Rackspace launches OpenStack portfolio

Rackspace has officially launched cloud services---Cloud Databases and Cloud Servers---powered by OpenStack, its open source platform.

As a result, new cloud customers to Rackspace will be operating under OpenStack. Current cloud customers will migrate to OpenStack under their own timelines.

With the move, Rackspace is among the largest deployments of OpenStack. Rackspace is offering public, private and hybrid cloud deployments.

Related: Rackspace's great OpenStack experiment nears lift-off | Rackspace: OpenStack could be the Linux of the cloud

The OpenStack Rackspace portfolio includes Cloud Servers, Databases, Cloud Files object storage and Cloud Sites, a platform as a service for .Net, PHP and monitoring.

For its part, Rackspace said that its OpenStack application programming interfaces (APIs) work 25 times faster for server create requests. John Engates, CTO of Rackspace, said that the biggest difference customers will see is the APIs. "The transition is designed to be very seamless," said Engates.

Engates added that Rackspace will publish migration timelines for customers "in the next couple of months." Rackspace will also create a tool to move the migration process forward. "There are no dates targeted for customers to move over," said Engates. "There is no real urgency. We want customers to make the transition at any pace that makes sense."

SOASTA and ScaleXtreme are reference customers for OpenStack.

As for Cloud Databases, Rackspace is touting the MySQL service as a faster alternative to Amazon. A new Control Panel tags servers, databases and Web sites, filters, searches and offers real-time data on infrastructure performance.