Ubuntu Cloud images are now in beta for Google’s service. In particular, Canonical has brought support for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and 14.10, as well as 12.04 LTS. All Ubuntu releases have guaranteed support for five years.
The
latest LTS release, 14.04, provides support for numerous software and
hardware architectures. The release added ARM multiplatform, ARM64, and
IBM POWER support. Additionally, KVM 2.0.0 is now supported alongside
Xen and VMware solutions.“Bringing Ubuntu to Google Cloud Platform is a logical first step in what we believe will be a great collaboration, benefiting developers and enterprises looking for an easy-to-use, reliable OS for their cloud deployments,” said Certified Public Cloud product manager Federico Lucifredi.
This beta means Ubuntu is now on the three biggest public cloud platforms: AWS, Azure, and now Google Cloud Platform. Canonical isn’t done yet though – the company also announced the release of an Ubuntu OpenStack distribution.
Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth calls the distribution an “autopilot” for OpenStack. “Point it at a rack or ten and tell it your preferences for storage, software defined network, and hypervisor, and it will create your cloud automatically, manage and monitor it for you, keep it fully secure, and update it to the next version of OpenStack in due course.”
In order to add machines to the OpenStack deployment, IT admins simply boot and allocate the machine using Canonical's Landscape tool. The machine is then added to the metal as a service (MAAS) and can be monitored using the same Landscape interface.
Canonical's OpenStack distribution is now in beta. For more information on the latest Ubuntu releases head to the Ubuntu Cloud product page.
