14 DAY TRIAL // Canonical is about to release its latest update to the popular Ubuntu operating system. Ubuntu 10.10 is set to be available Sunday 10 in the desktop, netbook and, of course, the server flavour.
The server release focuses heavily on could technologies and brings a number of improvements for those building private or public clouds based on Amazon's EC2 platform.
“With Ubuntu 10.10 Server Edition we continue to make Ubuntu the default open-source choice for cloud computing,” Neil Levine, VP of Corporate Services at Canonical, said.
“We are adding features and functions that extend our lead in the public cloud and bridge the gap to hybrid and local computing environments. The infrastructure layer is the enabler of cloud computing and Ubuntu 10.10 is leading the way to put open source at the heart of those efforts,” he added.
Ubuntu is one of the most popular choices for those running virtual instances in Amazon's EC2 cloud platform. Ubuntu 10.10 Sever Edition comes with tweaks and patches to the kernel which enable admins to update the Linux kernel on-the-fly, without rebooting the instance.
Another interesting feature is the possibility to export an instance as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) and then run it on a local machine via a KVM hypervisor. Amazon uses a purpose-built Xen hypervisor in EC2.
The caveat is that you can't import the image back into EC2, but developers can test any changes locally before they are satisfied enough with the results to deploy them in the cloud.
Ubuntu 10.10 comes with an updated version of 'Cloudinit,' a tool which is used to configure Ubuntu instances, setting up things like the default locale, the hostname, but also used to generate and set up SSH private keys and set up mount points. The tool has proven so popular that Amazon is now using it internally for EC2.
Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud is also getting a rather substantial update. Ubuntu 10.10 EC will ship with Eucalyptus 2.0, which was released over the summer. Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud enables admins to deploy an EC2-compatible cloud locally.
Anyone wanting to try out Ubuntu 10.10 Server Edition in EC2 will be able to do so for free for an hour starting from October 10, the launch date.
Check back here on Sunday to get your hands on the downloadable images.