Upcoming Ubuntu Linux Release Ties Public, Private Compute Clouds

Ubuntu 9.10 is currently in beta release, and is scheduled to be released in its final form on Oct. 29.

Cloud computing is a way to dynamically combine and scale server, storage, networking and other resources outside of a company's own traditional data center for such purposes as remote data storage or running Software-as-a-Service.

A company can build an internal or private cloud, which allows those resources to be available for its own purposes, or can use external or public clouds, which are available over the Internet.

Ubuntu 9.10 Linux provides images that users can now use in both the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) public cloud and in their own private Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC).

The UEC uses the Eucalyptus Systems open source implementation of Amazon EC2 to allow the development of private compute clouds.

The ability to allow virtual Ubuntu Linux machine images, whether based on the Amazon Machine Image (AMI) or on images from Ubuntu or other third-party developers, to run seamlessly on both the UEC and Amazon EC2 is important for both development and production environments.

For developers, a new service can be built for customers on a virtual image and tested on a private UEC cloud. Once the image has been completely tested, the customer can then be sure the service will run on the public Amazon EC2.

In production environments, customers can use the same management tools for their public and private clouds, and can move services between public and private clouds as needed.

More information on all the new changes in Ubuntu 9.10 Linux compared to the current Ubuntu 9.04 release can be found by clicking here.