Rackspace launches Private Edition to build on Open Stack

Rackspace has launched a new triple-pronged assault, building on the popular OpenStack cloud platform with three new offerings under the Rackspace Cloud: Private Edition banner.

The company, which was one of the founders of OpenStack in 2010, has announced that Private Edition will be a way for companies to build on open source software in developing their own cloud deployments.

According to Stuart Simms, Rackspace Hosting's VP for international corporate development & cloud services, there will be three strands to the Private Edition programme: a reference architecture; a new ecosystem for Rackspace cloud and support from managed services.

Simms said the reference cloud architecture would be an ideal way for companies new to cloud to adopt the technology and as a way to combat some of the fear out there. “There’s a naturally hesitancy about cloud: it’s an over-used term and get confused with virtualisation. Part of the trouble is that major vendors use cloud to mean different things, we hope to simplify things,” he said.

The reference cloud architecture is being offered as a download by Rackspace as a guide to best practice but Simms stressed that the architecture is not the end-point of the Rackspace offering, “The reference cloud architecture is to get people going with cloud – it's the starting point not the end point,” he added.

He said that the ecosystem would comprise a growing number of leading cloud players, including CloudTP, MomentumSI, and TeamSun who would use the reference architecture in order to build customer cloud deployments. He said that data centre providers such as Equinix were also part of the ecosystem, which had been put together Rackspace customers the optimum amount of choice. “We’ve seen massive growth in the ecosystem and this move has clarified roles and responsibilities,” he added.

The third prong of the Private Edition offering is the support for the OpenStack cloud orchestration layer with a range of Managed services, these include:

OpenStack updates and version upgrades performed by Rackspace

• Performance tuning to run your cloud optimally
• Analyse system issues and develop fixes for OpenStack bugs
• Apply security patches and hot fixes

Simms said that future developments  would include utility pricing but this was about 12 to 18 months away.

Commenting on the Rackspace decision to hand over Open Stack code to the community, Simms said that this demonstrated the company's commitment to OpenStack had never been greater. We’re committed to invest in Open Stack."