With all of the development going on in the Ubuntu ecosystem today, one of the more interesting developments in my opinion is the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud. UEC is a great way for existing (or new) Ubuntu/Canonical users/customers to build out a supported virtual machine hosting platform that utilizes the same tools as Amazon’s EC2 to manage it. This type of private cloud is extremely compelling, allowing you to setup an environment where your production environment is running on EC2, while utilizing the same tools, and images in a local test/dev environment.


Alternatively, running everything locally, you can maintain the flexibility to move to another UEC deployment, or EC2 if required.

A couple of days ago I had lunch with a friend of mine, and he slyly slid across the table Canonical’s “Cloud in a Box”.

This is meant to be passed off to decision makers, to help higher ups understand the ease of installation, the stability and compatibility of the UEC platform, and Canonical’s support muscle behind it.

Split nicely into two simple parts, Deploy and Decide, we’ll quickly go over both sections.

The Deploy section walks through the simple installation steps to getting a EUC install running, as well as including an Ubuntu “Your Private Cloud 9.10″ install disk.

Interesting for me is the List of Supported hardware for Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition and UEC. If you’re deploying this in your company, you’ll want the support Canonical can provide, and there’s a sizable list of hardware you can deploy on and get that support. It’s interesting to note that Canonical provides support for their platform, as well as the software running on it. Full solution support for this is key to a successful deployment.

The other side, the Decide section, reads like a dead tree powerpoint presentation, listing bullet and talking points that describe/add clarity to the UEC story. I particularly liked the “defining cloud computing” slide, as it clearly states the official canonical stance on where this product fits:

At Canonical, we believe cloud computing is all about Infrastructure as a Service. Specifically, the approach to managing Infrastructure first pioneered on Amazon EC2 and S3.

This reminds me to tell you to go listen to Simon Wardley. Presentation Gold.

What really separates Ubuntu cloud from other platforms based on Free and Open Source Software is really the community momentum, the scale of Amazon’s EC2, and the leadership vision to really make ubuntu the best virtual guest platform for applications. That’s no small feat. Today, Ubuntu is the most deployed Linux OS on Amazon’s public cloud, and it’s lead is growing.

Long story short: Canonical and Ubuntu are making a serious bid to be the next big enterprise linux distribution, and one of the major differentiators today is UEC. With the impending release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, there is going to be an increased interest in Ubuntu’s private cloud offering. Novell and Redhat should be taking notes.

Find out more about UEC: http://www.ubuntu.com/cloud/private
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