Yesterday, a story broke around the world about a recent cyber attack that appears to have originated in China, involving Google and many other companies.  Rackspace was a very small part of this situation and did everything possible to assist in resolving it.  No customer data at Rackspace was compromised or altered as a result of this action. We were mentioned as one of the target companies.

Here’s what we told the media who asked us about it:

Rackspace hosts tens of thousands of websites for customers and we take every precaution to make them safe and secure.   As a hosting and cloud computing company, we run the servers and operating systems for our customer’s websites, but customers run their own applications on those servers.  In this case, a server at Rackspace was compromised, disabled, and we actively assisted in the investigation of the cyber attack, fully cooperating with all affected parties.   Cyber attacks are a common occurrence in today’s online world, and we work every day to combat them and make our servers safe for our customers.

It’s difficult to share any more beyond the statement as we are committed to the privacy and security of the tens of thousands of customers we serve daily.  As a tech company, we know we need to remain diligent to prevent future incidents.  As always, our customers come first.  Here is an FAQ to assist our customers in understanding the event.

The New Year often brings new projects. Rackspace customer, Gallant FX, has a huge 10 weeks ahead of them as they sponsor Boston Technologies’ “Man VS Machine” competition, which launches at the end of this month.

This ten week competition will simultaneously run thousands of automated trading systems (Machine) and manual trades (Man) to see who earns the most cash in the Foreign Exchange Market (Forex). Thousands of traders, developers, and trading bots will be running on Rackspace infrastructure to make this competition happen. Six winners will be selected, with prizes ranging from $5,000 to $50,000. Winners are determined by account balances from their fictitious trading accounts at the end of the competition.

The last day to sign up for the contest is January 10th, 2010. Visit http://www.manversusmachine.net/mvm/rulesm for more information! Once the competition goes live, viewers can track the top 10 contestants from the Web site.

Gallant FX, the sponsor of the competition, is a Foreign Exchange liquidity provider offering a wide range of trading technologies and services in a unique Forex trading environment. A recent case study highlights how Rackspace helped Gallant find a reliable home for their application. This video shows how Rackspace “came in swinging” for GallantFX.

Who is the favorite in this competition? Will it be Man or Machine? Only time will tell.

There’s been some local buzz in recent weeks on Rackspace that we are happy to share. Two pieces, in particular, include a recent news story on our San Antonio headquarters and the major Racker move-in as well as a piece from the San Antonio Express-News which mentions our role in cloud as well as our dedication to Fanatical Support.

Incident Overview:

On December 18, 2009 between 3:37 p.m. and 4:12 p.m. CST, Rackspace experienced network connectivity problems.  The issues resulted from a problem with a router used for peering and backbone connectivity located outside the data center at a peering facility, which handles approximately 20% of Rackspace’s Dallas traffic.  The problems stemmed from a configuration and testing procedure made at our new Chicago data center, creating a routing loop between the Chicago and Dallas data centers.  This activity was in final preparation for network integration between the Chicago and Dallas data centers.  The network integration of the facilities was scheduled to take place during the monthly maintenance window outside normal business hours, and today’s incident occurred during final preparations.

Incident Timeline:

3:37 p.m. CST Rackspace detected customer impacting connectivity issues; backbone engineering begins troubleshooting procedures.

4:02 p.m. CST Backbone engineers confirmed source of issue as Rackspace router housed at a peering location outside our datacenter facility.

4:12 p.m. CST-Upon rerouting traffic from this device, all systems were back online.

Current Status:

Rackspace is operating under normal conditions, and we do not anticipate any further connectivity interruptions.

This issue interrupted our customers’ businesses, and for this we apologize.  If you have additional questions. please reach out to us.

Editor’s Update on Dec. 19, 2009 at 12:00 p.m. :  An FAQ on this incident.

We had a network issue at a peering location outside our datacenter facilities. The network is back up. More details to come.

It’s new, our customers have been asking for it and today, it’s here! Rackspace is excited to offer our customers one consolidated invoice for a simpler way to pay their Rackspace bill. The Rackspace Consolidated Invoice is for existing Rackspace customers with both Hosting and Cloud accounts and allows them the convenience of one invoice for both services.  The Rackspace Consolidated Invoice is part of an initiative to unify and strengthen Rackspace across all products lines.

