Cloud and managed hosting provider giant Rackspace Hosting today released Rackspace Private Cloud Software, a new offering powered by OpenStack that makes it easy for organizations to deploy their own multi-node private cloud environment anywhere they choose.
The company said the newly released software uses the same OpenStack compute platform that is used to run Rackspace’s own datacenters.
“The Rackspace Private Cloud Software combines the capabilities of public cloud with the customization, reliability and control advantages of a dedicated environment,” Rackspace explained in a statement. “Customers now have a simple way to install an OpenStack-based private cloud in their own datacenter, at Rackspace, or in a colocation facility.”
“We believe that the majority of our customers and cloud users will be running hybrid cloud environments for a long time,” said Jim Curry, general manager of Private Cloud business at Rackspace. “Today’s announcement allows businesses to utilize their existing investment in their own datacenter resources to run an open cloud solution for additional control and customization and also take advantage of Rackspace’s datacenter options.”
“I’m very impressed with the Rackspace Private Cloud Software as it directly addresses the concern of OpenStack being hard to install and configure. The installation is very robust and intuitive and requires very few parameters to produce a usable OpenStack environment,” said Kevin Jackson, infrastructure architect and author of the OpenStack Cloud Computing Cookbook.
Key Benefits of the OpenStack-powered Rackspace Private Cloud include:
• Rapid Deployment – Customers can run a simple installer to deploy OpenStack components and configuration for private clouds.
• Integrated and tested configuration –Rackspace selected what it says is a proven configuration, which initially includes Ubuntu 12.04 LTS host operating system and KVM hypervisor. It is 100% open source OpenStack Essex with Compute, Image Service, Identity Service and Dashboard. Rackspace said that it is working with partners like Red Hat and others to offer its customers choice of host operating systems and OpenStack distributions down the road.
• Optional Support – Organizations running the software can utilize free support forums or can choose to pay for Escalation Support services from Rackspace. Rackspace, which is know for its strong support, says Escalation Support includes 24x7x365 ticket and phone support.
“Since the founding of OpenStack, we have had requests from the marketplace and our customers for a private cloud software offering based on OpenStack that makes it easy to get up and running,” explained Lew Moorman, president at Rackspace. “Rackspace is making it easy for every IT decision maker, IT pro, and system administrator to install, test and run OpenStack clouds anywhere within minutes – you don’t need to be an OpenStack expert.”
“We are a longstanding partner of Rackspace and are pleased to extend our industry-leading storage solutions and capabilities for Rackspace Private Cloud Software,” said Dan Hushon, chief technology officer, service provider program, EMC Corporation. “For customers adopting OpenStack with Rackspace, they can be confident of EMC’s innovation and support for their underlying storage solutions and cloud infrastructure.”
“Red Hat applauds Rackspace’s efforts to help enable wider usage of OpenStack,” said Brian Stevens, chief technology officer and vice president, worldwide engineering, Red Hat. “Combined with our announcement of the availability of a preview release of Red Hat’s OpenStack distribution earlier this week, we see great potential in ongoing collaboration with Rackspace to deliver open hybrid clouds to our enterprise customers.”
More more information is available here.