Rackspace Cloud announced Mosso LLC in March, 2006, as a wholly owned subsidiary billed as a utility computing offering.

[8] Unlimited files of up to 5 GB can be uploaded, managed via the online control panel or RESTful API and optionally served out via Akamai Technologies' content delivery network.

[9] In addition to the online control panel, the service can be accessed over a RESTful API with open source client code available in C#/.NET, Python, PHP, Java, and Ruby.

Jungle Disk, previously also owned by Rackspace, allows Cloud Files to be mounted as a local drive within supported operating systems (Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows).

Uploaded files can be distributed via Akamai Technologies to "hundreds of endpoints across the world" which provides an additional layer of data redundancy.

There are no concepts of "appending" or "locking" data within Cloud Files (which may affect some disk mirroring or backup solutions), nor support for permissions or transcoding.

These are "much cheaper and generally easier to use than a traditional dedicated server", though it is still necessary to maintain the operating system and solution stack which is not required for the Cloud Sites product.

[17] Rackspace is quietly phasing out its older, less expensive products in transition to a managed platform where mandatory support charges are incorporated into the cost of the services.

[19] In addition to issuing basic management commands this "enables elastic scenarios" whereby servers are instantiated and destroyed in response to fluctuating load (one of the key characteristics of cloud computing).

This non-standard unit of measurement primarily reflects CPU processing time but also includes I/O operations so pages with many database queries will consume more "compute cycles".

Cloud Sites does not support Java, Tomcat, ColdFusion, SSH, RDP, API access, Microsoft Exchange or custom server-side components at this time.

It also allows users to manage multiple clients and the plans and products (e.g. databases, 24 x 7 support) that apply to them, with white label branding options for messaging.

[31] The control panel is also home to the billing and reporting functions and provides access to support materials including developer resources, a knowledge base, forums and live chat.

The change will come a new control panel as well as add-on cloud services offering databases, server monitoring, block storage, and virtual networking.