Rackspace offers high-end Red Hat for rent

Rackspace Managed Hosting recently tapped Red Hat as a partner to offer Linux as a hosted server option.

Rackspace this month plans to begin offering Red Hat Enterprise Linux on pre-installed and configured servers. The service allows users to configure their own Red Hat servers – including hardware and Linux operating system configuration. The server is then packaged with network bandwidth and system utilization parameters for a monthly price.

Rackspace previously offered Linux servers running older versions of Red Hat’s Linux operating system, such as Red Hat Linux 6, 7 and 8. The company claims to be the first to offer Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the newest version of Red Hat’s operating system for large enterprise servers.

Rackspace says it can guarantee 99.999% reliability for the servers it hosts, and offers 24-7 support. In addition to working directly with Red Hat for Linux support, Rackspace will also use the Red Hat Enterprise Network, a subscription service for automating Linux sever patch updates and other software maintenance upgrades and fixes.

Rackspace’s Linux servers can be configured with either Intel or AMD processors. The servers can be combined with security options, such as Cisco PIX firewall services, and storage options that can scale up to a terabyte, according to the firm.

While Rackspace offers hosted Windows and FreeBSD (open source Unix) servers, Linux is used by a majority of the hosting provider’s customers; it claims 3,000 out of the 4,500 businesses that use Rackspace have Linux.