CloudStrategies Newsletter: Volume 2 Issue 2 - Mar. 2011

Private CloudStrategies: Replace Your Space With RackSpace

  • Get out of the Data Center business altogether!
  • Take Advantage of Available Expertise!
  • CloudStrategies helps you select the best private cloud solution

Last month in the CloudStrategies Newsletter we proudly announced that CloudStrategies had joined the RackSpace Partner Program as a Platinum Member. This month we focus in on exactly what that means to you as a CloudStrategies client!

Rackspace HostingThe World's Leading Specialist in the Hosting & Cloud Computing Industry

Quite a boastful claim, but we joined the program because we believe that RackSpace is indeed the world's leading resource for private cloud strategies!

Private cloud holds the promise of getting your company completely out of the data center business. It's not what you do for a living so why should you be investing so much time, effort, energy, and expense on it?

RackSpace offers a wide variety of flexible programs which gives us the latitude to finely tune your solution to suit your needs precisely. Do you have a wide variety of line-of-business applications that each need tender loving care? We can address that. Want to provide all of your people with the best possible secure access to all of your enterprise data assets wherever they may be? RackSpace has great solutions there too. This creates a tremendous "toolkit" that offers you a broad selection of highly powerful information management tools that are all hosted by RackSpace, eliminating the need for you to worry about their continued operation. That's the promise of private cloud!

Private Cloud strategies hold the promise of dramatically reducing your CapEx and OpEx spend this year while delivering much higher service levels with greater assurance of data integrity, security, compliance, and continuity of business. That's a powerful combination.

Explore your private cloud options with CloudStrategies and let us take you on a comprehensive tour of your best options. You'll know where and what the savings and advantages are before you take a single step. Be sure to review RackSpace's Tips for Evaluating Private Clouds and contact CloudStrategies today at 973.115.9321 or info@cloudstrategies.net.

Managed Hosting

The Rackspace Cloud

Rackspace Email & Apps

RackSpace Tips for Evaluating Private Clouds

  1. How Secure is Secure?
    First, define and identify what's mission-critical to you. If your data and apps have to be as secure as possible to meet compliance requirements or your own high standards, Private Clouds are ideal. The inherent security that comes with a dedicated, single-tenant environment is a pivotal reason to choose a private cloud. What's more, you can add additional security services like Intrusions Detection Systems and dedicated firewalls.
  2. The Speed and Size to Scale
    When it comes to on-demand and unlimited scaling, the Private Cloud has one limitation to consider. It's not major, but something you should look into. The number of VMs you can provision and deploy will be limited by the physical hardware running behind your Cloud. You can of course still add computing power by expanding your configuration. It just won't be as fast and seamless as a public cloud. So ask yourself how fast do you need to scale-instantly or fast?
  3. What to Run and Not Run on our Managed Private Cloud
    Basically, you can choose to run most anything you want on a Private Cloud. But you might not need or want to run everything, in all honesty. It might make more sense to run your databases on a traditional managed hosting configuration or use a CDN enabled cloud storage solution for your files or you can create a hybrid hosting solution that mixes and matches Private Cloud, public cloud and Managed Hosting to create a master solution that fits your requirements nicely. The point is you have options.
  4. Virtualization Expertise Not Needed
    If you want to take advantage of the benefits of a Private Cloud, but don't have the skills, time or desire to mess with provisioning VMs or managing the hypervisor, outsourced Private Clouds are generally the way to go. Just make sure the provider you choose actually supports the virtualization layer for you as well as the operating systems that reside on each VM.