Rackspace has announced the unlimited availability of cloud databases and cloud servers powered by OpenStack, along with a powerful and streamlined new control panel.
These solutions further expand Rackspace’s broad cloud hosting portfolio, used today by more than 180,000 customers worldwide.
These products mark the first time a company deployed a large-scale, open source public cloud powered by OpenStack. Customers can now select from private, public or hybrid offerings and have the flexibility to deploy their solutions in a Rackspace data center or another data center of their choice.
Rackspace’s open cloud products also give application developers and IT organizations in businesses large and small the ability to build, test and deploy applications in the cloud for the first time without being locked-in.
The new Cloud Servers powered by OpenStack deliver increased efficiency, scalability and agility to customers, who can launch as many as 200 reliable cloud servers in 20 minutes.
Rackspace recently announced a celebration of the second anniversary of the OpenStack open-source cloud computing platform for building public or private clouds, according to an article on eWEEK.com.
Archivo mensual: Agosto 2012
Coalfire Opens VMware Compliance Lab
Coalfire Systems, Inc. today announced that it has established the VMware Compliance Lab, a center of excellence and that designs, tests and promotes IT security best practices and audit guidelines for virtualized computing environments.
The VMware Compliance Lab, housed in Coalfire’s Seattle office, provides partners and end users with the information and tools they need to expedite the audit process and ensure compliance with major IT security standards, including PCI DSS, HIPAA/HITECH, GLBA, FISMA and FedRAMP. As a fully-independent IT Governance, Risk an Compliance firm, Coalfire gathers reference architecture and controls data from VMware, tests those controls in both the lab and the field, and issues guidance documents that security professionals can use to manage risk and compliance. In addition to VMware products, the Lab also houses and tests controls information from other products built on the VMware reference architecture, including solutions from EMC, RSA, HP, Symantec, McAfee and LogRhythm.
“Coalfire is partnering with VMware and other industry leaders to promote security and compliance in virtualized environments,” said Rick Dakin, CEO, co-founder and senior strategist at Coalfire. “Our lab provides a clearinghouse of un-biased, tested and proven best practices, and as those best practices are adopted in the field, end users will be able to streamline and risk and compliance efforts.”
”Coalfire’s thought leadership and IT audit expertise enables our partners and customers to confidently virtualize highly regulated workloads and meet their regulatory requirements. The guidance provided by Coalfire coupled with VMware’s proven leadership and ecosystem enables enterprises to use their virtualization investment as they move business critical applications to the cloud,” said Parag Patel, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances.
The Era of Open Clouds Is Upon Us
Last year, cloud computing pundits predicted that 2012 would be the year when the clouds would open. They were right as cloud computing enthusiasts all over are embracing the open ecosystem; however, denying one vendor the right to serve as the de facto API is only the tip of the iceberg of this computing climate change. In his Day Two Keynote at Cloud Expo New York, Rackspace Chief Technology Officer John Engates discussed the open ecosystem and how, ultimately, winning cloud technologies will be based on the ecosystem they represent.
John Engates is CTO of Rackspace. He joined the company in August 2000, just a year after it was founded, as VP of Operations, managing the datacenter operations and customer-service teams. Two years later, when Rackspace decided to add new services for larger enterprise customers, he created and helped develop the Intensive Hosting business unit.
SOA and the Cloud: Why Your Cloud Applications Need SOA
Some consider cloud computing to be a cure-all for virtually any type of IT infrastructure. And while the cloud certainly delivers on many of its promises, it will never truly provide all that it’s capable of unless it’s optimized for integration with other applications and evolution for new requirements. What is the best way to provide this? Use a services-oriented architecture (SOA) as the fabric upon which to build your cloud-based applications. In this article, we’ll outline the reasons why an SOA is so important for the cloud, some principles to consider when creating your cloud platform on an SOA.
Nirvanix and TwinStrata Introduce Cloud Storage Starter Kit
“This Nirvanix-TwinStrata pre-packed solution gives enterprises everything they need at a simple, flat annual rate, making cloud storage for businesses more convenient than ever,” said Nicos Vekiarides, CEO of TwinStrata, as Nirvanix and TwinStrata today announced the availability of a pre-tested, fully integrated cloud storage starter kit that combines 50TB of Nirvanix cloud storage with TwinStrata’s enterprise-class CloudArray to provide a complete solution for a single annual rate of $48K all-inclusive.
