Managed cloud company Rackspace has added new features to its DevOps Automation Service including Windows support and expanded environment stack support.

Rackspace has launched its DevOps Advisory Service for broader DevOps transformation engagements.

Enhancements to the DevOps Automation Service offering will provide customers with additional services and Fanatical Support through the new managed operations service level.

Rackspace said the enhancements will help customers to design, manage and scale their cloud operations and enable a continuous application delivery model.

The service has also been expanded to support windows and new environment stack features including –

- Windows support – Rackspace DevOps Automation Service now supports Windows, featuring Microsoft DSC, an extension of PowerShell.

With Windows support Rackspace said it will utilize its modules to deploy infrastructure quickly and consistently, using Desired State Configuration and source-controlled code.

Rackspace said its customers will be able to take advantage of orchestration and monitoring that will help deploy and maintain more reliable application environments.

- Expanding environment stacks – Racksapce now supports environment stacks including Chef, Rails, Node.js, PHP, Tomcat and Python which according to Rackspace can be deployed within hours on the Rackspace Hybrid Cloud.

Rackspace has also launched its DevOps Advisory Service – where its specialists work with customers from stakeholder through to front-line level to help map and plan the organization’s shift to DevOps practices.

Rackspace’s transformation methodology leverages DevOps foundations to assess each customer’s current capability and manage gaps.

The service will use a variety of methods to help drive progress, including -

- DevOps Workshops - Rackspace is working with customers to perform a range of services including application assessment, transformation planning and knowledge transfer, plus enablement around key areas like configuration management tools, provisioning and deployments, continuous integration, continuous delivery (CI/CD) and monitoring.

- DevOps Strategy Planning - Rackspace DevOps specialists will work with customers to understand their requirements and help to create a custom project plan for their business needs and timeline.

- DevOps Professional Services - Rackspace will provide access to DevOps professional services from writing infrastructure code to designing structure and building migration plans for applications.

Rackspace said this is designed to help customers automate, deploy and test their infrastructure for their main applications, or a set of proof of concepts that the customer helps build.

Rackspace UK DevOps practice area CTO Chris Jackson said “extending our support to Windows and expanding the environment stacks we support is just one example of how we are always working to build on the success of our initial offering.”

“Fundamentally, these enhancements let our customers build and deploy features faster, quickly scale out their technology infrastructure and improve developer productivity,” Jackson said.

Rackspace’s DevOps enhancements are available now in the US and UK.