RightScale Introduces Cloud Appliance for vSphere 

RightScale Inc. today announced the RightScale Cloud Appliance for vSphere that integrates RightScale Cloud Portfolio Management and the VMware vSphere virtualization platform.

RightScale users will be able to leverage RightScale Cloud Portfolio Management to manage vSphere resources through a new, lightweight, on-premise RightScale virtual appliance.

With the RightScale Cloud Appliance for vSphere, IT teams can choose whether to deploy workloads to VMware vSphere or any of the leading public or private clouds already supported by RightScale, and will be able to create portable workloads that can move seamlessly between cloud environments and VMware vSphere. Using RightScale, enterprises reduce vendor lock-in and enable infrastructure teams to manage cloud-based workloads from a single pane of glass.

"Our enterprise customers want to combine public and private cloud resources with their existing vSphere environments to expand cloud adoption," said Thorsten von Eicken, RightScale CTO and co-founder. "The RightScale Cloud Appliance for vSphere will offer enterprise developers a cloud-centric way to deploy and manage applications, while allowing VMware administrators to continue to use familiar vCenter management tools."

Benefits of using the RightScale Cloud Appliance for vSphere include:

• Single pane of glass across cloud and vSphere environments: Using RightScale, enterprises can enable infrastructure teams to manage cloud-based workloads -- including major public clouds, vSphere environments, and OpenStack and CloudStack-based clouds -- from a single pane of glass.
• Enhanced vSphere environments with cloud-like capabilities: Cloud environments offer additional capabilities that go beyond the functionality of virtualized environments like vSphere. The RightScale Cloud Appliance adds cloud-like capabilities that expand and streamline access to vSphere. The appliance provides multi-tenancy governance on top of vSphere to allow automated, policy-based sharing of vSphere resource pools by multiple tenants. It also adds standardized instance types to enable developers to quickly pick from a preconfigured set of infrastructure options.
• Self-service access across cloud and virtualized environments: vSphere environments have traditionally been controlled, configured, and managed by IT. With the RightScale Cloud Appliance, new types of users such as application developers, software architects, and DevOps teams will be able to leverage RightScale to deploy and move workloads across cloud and vSphere environments according to the policies set by IT teams.
• Leveraging vCenter and RightScale in parallel: RightScale does not lock users into one management solution. Users can leverage RightScale Cloud Portfolio Management and VMware vCenter Server in parallel. For example, developers can leverage RightScale to deploy workloads in vSphere, while VMware administrators can leverage vCenter.
• Reduced vendor lock-in: RightScale ServerTemplates are dynamic configuration scripts. They provide portability for workloads across vSphere environments and public and private clouds.
• Unified reporting and analytics: With RightScale Cloud Analytics users can visualize usage and spending across vSphere data centers as well as other clouds.
• Cross-environment professional services: RightScale experts can help enterprises deploy and optimize application portfolios across vSphere virtualized environments as well as public and private clouds