Rackspace launches “Fanatical Support for Developers”

http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/rackspace-launches-fantatical-support-for-developers

by VanL • 13 years ago

60 55 13 years ago

jnoller11• 13 years ago

See also the official announcement here: http://www.rackspace.com/blog/rackspace-developer-support-fa...

Disclaimer: I am a Developer & Community Advocate for Rackspace; this means they pay me to serve developers and engage the hacker and developer community. This means that fundamentally - I serve you.

Any questions you may have, or criticisms, or better yet - suggestions to make Rackspace Cloud / OpenStack more developer friendly and supportive: let me know.

yareally• 13 years ago

Last time I used Rackspace for a VPS (over a year ago now), they required me to file a support ticket to create a cname/txt, for my domain linked to my VPS. Is that still the case? It was one of the reasons I left Rackspace for myself and all my clients. I just got tired of having to ask for something that other VPS providers let (and trust) developers to do themselves.

circa• 13 years ago

I don't think you need to do that any more. I too remember having to do that and it was a complete PITA.

jnoller11• 13 years ago

Our new cloud control panel allows you to manage this yourself. The new control panel allows you to have total control that you need and instances/etc can be fully orchestrated via the APIs.

msisk6• 13 years ago

Our DNS support is greatly expanded since then. The control panel lets you enter all the records you need (including PTR) and you can automate it as much as you want with our Cloud DNS API (which is what the control panel actually uses under the hood).

hkmurakami4• 13 years ago

Hey Jesse, I've been thinking about the various companies whose business practices and attitudes towards developers I agree with and would like to help grow. Rackspace was one of the few (fewer than 10 for sure) companies that I could come up with.

Could you comment on a high level what your experience has been so far, and what the attitude of developers, management, and culture there is like?

Thanks!

jnoller11• 13 years ago

This is a tough one, but I'll give it a stab. On a high level, Rackspace from the top brass, to individual engineers and developers really do believe in promoting and pushing Open Source, Open Standards and Open Design.

This is why so much has been materially invested in OpenStack (http://www.openstack.org/) which powers our Cloud offerings, why we have http://github.com/rackspace, http://rackerlabs.github.com and are internally looking at more and more projects to contribute back to the developer community. This is also why more and more projects lead by Rackspace are really being designed in the open and incubated in the OpenStack project (Marconi, for example: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Marconi, Heat and others).

I've been continually impressed that everyone is behind the idea of truly giving back, getting involved in and supporting open source and the community. Rackspace is a company that already supports its local community (http://www.rackspacefoundation.com/), gives employees time off for community service, etc.

From a strategic standpoint, this is why Fanatical Support for Developers is such a crucial piece to this. We want Rackspace's Open Cloud to be a fantastic experience for developers internally, and externally. We want all want to make Rackspace services the ones that every developer wants to use, and make Rackspace’s Open Source projects the best of breed solutions in their areas.

This vision; and Rackspace's values are why I joined - they may not be where they want to be today, and this vision takes time to achieve, but everyone is actively invested in it.

cnp2• 13 years ago

Does Rackspace provide no Node support? That's very surprising.

johnnysee• 13 years ago

We plan to release an official node.js SDK soon. I don't have a specific date, but it should be relatively soon.

briancurtin• 13 years ago

The article says node.js support is on the way.

kenperkins• 13 years ago

Full Disclosure: I'm the lead node.js developer advocate for Rackspace

As it turns out, we're announcing our node.js SDK plans (with support) today:

http://devops.rackspace.com/pkgcloud-update.html

ddispaltro• 13 years ago

As a side note, we have open sourced many projects in Node:

* https://github.com/racker/node-elementtree

* https://github.com/racker/node-cassandra-client

* https://github.com/racker/node-zookeeper-client

* https://github.com/cloudkick/whiskey

salimmadjd2• 13 years ago

I didn't see any mentions of Go yet.

jnoller11• 13 years ago

I know of one unofficial Go SDK in the works. When we fully support an SDK we really support it by dedicating headcount to those SDKs. Things are obviously still evolving, and Go support is definitely on my wish list.

kc5tja3• 13 years ago

Hello; Sam Falvo here, a Rackspace quality engineer. I'm working on the Gorax project to offer Go bindings to Rackspace's APIs. I encourage you to watch the github.com/racker/gorax project to remain informed of updates.

