Cloud applications. Doing so on the desktop places a series of shortcuts on the desktop. One takes you into the NAS interface, one lets you access the automatically created public share folder, and another takes you to your personal cloud. The fourth is for connecting with WD's Learning Center, where you can watch videos and read documents about the My Cloud Mirror.

Clearly, the setup is designed for home users and those new to working with storage. I'm not quite sure why the rather bloated desktop software is needed, though. You should just be able to type in a URL and fire up the setup wizard no matter what type of client machine you're on. Most users should do just fine by following the guide.

Interface and Features
Western Digital has a consistent interface across all of its My Cloud NASes, and even its My Net routers, which is a very good design decision. The interface is clean, modern, and filled with big toggle buttons for enabling and disabling features and services. It's an inviting, easy-to-navigate UI. You scroll through large icons across the top of the screen to get to different areas in the UI including shares, backups, apps, users, and more.

There is one difference between the My Cloud Mirror's UI and that of the original, single-drive My Cloud—the RAID settings. The My Cloud Mirror lets you set up RAID 0 and 1, JBOD (just a bunch of disks; i.e., no mirroring), and disk spanning, a configuration in which data is written across both disks, allowing multiple drives to act as one single volume.

Besides helping you configure RAID, the UI tells you the state of your RAID array, letting you know if it's healthy or has some sort of problem. One issue I find puzzling with RAID in this device is that Auto-Rebuild is disabled by default. If one of the disk drives in the mirrored set fails, you can replace it with a new drive. Auto-rebuild will rebuild the mirrored set, restoring your data in the process. Auto-rebuild capability is a key feature of mirroring and it's unclear why WD would have it off by default (although it's easy enough to turn on).

The My Cloud Mirror also offers support for most of the basic NAS functionality: remote access and sharing with the My Cloud service, streaming with UPnP and DLNA, creating and managing users and groups, and more. iTunes and ISO image mounting are also supported.

You can, of course, map drives via your operating system to shares on the NAS. There is also some Web file management offered, but it's limited. If you go into Web File Viewer in the Apps section of the interface, you will see all of your folder shares. About mid-screen on the right side of the interface are a number of icons: Copy, Upload, Download, Rename, and a few more.

You can only use these icons to execute commands on files within folder shares, not on the folders themselves. For instance, when I single-clicked on a folder to highlight it, the icons remained inactive. Once I opened a share, the icons were active, and I could execute any of the icon commands on any file I selected within the folder. I would prefer the option to select a folder so I could quickly rename, copy or delete it from this section of the interface. Instead, I have to either go into the Shares settings in the UI, or use the mapped drive through Windows Explorer to rename or manage files.

A few features are absent that some users might miss. There's an option for Remote Backup, and the instructions within the interface state you can back up to another My Cloud Mirror or another device, but it's not clear anywhere if you can use RSync to back up to the original My Cloud or My Cloud EX4 NASes.

I also don't understand why the USB drives can't support printers. I suppose it's because wireless printing is becoming more commonplace, but customers should have the option.

There is also a lack of any reference within the interface to using the My Cloud Mirror as part of a video-surveillance solution. NVR (Network Video Recording) is a key feature on other two-bay NASes including the Iomega StorCenter ix2-dl.

None of these are huge problems with the device (unless you absolutely must have them), but I'd love to see these features added in a future iteration.

Performance and Mirror Recovery
The My Cloud Mirror proved to be among the best-performing two-bay NASes I've tested. It averaged a write speed of 66MBps and a read speed of 58MBps. The only NAS that had better performance in this class is Synology's DS712+, which clocked reads of 79MBps and writes of 88MBps. I presume that the extra 500MB of RAM in the DS712+ boosts its performance.

Western Digital My Cloud Mirror Performance Chart

Western Digital's newest NAS recovered from a simulated drive failure like a champ. First, I ensured that I had Auto-Rebuild enabled in the RAID settings. Next, with the NAS running, I pulled the drive from the second drive bay. The interface immediately called out the drive's health with a big, red caution error. Next, a pop-up appeared, informing me that "The system is busy. Please wait until the system LED turns solid blue before inserting another drive."

