Rackspace is leaping out ahead of VMware when it comes to helping VMware customers find their way to the hybrid cloud.
While customers wait for VMware to get its own cloud data centers into large-scale operation and further develop its vCloud Director software, Rackspace is offering to take VMware workloads into its managed service business and run them on servers using the standard VMware vCenter environment.
Rackspace Hosting already runs many VMware-based workloads in its managed service business, which is distinct from its Rackspace Public Cloud, an OpenStack implementation based on the open source hypervisors Xen and KVM.
Rackspace is encouraging VMware customers to make use of its new Managed Virtualization service by promising to run their VMware virtual machines on a vCenter host dedicated to their use and visible to their existing vCenter management console. In effect, VMware customers who sign up will be able to treat the Dedicated vCenter Server section of Rackspace’s data center as an extension of their own data center. They’ll be able to view their workloads in it through their own on-premises vCenter management tools.