Rackspace OnMetal vs SoftLayer: What are the differences?

Rackspace OnMetal: Single-tenant, Baremetal Cloud Servers from Rackspace. OnMetal servers are single-tenant, bare-metal servers provisioned via the same OpenStack API as our cloud. They can be spun up as quickly as VMs to offer the agility of multi-tenant environments with the performance of single-tenant hardware. OnMetal servers are our own design and are engineered in a highly opinionated way. We’ve made them 100 percent solid-state with external cooling, leading to increased mean time between failures (MTBF). They are also incredibly large, so you’ll need fewer of them; SoftLayer: SoftLayer provides on-demand IT infrastructure, dedicated servers and cloud resources. SoftLayer dedicated servers give you options from entry-level single processor servers to quad proc, hex-core, and even GPU-powered workhorses. They're all deployed in real time via our portal or API.

Rackspace OnMetal and SoftLayer can be categorized as "Dedicated Cloud Hosting" tools.

Some of the features offered by Rackspace OnMetal are:

• Provision instantly, instead of in hours or days.
• Manage as easily as virtual cloud servers through our Cloud Control Panel and the OpenStack API.
• Integrate with your existing cloud architecture.

On the other hand, SoftLayer provides the following key features:

• 5TB public outbound bandwidth, standard
• 100Mbps network uplinks, standard
• More starting RAM in most servers

According to the StackShare community, SoftLayer has a broader approval, being mentioned in 45 company stacks & 8 developers stacks; compared to Rackspace OnMetal, which is listed in 5 company stacks and 3 developer stacks.