NewsOutsourcingInfrastructure

From August, SoftLayer will begin provisioning and configuring private cloud deployments on demand. The infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) leverages the company's automated architecture, worldwide data center locations and private network as well as customer-controlled infrastructure management system.

"For some time, our customers have used our dedicated servers, network resources and virtualization options to build their own private clouds," said Duke Skarda, CTO for SoftLayer. "Now, with SoftLayer Private Clouds, instead of starting at square one, you begin with a pre-configured cloud ready for whatever you want to do with it. At the push of a button, you have a dedicated cloud at your command, with full access and control over every aspect, and the ability to scale infinitely, on demand."  SoftLayer's first private cloud IaaS is built on the Citrix CloudPlatform, powered by Apache CloudStack.

SoftLayer Private Clouds streamline ordering, enabling customers to simply choose the number of physical servers that they need as client hosts and then customize the configuration and resources for those servers as desired. In as short a time as two hours, SoftLayer officials claimed, an automated provisioning system will have:

Customers can add physical nodes and virtual servers to their private clouds at any time, through a customer portal, an API and the Apache CloudStack management tools. Global deployment will also be seamless given SoftLayer's data center footprint and private network with CloudStack zones in each data center controlled from a single pane of glass and centralized management server.

Additionally, SoftLayer's object storage solution provides a searchable repository for sharing virtual machine images, files and other resources that demand high-availability and accessibility. The SoftLayer Private Clouds can be managed with the RightScale cloud management and private cloud solution, RightScale myCloud. This gives customers robust management capabilities including the use of RightScale ServerTemplates, RightScripts and other services such as reporting and chargebacks.

SoftLayer Private Clouds will be priced from US$1,218 per-month for a base configuration including one management server, one host server and associated software licenses.