Some links on this page are affiliate links: if you buy through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.
Rackspace partnered with Red Hat in February 2016 to make OpenStack easier for enterprises to adopt and operate. Red Hat supplied the supported enterprise software stack; Rackspace supplied deployment, monitoring, managed infrastructure, and day-to-day operational expertise. The deal was therefore less about launching a brand-new OpenStack product than about reducing the risk and complexity of running a private cloud.
This is a historical analysis of the partnership announced on February 11, 2016. The public sources reviewed do not establish that the original Rackspace Private Cloud Powered by Red Hat offer remains available in the same form in 2026.
The partnership in one sentence
Rackspace added a Red Hat-powered option to its managed OpenStack portfolio, combining Red Hat’s enterprise-supported OpenStack distribution with Rackspace’s expertise in deploying and operating cloud infrastructure.
Recommended Free Tools
That division of labor addressed a practical enterprise problem: OpenStack was open and flexible, but installing, integrating, upgrading, securing, and operating it required specialized skills. A customer could obtain more private-cloud control without building an entire OpenStack operations team internally.
#1 Best Overall
What was announced in 2016?
The offering was known as Rackspace Private Cloud Powered by Red Hat, also described as OpenStack as a Service powered by Red Hat. According to the companies’ announcements, it could be delivered in three broad locations:
- Rackspace data centers;
- the customer’s own data center; or
- a third-party colocation facility.
Red Hat described the choice as either an on-site private cloud or a managed private-cloud service. That distinction mattered. Enterprises could retain control over physical location and data placement while outsourcing some or most of the platform’s operation.
Rackspace identified the initial managed environment as including:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux;
- Red Hat Satellite;
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform; and
- Rackspace management and support.
Later Red Hat material describing the broader solution also listed Red Hat OpenStack Platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Ceph Storage, Red Hat Satellite, Red Hat technical-account support, and Rackspace Fanatical Support and operations. See the Red Hat customer success story.
Red Hat’s announcement promised a two-year maintenance and support cycle. That should not be read as a universal uptime guarantee or unlimited support for every possible configuration. It was a product-level lifecycle statement; the exact support boundaries, service levels, and customer responsibilities would depend on the contract and architecture.
Why OpenStack needed a managed-service layer
OpenStack is a collection of infrastructure services rather than a single turnkey appliance. A production deployment typically involves compute, networking, identity, images, storage, dashboards, orchestration, monitoring, security patching, and lifecycle management.
A customer evaluating OpenStack had to solve problems such as:
The Tool Desk
Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →- selecting compatible hardware and network designs;
- integrating storage and virtualization components;
- building failure domains and capacity plans;
- patching the operating system and cloud services;
- performing upgrades without disrupting workloads;
- monitoring control-plane and data-plane health;
- responding to incidents around the clock; and
- training or hiring engineers with relevant experience.
Rackspace’s contemporary messaging called OpenStack complicated and positioned its service as a prescribed, supported cloud rather than a custom engineering project. The important distinction is that open source does not mean operationally simple. Red Hat could support and package the software, but customers still needed someone to make it work reliably in their environment.
Why Red Hat was the logical partner
Enterprise credibility
Red Hat already had relationships with enterprise data-center teams through Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Its role gave OpenStack a familiar commercial support model, certified ecosystem, and subscription structure.
Red Hat’s 2016 announcement said the companies had worked together since 2003 and described Rackspace as the first managed-hosting provider for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It also said Rackspace managed more than 40,000 globally distributed Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems at the time. Those figures should be treated as claims from Red Hat’s announcement, not as current statistics.
A supported version of an open platform
Red Hat’s value was not simply the OpenStack code itself. It was the combination of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, an enterprise OpenStack distribution, validated integrations, maintenance, technical support, and a defined product lifecycle.
Free tools Windows power users keep installed
One-click scans. No signup required.
Red Hat’s contemporaneous product positioning described Red Hat OpenStack Platform as a production-ready infrastructure-as-a-service foundation built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Its OpenStack Platform 8 announcement illustrates how Red Hat presented the platform during this period.
