Rackspace and Cern update OpenStack with federated cloud support

Rackspace has disclosed that its collaboration with Cern openlab on multi-cloud environments has borne fruit with the resulting code being included in the latest Icehouse build of the OpenStack cloud framework.

Since July 2013, Rackspace and Cern openlab have been collaborating on a project to link together multiple clouds - so-called cloud federation - to enable users to take advantage of compute resources spread across multiple cloud providers.

Now, code development work led by a Cern research fellow and sponsored by Rackspace has been included in the latest OpenStack Icehouse release, the firm said.

Writing on the Rackspace blog, Toby Owen, head of product strategy for the firm, said: "The inclusion of code in Icehouse to federate identity in multi-cloud environments is a major milestone and can eliminate isolation among cloud resources."

Identity federation enables a private cloud user to manage a multi-cloud environment using only their private cloud sign-in credentials.

At Cern, for example, this would enable a user of the Cern OpenStack cloud to spin up an image there, then migrate that image to Rackspace's public cloud and spin it up there using the same Cern credentials. This will also require planned enhancements to the OpenStack image service, Owen said.

Rackspace said it will continue to work with Cern openlab to further enhance federation capabilities. These will expand in scope to enable the use of resources, authorisation models and service catalogues in multi-cloud environments across public and private clouds, according to the firm.

"Working with Cern openlab and the OpenStack community, we're solving the hard problems in OpenStack together. Federation is critical for OpenStack to continue its momentum," Owen said.

Rackspace and Cern openlab are also working together on other areas such as data analysis and management, he added.