Dell Unveils Industry’s First OpenStack Infrastructure-as-a-Service Cloud Solution

To further advance the adoption of open source Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Dell today announced the first available cloud solution offering based on the OpenStack platform—the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution. Customers seeking alternatives to existing cloud options based on proprietary, licensed software models can now utilize the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution, which integrates the OpenStack cloud operating system, cloud-optimized Dell PowerEdge C servers, the Dell-developed “Crowbar” OpenStack installer, and services from Dell and Rackspace Cloud Builders.

The Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution comes with a reference architecture designed to help customers quickly integrate, deploy and manage their IT resources in an OpenStack environment. Tested, validated, and supported by Dell, the reference architecture is based on Dell PowerEdge C Series servers, which c capture the efficiencies and design lessons learned from some of the world’s largest hosting and cloud providers, while being engineered to maximize revenue per-square foot within the data center .

This solution also incorporates Dell’s popular Crowbar software framework, which manages the OpenStack deployment from the initial server boot to the configuration of the primary OpenStack components, allowing users to complete bare metal deployment of multi-node OpenStack clouds in a matter of hours, as opposed to days. Once the initial deployment is complete, Crowbar can be used to maintain, expand, and architect the complete solution, including BIOS configuration, network discovery, status monitoring, performance data gathering, and alerting. Dell has released Crowbar to the community as open source code to enable users to build functionality to address their specific system needs, and is working with the community to submit Crowbar as a core project in the OpenStack initiative.

Dell has been part of the OpenStack community since its creation, and has worked closely with a number of key OpenStack partners, including Rackspace, Citrix, Opscode, Canonical, Intel, and others. Dell is also one of the industry’s most experienced partners to top global cloud services providers, including Facebook and Microsoft Windows Azure. This expertise in servers, software, and services is the underpinning of the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution, which utilizes the current OpenStack release, Cactus. With support for the two top public compute cloud application programming interfaces from Amazon and Rackspace, as well as extensive support for all of the major virtualization technologies from Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware, OpenStack and the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution provide all the components necessary to deliver a comprehensive cloud offering.

“In order to efficiently serve over 300,000 customers, DreamHost has built intelligent service automation into all our web hosting solutions,” said Simon Anderson, CEO of DreamHost. “As we expand into cloud services based on Ceph, the open source distributed storage system sponsored by DreamHost, we’ve chosen Dell’s PowerEdge C servers, OpenStack and Crowbar open source service provisioning software to enable a dramatic improvement in operational efficiencies at scale. These unique advantages, powered in part by Dell, give DreamHost the ability to pursue disruptive business models and stay true to our vision to democratize the delivery of data and compute intensive web services.”

“Service providers and enterprises wanting to build highly scalable, flexible cloud infrastructure can now deploy OpenStack-based clouds more quickly and confidently with the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution and services from Rackspace Cloud Builders,” said Jim Curry, GM, Rackspace Cloud Builders. “Backed by the OpenStack experts at Dell and Rackspace, organizations will have access to tested reference architectures and ongoing support to optimize their OpenStack cloud environments.”

“Citrix is a founding member of the OpenStack initiative and has been one of the largest contributors to the project to date. OpenStack has seen tremendous momentum in the last year as the demand from organizations looking to build open, elastic, scale-out infrastructures have dramatically increased,” said Sameer Dholakia, Group VP and GM, Cloud Platforms Group, Citrix. “With this announcement, Dell is building on that momentum by delivering solutions and services that make it easier to deploy an OpenStack-based cloud environment. We will continue to collaborate with Dell and Rackspace on OpenStack to create innovative new offerings that help organizations make the transition to the cloud.”

“Dell is an active participant in the OpenStack community because it brings our customers open APIs, capable practices for cloud operations, and affordable infrastructure. Utilizing and integrating the efficiencies of the PowerEdge C line with optimized software, and tailored services, the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution enables users to go from unboxing servers to running a usable OpenStack cloud in mere hours,” said Mark Linebaugh, vice president, Next Generation Computing Solutions, Dell. “The ability to quickly develop, deploy, and deliver open source cloud services can translate not only to lower costs, but also the flexibility to rapidly add new features and meet customer needs on demand.”

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