Rackspace, known for its OpenStack-based Public Cloud IaaS service, is now offering a productized version of the software behind that service publicly as a free download, with no licensing, writes Wikibon Analyst Stuart Miniman. Customers can either have Rackspace run the solution for about the same cost as normal software licensing or can run their private clouds themselves and pay Rackspace nothing. Rackspace support is all remote, delivered over the Internet, and the customer is responsible for the hardware. However, the Rackspace cloud is designed to work around component failures, simplifying operations hugely.

The private cloud is built on the KVM hypervisor on top of Ubuntu, rather than on VMware. Rackspace has built a reference architecture partner program including NetApp, EMC storage, and Brocade and Arista switches. However, it has also built prototype Open Compute servers and can help customers adopt OpenStack Cinder for storage, and it points customers towards the kind of commodity hardware that Yahoo, Google, Facebook, etc., use.

The Rackspace Private Cloud, writes Miniman, gives organizations a path for rapid transformation of operations with flexibility concerning the underlying hardware. This can save a great deal of money on operations by eliminating the need to constantly adjust and optimize infrastructure. That can shift the 80:20 ratio of budget devoted to operations vs money to support new business ventures.

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