Cloud Chatter: April 2017

Welcome to our April edition. We begin with our recent release of Ubuntu 17.04 supporting the widest range of container capabilities. We have a selection of Kubernetes webinars for you to watch, or get up to speed with some indepth tutorials. Read about our exciting partnership announcements with Oracle, City Network, AWS and Unitas Global. Discover our plans for our upcoming presence at the OpenStack Summit in Boston next month. And finally, enjoy our roundup of industry news.

Ubuntu 17.04 supports widest range of container capabilities

This month marked the 26th release of Ubuntu, entitled 17.04 Zesty Zapus, offering the most complete portfolio of container support in a Linux distribution. This includes snaps for singleton apps, LXD by Canonical for lightweight VM-style machine containers, and auto-updating Docker snap packages available in stable, candidate, beta and edge channels. The Canonical Distribution of Kubernetes 1.6, representing the very latest upstream container infrastructure, has 100% compatibility with Google’s hosted Kubernetes service GKE.

Ubuntu 17.04 also includes OpenStack’s latest Ocata release, which is also available on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS via Canonical’s public Cloud Archive. Canonical’s OpenStack offering supports upgrades of running clouds without workload interruption. The introduction of Cells v2 in this release ensures that new clouds have a consistent way to scale from small to very large as capacity requirements change.

Furthermore there is increased network performance for clouds and guests with the Linux 4.10 kernel. Learn more

GPUs and Kubernetes for Deep Learning

The Canonical Distribution of Kubernetes is the only distribution that natively supports GPUs, making it ideal for managing Deep Learning and Media workloads. Our latest webinar discusses how such artificial intelligence can be achieved using Kubernetes, nVidia GPUs, and the operation toolbox provided by Canonical. Watch the webinar

Get up and running with Kubernetes

Our Kubernetes webinar series will be covering a range of operational tasks over the next few months. These will include upgrades, backups, snapshots, scalability, and other operational concerns that will allow you to completely manage your Kubernetes cluster(s) with confidence. The available webinars in the series so far include:

• Getting started with the Canonical Distribution of Kubernetes – watch on-demand
• Learn the secrets of validation and testing your Kubernetes cluster – watch on-demand
• Painless Kubernetes upgrades – register now

Unitas Global and Canonical provide Fully-Managed Enterprise OpenStack

Unitas Global, the leading enterprise hybrid cloud solution provider, and Canonical, announced they will provide a new fully managed and hosted OpenStack private cloud to enterprise clients around the world. This partnership along with Unitas Global’s large ecosystem of system integrators and partners will enable customers to choose an end to end infrastructure solution to design, build, and integrate custom private cloud infrastructure based on OpenStack. Learn more

OpenStack public cloud, from Stockholm to Dubai and everywhere between

City Network, a leading European provider of OpenStack infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) has joined the Ubuntu Certified Public Cloud programme. Through its public cloud service ‘City Cloud’, companies across the globe can purchase server and storage capacity as needed, paying for the capacity they use and leveraging the flexibility and scalability of the OpenStack-platform. With dedicated and OpenStack-based City Cloud nodes in the US. Europe and Asia, City Network also recently launched in Dubai. Learn more.

Certified Ubuntu Images available on Oracle Bare Metal Cloud Service

Certified Ubuntu images are now available in the Oracle Bare Metal Cloud Services, providing developers with compute options ranging from single to 16 OCPU virtual machines (VMs) to high-performance, dedicated bare metal compute instances. This is in addition to the image already offered on Oracle Compute Cloud Service and maintains the ability for enterprises to add Canonical-backed Ubuntu Advantage Support and Systems Management. Oracle and Canonical customers now have access to the latest Ubuntu features, compliance accreditations and security updates. Learn more

Ubuntu on AWS gets serious performance boost with AWS-tuned kernel

Ubuntu Cloud Images for Amazon have been enabled with the AWS-tuned Ubuntu kernel by default. The AWS-tuned Ubuntu kernel will receive the same level of support and security maintenance as all supported Ubuntu kernels for the duration of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. The most notable highlights for this kernel include: Up to 30% faster kernel boot speeds, full support for Elastic Network Adapter (ENA), increased I/O performance for i3 instances and more! Learn more

Ubuntu 12.04 goes end-of-life

Following the end-of-life of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on Fri tomorrow,, April 28, 2017, Canonical is offering Ubuntu 12.04 ESM (Extended Security Maintenance), which provides important security fixes for the kernel and the most essential user space packages in Ubuntu 12.04. These updates are delivered in a secure, private archive exclusively available to Ubuntu Advantage customers on a per-node or per hour basis.

For more information, read our FAQs or watch our latest webinar.

Preparing for a great show at OpenStack Summit Boston

We’ll be in Boston, from the 7th-12th May, at the OpenStack Summit. Join us at the Ubuntu booth and talk with us about your business’s cloud needs or find out about our cloud and container solutions, from LXD to Docker and Kubernetes with our featured demos. We’ll also be running some hands-on Telco and Container-specific workshops, as well as delivering a range of informative speaking sessions within the summit agenda. Book a meeting with our Executive Team or learn more about what we have planned.

Section 4: Top posts from Insights

• [News] Scalable, Secure Access to Data with DBaaS on IBM LinuxONE
• [Blog] General availability of Kubernetes 1.6 on Ubuntu
• [Tutorial] How we commoditized GPUs for Kubernetes
• [Whitepaper] The no-nonsense way to accelerate your business with containers
• [eBook] What IT pros need to know about server provisioning
• [Video tutorial] How to install MAAS on your machine

OpenStack, SDN & NFV

• How robots will retool the server industry
• What’s new in OpenStack Ocata
• OPNFV, the Open Source Project for Integrated Testing of Full, Next-Generation Networking Stack, Issues its Fourth Release

Containers & Storage

• Is it time to buy into container management platforms
• Enterprise container DevOps steps up its game with Kubernetes 1.6
• The major changes that make Docker container services enterprise-ready

Big data / Machine Learning / Deep Learning

• New AI Chips to Give GPUs a Run for Deep Learning Money
• Will the cloud save big data?
• Why Securing Big Data is a Big Deal