An open market auction for cloud servers called Rackspace SPOT has been launched by managed cloud hosting provider Rackspace Technology (NASDAQ: RXT). Rackspace SPOT offers instantaneous online registration, a customer-driven bidding process that allows users to calculate market pricing, and capacity supplied as fully managed, turnkey Kubernetes clusters.
Rackspace SPOT introduces a range of key features designed to optimize and streamline Kubernetes cluster management for preemptible workloads. This platform offers Kubernetes clusters specifically tailored for tasks that can be interrupted, ensuring efficient resource use without sacrificing performance. A standout feature is the inclusion of a Kubernetes control plane, with an option for a High Availability (HA) control plane, to ensure consistent, reliable management across the cluster. Furthermore, Rackspace SPOT supports autoscaling of Kubernetes clusters, enabling them to adjust dynamically to workload demands.
As of now, Rackspace SPOT is available in five global regions, boasting thousands of servers to cater to the needs of its users worldwide. The platform adopts dynamic market pricing through a bidding system, guaranteeing users the most competitive and current prices for their computing needs. Additionally, Rackspace SPOT is designed with developers in mind, offering an Application Programming Interface (APIs) and compatibility with Open Tofu/Terraform providers. This would make it easier for developers to integrate and manage their applications on the platform, providing a flexible and efficient solution for handling preemptible workloads.
According to Lance Weaver, Chief Product and Technology Officer of Rackspace Technology’s Private Cloud Business Unit, “Rackspace SPOT offers a unique open market auction model that provides cost-effective cloud infrastructure solutions for small to medium enterprises, startups, digital companies, and developers. By using market-driven dynamic pricing and high-availability Kubernetes clusters, enterprises may procure cloud infrastructure at optimal cost by adjusting resources in real time. The openness of the auction procedure offers data for price comparison and cost-effective alternative selection.”
Members from Rackspace Technology teamed up with Platform9, a standalone provider of Kubernetes controlled by Software-as-a-Service, to contribute to the evolution of Rackspace Spot.
Sirish Raghuram, the co-founder and Chief Growth Officer of Platform9, expressed, ‘Our pleasure lies in contributing to Rackspace Spot, a significant innovation in the sector of cloud computing. Spot features several other advances by Platform9, including a recently hosted Kubernetes control plane centrally, driving down costs for users. It empowers customers to initiate a fully managed Kubernetes cluster for a mere $0.72 a month, making it phenomenally cheaper than similar alternatives.”
Rackspace SPOT aims to deliver considerable benefits by leveraging an open marketplace approach to slash costs related to cloud server resources. Users get the unique opportunity to bid on cloud servers from the extensive inventory of Rackspace. The bidding culminates through an open market auction process, typically within minutes. This distributed and scalable system focuses on enhancing efficiency and flexibility, which is particularly useful to manage substantial workloads.
In order to warrant transparency and competition, the market price for servers is established at the final cut-off price of the auction. Moreover, Rackspace SPOT is dedicated to augmenting the user experience. It employs Slack webhooks to generate alerts concerning node pre-emption, this way both keeping users in the loop and enabling them to swiftly react to alterations in their computing environment.
Users of Rackspace Spot can enjoy the benefits of Kubernetes with no concerns about troubleshooting or implementing high-availability updates, thanks to its modular design. On top of that, SPOT comes pre-installed with two storage classes – Permanent Storage (SSD) and Serial ATA (SATA), in addition to load balancers and a Calico Container Network Interface (CNI) manageable via network policies.
Rackspace SPOT can further elevate user experiences by enabling the integration of preferred Kubernetes Helm charts or Operators. Additionally, it offers a variety of ready-to-use options handpicked by Rackspace engineers. These preset add-ons include Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) operators for streamlined database management, cluster backup solutions for data protection, enhanced monitoring for better oversight, security scanning to protect against vulnerabilities, and Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) tools to facilitate the creation and deployment of machine learning models.
