Rackspace Launches Managed OpenStack Private Cloud to Deliver Industry Leading 99.99 per cent Uptime Guarantee
Managed Offering Enables Customers to Seamlessly Scale to Hundreds of Nodes
LONDON – 25 September, 2014 – Rackspace® (NYSE:RAX), the #1 managed cloud company, today announced the next global release of its Rackspace Private Cloud offering powered by OpenStack designed to run enterprise production workloads. The offering now includes an industry leading 99.99 percent OpenStack API uptime guarantee, increased scalability to hundreds of nodes and DevOps automation services for application lifecycle management.
Launched in 2011, the Rackspace Private Cloud was designed and built by the OpenStack experts who co-founded OpenStack and run one of the world’s largest OpenStack-powered clouds. It delivers the agility and efficiency of a public cloud combined with the enhanced security, control and performance of a dedicated environment. Customers can deploy Rackspace Private Cloud in their data centre, at Rackspace or in both locations all backed by Fanatical Support®.
“For businesses that have traditionally been locked out of the public cloud for control and compliance reasons, or very large resource requirements, this private cloud environment now lets them experience all the benefits of the OpenStack platform,”says Nigel Beighton, VP Technology Rackspace.“This is an important indication that OpenStack is maturing fast. Today businesses don’t want to be tied into proprietary systems that stifle innovation and agility, so the principles of an open source platform that is easy to implement, massively scalable and feature rich is increasingly attractive. The fact that we are also offering unprecedented API uptime guarantees for our private cloud is testament to our faith in the capability of the platform.”
The offering combines expertise, services and guarantees with the OpenStack Icehouse release, enabling customers to take advantage of the following:
· Scalability with Availability – Rackspace Private Cloud is designed to scale enterprise production workloads. It includes a 99.99 per cent OpenStack API uptime guarantee, designed to scale to hundreds of nodes and deliver high availability with consistent performance. It deploys OpenStack services using Linux containers, which allows customers to independently scale each service and provides the ability to perform seamless, in-place upgrades from one release to another.
· Application-Level Automation — Unlocking the full power of a cloud requires automation. Rackspace DevOps Automation Services help customers automate their process for deploying and scaling applications by treating their infrastructure as code. In addition, Rackspace Private Cloud supports OpenStack Orchestration (Heat), which helps customers automate the provisioning of infrastructure, services and applications.
· Expertise – Rackspace Private Cloud is built and operated by the company who co-founded OpenStack, is a top contributor to OpenStack and now runs one of the world’s largest OpenStack-powered clouds.
· Hybrid – Customers have the ability to burst into the public cloud by using RackConnect® to securely connect the customer’s Rackspace Private Cloud with the Rackspace Public Cloud.
· Fanatical Support® – Rackspace Private Cloud is backed with Fanatical Support that includes 24x7x365 access to a team of experts, a dedicated account manager, an optional dedicated OpenStack engineer, proactive monitoring and 100 percent network uptime guarantee when hosted in a Rackspace data center.
· Deploy Anywhere – Flexible solution that offers customers the ability to deploy anywhere in nine Rackspace data centres around the globe, in their data centre, or in both locations.
The Rackspace Private Cloud enhancements will roll out for Rackspace customers in the UK in early October 2014 with the addition of Rackspace DevOps Automation Services to be determined at a later date. To learn more about Rackspace Private Cloud, please visit: http://www.rackspace.co.uk/cloud/private
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) form an essential communications bond between different software programme elements and data streams with their ability to ‘speak’ to required information components. As a key element of a wider Service Level Agreement (SLA), API uptime expresses an interface’s availability within a service-based computing system where programme components are made available from the cloud.
About Rackspace
Rackspace® (NYSE: RAX) is the #1 managed cloud company. Its technical expertise and Fanatical Support® allow companies to tap the power of the cloud without the pain of hiring experts in dozens of complex technologies. Rackspace is also the leader in hybrid cloud, giving each company the best fit for its unique needs — whether on single – or multi-tenant servers, or a combination of those platforms. Rackspace is the founder of OpenStack®, the open-source operating system for the cloud. Headquartered in San Antonio, Rackspace serves more than 200,000 business customers from data centres on four continents. It ranks #29 on Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For and #26 in the Sunday Times Best Companies. For more information, visit http://www.rackspace.co.uk/
