Today is a big day for Rackspace® Hosting. We announced a new project that we believe will change the way the cloud is developed and it's called OpenStack™ – an open source cloud platform designed to foster the emergence of technology standards and cloud interoperability. In short, we will be opening code on our cloud infrastructure for public use.
The initial components being released through this project include the code that powers our Cloud Files (available today) and Cloud Servers (expected available late 2010). This project will also incorporate technology provided by other open-source projects. We expect to be joined by leaders in the technology industry and others to drive a deployable totally open cloud solution through this project.
Why are we doing this? Historically, most cloud offerings have been built on proprietary or closed platforms that create lock-in and make migration difficult. With OpenStack, any interested party – including our peers, Solution Partners and customers – will be able to collaborate with us to author, improve and expand OpenStack technologies.
What does this mean for our customers and Solution Partners?
- No fear of lock-in
- Flexibility in deployment for a highly elastic commodity cloud
- A bigger, more robust ecosystem for more tools, better capabilities and a stronger platform
- Freedom to decide how you want your cloud
OpenStack is an innovative, open-source cloud computing solution for creating, managing and deploying scalable elastic cloud services. Through the ongoing development of this project, we will be able to drive greater industry standards and help increase the speed of cloud innovation. As the leading specialist in the hosting industry, it is simply our responsibility.
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Meanwhile, in another official release, Rackspace also announced that the project will also incorporate technology that powers the NASA Nebula Cloud Platform. Rackspace and NASA plan to actively collaborate on joint technology development and leverage the efforts of open-source software developers worldwide.
“Modern scientific computation requires ever increasing storage and processing power delivered on-demand,” said Chris C. Kemp, NASA’s Chief Technology Officer for IT.
OpenStack will feature several cloud infrastructure components including a fully distributed object store based on Rackspace Cloud Files, available today at OpenStack.org. The next component planned for release is a scalable compute-provisioning engine based on the NASA Nebula cloud technology and Rackspace Cloud Servers technology. It is expected to be available later this year.
Using these components, organizations would be able to turn physical hardware into scalable and extensible cloud environments using the same code currently in production serving tens of thousands of customers and large government projects.
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