Rackspace, cloud computing platform provider and founder of OpenStack, is currently introducing its new DevOps Automation Service. They offer managed support for things like infrastructure and workflow automation, monitoring and log aggregation, and source control for infrastructure code.
Rackspace has identified the shortage of DevOps engineers as a major problem in the industry. Based on the technology and processes they use in-house, they’ve crafted the new service to help their customers to speed up their development and IT.
When a client signs up to their DevOps Automation Service, Rackspace works with the client to understand the client’s existing infrastructure. Then Rackspace can take over the development of Chef cookbooks and help the client to setup and operate the tools typically needed to grow a DevOps culture at the client organization.
By managing the client’s Chef cookbooks and environments, Rackspaces ensures that all environments are in sync and all code is managed in version control. That way, Rackspace helps to fully automate Dev, Staging and Production environments for their clients.
Additionally Rackspace provides help in automating continuous deployment workflows with Jenkins and Rundeck, monitoring performance metrics using StatsD, Graphite, and New Relic, and aggregating logs for their clients to gain deeper insights into their application infrastructure with logstash.
Currently available for a limited number of US-based customers with a working knowledge of Chef, Rackspace is planning to make the DevOps Automation Service available for every customer in early 2014.