To view the full article in its entirety, please visit eWeek: Rackspace Launches Cloud Plug-In for Visual Studio 2010

Rackspace Hosting, a provider of hosting and cloud computing services, has announced the Rackspace Cloud Plug-In for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.

The new plug-in is a Visual Studio toolkit that enables .NET developers to seamlessly extend development and deployment to Rackspace Cloud Servers for Windows. The toolset enables developers to deploy applications written with Visual Studio tools directly to Rackspace’s cloud infrastructure. It reduces deployment and provisioning time and provides users with a single cloud management portal, Rackspace said

New API (application programming interface) features of the Rackspace Cloud Plug-In for Visual Studio 2010 include the ability to: Launch, reboot and fully control all servers; rebuild servers from images and create custom images; schedule application backups; upsize and scale server configurations as needed; and manage and share IP addresses

“Rackspace has again demonstrated it is a key player in the cloud by providing the entire MSDN community and all .NET developers a way to quickly develop, deploy and manage cloud applications written in a development environment familiar to them,” said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft, in a statement. “This effort highlights the openness of Visual Studio and Microsoft’s unique position within the cloud computing ecosystem, as both a partner to other cloud providers and a cloud provider itself. The Rackspace Plug-In for Visual Studio 2010 toolkit is intended to help with developers looking for an easier way to deploy their applications, websites and blogs to the cloud.”