RightScale has launched a new cloud management platform that offers application portability across cloud infrastructures. The company has enhanced its ServerTemplate technology to provide automatic configuration of servers for different clouds, system architectures and operating systems. It enables users to take advantage of specific features and functionality offered by each cloud provider, including Amazon and Rackspace, while retaining complete portability.
According to RightScale, its cloud management platform allows organisations to use cloud computing for scalable, cost-effective IT infrastructure, with total control and portability. ServerTemplates, a core component of the RightScale platform, configures servers in the context of overall system architecture. The ServerTemplates support a range of automation to simplify application management in the cloud.
The company claims that ServerTemplates provides high levels of portability by automatically configuring servers for a specific cloud, application architecture and operating system. It allows users to deploy applications on their selected cloud using all the features of that cloud while retaining portability to other clouds.
RightScale has also incorporated an open source server configuration managemtn framework Opscode’s chef, into its ServerTemplate technology to implement the portable ServerTemplates. Users can specify what resources are needed for each server, and the ServerTemplate selects, at runtime, the right implementation for the specific cloud and deployment architecture. Chef Recipes’ then execute the implementation in an operating system-independent way.
Finally, RightScale’s new agent,RightLink orchestrates the execution of RightScripts and Chef Recipes at boot, during operation, or at shut down. It also manages the cross-server communication required to ensure each server is configured and connected to operate within a larger cloud deployment.
