For a work-related project I recently needed to compare cloud hosting options so I had a quick look at Amazon’s EC2, Rackspace’s Cloud Servers and IBM’s Smart Business Cloud. For our particular requirements, Rackspace looked like the best option but they all seem to be quite similar, though with an obvious enterprise focus from IBM. Below is a list of the main differences I spotted between the three options which I thought might be useful to others (there are probably many more).
| Amazon EC2 | Rackspace Cloud Servers | IBM Smart Business Cloud | |
| Direct 24x7x365 Support | Extra
Free forums (community) $49+ or $100+/month local business hours $400+ or $15k+/month 24x7x365 |
Yes
Phone/IM |
Extra
Free forums (support-monitored) $75+ or $1000/month |
| Software support | No | Yes
Specific list including some OS, SQL server, MySQL, Apache, IIS/.NET |
Extra
OS support only, charged per hour on top of instance cost |
| Login to machine for troubleshooting support | No | Yes | Extra
Part of add-on software support |
| Local data kept on instance reboot | No | Yes | Yes |
| Mountable persistent storage | Extra
Elastic Block Storage (EBS) |
No
CloudFiles API not file system access |
Extra
Charged per hour |
| CPU bursting | Partial
Micro instances only |
Yes
Free when spare capacity on host |
No |
| Instance capacity changes | No
Create new instance and migrate |
Yes
Reboot required |
Unknown |
| Reverse DNS support | Yes | Yes | Unknown |
| Reserved public IP address per instance | No
5 reserved public IPs per account |
Yes | Extra
Up to 4 per instance, per hour charge for reserved |
| Reserved instances for assured availability | Extra
Up front cost, cheaper rates |
No
Can be combined with managed hosting |
Extra
Up front cost, cheaper rates |
| Import your own virtual machines | Partial
VMware VMDK images of Windows Server 2008 (Datacenter, Enterprise, and Standard editions) |
No | No |
| Images including 3rd party software | Extra
Microsoft SQL Server Many IBM products |
Extra
Microsoft SQL Server |
Yes
Many IBM products; pay as you go, bring your own license, free for development use |
| Performance monitoring | Extra
CloudWatch |
Extra
3rd party Server Density recommended |
Unknown |
| Easy to use | No
Complex but lots of features |
Yes
Simple but limited features |
Unknown |
| Free trial | Yes
1 year full time free micro instance including storage, data transfer and other services |
Yes
1st month free (up to £50) |
No |
Thanks for the post.