The original Rackspace Cloud app came out last year when the iPad launched. Today, the iPad 2 is launching and the app is making a second entrance. This time with capabilities that make it usable for communities far larger than the systems administrator crowd.
The new Rackspace Cloud app has new features for the system administrator to better manage cloud infrastructure:
- Administrators may manage the Rackspace Cloud and customize OpenStack clouds. OpenStack is the open cloud building initiative that Rackspace helped start.
- The app runs on the iPhone, iTouch and iPad devices.
- The app now works in the United Kingdom.
- The app has Chef integration, providing the capability to manage up to ten servers at once.
- The app uses the API and can do everything the API does. This falls in line with what Programmable Web sees. The Twitter site, for instance, is run by the API.
But its features also make the app more universal. It runs on Apple iOS 4.3, connecting audio and video files to the Rackspace cloud infrastructure with the ability to run directly on Apple TV.
You may also share from the app through Twitter, for example.
The ability to use Apple TV and share through Twitter shows how storage is fundamentally becoming abstracted. Storage is becoming more of a conduit to connect devices. In the process, managing a cloud infrastructure can also be in line with using an app to show the video on your Apple TV or sharing it through a social community.
