RackConnect

RackConnect™ is a unique solution designed for customers who require the flexibility and elasticity of the cloud, as well as the enhanced security and performance characteristics of traditional hosting – the best of both worlds. In essence, RackConnect enables customers to realise the power of Hybrid Hosting.

For Enterprise Businesses	For Small and Midsized companies
Enterprise business trust their mission critical applications on highly available and high performing traditional hosted infrastructure, using products such as high speed SAN storage, single tenant virtualisation and high capacity load balancers. RackConnect can enhance this infrastructure with rapidly elastic cloud compute and storage resources, allowing you to flex your capacity at a moment’s notice, reacting to unexpected spikes in demand or to seasonal business trends.	Customers with smaller dedicated hosting footprints can realise cost savings by shifting certain components of their application to a cloud platform, such as the web or application tier. Moving image libraries to cloud storage, for example, reduces the dedicated storage requirements and allows faster content distribution via the CDN capability of Cloud Files. For customers using Cloud Servers, RackConnect can allow you to add in a custom-built, high performance database or app server to provide a more secure, single tenant backend for your app. Layer on a dedicated firewall, Web App Firewall, or DDoS mitigation to help protect your entire solution.

For Enterprise Businesses

For Small and Midsized companies

Enterprise business trust their mission critical applications on highly available and high performing traditional hosted infrastructure, using products such as high speed SAN storage, single tenant virtualisation and high capacity load balancers. RackConnect can enhance this infrastructure with rapidly elastic cloud compute and storage resources, allowing you to flex your capacity at a moment’s notice, reacting to unexpected spikes in demand or to seasonal business trends.

Customers with smaller dedicated hosting footprints can realise cost savings by shifting certain components of their application to a cloud platform, such as the web or application tier. Moving image libraries to cloud storage, for example, reduces the dedicated storage requirements and allows faster content distribution via the CDN capability of Cloud Files.

For customers using Cloud Servers, RackConnect can allow you to add in a custom-built, high performance database or app server to provide a more secure, single tenant backend for your app. Layer on a dedicated firewall, Web App Firewall, or DDoS mitigation to help protect your entire solution.

How RackConnect Works

RackConnect

Choose an F5® BIG-IP® Local Traffic Manager or a Cisco® ASA firewall to connect your traditional hosted infrastructure to the Rackspace Cloud
Cloud Servers can automatically be added to your load balancer, enabling you to scale on demand
Connect to Rackspace with an encrypted VPN tunnel to link the Rackspace Cloud to your data centre or existing IT infrastructure
Define Network Security Policies in the customer portal and they are automatically applied and managed across your firewall, load balancer, and Cloud Servers
Manage cloud and dedicated network security policies centrally in your portal, the MyRackspace® portal.
Add Cloud Files for easily scalable storage

Use Cases

The use cases below show you the true flexibility of the RackConnect solution, from simple configurations to true Enterprise scale. These examples can help you solve the tradeoff between security requirements, performance, and cost.

Dedicated hardware firewall with Cloud Servers provides protection for the integrity of your data and safeguards against service interruptions.

Suitable Use Cases

Add a firewall to your Cloud Servers deployment
VPN to the cloud via site-to-site VPN
Manage the security of your environment automatically from the customer portal

Cost Effective Hybrid Example

RackConnect

Dedicated firewall protecting your Cloud Servers, and a high-performance physical server for your database backend.

Suitable Use Cases

Ecommerce Sites
High traffic blogs
Content management systems
Database-driven web applications

RackConnect Download Empire Avenue Case Study

VPN Cloud Bursting Example

RackConnect

Encrypted VPN tunnel creates a secure connection between your existing data centre or IT infrastructure and the Rackspace Cloud.

Suitable Use Cases

Extend your IT infrastructure to the Rackspace Cloud
“Burst” extra compute requirements into the Rackspace Cloud
Shift workloads to the cloud (OPEX) to free up valuable data centre space

Suitable Use Cases

Collaboration or messaging solutions, such as Microsoft SharePoint® and Microsoft Exchange®
Secure administrator access to Cloud Servers via VPNs
Test and development in the cloud
Employ cloud as a data replication target
Use the Rackspace Cloud as a target for your disaster recovery solution

Load Balanced Example

RackConnect

Hardware-based, dedicated load balancer and dedicated firewall. Load balances dedicated and Cloud Servers together. Size your environment to your average capacity, and use utility-priced cloud to handle peak traffic needs. Cloud Servers can be automatically added to your load balancer, allowing you to scale on demand.

Suitable Use Cases