Cloud Block Storage, Open Source, OpenStack, Rackspace, Rackspace Cloud, Rackspace Cloud Block Storage, Solid-state drive, Standards, Storage

Rackspace Launches High Performance OpenStack Cloud Block Storage

Today, Rackspace Hosting announced the unlimited availability of Cloud Block Storage, powered by OpenStack®. This solution provides a superior approach to attached storage in the Cloud by addressing customer demand for consistent and affordable performance for file systems, databases and other input/output (I/O) intensive applications. Rackspace Cloud Block Storage offers a standard volume option for everyday storage with performance that has been tested to be at least 30 percent less variable than that of alternatives1. The new product’s Solid State Drive (SSD) volume option has also been tested to deliver even higher performance, 5x to 6x faster than competing solutions1. Both options feature a transparent, flat pricing structure with no charge for I/O, and are now available for Cloud Servers powered by OpenStack.

“The Rackspace Cloud Block Storage solution is a crucial piece of our product portfolio,” said John Engates, CTO of Rackspace. “The explosion of data over the past few years has placed greater demands on our customers, presenting them with a variety of new storage related challenges. We developed Cloud Block Storage to deliver consistent performance in the cloud, with a very simple pricing model that gives customers the flexibility they require to meet their unique business needs.”

With Rackspace Cloud Block Storage, customers get:

A Full-Featured Attachable Storage Solution

  • Attach multiple volumes of up to 1 Terabyte each of block storage to
    Cloud Servers
  • Detach and re-attach storage between compute nodes in seconds
  • Choice of Standard Performance or SSD-based High-Performance storage

Enhanced Performance

  • SSD-based solution is more than 10 times faster than Standard drive
    performance1.
  • Rackspace’s Cloud Block Storage Standard drive delivers consistent
    performance with less variability than standard drive solutions
    offered by leading competitors1.
  • High performance can be achieved without the need to RAID0 (stripe)
    volumes together, providing significant savings in cost and complexity.
  • There is no cap on I/O and users do not have to specify IOPS numbers,
    as they do with competing solutions.

A Simple Pricing Model

  • Standard – $0.15 per gigabyte per month; SSD – $0.70 per gigabyte per
    month
  • $.10 per gigabyte per month for snapshot data stored
  • Competitive pricing structure also features I/O at no additional
    charge, no additional per-instance fee, no minimum instance size, and
    consistent pricing in all U.S. regions

No Vendor Lock-In

  • Using the OpenStack Cinder APIs will allow customers to avoid
    proprietary implementation
    Rackspace Cloud Block Storage

Standard volumes are aimed at customers that typically require large amounts of everyday storage. These customers can leverage the product for a broad range of applications, including those that require standard performance or those needing to scale storage without scaling compute nodes. In addition, the product provides dependable storage for archiving solutions, companies that access large quantities of large files, and small to medium size websites.

Rackspace Cloud Block Storage SSD volumes are ideally suited for customers that require even higher levels of performance than what is normally experienced with standard drives. With a faster and more reliable SSD-based storage solution, customers can be better equipped to use applications that are crucial to their business, such as self-managed MySQL databases, MongoDB, Cassandra, and Web caching and indexing, among others.

“Based on our internal benchmarks, we’ve been impressed with the ability of Rackspace Cloud Block Storage to steadily perform at a high level,” said Greg Arnette, CTO at Sonian Inc. “For our customers, the capacity to effectively archive large amounts of email data is critical to their business. As a result, we look for storage solutions that give us maximum agility, scalability and enterprise readiness. We are excited that Rackspace is now providing a new block storage alternative service for running our large scale email archiving deployments.”

Cloud Block Storage joins Cloud Databases as a key solution in Rackspace’s expanding portfolio of storage products. Rackspace Cloud Block Storage is now available in the U.S. and UK. For more information, visit http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/public/blockstorage/

1 The data provided results from performance benchmarking tests that were commissioned by Rackspace. More information is available at: http://www.rackspace.com/blog/cloud-block-storage/.