Progress is kind of slow at the moment, but is proceeding more or less steadily. It's also the newest language binding, so it will of course not be as feature complete as, say, the Python or Node bindings.

tszming3• 13 years ago

Does Rackspace still require personal verification (onboarding) in order to open an account?

Last time I told them I want to open an account for testing and get rejected:

>> Dear Customer, We reviewed your order request and, unfortunately, we have determined that you are not eligible for a Rackspace account. We apologize for any inconvenience

This is un-cool and please don't do it.

jnoller11• 13 years ago

I will pass this on to the team; I concur that developer/testing signup and on-boarding presents a barrier to entry for developers to try things out and get started. In order to truly support developers the process must present a minimal amount of friction.

unoti2• 13 years ago

I've been a Rackspace customer for many years, and very very nearly left a couple of weeks ago. A program like this one might have been a huge help. Here's what happened.

My startup started getting real traction and doing a lot of business. As my user count grew, I started to see slow response times on my server. I checked out the configuration and everything looked ok to me-- but even during times of super slow response, the server was showing vmstats that looked 99% idle. So I figured this is either a network problem, or something else beyond my control, or a configuration problem that is beyond my talent to identify.

My customer base was exploding, and my infrastructure was failing. In that moment, I would have done just about ANYTHING to solve the problem. I filed a support ticket, but I didn't expect that'd help, and it didn't. I started looking around rackspace to try to figure out if I could upgrade to a dedicated server. It's not really clear to me from looking at Rackspace's web page hard for 20 minutes whether they even offer dedicated servers. If you search google for "Rackspace Dedicated Server" you get what to me is a confusing mixed message, and no clear path for getting a dedicated server. It's not clear to me if that page is comparing how Managed hosting is better than dedicated servers, or if managed hosting is the only way you offer dedicated servers, or if getting the biggest server IS the way you offer dedicated servers.

I damn near just took a shot in the dark and migrated my whole service to another provider in a desparate attempt to see if things got better. For all I knew, it was a misbehaving tenant colocated on my machine. That happened before though, and you guys identified it and solved it in hours.

In the end, I solved the problem for myself by pounding my head against it for 24 hours straight and found a configuration problem in Apache. But having an expert there to help me with this-- I would have paid any amount of money. I still would love to know I'm not going it alone in case I get DOS'd or something. But I'm not even sure who to talk to to build a relationship.

unoti2• 13 years ago

I've read the official announcement a few times now, and near as I can gather, Rackspace is not offering the kind of support I'm looking for. That support announcement appears to be helping me to fanatically use the Rackspace API's, rather than really partnering with me to use their infrastructure to do my work.

I guess what I'm looking for is just general consulting, with people who are smart and know what they're doing. Maybe what I'm looking for is comrades, fellow hackers, or a consulting service. I live in the Bay Area, so you'd think I'd be neighbors with these people.

Any of you out there: if you know of IRC channels, forums, or anything like that where people help each other with this sort of thing, let me know, I want to be part of it. I could totally help people with the kinds of problems I've been through. My wife suggested I talk to HN about the problem I was having, and I had to explain to her that this isn't that kind of community-- we talk about articles and issues, not specific problems usually. If any of you know about a community or consulting service like that or have ideas and suggestions, I'd love to hear about it.

jebblue2• 13 years ago

If they get away from utility pricing and go flat like Linode then that might be interesting. It's the same reason I don't use AWS, nickel and diming practices.

hkmurakami4• 13 years ago

I wonder what the logistics and financial realities look like for a company that has become as big as Rackspace.

