Rackspace Launches Private Cloud Powered By Red Hat

Rackspace today announced the release of Rackspace Private Cloud powered by Red Hat, which delivers OpenStack private clouds-as-a-service using the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform.

Announced at the Rackspace::Solve event here, the new offering expands the Rackspace OpenStack-as-a-service product portfolio, further extending the company’s strategy to deliver reliable and easy-to-use OpenStack private and hybrid clouds.

Expanding

“As the leading operator of OpenStack clouds with the most comprehensive OpenStack product portfolio in the industry, Rackspace is expanding our managed services and expertise to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform,” said Darrin Hanson, vice president and general manager of OpenStack Private Cloud at Rackspace, in a statement. “We help make OpenStack simple by eliminating the complexity and delivering it as-a-service to customers in their data center, a Rackspace data center or in a co-location facility.”

The new offering is fully managed by OpenStack and Red Hat experts at Rackspace and backed by Rackspace’s promise of Fanatical Support. Rackspace Private Cloud powered by Red Hat provides public cloud benefits with the security, control and performance of an enterprise environment, Hanson said. The offering also is backed by Rackspace’s 99.99 percent OpenStack API uptime guarantee.

Moreover, Rackspace is contributing to Red Hat’s continued efforts to improve Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform by testing and certifying for broad hardware and software compatibility, performance and availability. Rackspace manages and maintains the Red Hat environment including the underlying Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Satellite and Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform so customers can focus on their business applications and not their infrastructure, the company said.

This solution will further accelerate the adoption of OpenStack by bringing its power to customers keen to consume private cloud delivered as a managed service,” said Radhesh Balakrishnan, general manager of OpenStack at Red Hat, who joined Hanson onstage to announce the expansion of the companies’ partnership. “Red Hat and Rackspace have a long history of working together to deliver leading technology solutions to customers, and we look forward to continuing to drive great outcomes for our customers through this extension of our relationship.”

As the 2015 Red Hat North American Cloud Partner of the Year with more than 170 Red Hat certifications and OpenStack operational expertise, Rackspace is uniquely positioned to deliver this service to customers.

“The primary barrier to OpenStack adoption is complexity; the No. 2 reason is there is a lack of available talent in the industry,” Hanson said at the Rackspace::Solve event. “We eliminate that fear that there’s not enough talent in the market, and we eliminate the complexities by delivering OpenStack as a service and backing it up with our industry-leading SLA.”

For his part, Balakrishnan noted that “Rackspace has established the reputation as being the experts as one of the founders of OpenStack.” OpenStack began in 2010 as a joint project between Rackspace Hosting and NASA. And regarding the gap in skills being an OpenStack adoption blocker, he noted, “If there is an organization to help you succeed with OpenStack, it’s Rackspace.”

Balakrishnan added that the Red Hat for OpenStack offering brings organizations instant production readiness. It delivers commercially hardened code, integration with the Red Hat stack, an enterprise life cycle, and support and services, and it taps into a global partner ecosystem, he said.

Meanwhile, in a blog post, Balakrishnan said: “TD Bank is currently working to implement Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform, and Graeme Peacock, vice president of engineering, TD Bank, says ‘Given the bifurcation that has happened with UNIX over the last twenty years, we wanted a product that was open rather than proprietary, provided real enterprise support and provided the best possible future proofing in a rapidly evolving environment. We chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform for that reason.'”

Moreover, Rackspace provides customers with additional benefits through a managed deployment of Red Hat-powered private clouds, including a certified deployment of Red Hat Linux OpenStack Platform that is enterprise hardened and supported by a broad partner ecosystem.

In addition, further along the lines of reduced complexity, customers have a single point of contact that will deploy, manage and maintain their Red Hat-powered private cloud at Rackspace. As an additional feature of Rackspace Private Cloud powered by Red Hat, customers have the flexibility of bringing their own Red Hat subscriptions to Rackspace, using Red Hat Cloud Access.

“We are consistently hearing feedback from enterprises that one of the primary barriers to OpenStack adoption continues to be the operational complexities around deployment,” said Gina Longoria, senior analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, in a statement. “With Rackspace expanding their offerings to provide a tested and managed deployment of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform, customers can take out a lot of the uncertainty of the do it yourself model and leverage the OpenStack as-a-service product portfolio at Rackspace. The company’s leadership within OpenStack and long standing operational experience in running OpenStack powered clouds will continue to help drive enterprise adoption.”

Rackspace Private Cloud powered by Red Hat is now generally available for customers globally.

“We will continue to offer our own upstream OpenStack powered private cloud, of course, but for companies who’ve built their stacks around a Red Hat partnership and are looking for an additional level of ongoing, expert support, Rackspace now has you covered,” Hanson said in his own blog post.

Originally published on eWeek.