Ubuntu is currently the most used container host OS

Jun 6, 2018 21:18 GMT  ·  By

Canonical announced on Wednesday the availability of its widely-used Ubuntu Linux operating system as a container for Amazon's EKS (Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes).

Officially launched on Tuesday, Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (Amazon EKS) is engineered to deliver Kubernetes, the open-source and production-grade container orchestration tool as a managed service on the AWS (Amazon Web Services) cloud computing services. As Ubuntu is the most widely used container host operating system, especially for Kubernetes deployments, it can now be used to host containers in Amazon’s EKS.

"The benefits of Ubuntu optimization by Amazon and Canonical now extend to Amazon’s Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (EKS) with Ubuntu worker nodes hosting high-performance Docker containers in AWS. This creates perfect portability for enterprise container workloads developed on Ubuntu workstations and operated on private infrastructure with Canonical’s distribution of upstream Kubernetes," said Canonical.

Advantages of Ubuntu on EKS

Designed for container portability, Ubuntu on EKS promises a set of great optimizations over Ubuntu on AWS. Among these, we can mention up to 30 percent faster kernel boot speeds, i3.metal support, better i3 instance class support with NVM Express (NVMe) storage disks for extreme IO, Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) with support for up to 25 Gbps network interfaces, as well as continuous security updates and image maintenance to address critical flaws.

In the private infrastructure, the Ubuntu on EKS container hosts offer the same runtime dynamics as those of other Ubuntu-based Kubernetes deployments. It consists of worker nodes created using Canonical's brand-new minimal Ubuntu base image designed to dramatically shrink both the security cross-section and the image size for Ubuntu on AWS. This makes it easier to customize Ubuntu EKS container host nodes to match your enterprise needs.

Ubuntu container hosts in EKS can also be integrated into existing enterprise infrastructures for binary compatibility with your production, testing, and development lines, better security with minimal risks, greater productivity with fewer deltas, better economics across both public and private clouds, as well as improved velocity with widely-used development tools. Ubuntu container hosts in EKS are available in the AWS Marketplace and can be launched using these instructions.