CAS accelerates breakthroughs in science by modernizing its OpenStack cloud

This leader in science information achieves cost savings, optimization and consistency in the private cloud.

CAS customer logo Industry Technology, Education Challenge

Upgrade a mission-critical private cloud environment to support cutting-edge, lifesaving, chemistry-related and life science research.

Solutions Rackspace Elastic Engineering Platforms OpenStack Private

Our customer

As a division of the American Chemical Society, CAS connects the world's scientific knowledge to accelerate breakthroughs that improve lives. Founded in 1907 in Columbus, Ohio, as a volunteer effort to organize published chemistry research, CAS officially became a self-supporting division in 1956.

“We help people, companies, institutions and academics develop scientific innovations faster, for example, cancer drugs and vaccines,” said Luke Chandler, Senior Director of Cloud Platforms and Solutions, Infrastructure and Support Services for CAS. “It may sound like a cliché, but CAS is helping empower the scientific discoveries that is saving people's lives.”

 

“Rackspace Technology enabled CAS to implement a robust private cloud and the ability to offer more choices. It could not have been done without the partnership and leadership from Rackspace Technology."
Luke Chandler, Senior Director, Cloud Platforms and Solutions, Infrastructure and Support Services, CAS
a person looking into a microscope

The obstacles they faced

CAS has been an OpenStack™ customer with Rackspace Technology® for over 10 years. The relationship has evolved as the OpenStack platform has matured, after being co-founded by Rackspace Technology and NASA in 2010.

Rackspace Technology provides expertise and manages three crucial CAS OpenStack environments, which are deployed on-premises in its data centers, including:

  • A development cloud for testing updates
  • A non-production cloud for pre-production testing
  • A production cloud hosting live services on the latest hardware, including Dell R730s, R740s and R750s servers

CAS sought to modernize its OpenStack environment to enhance the resiliency, reliability and functionality of its private cloud, which hosts the company's main revenue-generating solutions. To meet the highest standards on its cloud platform, CAS prioritized high availability, reliability and performance.

a medical professional looking into a microscope

“We must ensure our customers are happy, and we are always focused on delivering an exceptional customer experience that speeds up their productivity. We can't do that without the right technology and right partner. With Rackspace Technology, we're in a great position."

Luke Chandler, Senior Director, Cloud Platforms and Solutions, Infrastructure and Support Services, CAS
a medical professional

How we helped

In 2020, CAS sought to take its private cloud to the next level, an initiative that has involved continuously upgrading its OpenStack Enterprise platform and keeping the company’s technological capabilities current.

"The technology has to be bulletproof. It must be top notch," said Chandler. "We partnered with Rackspace Technology as our managed service provider to raise the bar for our private cloud — including everything from resiliency, to reliability, to service robustness. We went through a full redesign to achieve modernization of our private cloud."

A key project was a minimal viable product (MVP) upgrade that moved CAS forward several OpenStack versions with zero downtime over a six-to-nine-month period. This required careful planning and execution, including temporarily cloning the Keystone authentication service to maintain uptime of the critical Swift object storage that CAS relies on to deliver content to its users.

The project timeframe, which Chandler described as "incredibly successful," helped raised the baseline of credibility for CAS offerings to new heights. "Versions usually complete about every 18 months,” he said. “But we've gone from version N to V, nine iterations, in less than four years.”

The MVP project was a high-stakes undertaking for CAS with little room for error. "We're not a huge corporation in terms of revenue, and so when a single product is being supported by Rackspace Technology with OpenStack, and you're going through an MVP, it's a big deal," said Chandler. "The transparency, the communication, the way we systematically went through the releases and got to the MVP, it was successful and hit on all cylinders."

Another major initiative driven by the Rackspace Technology team was converting the CAS networking topology to single-bond LACP, cutting the number of switch ports needed in half, allowing higher rack density and saving significantly on data center costs.

CAS was an early adopter of the innovative Rackspace Technology assigned engineer offering, called Rackspace Elastic Engineering, which provides a dedicated resource to work closely with a customer.

"The number one benefit is that the assigned engineer becomes a resource that fits within our culture, first and foremost, and is truly part of our team," said Chandler. "The continuity of the expertise is another big factor, because these are really complicated environments."

Rackspace Technology expertise has helped CAS optimize deployment and significantly reduce costs. One key aspect that differentiates the work that the Rackspace Technology team has done with CAS is its use of optimization techniques, such as huge pages and CPU pinning, for the majority of VMs within its OpenStack environment. This optimization ensures peak performance and efficiency for CAS applications, giving the company a competitive edge in its industry.

What we achieved together

CAS and Rackspace Technology have developed a deep, long-term and symbiotic partnership around OpenStack. Over the years, the platform and relationship have come a long way. CAS values the open collaboration and has been able to grow its own technical capabilities as it has learned from Rackspace Technology expertise.

For CAS to remain innovative, it must ensure its private cloud remains robust and able to support both existing and new product lines. Looking ahead, CAS is focused on supporting the launch of its new life sciences product line, the CAS BioFinder Discovery Platform™, a biological complement to its flagship CAS SciFinder Discovery Platform™ for chemistry research.

"You have small molecule chemistry on one side and an evolution to more robust coverage of life sciences on the other, a big change for us," said Chandler. "We must deliver the CAS BioFinder Discovery Platform the same way we've shared small molecule chemistry information for the last 100 years. That's not easy. We must evolve to address the needs of a new market with new customers who have unique needs. Without the right technology support, success becomes more difficult."

CAS is currently going through a complete private-cloud OpenStack lifecycle program, refreshing its environments while onboarding several new products, an initiative expected to increase overall efficiency and  reduce costs. The goal is to emerge with an updated private cloud that better supports customer-facing products and accommodates new workloads.

CAS has been very satisfied with its Rackspace Technology partnership throughout this process. The expertise has helped CAS optimize deployment and significantly reduce costs. It's been a mutually beneficial journey, with both parties learning and growing together. This spirit of partnership will continue to drive success as CAS continues to evolve its business into the future.

About Rackspace Technology

Rackspace Technology is a hybrid, multicloud solutions expert. We combine our expertise with the world’s leading technologies — across AI, applications, data and security — to deliver end-to-end solutions. We have a proven record of advising customers based on their business challenges, designing solutions that scale, building and managing those solutions, and optimizing returns into the future. 

As a global hybrid, multicloud technology services pioneer, we deliver innovative capabilities to help customers build new revenue streams, increase efficiency and create incredible experiences. Named a best place to work, year after year according to Fortune, Forbes and Glassdoor, we attract and develop world-class talent to deliver the best expertise to our customers. Everything we do is wrapped in Fanatical Experience® — our obsession with customer success that drives us to help each customer work faster, smarter and stay ahead of what’s next. 

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