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Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Secure Cloud and Network Unification

While the cloud provides businesses with a more secure IT investment, many don’t realize the data-protection risks of public networks until it’s too late. As a result, CIOs and business owners are kept up at night worrying about the security of their mission-critical data, not realizing that a private, secure intersection of network and cloud services can provide a cost-efficient elixir to help them sleep easier.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Christopher K. Ortbals, Cbeyond’s Vice President, Cloud Services, will outline how businesses can successfully connect cloud services to a secure network and realize a “better night’s sleep” thanks to unparalleled performance, cost improvement, and, most importantly, data protection and reliability.

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Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: The SDN (R)evolution

Software-Defined Networking has the potential to revolutionize the networking world.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Scott Sneddon is Chief Solutions Architect at Vyatta, will discuss the SDN and network virtualization landscape and how this new technology can enable a whole new way of operating your network. He will also discuss a pragmatic and evolutionary approach to adopting SDN technologies in your environment.
Scott Sneddon is Chief Solutions Architect at Vyatta.

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IDC supports EU stance on cloud computing

The International Data Center (IDC) has come out in support of the European Union’s stance on cloud computing in a new report from the analyst house – albeit one published on the EU’s behalf.

Back in September, EU digital agenda vice president Neelie Kroes set out her strategy to make the EU the ‘e-EU’ in a report entitled “Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe”, which summarised that the cloud could provide a €160bn injection to the European GDP by 2020, and a net gain of 2.5m jobs. 

But the IDC, in their analysis, goes a step further. In a study conducted by IDC on behalf of the EU, removing the barriers to cloud adoption through sustainable policy would bring up to €250bn GDP growth by the end of the decade.

The IDC model is straightforward enough. If the EU doesn’t intervene and introduce relevant policies …

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Cloud: I Like Renting a Piece of Cyberspace

I read a story by one respected writer who said that “cloud computing” will equal “computing” within five years. A day later, I saw a story by another respected writer who said that cloudwashing and a lack of standards means that most enterprises don’t yet even had a cloud-computing strategy, let alone deployment.

These statements can’t both be true; I think neither of them are.

Then there’s a recent survey commissioned by Citrix in which 51% of respondents in the US thought that bad weather could disrupt cloud computing. I suppose that’s literally true, if a bad storm keeps people from coming to work.

More hopeful – and more accurate, I think – are survey results released from The Future of Cloud, a group backed by venture capitalist Michael Skok, which find that 82% of enteprises are using SaaS and 75% say they’ll be building apps via PaaS within five years.

That software-as-a-service number may still be driven by a lot of email and/or collaboration rather than more complex application, but it shows that enterprise IT managers are savvy about cloud computing, or at least think they’re savvy in using the term.

The perceived lack of standards comes from the VMware vs. The World competition, with the separate open-source stacks competition within that. I don’t see this as an impediment, as there’s been a lack of standards – aka competing platforms – in this industry since its inception. The ostensible concern is a concern about vendor lock-in, and the lack of interoperability among the cloud stacks.

Pro tip: said interoperability will never happen, and concern about this is just a stalling tactic. Cloud computing is still new and most enterprise shops will proceed cautiously, if not show outright defiance against it.

The cloudwashing issue doesn’t bother me as much as it does some people, although I know I would be terribly annoyed by it if I worked for a company that smashes into Oracle and other big-iron vendors every day. I will be proven wrong on this if, ultimately, innovation is killed off by old wine in new bottles.

I also saw a tweet the other day by someone who questioned how many cloud analysts/pundits/etc. have fired up cloud instances on their own. I have.

I’m involved in a few projects in which cloud is present, one as a simple thin-client user, one instance (so to speak) of PaaS, and two others where we’re working to stage our stuff via IaaS. It’s damned difficult work, but something that simply wasn’t possible a few years ago. I like renting pieces of cyberspace rather than scrounging for the capital to buy it.