A route into enterprise private cloud
Many companies were interested in OpenStack’s open interfaces and scale-out architecture but were reluctant to make an upstream community project the foundation of critical infrastructure. Red Hat supplied a more familiar enterprise route; Rackspace supplied the operating capability needed to turn it into a service.
Why Rackspace wanted the deal
Moving beyond infrastructure hosting
Rackspace was expanding from hosting infrastructure toward managed cloud services. A Red Hat-powered private cloud let it earn recurring management and support revenue even when the customer wanted the platform in its own data center or a colocation site.
Rank #3
That broadened Rackspace’s addressable market. It did not have to persuade every customer to move onto Rackspace-owned infrastructure. Instead, it could manage a customer’s preferred enterprise platform and monetize expertise around the customer’s existing hardware and facilities.
Offering more choice
The deal also complemented Rackspace’s broader OpenStack strategy. Customers could choose a Rackspace-managed implementation based on Red Hat’s enterprise distribution while retaining deployment-location options.
However, “choice” did not mean unlimited customization. Rackspace documentation describes the service as a prescribed deployment containing most, but not all, of the available Red Hat OpenStack Platform features. Standardization was part of the value proposition because a defined architecture is easier to support, monitor, and upgrade.
What customers actually bought
The offering is easiest to understand as several layers rather than one product:
- Enterprise software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat OpenStack Platform, and related Red Hat subscriptions.
- Management tooling: Red Hat Satellite and the operational systems used to administer the environment.
- Infrastructure: Customer-owned, Rackspace-hosted, or colocated servers, networking, and storage.
- Implementation: Architecture, deployment, integration, and configuration services from Rackspace.
- Day-two operations: Monitoring, incident response, maintenance, upgrades, and support, subject to the contracted service scope.
- Storage and platform components: Later documentation references Ceph and a defined set of OpenStack services.
Rackspace’s RPCR feature documentation describes a deployment containing services including Nova for compute, Cinder for block storage, Ceph for converged storage, Horizon for the dashboard, Keystone for identity, Glance for images, Neutron for networking, Heat for orchestration, OpenStack Director, and Red Hat Satellite.
The documentation also makes clear that the service was not necessarily the entirety of Red Hat OpenStack Platform. A buyer should therefore request a written supported-feature matrix rather than assume that every upstream OpenStack project or configuration was available.
Which enterprise problem did it solve?
The partnership targeted organizations that wanted some combination of:
- control over infrastructure and data placement;
- private-cloud self-service and elasticity;
- open standards and less dependence on a proprietary virtualization platform;
- enterprise support and lifecycle predictability;
- a hybrid-cloud strategy; and
- outsourced operations instead of a large internal OpenStack team.
It was not automatically the cheapest or fastest infrastructure option. Private cloud still requires capacity planning, hardware, facilities, networking, storage, security, and lifecycle management. The model made the most sense when governance, compliance, data locality, predictable workloads, existing infrastructure, or specialized requirements justified those costs.
How it compared with the main alternatives
VMware
VMware was a powerful incumbent because many enterprises already had VMware skills, tools, processes, and installed infrastructure. Staying with VMware could minimize organizational disruption.
Do these 3 things before closing this tab:
1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesOpenStack could appeal to organizations seeking an open-source foundation, scale-out workloads, Linux-native tooling, or greater architectural flexibility. But it would be misleading to claim that OpenStack was categorically cheaper. Total cost depended on hardware, utilization, subscriptions, staffing, support, training, and the value of existing VMware investments.
Microsoft Azure Stack
The 2016 competitive discussion also placed Microsoft Azure Stack in the picture. Its strategic attraction was consistency with Microsoft Azure and the wider Microsoft ecosystem. Red Hat OpenStack offered a different model: an open, Linux-centered platform with a broader vendor and deployment philosophy.
Because Azure Stack was still emerging during the source period, its 2016 competitive position should not be described using later product capabilities or assumptions.
AWS and Microsoft Azure
Public cloud removed much of the need to purchase and operate physical infrastructure. It was often the simpler choice for variable, intermittent, or rapidly changing workloads.
