Rackspace Cloud Monitoring: On-premises or In the Cloud

Written by samdizzy
August 22, 2012

Rackspace Cloud Monitoring, a new service, allows customers to monitor the health of their IT infrastructure whether it’s on-premises, at a third-party data center, or off in a cloud. The monitoring service leverages Cloudkick technology, which Rackspace acquired in 2010.

But why does Rackspace (NYSE: RAX) want to help customers monitor infrastructure — even if it isn’t located within Rackspace’s cloud? The simple answer: If customers embrace the Rackspace Cloud Monitoring tool, it may give customers a better feel for when and why to shift applications into Rackspace’s data centers.

Rackspace claims the cloud monitoring tool “provides real time alerts allowing customers to react quickly to ensure uptime.” In other words, Rackspace could wind up competing with some smaller MSPs — many of which monitor customers’ on-premises PCs and servers. In Rackspace’s case, the monitoring service tracks the health of customers’ websites, ports, protocols and more.

According to a prepared statement from Rackspace CTO Jon Engates, “This product provides one easy solution to monitor all IT infrastructure from a single interface, regardless of vendor or location.”

Rackspace claims the cloud monitoring solution can:

Deliver Proactive Alerts: Set up via the Control Panel or API to monitor websites, URLs, ports and protocols.

Monitor Any Infrastructure Anywhere: Regardless of whether it’s on-premises, off-premises at a third-party data center, or in any cloud.

Offer Global and Regional Granularity: Ensure customers visiting from multiple countries find acceptable response times.

Auto Scale: Including the ability to “add thousands of Cloud Servers in minutes.”

Deliver Time Savings – Cloud Based: No installation. No upgrade. No maintenance.

Rackspace did not disclose pricing for the cloud monitoring tool. Nor did Rackspace disclose a channel partner or peer service provider initiative for the tool. But I suspect a lot of MSPs will give it a look as they seek next-generation monitoring tools.