Rackspace and Amazon do this "nickel and diming" and they share the common trait of being rather large, high overhead organizations. On the other hand, places like DigitalOcean or Linode appear to be smaller places that try to keep their overhead as low as possible.

jebblue2• 13 years ago

I see what you're saying but without being indelicate, their overhead isn't mine.

peacemaker• 13 years ago

Agreed. I've heard good things about Rackspace but I need a flat rate to manage my costs.

bjudson• 13 years ago

This is a real weak spot for companies like Google and Amazon, which have very little experience delivering quality tech support. Rackspace is playing catch up on the technical side, but they really understand support. It goes a long way.

jnoller11• 13 years ago

Some people may see "Fanatical Support" and cringe at it as marketing: it's really not. It's a company core value, and baked into the DNA of every person in the company from HR, to IT, support, engineering - customers, developers, etc are not just revenue - they're our family and friends.

Fanatical support is what makes Rackspace, well - Rackspace.

hkmurakami4• 13 years ago

That's really reminiscent of Zappos. I don't know how their service first attitude was taken at first, but I think over the years we've accepted it as a genuine thing.

rubyn00bie2• 13 years ago

Too little too late?

I find this hard to believe-- as a current Rackspace customer (I'd kill to switch) I can say I've had nothing but horrible customer support. Save, one guy named Mark Lessel-- who is a fucking boss (had to give him props).

But I only get to someone like mark, once I've gotten so fed up, I start being an asshole and then, only then, does anything get done (they send Mark to help me). I don't like being an asshole, but spending 3 days going back and forth before getting a resolution is too much.

They've too often had people without technical ability (or it so it seems) attempt to assist me, then blow me off because they don't understand the true nature of the problem.

They say you can "move a slider" and increase the size of your VPS. Which couldn't be further from the truth; more often than not you have to get on the line with their support to figure out why the instance failed to build. Only to drag it out for another 30 minutes telling you to wait; before actually investigating the god damn problem.... Makes scaling quickly very easy (sarcasm).

Rackspace is made even worse by the outright lies about their 'fanatical customer support.' Biggest bullshit marketing lie from a, somewhat respectable, tech company I've seen. If they just advertised middle of the road support and service, I think I'd be less upset. It's just the lies that get to me. Don't over promise and under deliver, that's a bait and switch.

Maybe they should start giving away lipstick with every VPS; so we can all look pretty while we get fucked ;-)

drfritznunkie• 13 years ago

I have to agree with you rubynOObie. My former company was a big Rackspace customer, over 8? years, in their top tier dedicated environment (Intensive or somesuch they called it). I too really wanted to believe in their "Fanatical Support", primarily because we were shelling out $$k+/mo, but there were way too many mistakes on their side to ever believe it. If they couldn't do it with hardware/OS support, why would I believe they could do it with complex application support?

Our relationship became so toxic that they flew me down to SA for some customer appreciation event. Which oddly enough, was about 50% new happy customers, and 50% disgruntled existing customers. And boy was my experience with their support reinforced repeatedly by the others...

Not to mention I went through more than dozen "dedicated" account teams. They were all so earnest at first, but by the time I left, I had basically scripted the conversation for a new account team, pointing out all the custom things on our account and with our configuration that they absolutely couldn't mess with under penalty of death.

Their dedicated pricing is non-competitive these days... I think they rely on the fact that once you're past a certain size, moving to another provider would be so painful that you'll happily pay their ridiculous rates.

exiquio• 13 years ago

In our (Rackspace) defense I will say that we definitely don't rely on a customer getting bigger and being stuck with us as a result due to migration pains. I can demonstrate that logically if you will follow:

Surely this audience is aware of OpenStack and our commitment to such having open source the first major components a few years ago. With such knowledge you can logically assume that we want to be interoperable with other companies' offerings on the same platform.

