BootStack FAQs

How do I get started with an on-premise OpenStack?

Contact us and we’ll help you scope and size the cloud for your application. We’ll either need to know your existing hardware, or advise you on certified hardware to acquire. You might want to consider our Jumpstart Training program, which gives your team a detailed look at OpenStack and our best practices. Then we will bring our team on site, and build your cloud using Canonical tools so you can start running workloads on it. That can happen in a week.

Back to top

Which hosting companies can I use?

We have a growing number of partners for physical hosting, but can review the list of preferred hosting companies in your area and will engage with them if they provide standard remote power and network access to hosted machines, as well as servers certified for use with Ubuntu (all major manufacturers). Contact us to scope and size the cloud, to design and build the right BootStack for your organization. With existing hosting partners BootStack can be in place within the current week, with a new hosting facility we’d need to schedule time for infrastructure access and validation.

Back to top

What tools do you use to build and manage my BootStack cloud?

Your BootStack cloud will be built using Canonical’s distribution of Ubuntu OpenStack, using the KVM hypervisor for isolation or LXC containers for performance, supported storage options including Swift and Ceph, high performance HA messaging, database and API services, and the full set of industry-leading tools from Canonical: MaaS, Juju and Landscape, to allow quick and easy provisioning, orchestration and management of cloud resources.

This is the same underlying toolset that runs the world’s most impressive OpenStack deployments – whether its extreme scale, performance or resilience that you aspire to, Canonical has been centrally involved in the majority of large and high performance OpenStack deployments and brings that expertise to bear on your BootStack.

Back to top

What do I get? What does managed mean? What does it include?

Once we have built and verified your BootStack cloud, we deliver all the required information to get you started and keep track of your system. Your team can sit, side by side with ours during the deployment, and we’ll sit side by side your team taking their first steps to consume the cloud. We can run the operations for as long as you want, keeping your cloud up to date and healthy, backing up critical infrastructure components, monitoring the system and fixing problems that occur before your users notice them. We’ll keep you posted if there is anything that requires your attention. You will have access to OpenStack Dashboard and APIs, to our support ticketing system, to all the relevant documentation, monitoring systems, and reporting including alerts and SLA coverage.

Back to top

How does the transfer option work?

When your team is in place and you want to take over the management of your cloud, we have a protocol to make that happen smoothly and without any disruption to your customers, workloads or applications running on your BootStack cloud.

You can choose to stay a support customer, keep using our industry-leading management tools, on which we can provide training. You can choose to use any other management tool. In that case we would coordinate with your team and have the management of the cloud transferred, retain all of its standard open source orchestration.

At the end of the transfer, we would remove all our access credentials from the system.

Back to top

Is there a minimum commitment?

Yes. Canonical BootStack requires a 3-month commitment when hosted with a standard hosting partner, and 6 month commitment on premise. From that point, if your team is ready to take over the control of your cloud, you are may opt to have our team transferring the control back to you.

Back to top

What about scalability? Can I scale my cloud?

Absolutely. Not only can you freely scale your cloud, but we would send out an email when you are running out of resources so you can take the appropriate action. That is part of our industry best service, included in BootStack.

Back to top

I have a BootStack cloud, now what?

Having your BootStack cloud ready is just the beginning of your journey with Canonical. You can leverage the expertise of the most relevant OpenStack OS, with a large number of relevant case studies in multiple industries, you can bundle the best of breed tools and deploy the next generation of applications, build your big data efforts on your BootStack cloud, enjoy the growing number of JuJu charms, …Rest assured that whatever you do, we’ve got your back.

Back to top

Why BootStack? What is new?

BootStack is a service design to cover the needs of a vast range of customers worldwide with a common denominator: the need to consume OpenStack with the security and flexibility of a private cloud, and the agility and scalability of a public cloud. Read the story.

Back to top