I picked up an Iphone a few days ago. One of the first apps I downloaded was “Rackspace Cloud”. For those who don’t know, this app allows you to interface with your cloud servers and cloud files containers via your API key provided in your control panel.



The first thing I liked about this app was the simplicity and clean look. As with the menus on the Iphone, it was simple to navigate and quick to get started. When you first run the app, you are greeted with the Rackspace Cloud logo and are prompted for your username and authorization key (API key). Both of these can be found in your Rackspace Cloud control panel. After entering the key, it begins to authenticate:



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After entering my key, the app quickly pulled up my cloud server complete with server name, linux distribution, and server size.



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For my basic use of cloud servers, I only have 1 server deployed for now. Once you select a particular server, you are shown the following information (similar to the Rackspace Cloud online control panel) :



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Normally in the private IP field, you would actually have it populated. I did edit the picture for privacy purposes :) . For those of you wondering about using private IP’s for free bandwidth between cloud servers, be sure to check out my brief post. Notice in the image that it gives you an option to resize your server via Iphone…nice! You can scale up or scale down, depending on the resources you have and how much storage you are consuming. Rebooting the server is also made simple via the same page.



Lastly I would like to mention the cloud files functionality built into this app. At the bottom right corner from within any page of this app, you are able to access your cloud files account. Once selected, you are shown the containers you have, the number of files in each, and the aggregate storage for the containers.



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After selecting the container you get a list of files, in addition to the information shown on the previous page.



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Now, for my favorite part and something I will personally use most often. This application also allows the ability to select an individual file and either email the file as attachment or email the link to the file. In order to email the file or link, the container housing the file would need to be published to the CDN in your Rackspace Cloud control panel. A third option on this screen that is missing in the screenshot below, is the ability to preview the file. In order for the file to allow for a preview, the Iphone must support the file format. A couple supported formats would include (but not limited too) JPG and PDF.



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One feature that I would like too see in the future is the ability to publish a container to the CDN. It would also be nice to upload images to cloud files straight from the Iphone. At first I thought this second part was asking a bit much, but after reading here, it appears that we could see this last feature in a 1.2 release. Overall, props to Michael Mayo for a great compliment to the Rackspace Cloud toolbox.