Rackspace to Offer Managed Private VMware vCloud

Rackspace has added dedicated VMware vCloud to its portfolio of managed services. The managed cloud service essentially offloads day-to-day tasks like backing up VMs and applying patches to the operating system from IT staff’s plate, so they can “focus on higher-value projects,” Arrian Mehis, general manager of VMware Practice at Rackspace, wrote in a blog post Wednesday.

“As we saw throughout 2014, IT budgets and headcount remained flat; however, businesses still expected central IT to help drive growth and innovation,” Mehis wrote.

In a market where cloud infrastructure capacity is a commodity that’s rapidly shrinking in cost, Rackspace has chosen to differentiate by providing a wide variety of highly hands-on managed cloud services. Last November, the company announced managed Microsoft private clouds. Earlier last year, Rackspace expanded its managed services portfolio extensively and introduced pay-as-you-go billing for manage services.

According to Wednesday’s announcement, Rackspace will provide a hosted, single-tenant vCloud environment, including automation, self-service capabilities, hosted catalogs, access to vCloud API and vCLoud web portal, plus the company’s 100 percent network uptime and one-hour hardware replacement guarantees. The hardware hosting each private cloud will be completely isolated, from firewall to storage.

The vCloud API (application programming interface) will enable a customer to integrate third-part orchestration tools and policy-based governance.

Customers with existing vCloud environments hosted in-house will be able to extend them into Rackspace’s data centers.

Rackspace has been providing managed VMware vCenter services previously.