If you are looking for a hosting provider, it is impossible to bypass Rackspace. One of the top operators in the space, the company has been innovating since its start in 2000. Regularly named one of the best companies to work for, its staff (who call themselves ‘Rackers’) are proud of their culture of fanatical support.

“We had to separate our processing scaling from our storage scaling. We needed an SDS provider with performance, operability and survivability – a solution that could scale to 10s of petabytes”

Dan Shain Director, Research and Design, Rackspace Cloud Office

Solution Components

Software-Defined Storage

• Scality RING
• REST storage interface
• Stretched RING configuration across 3 continents

Storage Hardware

• 48 HPE Apollo 4510 servers with 10 PB RAW storage

Third-Party Applications

• Open-Xchange Dovecot Pro

Rackspace Looks to Scality RING to Create Efficiencies with Infrastructure Assets, Meet SLAs

Growth and Improvements

Scality RING helped Rackspace manage costs, plan for growth, and improve operability for its hosted services. The company also realized CAPEX and OPEX savings.

Rackspace Presentation at Scality SDS Day Tokyo 2017

At SDS Day Tokyo 2017, Dan Shain, Senior Development Manager at Rackspace, describes his experiences with managing a growing business and implementing a flexible, open storage infrastructure based on software-defined storage.

Email accessibility and reliability

A long standing member of the Dovecot Open Source community, Rackspace decided to move to the Dovecot Pro system. This allowed it to migrate the back-end storage infrastructure to the Scality RING, leveraging HPE Apollo 4510 servers.

In line with its support promise, Rackspace planned to do this without service and support disruption. The combination of Dovecot Pro and the RING reduced the number of servers required by 80%, providing massive cost savings in upkeep across hardware, electricity and cooling.

It also made it easier for Rackspace to continue operating and growing its email service, while maintaining its usual levels of quality service.

Primary Benefits of Scality RING for Rackspace