06 June 2016

The RiMatrix BCC combines Rittal’s hardware with iNNOVO’s complete cloud infrastructure.

Rittal and iNNOVO Cloud have teamed up to create what’s described as an industry first with their “turnkey cloud data centre in a container” concept.  

According to Rittal, planning and constructing a data centre has so far been regarded as an entirely bespoke process taking several years to complete. It believes the RiMatrix Balanced Cloud Center (BCC) presents an alternative that could offer a faster solution. 

The BCC aims to show how companies can rapidly establish new cloud-based data centres. It combines Rittal’s IT racks, containers, climate control technology and power distribution with the complete cloud infrastructure supplied and installed by Germany-based service provider iNNOVO Cloud.  

Their focus has been on delivering ‘ITaaS’ so that the server, storage, network and applications collectively run in as standardised a way as possible, laying the foundations for a company-specific, bespoke cloud platform. 

Customers would receive a turnkey cloud data centre in ISO or non-ISO container format in which the components such as racks, climate control and power supply systems would be provided as pre-defined modules. Uniquely, the server, network, and storage would be included with the delivery already pre-configured. 

Furthermore, the cloud management software would be provided courtesy of the open source OpenStack framework that is part of iNNOVO Cloud’s infrastructure. 

The result, says Rittal, is a standardised and completely virtualised cloud data centre that is equally suitable for standard and highly demanding applications, such as HPC or ‘Big Data’.

The partners reckon businesses would use the components within the BCC to model a “huge range” of options to meet their needs, from an on-premises private cloud to virtual private data centres, all using verifiably safe servers, storage and network systems. 

Martin Kipping, Rittal’s director international IT projects, says time-to-market is a critical factor for companies. He adds: “The industrialisation of data centre construction now enables companies to create their own powerful IT infrastructure solutions more quickly and easily than ever before.