A managed private cloud could still be attractive where customers had data-residency or regulatory requirements, predictable sustained utilization, existing infrastructure, specialized hardware, latency constraints, or a need for dedicated capacity and control. Managed OpenStack reduced operational burden, but it did not make private cloud equivalent to public cloud.
Best Value
Other OpenStack providers
Organizations could also evaluate providers and distributions from companies such as Mirantis, Canonical, SUSE, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and IBM-related cloud businesses, as well as in-house deployments and hardware-led reference architectures.
The right comparison was not simply which OpenStack distribution was “best.” It was who owned the hardware, who operated the control plane, who supplied the software subscription, who handled upgrades, which services were supported, and what the exit path looked like.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.The central trade-off: standardization versus flexibility
A prescribed deployment offered a meaningful operational benefit: fewer combinations of hardware, drivers, versions, and configurations to troubleshoot. That could improve supportability and make lifecycle planning more predictable.
What’s actually slowing this PC down?
Pick the symptom - the matching free tool is one click away.
The cost was reduced freedom. An organization dependent on unsupported OpenStack services, unusual networking, external storage integrations, or custom control-plane changes might find the managed model restrictive.
This also explains why the partnership was a risk-reduction strategy rather than a promise to eliminate risk. It reduced the burden of assembling and operating the platform, but introduced dependence on Rackspace’s architecture, tooling, support boundaries, and upgrade process. Open interfaces can reduce proprietary lock-in without eliminating operational or contractual dependence.
Questions a serious buyer should ask
Workload fit
- Are the workloads virtual machines, containers, databases, or specialized appliances?
- Do they require OpenStack APIs, or merely virtualized compute?
- Are utilization and growth predictable enough to justify private capacity?
- Are GPUs, bare metal, SR-IOV, or unusual networking required?
Responsibility boundaries
- Who owns hardware, firmware, operating systems, OpenStack services, storage, networking, identity, security, backup, and disaster recovery?
- Is 24/7 support included?
- Can the provider perform emergency changes?
- How are maintenance windows and outages handled?
Compatibility and lifecycle
- Which OpenStack services and guest operating systems are supported?
- Can customer-owned hardware be used?
- What is the support period for each software version?
- Are upgrades rolling, in-place, or disruptive?
- Who pays for major-version migrations?
Total cost
Compare at least five years of total cost, including servers, storage, networking, facilities, Red Hat subscriptions, Rackspace management fees, implementation, monitoring, backups, disaster recovery, staff, training, upgrades, and migration. A low software price does not establish a low private-cloud cost.
Exit and portability
- Can workloads and images be moved to another provider?
- Are standard OpenStack APIs preserved?
- Can the customer retrieve Ceph data and block volumes?
- Are configuration files and automation artifacts returned at termination?
- What happens to Red Hat subscriptions after the contract ends?
What can be verified today?
Red Hat later described Rackspace Private Cloud Powered by Red Hat in customer material and reported that Rackspace received its 2017 Red Hat Innovator of the Year Award. The award announcement confirms the product’s February 2016 launch and its place in the companies’ partnership history.
PC Slower Than It Used to Be?
A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11Crashes, No Sound, or Screen Glitches?
Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minuteRackspace documentation updated after the original announcement lists several Red Hat OpenStack Platform versions, including versions 9, 10, 11, and 13. That historical documentation does not establish that all versions were simultaneously supported, available to new customers, or current. Nor do the public sources reviewed establish the original offer’s availability, pricing, or successor product in August 2026.
Final assessment
Rackspace and Red Hat partnered because each had what the other lacked. Red Hat brought enterprise software credibility, Linux relationships, a supported OpenStack distribution, and lifecycle expertise. Rackspace brought the deployment and operational capability required to make that platform usable for customers that did not want to run OpenStack alone.
The result was an enterprise adoption strategy: turn a complex open-source infrastructure project into a defined, managed private-cloud service. Its appeal depended on a customer’s need for control, governance, predictable capacity, or hybrid-cloud flexibility. Its limitations were equally clear: private-cloud economics remained demanding, the prescribed architecture constrained customization, and the customer still needed to govern applications, security, connectivity, capacity, and recovery.
Quick Recap
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
Quick wins for a faster PC:
Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →
