Mirantis Partners With Redapt To Launch Certified OpenStack Appliances

Mirantis, one of the largest players in the OpenStack distribution ecosystem, today announced that it is launching a new hardware initiative that will make it easier for businesses to adopt OpenStack.

These ‘Mirantis Unlocked Appliances‘ will be certified by the company and built by its partners. The idea here is to offer enterprises what is essentially a drop-in cloud solution that they can plug into their data centers to quickly get up and running with OpenStack (nobody has ever accused OpenStack of being too easy to install, after all).

Currently, the main technology partner for building these appliances is systems integrator Redapt. Configurations for this appliance range from six compute notes with twelve terabytes of storage to a full rack with 24 compute notes and 24 terabyte of storage. Across two racks, these Dell R630-based appliances could handle over 1,500 virtual machines. The basic six-node configuration will retail for $250,000. A larger 16-node version will be about $400,000. Mirantis plans to bring other partners on board over time.

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“About 20 percent of infrastructure is consumed through the appliance form factor because it is extremely easy to set up and operate,” said Alex Freedland, Mirantis president and co-founder in today’s announcement. “Mirantis Unlocked Appliances combines this ease-of-use with the openness and flexibility of OpenStack, delivered as a cloud-in-a-box. Our first Appliance focuses on the most common OpenStack use case – developing cloud-native applications – and will be built and shipped by Certified Rack Partners across the ecosystem.”