In addition, if you’re a current RackConnect customer, we need you! We’d like to get your feedback on what you think about our current solution and what you think we could do to make it better. Please take a few minutes to complete our survey and provide us with your feedback.

Now, here’s what’s new with RackConnect:

New RackConnect Knowledge Center!

To help you better understand RackConnect and how you can use it, we’ve recently updated our Knowledge Center to include a series of support articles for you to leverage. Please visit the following link to learn more: http://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/product-page/rackconnect

Cloud Server Load Balancing Now Automated!

Newly created Cloud Servers can now automatically be associated with an F5 Big-IP Local Traffic Manger load balancer pool. How does it work? Simply use metadata when creating a Cloud Server. The server will automatically be added to the pool and automatically removed when the server is deleted.

When you create a new Cloud Server enter:

Metadata Key: RackConnectLBPool
Metadata Value: (The exact name of the pool as defined on the load balancer; use a semi-colon separated list for more than one pool)

It should look something like this:

Please review the RackConnect Knowledge Center article we created, for more information. If you don’t know the names of your load balancer pools, no worries! Simply contact your Support team.

RackConnect API Now Available!

Did you know that RackConnect has an API? The RackConnect API provides a way for you to programmatically access certain read-only information about your Cloud Server and RackConnect configuration from within your Cloud Servers. The API will provide information that will be useful in several instances:

1. When you are scripting or automating any post-server build configuration tasks, you can query the API to learn when RackConnect automation has completed configuring your server; so any tasks you wish to perform don’t conflict with the automation being performed by RackConnect.
2. When you are setting up the network configuration manually on your Cloud Server (when the “Configure Network Stack” automation feature is disabled on your Cloud account) the API will return the gateway IP address to be used as the default gateway on your Cloud Server, which you can then use to correctly configure the Cloud Server network stack.
3. When you wish to determine the specific actions the automation will take against one of your Cloud Servers you can view the status of each automation feature for a specific Cloud Server.

The RackConnect API provides four API calls, available from within your Cloud Server(s), that provide details regarding the status of the your RackConnect environment, including:

• get gateway IP address
• get automation status
• get automation status details (status of tasks)
• get automation features status

For more information and specific usage instructions, please see the RackConnect Customer API.

Stay tuned for more updates coming soon!

Additional RackConnect blogs to check out:

• Building A Hybrid Cloud With RackConnect
• Hybrid Cloud: Enabling Flexibility For Small Businesses

Since there is no completely clear definition for hybrid cloud, the best I can do to explain it is to describe how you can build a hybrid cloud at Rackspace. We have a unique enabler called RackConnect. It’s our organically grown spin on hybrid technology that creates a bridge between your dedicated, hosted network and the Rackspace public cloud. RackConnect lets you store your most sensitive data (e.g. payment card information and customer records), and run your most demanding applications (e.g. large databases or financial applications) on dedicated gear; while you run applications that are well-suited for the cloud (e.g. Database-driven web, messaging and collaboration applications) in the cloud. It brings the two solutions together by allowing them to communicate with each other.

RackConnect has two basic parts: a network device or set of devices, and an automation system. The network device can be a firewall, a load balancer, a combination of the two or a high availability combination (so up to four devices if you’re doing the math). The device(s) passes network traffic between the dedicated and cloud environments in a secure and efficient manner. For example, a firewall can be configured to allow a dedicated database to speak with cloud web servers, but not the Internet.

The second component, the automation system, does most of this configuration for you. When you add new cloud servers to your environment, the system automatically configures the network device to enforce the network security policies you define. When you remove a cloud server, it cleans up. It also configures the software firewall on each of the cloud servers, so that they can only communicate in the way you desire. For example, the software firewall can be set to allow your cloud servers to only communicate with your dedicated servers and the Internet, but not between each other.

To further evolve this solution and continue to meet the needs of our customers, we’ve recently built in some new RackConnect capabilities. Now it can to do even more. RackConnect now has an Application Programming Interface (API) that can be used to retrieve RackConnect status information, such as gateway IP addresses, the automation status, automation status details and the automation features status (whether automation is turned on or off). It also supports Rackspace Cloud Servers powered by OpenStack. New cloud servers can be automatically added to load balancer pools, based on the server name or metadata.

This is just the first of several articles planned for the next few weeks that will cover hybrid cloud. Some of the articles will also announce opportunities for you to come hear us talk about our growth in this space. And if you’re in the Chicago area this week, stop by and see us at Cloud Connect! Also, sign-up to attend our Hybrid Clouds speaking session on Thursday, Sept. 13 at 11:30 a.m.

Stay tuned!