CloudBerry Explorer Adds Support for Cloudian
CloudBerry Lab today released CloudBerry Explorer, an application that allows users to manage files in Amazon S3 storage buckets just as they would on their local computers. This new version offers support for Gemini Technologies’ industry-leading Cloudian Cloud storage solution.
Cloudian is an S3 API compliant, multi-tenant, multi-datacenter cloud storage platform that enables cloud service providers and enterprises to cost-effectively deploy extremely scalable and reliable object storage services within public and private clouds. The Cloudian platform leverages commodity servers and offers a fully distributed, peer-to-peer architecture, with no single point of failure. The solution easily scales from one node up to hundreds of nodes across multiple data centers, supporting petabytes of data. Cloudian also provides a comprehensive user interface for both end user applications as well as administrative functions, including billing, monitoring and provisioning.
CloudBerry Explorer allows end users to accomplish simple tasks without special technical knowledge, automate time-consuming tasks to improve productivity. The new version of CloudBerry Explorer helps users manage Cloudian storage just as they manage Amazon S3. Users can upload files to Cloudian, create buckets and folders and perform other management tasks simply and efficiently.
“Our Cloudian solution is all about accessibility, scalability and affordability, while offering unmatched performance and security,” said Giorgio Propersi, General Manager, Gemini Technologies. “CloudBerry Explorer is a great tool which reflects the same principles and goals as Cloudian. We are pleased to see it help even more customers adopt our leading cloud storage platform.”
CloudBerry Explorer is designed to work on Windows 2003/XP/Vista/2008 and Windows 7. Microsoft PowerShell command line interface allows advanced computer users integrate Amazon S3 storage access with other routines.
“Cloudian is one of the most powerful and accessible storage solutions on the market today,” said Aleksey Serkov, CTO, CloudBerry Lab. “We are pleased to meet growing customer demand by helping companies of all sizes adopt and manage Cloudian regardless of their technical expertise level.”
CloudBerry Explorer for Windows is a freeware. CloudBerry Explorer PRO costs $39.99 (US).
Cloud Computing: The Next Generation of Computing & Sustainable IT
NIST defines cloud computing as a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. My own definition is slightly to the point, I consider cloud computing as Information Technology as a Utility Service. To be clear, I find Cloud Computing no different than Managed Services. It doesn’t matter if you utilize software as a service, platform as a service, or infrastructure as a service, the idea is to treat IT as a utility service to save overall costs.
Mission-Critical Applications in the Cloud – Myth or Reality?
In his Opening Keynote at Cloud Expo, Henry Fastert, SHI’s Chief Technologist and Managing Partner, shares insight on how the latest generation of cloud computing is now capable of addressing the needs of the enterprise mission critical applications. These mission-critical applications require computing infrastructure that is secure, optimizes performance, and is highly resilient. The purpose of the keynote is to highlight how the latest cloud computing designs have evolved in terms of security, availability, and overall service quality to meet the needs of mission critical applications.
VMware, Intel, and NEC All to Join OpenStack
At its first full Board of Directors meeting, due to be held Tuesday August 28th, The OpenStack Foundation will be considering among other things applications from VMware, Intel, and NEC to become Gold Members of the foundation. They would be joining prior Gold Members like Cisco, Dell, NetApp and Yahoo! The Foundation already numbers AT&T, Canonical, HP, Rackspace, IBM, Nebula, Red Hat, and SUSE as its Platinum members.
Private Cloud 2.0: CMAP – The “SaaS Stack” for the Enterprise
A critical component of a Private Cloud 2.0 architecture is what Techcello call a ‘CMAP’ – A Cloud-ready Multi-tenant Application Platform.
In the same fashion that Private Cloud internalizes the IaaS model, so this can also be repeated for both the PaaS and SaaS layers too.
Indeed with virtualization well established it’s more so these areas where the enterprise will find the new opportunity growth areas for expanding IT productivity and ROI.