The LED on the front panel turned blue a couple seconds later. I popped a new drive of equivalent capacity into the second bay, and, a minute later, I saw in the Storage settings that my RAID array was being re-built. In fact, during the rebuild, I had access to all of the data on the NAS and was even able to stream a movie from the device. That's definitely a no-hassle recovery process.

Top-Notch Consumer NAS
The My Cloud Mirror has even better potential for adoption than Western Digital's original My Cloud. At $399 for 4TB of storage, it's a great deal, and for less than $600 you can pump the storage capacity up to 8TB. Furthermore, the unit offers data redundancy via RAID, in addition to the excellent private-cloud and backup options found in the original single-drive My Cloud. The result is a superb NAS for home and SOHO users, although storage gurus may miss a few features. Western Digital's My Cloud Mirror is all-round well-designed and easy-to-use, making it a clear Editors' Choice for consumer and SOHO NAS devices.

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Rackspace Cloud Servers

Pros Excellent customer support. Good value for price.

Cons Some interface latency. Not enough self-service automation or set-up wizards. Bottom Line Rackspace is not as polished a cloud platform as some of its competitors, but its customer support is excellent and pricing is very competitive.

By Samara Lynn

Rackspace is one of the big cloud hosting providers, along with Microsoft Azure and Amazon's EC2 platform. Rackspace is sort of the scrappy sibling of the other two. It's not as polished a platform as Azure, lacking the snazzy interface and automated, self-service wizards that let you get a cloud server up and running in minutes. Nor is it as vast a platform as Amazon's EC2, which offers a multitude of extensions and store apps. However, among the three, Rackspace's support and enthusiasm for customers is unparalleled. Plus, Rackspace has the most competitive pricing of the three. Be prepared to spend considerable time reading text guides if you're new to Rackspace and cloud platforms, however.

Getting Started
You can sign up for a Rackspace Cloud Servers account for free, but you'll need to provide a credit card to do so (as with Azure and EC2). Thirty days after you get your first server up and running, Rackspace will start charging you for uptime.

To test Rackspace, I set up a small business-size Windows Server 2012 cloud server and compared the process and pricing with Azure and Amazon EC2. Of course, all three services can do much more than this. (And I did examine some other capabilities, too.) They all offer a wide variety of services that differ from company to company. It seemed fair, then, to compare them by completing the same basic and common task of creating a hosted server. My ratings of cloud providers are, therefore, primarily based on the following factors: ease-of-use, UI navigability and user-friendliness, available support, and pricing. 

You start with Rackspace by selecting your desired service level. The Rackspace plans are the easiest to understand of the three providers I tested, and the free, basic support is far more generous than that of Azure or EC2.

The basic support included with each Rackspace subscription is called "Infrastructure Level." Rackspace recommends this level for organizations that have some in-house IT to assist them with running a cloud environment, and it's an appropriate plan for technical users. With this plan, Rackspace offers 24/7 access to its cloud-support engineers, plus assistance with coding, launching cloud servers, security, and more.

With Azure and EC2, basic support essentially gives you little more than access to community forums.

For even more white-glove support, Rackspace offers its Managed Cloud service level. For an additional (and reasonable) $100 per month plus the cost of your cloud subscription, you get immediate response to any alarms set off by your cloud server. You also get help with just about every facet of your cloud environment, including assistance with databases, FTP, SSL certificates, and security. The $100 per month additional cost still puts Rackspace's top-tier support far below the pricing for Azure and EC2's highest-level support offerings. It's a great deal.

Hosted Server Support Pricing

After you select a service level, you get an activation email to verify the account. Until you do, you can only make limited use of your Rackspace cloud control panel.

To create a cloud server, Rackspace pinpoints the data center that is geographically closest to you. The company has data centers in the U.S., Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. Being in New York, I saw in my cloud account that the server I was creating was associated with a northeastern U.S. data center.

Next, I clicked the Create Server button, and my cloud server was given an editable default name. After that, I had to select my server operating system image. I chose Windows Server 2012, but I also could have selected Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. I noticed there were no other Windows legacy servers available. If for some reason you need a hosted Windows Server 2003 instance, you'll need to look to Azure or EC2, or you will have to upload your own operating system image.

Rackspace also offers several Linux images, including CentOS, Debian, Fedora, FreeBSD, Gentoo, OpenSUSE, Red Hat, Scientific Linux, and Ubuntu. With Windows server images, you can also install SharePoint and SQL server.

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