We really believe in this "fanatical support" thing and we believe we can compete with others on a fair playing field because of it. We do this in part by paying attention:

If our support fails in areas and it's made public in places like this website, trust we are reading about it and discussing it at various levels. Furthermore, we are always striving to get it right. Take that from someone who isn't paid to read this, but paid to write software.

FTR, these are my opinions as someone in the Rackspace culture. Take it for what its worth.

Tell us what we suck at so we can do it better (like you did, drfritznunkie). Thanks.

rcollazo2• 13 years ago

We really do believe in offering "Fanatical Support". Mark is a shining example of Rackspace ideals. On behalf of Rackspace, I'd like to offer a sincere apology for your poor experience with us.

I'd like to learn more about your experience with us and figure out how we can improve. Would you mind emailing help@rackspace.com with your details?

rubyn00bie2• 13 years ago

Soo... this is another part of my problem, is that in public venues like HN or Twitter you guys boss up getting people to your support site.

However, once on the support site, it falls flat on its face. I am pushed off to one person who doesn't care after another, who doesn't listen or read. I've called 'em out before and that's how I usually get escalated to Mark...

They've got tickets to answer, they're busy, but it's blatantly obvious most of your CS reps goals are not to fix my problem but to get through tickets.

I've done high-end technical support, and I know that people 'believe' in it while they're in the office, talking the talk, but not in their actions. That's your problem, culturally, and publicly, you all say it so many times people believe they're doing it without actually know what it means.

From the outside: you're failing.

Furthermore: I hate being passed off to an account manager cough sales rep cough who kisses my ass when I don't have problems then can't do shit to help me when I do. I don't want a reach around, I want my problems solved. Phone support? A joke. Within 30 seconds of the person on the phone realizing the problem is actually technical, they push you back to the support site.

You guys should signup for a Linode account, file a ticket, and learn from that experience. It's baffling that Linode doesn't boast about its support, like you all, but manages to consistently provide better support resolving my issues quickly without a terrible back and forth.

What Rackspace does for the open source community, and in fighting patent trolls is amazing-- I love that about Rackspace. But certainly not your support.

larrys• 13 years ago

We are a current rackspace customer and it's been YMMV with them.

We had a particular project that we needed to use the VPS for and noted the page on the SMTP policy. The sales staff were all over us with emails and follow ups but when we posed the question regarding something specific with the SMTP policy (pointing to the particular page) they went silent. No answer, no follow up no reply to our follow ups.

Sent an email to the page that says "if you have any questions write here" and got a link back to that same page (iirc or something literally that worthless).

The lack of follow up (for an important issue) and reply ( to questions) made it a non-starter to use Rackspace for this purpose.

Found it. So in other words we sent an email to abuse@rackspace.com. with a question (per what the page says) and got this auto response:

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED-RESPONSE

Please read carefully! This may be the only response we send you.

Thank you for writing the Rackspace AUP Department. We will make every

effort to investigate all reports of abusive activity in a timely

manner. The information that you have submitted will be used to

investigate the incident for violations of our Acceptable Use Policy,

which you can view at:

http://www.rackspace.com/aboutus/acceptable_use.php

When reporting unsolicited commercial/bulk email (UCE/UBE/spam),

please forward the entire message, including full headers, leaving the

original subject line intact.

When reporting scans, probes, hacking attempts, or malicious

activity, please include an unaltered excerpt of your security log files

showing ONLY THE INCIDENTS PERTAINING TO Rackspace and/or its

customer. Please cut and paste it directly into the body of the email

message, including:

Source IP Address

Date and Time

Source/Destination Ports

Any other brief pertinent details

Thank you!

Rackspace AUP Department

RackerShagz• 13 years ago

Racker here and very sorry that you were bounced between groups like this and then still had to try to find the info on your own. It's certainly not the experience that we aim to provide.

If this is still something we can help with, please send details to help@rackspace.com. We'll make sure that this gets to the right Rackers.

Rackspace launches “Fanatical Support for Developers”

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