14 DAY TRIAL // Canonical is somewhat of a new player in the Linux server market, but it has been making great headway in the past years, especially thanks to its more unusual approach of offering Ubuntu Server for free unlike popular alternatives from Red Hat or SUSE. But one area where Ubuntu has really caught on is cloud computing thanks to its Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud offering. Canonical is now announcing another win in the market with a partnership with Dell.
"Dell will offer a series of ‘blueprint’ configurations that have been optimised for different use cases and scale. These will include PowerEdge-C hardware, UEC software and full technical support – you will be able to buy these straight from Dell or you can use the ‘blueprints’ as a base to create your own bespoke solution. The Dell team have great strength and experience here and will provide detailed guidance on all the ‘blueprint’ solutions, as well as enterprise class deployments," Mark Murphy, Global Alliances director at Canonical, announced.
Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud joins proprietary products from Microsoft and VMWare, which Dell was already supporting. Canonical says it's the first time a major hardware vendor has offered an open-source cloud computing alternative.
Dell will be offering its systems with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, which is yet to be released, and customers will get a turn-key cloud computing product compatible with Amazon's EC2 (Elastic Cloud Computing) and S3 (Simple Storage Service) APIs. Canonical says it has worked with Dell engineers for the past six months to ensure 100-percent compatibility of Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud with Dell's PowerEdge-C servers. Dell has been offering Ubuntu-based laptops and desktops for the past three years or so.
Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud
Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud is based on Ubuntu Server and leverages the Eucalyptus open-source cloud platform. It enables businesses to deploy a flexible cloud environment that caters to their specific needs and has the advantage of being 'on site,' something many companies are more comfortable with.
Eucalyptus implements the Amazon's EC2 and S3 APIs to ensure interoperability. This means that applications designed for Amazon's public cloud will work in a cloud infrastructure based on Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud and vice-versa. This way, companies can start by using Amazon's services and then move to their own infrastructure without all the work put into developing their apps.
Ubuntu Server 9.10 (with Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud support) is available for download here on Softpedia.