Barton's Blog

OpenStack, the open source cloud platform based on code donated by NASA and Rackspace, has gained considerable traction since it was launched eight months ago.  The community has rapidly grown and there have been several releases.  Now its time to get potential customers trying it out and kicking the tires.

With the idea of removing friction to adoption and make the testing out of the platform as easy as possible, Dell, Equinix and Rackspace are announcing today the availability of a free OpenStack cloud demonstration and test environment.

The idea of the demo environment is to allow organizations to easily evaluate OpenStack and assess application performance on the platform in a low risk environment for free.  The next step after a successful demo would be a proof of concept.

Movin workloads around the country

This demo environment is initially available in three U.S. data centers and in Q2 of this year this offering will also be available in Equinix data centers in Europe and Asia.  The initial data centers are:

• Equinix Silicon Valley
• Equinix Asburn, VA
• Rackspace Chicago

By having geographically dispersed facilities customers are able to test out the moving of applications and workloads between them.

The various parts

The OpenStack demo environment is made up of the following components

• OpenStack cloud operating system
• Services and support from Rackspace Cloud Builders
• Cloud optimized Dell PowerEdge C systems
• Platform Equinix, a global delivery platform of 92 network neutral data centers in 35 metro markets

Widening the circle

The name of the game here is making the trying out of OpenStack as easy as possible.  There are a lot of community members and open source aficionados who are already testing out OpenStack.  The idea with OpenStack cloud demonstration environment is to provide a set up where a greater number of organizations feel comfortable evaluating the platform for themselves.

Try it, you just might like it 🙂

Extra-credit reading

• OpenStack Installer Demo at SXSW

• OpenStack heads into Interstellar Overdrive

Updated reading

• Dell, Rackspace, and Equinix float free OpenStack test cloud – The Register

• OpenStack Continues The Quest To Be “The Cloud Standard” – NetworkWorld

• Three Vendors Team Up To Launch OpenStack Demos – Application Development Trends

• OpenStack Demos at Equinix Will Traverse Clouds – Data Center Knowledge

• OpenStack Continues The Quest To Be “The Cloud Standard” – Network World

• Equinix, Dell, Rackspace Partner to Build OpenStack Cloud Demo Environments – The WHIR

Pau for now…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 30th, 2011 at 6:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.