OpenStack Everywhere Just Got Even Better

jasonbarnhill

OpenStack Everywhere Just Got Even Better

While private cloud as a service has become the preferred consumption model, many organizations still need their infrastructure, applications and data to reside in their own data center, to meet security, regulatory compliance and data sovereignty requirements.

In response to this need, Rackspace introduced OpenStack Everywhere, enabling customers to consume private clouds, as a service, in any data center. OpenStack Everywhere is deployed on Rackspace-managed infrastructure, freeing customers from managing their own infrastructure without compromising the location of their cloud.

Since launching last year, we’ve made improvements based upon customer feedback, including:

  • reducing the starting price by 40 percent and
  • simplifying the process for customers to scale their clouds.

Our original OpenStack Everywhere designs were targeted at larger private clouds, which required multiple cabinets of servers and devices. New designs start at a single cabinet, enabling customers to use OpenStack Everywhere to deploy smaller footprint private clouds at lower prices. And by optimizing the compute nodes, we’ve reduced the ‘per VM’ cost by 20 percent.

We’ve simplified OpenStack Everywhere by streamlining the design and deployment process and making it easier for customers to get started. All new OpenStack Everywhere deployments use the same anchor cabinet, which has the networking, storage, compute and control plane needed to get the private cloud up and running quickly. From there, four expansion cabinet options allow you to easily grow your private cloud.

Why private cloud as a service?

Moving to the cloud is complex, and the process is littered with critical decisions that each organization must make. How do I successfully move workloads to the cloud? Do I need to re-architect legacy applications? Do I have the right skill sets on my team to ensure a successful cloud adoption? And perhaps the most important decision of them all: Who will operate my cloud?

Before the cloud era, many CIOs and IT organizations opted to manage their own infrastructure. But these days, this approach is no longer the preferred method.

Operating a private cloud is much more complex than operating traditional infrastructure, and most organizations no longer view managing their own infrastructure as strategic to their business. They want to consume private cloud as a service, freeing them from the challenges and complexities of operating a cloud and enabling them to focus on their core business.

At Rackspace, we pioneered this delivery model, after creating OpenStack with NASA in 2010. It is now becoming the standard across the industry, as evidenced by the recent launch of the Remotely Managed Private Cloud category within the OpenStack Marketplace.

Having Rackspace manage your private cloud does more than just conserve the resources of your in-house IT team, allowing them to focus on ways to differentiate your business. According to a recent study, customers who choose Rackspace to manage their cloud, save an average of $258,000 (per 20 servers) in internal operating costs annually.

The savings of time, money and scarce IT resources are the major reasons why more than half of the Fortune 100 uses OpenStack — and a growing number of those choose Rackspace to manage their private clouds.

At the OpenStack Summit Boston earlier this month, Patrick Weeks, senior director of digital operations at GE, described why one of the largest and most innovative companies in the world is consuming private cloud as a service from Rackspace.

Watch Weeks’ keynote to learn GE’s story and find out why one architect at GE Healthcare said of Rackspace’s OpenStack private cloud, “This platform must be made of awesome.”

Free strategy session

Rackspace has successfully scaled OpenStack to thousands of nodes and operate private clouds for some of the largest companies in the world. To learn more and ask questions about whether private cloud as a service might be a good fit for your organization, take advantage of a free strategy session with a private cloud expert  — no strings attached. SIGN UP NOW.