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Internet Protocol Address Management, Internet Technology, IP address, Networking

6Connect Launches Cloud-Based Network Automation Suite for Next-Gen IP Networks

6connect, Inc. today announced at Interop in New York City, their new automated, cloud control suite architected from the ground-up for a new era of IPv6 migration, rampant device and IP address proliferation, and widespread adoption of virtualization and cloud computing.

Delivered locally or through the cloud, the 6connect ProVision™ Suite offers Service Providers and Enterprises a future-ready, unified SaaS platform for provisioning and managing networks in today’s integrated IPv4 and IPv6 world. ProVision provides dramatic time and cost efficiencies over old spreadsheet-dependent and costly appliance solutions for IPAM, DNS, DHCP and asset management. The Service Provider Edition also incorporates peering management and SWIP automation.

“With the number of connected devices and virtual machines growing exponentially and regional internet registries for Europe and Asia already out of IPv4 space, network architectures are undergoing fundamental change,” said Bill Bien, CEO of 6connect.  “Legacy DDI and automation solutions are no longer efficient. We’ve designed ProVision as a disruptive, next-generation platform for automated management control of complex IP address zones, virtual machines, mobile devices, and all types of corporate assets.”

The ProVision Suite comes with RESTful APIs that integrate through connector apps with existing business software, such as CRM, ERP and BPM.  It provides easy access to portals and templates that provide better control and faster access to fully automated tools.

6connect’s cloud-based provisioning software is already used by leading service providers and enterprises around the world. With the launch of ProVision, 6connect now provides a single, integrated and vendor neutral platform for network discovery, planning, provisioning and management of IP resources and devices.

“6connect has helped us become much more efficient,” said Alex Latzko, Senior Architect, Lightower Fiber Networks. “We no longer use multiple incompatible systems, it’s unified now.”

With the Internet running out of IPv4 space, service providers and enterprise network operators need to manage the remaining inventory more closely than ever before, while they migrate to IPv6. 6connect makes managing these changes easy, scalable, and secure. With ProVision Suite, RIR (regional internet registry) and LIR (local internet registry) resource allocations are also integrated with the platform.


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Making the Move to the Cloud: Best Practices and Advice

CIOs face bigger IT challenges today than they did just 5 years ago as tightening regulations and shrinking budgets up the ante. Compounding the pressure, data is exploding in size and diversity, business is more mobile, and social media is pervasive. For these reasons, some organizations are opting for cloud computing to reduce risk, streamline information management, and rein in costs.
Answering the questions on every CIO’s mind, “Best Practices for Cloud-Based Information Governance” explores the latest ideas on evaluating cloud deployment: public or private clouds, data location and privacy, data ownership and access, and cloud technology ownership, to name a few.

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Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Utilizing Cloud to Stay Focused on What Matters

Both small startups and large organizations have the same choice to make: focus on what is important or spend time toiling with the ancillary details. No matter the size of your team, you still have to solve the same problems: code, testing, infrastructure, monitoring, availability and performance. But the time has never been better than now to let someone else solve those problems while you focus on what’s most important to your business, your customers.
More and more companies are embracing SaaS, PaaS and IaaS solutions for their toolchains; they are cloudifying their business. The quality and availability of these solutions has come to a point where you can rely on them within your production systems, allowing you to keep your internal resources focused on your business.

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MaaS – The Solution to Design, Map, Integrate and Publish Open Data

Open Data is data that can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone – subject only, at the most, to the requirement for attributes and sharealikes (Open Software Service Definition – OSSD). As a consequence, Open Data should create value and might have a positive impact in many different areas such as government (tax money expenditure), health (medical research, hospital acceptance by pathology), quality of life (air breathed in our city, pollution) or might influence public decisions like investments, public economy and expenditure. We are talking about services, so open data are services needed to connect the community with the public bodies. However, the required open data should be part of a design and then integrated, mapped, updated and published in a form, which is easy to use. MaaS is the Open Data driver and enables Open Data portability into the Cloud.

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The cloud news categorized.