Defense Market

The Defense Information Service Agency (DISA) released the next version of its Rapid Access Computing Environment (RACE). Initially launched in October 2008, RACE initially featured the rapid delivery of Test & Development environments. Latest release enables DoD users to self-service provision operating environments within the highly secured Defense Enterprise Computing Center’s (DECC) production environment. With its rapidly accessible and scalable computing infrastructure, RACE uses virtualization and the nearly unlimited capability of cloud computing to offer Defense Department customers platform/infrastructure as a service in test and production environments, the first of its kind for DoD.

“RACE is a first for DoD – our users can now customize, purchase, and receive their test and development computing platform within 24 hours and the production environments within 72 hours, and that’s a must for worldwide missions with ever-changing computing requirements. Our goal is to allow software development to securely occur within the decision-making cycle. RACE and other DISA initiatives such as Forge.mil, Global Content Delivery Services, and the Net-centric Enterprise Service posture the Agency to support the ever evolving needs of the American warfighter”, said Henry J. Sienkiewicz, Technical Program Director, DISA Computing Services.

RACE’s quick-turn computing solution provides DoD customers with highly standardized computing platforms quickly, inexpensively and securely. With RACE allowing for provisioning within the production environment, customers get self-service provisioning with streamlined accreditation. They’ll get pre-established inherited IA controls as well as the ability to promote projects and programs from test to the production environment. SAN storage up to 1TB per RACE server is also now available, with additional storage from 10GB to 1TB in 10GB increments available. Customers need only a government credit card or completed MIPR to begin.