Enterprise IT departments can now realize the benefits of Rackspace Cloud in their own datacenters with Rackspace Cloud: Private Edition, an OpenStack-powered cloud backed by Rackspace managed services and operational support. Rackspace will help enterprises run private clouds in production, relying on a unique knowledge of OpenStack and experience operating one of the world's largest clouds. This experience also drove the Rackspace Cloud: Private Edition reference architecture, which the company is publishing today in a continued commitment to openness and to help ensure compatibility and interoperability in the industry.
"Rackspace’s success is based on providing Fanatical Support to its customers, and Rackspace Cloud: Private Edition will extend this support model to our customer's datacenters,” said Jim Curry, General Manager of Rackspace Cloud Builders. “The customer maintains more control, with no software license fees or technology lock-in, and they can now rely on one company for public, private, and hybrid cloud management regardless of location."
Rackspace Cloud: Private Edition is a new open approach for enterprise IT departments looking to build production clouds with OpenStack, by leveraging open source software, published reference architectures, certified deployment partners and ongoing help running the cloud from Rackspace. More than just basic server virtualization, Rackspace Cloud: Private Edition offers compelling features that are generally available on the public cloud, such as instant provisioning through a self-service portal for employees, API access for developers and admin control panels to set quotas and manage usage, which can all be available in a qualified datacenter of the customer's choosing.
"We chose OpenStack as the infrastructure to power our commerce platform because it is flexible, scalable and best meets the needs of our broad application developer community," said Neal Sample, CTO X.commerce. "Working with Rackspace to build X.commerce on OpenStack was an easy decision, because our open source philosophies are well-aligned, they are core contributors to the OpenStack project and have a depth of knowledge in hosting and cloud computing."
A growing network of certified deployment partners, including Cloud Technology Partners (cloudTP), MomentumSI, and TeamSun, can build the clouds using the reference architecture in the customer’s datacenter of choice, including key Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers worldwide. The initial design is based on proven OpenStack software configurations and hardware from Cisco and Dell, and is expected to be expanded in 2012 to include additional technology options. Additionally, an ecosystem of Technology Partners are announcing support today including Opscode and RightScale.
"OpenStack is quickly gaining interest from our customers and its benefits will continue to be realized as more private clouds come online that are compatible with OpenStack-powered public clouds," said Lew Tucker, CTO, Cloud Computing, Cisco. "We are pleased to see Rackspace include Cisco in its reference architecture for an OpenStack cloud and believe this will continue to drive the industry forward."
By adopting OpenStack, enterprises gain a powerful and flexible cloud orchestration layer, access to future upgrades, and compatibility with OpenStack public clouds everywhere. As part of Rackspace Cloud: Private Edition, Rackspace will support the OpenStack cloud orchestration layer 24x7x365, with these Managed Services for OpenStack:
- OpenStack updates and version upgrades performed by Rackspace
- Performance tuning to run your cloud optimally
- Analyze system issues and develop fixes for OpenStack bugs
- Apply security patches and hot fixes
- Escalation support for cloud operations or engineering questions (to engineers or developers depending on the issue)
- OpenStack training for developers and system administrators
To learn more about the Rackspace Cloud: Private Edition visit: http://rackspace.com/cloud/private-edition.