Enrolling is easy. Current customers with appropriate permissions can enroll in this program through the My.Rackspace.com customer portal.  After logging in, follow the link.

Editor’s Note:  This service is currently available only to U.S.-based customers.  U.K. customers can watch for this service later in 2010.

As 2009 winds to a close, businesses are considering ways in which to improve their operations and processes and maximize resources for the next year. We would like to invite you to join our complimentary webinar series that explores some of the most effective IT solutions available to businesses today.

“SharePoint 2010: A Sneak Peek at What’s New” webinar

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is expected to launch the first half of next year. As MS hosting experts, we’ll help you get a closer look at SharePoint 2010’s new features and key enhancements, as well as demonstrate how its functionality can improve collaboration and information management processes.  This webinar features Rackspace SharePoint Architect Jeff Deverter. Topics include: (read more…)

TechCrunch is the technology industry’s most influential media organization and when they make moves the implications can be deep. Recently TechCrunch moved to the Rackspace Cloud and TechCrunch’s CTO, Nik Cubrilovic, talked with building43’s host Robert Scoble about what the move’s implications were to traffic, uptime, peace of mind, and also costs. Across the board Nik praised Rackspace Cloud. In the interview Cubrilovic revealed that they moved from a company that was providing free hosting and are now paying to use Rackspace’s services.

Robert Scoble interviews Nik Cubrilovic from Rackspace Hosting on Vimeo.

Rackers all over the country are gearing up for the third annual Thanksgiving Food Drive. In November of 2008, Rackers were able to collect enough food to feed 500 San Antonio families, 25 Virginia families, 35 Austin families, and 60 families in the DFW area. All together, Rackspace joined together to support 620 families in need. This was a huge accomplishment and Rackers rallied together to achieve this goal.

This year, our goal for San Antonio is to feed 750 needy local families – 800 company wide, including all locations. Throughout 2009, the need for food has grown to the highest level since the “food security” report began in 1995. 1 in 7 Americans struggles to get enough to eat, and more than a third go hungry from time to time. An estimated 36.2 million Americans are food insecure. Of those 36 million, almost 13 million are children and 2 million are seniors. Last year, over 25 million people used a Food Bank for emergency food assistance. Our goal may be ambitious, but the need for food is growing.

On Friday, November 20th Rackers in San Antonio will be assembling 750 food baskets. Austin Rackers will be distributing food collected to needy families through the Capital Area Food Bank. On Saturday, November 21st, San Antonio Rackers will be distributing all boxes to needy families to benefit the San Antonio Food Bank.

See below for pictures of last year’s food drives:

For more information on hunger in the United States, click here.

That’s right, for the third year now, Rackspace is now accepting applications for the 2009 FANATI® Award for Outstanding Customer Service. For three years now, Rackspace has awarded The FANATI to the one customer who best demonstrates ‘Fanatical Support’ when it comes to their customers.

Here at Rackspace, we’ve built a reputation based on service, known to our customers as Fanatical Support®; our anytime, anywhere, any way approach to customer service. And we know we’re not the only ones who put customer needs first. That’s why we created The FANATI in 2007 to recognize one of our customers for valuing customer service as much as we do.

The contest consists of two rounds of judging (judging by a panel of experts and a customer satisfaction survey). Customers first complete the application process located on the MyRackspace® customer portal. The past two years, the award has only been available to our Managed Hosting customers. But this year we are opening it to all US-based customers including Cloud and Email & Apps customers. Those customers will be able to access the application online here.

The other thing we are changing this year is the format of the application. No longer is it just a written application answering a bunch of questions. This year we want to make it personal and with a touch of creativity. That is why we are only accepting video applications! All our customers need to do is create a short (less than five minutes) video explaining what they do and how they exemplify outstanding customer service. It should be interesting none the less.

So if you’re a customer, and you think your customer service is pretty good…award winning even…then log on to the MyRackspace portal or click the link on your control panel, and let us hear from you.

For more information on The FANATI, click here, or leave us a comment below if you have any questions.