Internap advances OpenStack performance and flexibility

Internap has introduced two key initiatives that extend the capabilities of its OpenStack-based cloud services portfolio. A new bare-metal service on the OpenStack platform provides a high-performance IaaS option for devops teams to deploy mission-critical applications and big-data workloads on OpenStack. Additionally, OpenStack interoperability and identity federation will allow customers to move workloads securely and seamlessly across public and private clouds. These two initiatives are designed to help enterprises and devops teams deploy and manage cloud-native and enterprise applications in a hybrid environment.

“We’re committed to enabling easy adoption of OpenStack for public and private clouds. With Internap’s new bare-metal servers on OpenStack, customers running data-intensive applications and workloads benefit from increased choice in deploying applications on virtual or dedicated server instances to meet their performance needs,” said Satish Hemachandran, senior vice president and general manager, cloud and hosting, at Internap. “Our OpenStack interoperability certification and the identity federation development will deliver on our vision of a seamless customer experience based on open standards.”

“Our players have come to enjoy, and now expect, a near real-life experience regardless of their location or device,” said Jose Avila, vice president of engineering at CrowdStar. “With Internap’s OpenStack-based bare-metal instances, we can provide our users a richer and more responsive gaming experience, while maintaining the infrastructure flexibility and openness that we’ve come to rely on from OpenStack.”

Expanded OpenStack Hybridization Options with Bare-Metal Beta Release

Internap is now offering its bare-metal AgileSERVERs on OpenStack, delivering enhanced speed and reliability for applications that require the highest levels of performance consistency. In this initial release, customers can instantly provision and manage bare-metal instances, choosing from a range of server options that can be hybridized with Internap’s AgileCLOUD public cloud instances through the OpenStack Horizon management dashboard. The release features additional networking capabilities like IPMI, NIC bonding and up to 10 VLANs per environment, allowing customers to more efficiently deploy and support complex server and OS clustering use cases without needing to use more expensive hardware solutions.

“The true power of the OpenStack ecosystem is realized through the broad support of our community partners in leveraging the platform’s flexibility to offer developers increased choice in building their applications,” said Jonathan Bryce, executive director at the OpenStack Foundation. “Internap is a longtime leader in the OpenStack community. Their work in bare-metal provisioning provides a hosted alternative for businesses looking for options beyond VMs.”

Internap’s OpenStack-based AgileSERVERs are being offered out of Montreal, Canada, and are available immediately to new and existing customers who register for the beta program. To sign up, visit http://www.internap.com/agileserverbeta. A sponsor of the OpenStack Summit, taking place May 18-22 in Vancouver, Internap will showcase its bare-metal AgileSERVERs and AgileCLOUD public cloud in booth T51.

Advanced Interoperability through Identity Federation and DefCore Standards

As early OpenStack adopters, Internap and its subsidiary, iWeb, have amassed deep development expertise and made significant contributions to the community. Developers from the combined company are among the top 40 contributors to the OpenStack code base with more than 400 commits to date. Continuing its commitment to enhancing hybridization and interoperability capabilities based on OpenStack, Internap today announced that it will take full advantage of OpenStack’s Kilo release and corresponding federated identity enhancements in 2015. Federated identity in Kilo broadens hybrid and multi-cloud use case opportunities for customers, enabling workload portability by using the same identification data to access public and private OpenStack-powered clouds from different providers in the ecosystem.

Internap also completed the OpenStack Foundation’s new set of interoperability tests for products branded as “OpenStack-powered.” AgileCLOUD met or exceeded the standards outlined by the OpenStack DefCore committee to ensure interoperability among OpenStack clouds. The latest product validation criteria, which includes “must-pass” API tests and designated sections of code, provides customers with the assurance that products are running a common set of core services and will deliver a consistent, reliable platform for their applications.