Rackspace and Scality

Scality RING was the only solution that met Rackspace’s operational and survivability standards, so the choice was clear.

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CUSTOMERS / CLOUD SERVICE PROVIDER

Rackspace Technology

Rackspace creates infrastructure asset efficiencies and meets SLAs with Scality RING

The solution brings the resiliency and availability that backs Rackspace’s 100% guarantee to customers.

A true leader in managed hosting and cloud services, Rackspace Technology has been innovating since its start in 1998.

Regularly found on lists of best companies to work for, the organization’s hardworking staff (who call themselves “Rackers”) are proud of their culture — and of the Fanatical Support® they deliver. Rackers feel so strongly about customer support, in fact, they trademarked the name.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Rackspace seeks the same high level of support from their vendors, especially when it comes to the infrastructure that underlies their services.

A goal to increase reliability and scalability

Rackspace decided to review their email back-end infrastructure. Why not take an opportunity to try to increase reliability and scalability — while lowering costs — if they had to make a change?

Armed with an ambitious list of key requirements for performance, operability, survivability and management, Rackspace identified 23 software-defined storage vendors to put to the test. Only one met their high bar — Scality.

The challenge

In a business where price often leads the decision-making process, managing costs is critical to competitiveness. When Rackspace decided to pursue broader segments of the market for email hosting, they looked for ways to cut costs without compromising the other critical requirement: availability of data and service.

With their clients’ complete satisfaction at the heart of their decision-making process, Rackspace doesn’t take infrastructure decisions lightly. As the storage demands of more than 4 million accounts continued to increase,

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“We consider software-defined storage to be critical to our strategy for its growth potential, data center efficiency and efficient — and flexible — use of assets.”

Dan Shain

Director, R&D, Rackspace Cloud Office

The outcome

Scality RING was the only tested solution to shine on all measures — taking Rackspace from a less than optimal DR-configuration with long RPO/RTO to a highly resilient, active/active, multi-site object storage system with near zero RTO/RPO.

Rackspace has seen a 45% reduction in TCO due to substantial Capex and Opex savings, and they’re also seeing significant secondary benefits of their move to Scality RING. One of the top “secondaries” was thanks to the small footprint — they’ve been able to vacate an entire data center in Texas, saving millions of dollars in lease fees.

General benefits are netting big payoff as well — faster onboarding of customers because expansion is easy and painless, reallocation of personnel to new priorities because the administrative work is significantly reduced, and a clear path for growth.

Infinite scalability

Because storage growth is continuous, Rackspace requires a solution that easily scales without limits or interruptions — Scality RING delivers.

Resilience, availability & reliability

Scality RING makes the company’s 100% availability promise to its customers possible, even through expansions, upgrades and the loss of a data center.