May 5, 2008 1:08 PM PDT

Mosso to add cloud-based storage

Posted by Mike Ricciuti

Mosso, the cloud computing division of hosting provider Rackspace, plans to add online storage to its menu of services later this year.

The storage service, called CloudFS, is available to a limited number of customers in a closed beta test and will enter more a more widespread public beta test sometime later this year, the company said.

Developers and businesses can sign up to take part in the initial beta service now.

CloudFS gives developers access to almost unlimited amounts of storage for 15 cents per gigabyte, including replicated copies of backed-up data.

(Credit: Mosso)

Mosso in February launched an online service called The Hosted Cloud that so far offers e-mail hosting and managed hosting services.

As Gordon Haff wrote at the time, Mosso takes a slightly different approach than other online service providers:

The core concept behind Mosso's Hosting Cloud is that many Web-based applications or sites are built up using largely common stacks of technologies such as PHP and MySQL databases. Mosso takes advantage of this fact by providing the means to provision applications running on one of these common stacks. Mosso is effectively offering cloud computing at a level of abstraction more akin to that of a Web hosting provider.

Haff notes that "Mosso takes care of patching and updating the operating system and other software stack components...it's a bit different than what's generally discussed in the context of cloud computing."

CloudFS will be accessible via the REST Web services API, and language-specific APIs such as those supported by .Net, Java, PHP, Ruby and Python, the company said.