StackIQ Continues to Show Who's Boss in Server Automation With Newest Product

SOLANA BEACH, CA--(Marketwired - February 09, 2015) - StackIQ Inc., makers of the warehouse-grade automation platform for any large-scale server infrastructure, today announced the immediate availability of StackIQ Boss 5. This latest release contains key new capabilities that represent a significant advancement in server automation technology for enterprise and service provider datacenters.

Along with this latest release, the company has re-branded its products (See press release Warehouse-grade Automation Is The Future Says StackIQ). StackIQ Cluster Manager is now StackIQ Boss. StackIQ Rolls become StackIQ Pallets. And, StackIQ Wire is the new name for the programmatic framework used to access and control the many services of Boss.

"Large, scalable server clusters that support Hadoop and private clouds do require a different level of infrastructure automation capabilities, speed, and tight coupling between hardware and software layers," states Juan Guevara, VP of Big Data Solutions, Trace3. "A commercial product that offers complete automation for these environments benefits us immensely by dramatically reducing manual task time."

"Boss 5 extends our full stack server automation capabilities to Docker containers as well as enhancing all of our Hadoop and OpenStack solutions," says Tim McIntire, CEO and co-founder, StackIQ Inc. "We are bullish on Big Data and thrilled about helping customers accelerate deployment of infrastructures to seize the many opportunities that deep analytics and insights bring."

Highlights of What's New In StackIQ Boss 5

RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) 7 Support
RHEL7 natively supports Docker containers and is used in the latest release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform. Boss 5 updates the Core Pallet to version 7.0 which now fully supports RHEL7 and, by extension, delivers Docker automation. A key value of Boss rests in its ability to provide full stack automation for any heterogeneous environment used for any combination of bare metal servers, virtual machines, and containers. Customers can now use StackIQ to automate a multitude of next generation datacenter workflows.

Spreadsheet Configuration for Disks and Host Identification
StackIQ Boss now fully automates that pre-installation process. Configuring RAID cards and host identification seems easy but it is a major time sink and introduces risk like all other tasks at scale. Customers have to set up proper RAID arrays, alter BIOS settings, and set up host-based networking. Then, the settings have to be replicated and applied consistently across hundreds or thousands of machines.

Every IT ops team maintains a spreadsheet inventory of their systems that is either generated by hand or through an asset management tool. Boss instantly converts what is contained in a RAID configuration spreadsheet into a functioning cluster by ingesting information such as device ID, slot number, and RAID level. This spreadsheet can be used to set IP address, hostname, primary network interface, and appliance type assignments.

Spreadsheet configuration is a powerful enterprise feature since it essentially lets customers reuse what they already maintain while shortening time-to-automate.

Spreadsheet Configuration for All Major Commercial Hadoop Distributions
Hadoop Pallets for StackIQ Boss now include spreadsheet configuration for application level configuration. This capability removes the need for manually configuring within a Hadoop management console at deployment time.

Advanced Agent Readiness For Puppet
Boss 5 prepares every compute node with Puppet agents available. With a single command, a cluster can be made immediately available to any third party management tool using an integrated Puppet Master and Puppet agents.

Real-time Log File Streaming
Lets IT ops view a combination of logs (e.g., web log, Hive log, Ambari log) centrally. This allows the identification and tracing of a problem across nodes from a single UI (user interface).

Warehouse-grade Automation: Boss, Pallets, and Wire

StackIQ Boss 5 is a complete automation platform built specifically for any Big Data and private cloud infrastructure. The StackIQ platform is comprised of three parts that -- together -- deliver an easy "build, run, manage" infrastructure.

StackIQ Boss, the base product, performs the main duties of server discovery, pre-configuration, base installation, and ongoing health and performance monitoring. Boss integrates with virtually any systems management or popular DevOps configuration tool. Boss ensures that the proper settings for site configuration, network configuration, security policies, and overall corporate compliance are achieved blazingly fast with a massively parallelized installation engine.

StackIQ Pallets are pre-built configuration packages that contain details specific to certain applications, middleware, or physical infrastructure. These Pallets are available as sets or a la carte depending on customer requirements. The Pallets provide the necessary deep 'line of sight' from the application layer (e.g., commercial Hadoop package) all the way through to the underlying server cluster.

StackIQ Wire is Boss' programmable framework so that third party management systems can enroll whole clusters, individual nodes (based on machine types or roles), or run health checks for performance monitoring or troubleshooting. Wire also enables IT ops to create and tailor Pallets to meet the organization's specific needs (e.g., add custom monitoring, install different version of Java). This makes Pallet installations extremely flexible.

Availability and Pricing
StackIQ Boss 5 is available immediately. A trial version of Boss is available at http://www.StackIQ.com. For enterprise pricing, contact the company at sales@stackiq.com.

About StackIQ
StackIQ helps customers build, run, and manage large distributed systems and private cloud infrastructure with a complete automation platform. To date, the company has helped over 150 organizations automate over 1 Million Linux servers thereby removing over 560 years worth of manual installation and configuration tasks. Learn more about us at www.StackIQ.com.