Rackspace Launches First Kubernetes Private Cloud

Internet services provider expands its Private Cloud-as-a-Service portfolio to add container-related services for both private and multi-cloud deployments. Rackspace isn't afraid to make up its own new enterprise cloud markets. On June 20 at the HPE Discover conference in Las Vegas, the internet services provider revealed that it has expanded its private cloud-as-a-service portfolio in collaboration with Hewlett Packard Enterprise to launch Rackspace Kubernetes-as-a-Service (RKaaS). This will include a pay-per-use infrastructure in a private cloud environment, which the company described as “an industry first.” At the same time, Rackspace announced a similar deal with HPE to launch a Private Cloud-as-a-Service (PCaaS) powered by VMware, also using pay-per-use infrastructure. The San Antonio-based company said that with both offerings, enterprises can deploy services for its elastic infrastructure and simplified IT in a private cloud environment located in their own data center, a colocation facility or a data center managed by Rackspace. Kubernetes Orchestration as a Cloud Service Kubernetes is an open-source project that provides container orchestration, deployment and management capabilities. While Kubernetes started off as a Google project and Google still contributes more code than anyone, it has been a multi-stakeholder effort run by the Linux Foundation's Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) since July 2015. Kubernetes' roots go back to 2014, when Google publicly released the open source code for the project. But it was 2017 when Kubernetes' popularity took off, with nearly every major IT vendor now backing the platform, even onetime rivals, such as Docker. Rackspace has been focused in recent months on creating a portfolio of Private Cloud-as-a-Service (PCaaS) solutions designed to relieve IT teams of their operational burden, the company said.