Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

April 2023

Upgrade your existing Ubuntu LTS instances to Ubuntu Pro in AWS

In April 2023, Amazon Web Services (AWS) released a new functionality that allows users running Ubuntu LTS to upgrade their instances to Ubuntu Pro with just a few clicks. This upgrade provides additional security features, including patching for universe packages, extended security management for an additional five years, live kernel patching, and access to FedRamp and FIPS modules.

ChatGPT uncertain about the future of cloud computing

ChatGPT has been the talk of the town for more than four months now. As the first ever artificial intelligence (AI) -powered chatbot, it has quickly gained immense popularity, helping students, engineers and even executives generate content, write and debug code and run market analyses. But could ChatGPT be used for anything other than natural language processing (NPL)? Could it, for example, assist businesses with strategic decision-making? I decided to try it out.

No more DHCP(d)

DHCP is dead; long live DHCP. Yes, the end-of-life announcement for ISC DHCP means that the ISC will no longer provide official support or updates for the software. Our ever-faithful, omnipresent friend — the familiar dhcpd daemon — is retiring, albeit over a really long walk to that cabin in the mountains. While the software will continue to function, it will become increasingly vulnerable to breakage, security vulnerabilities, and other issues over time as the software ages.

Try Ubuntu confidential VMs with Intel TDX today: limited preview now available on Azure

On behalf of the Canonical confidential computing team, I am happy to announce the limited preview of Ubuntu Confidential VMs with Intel TDX on Microsoft Azure. As part of the DCev5-series and ECesv5-series VMs, they’re available for you to try today! This exciting development is an important milestone in Ubuntu’s journey to power the confidential public cloud of the future.

How we designed the new Ubuntu Desktop installer

Back in 2021, Ubuntu Desktop engineering manager Ken VanDine talked about Canonical’s investment in Flutter support for Linux. To demonstrate the versatility of the Flutter toolkit, we committed to redesigning the Ubuntu installer experience as part of a larger overhaul of the underlying technology behind the Ubuntu installer. Up until now, the Ubuntu Server and Desktop installers had two separate underlying code-bases.

Azure AD authentication comes to Ubuntu Desktop 23.04

Ubuntu Desktop 23.04 is the first and only Linux distribution to enable native user authentication with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). The adoption of cloud-based identity providers in the enterprise is skyrocketing and this has been one of the most requested features. With Ubuntu Desktop 23.04 we decided to act on the feedback and offer a way to natively let enterprise users authenticate Ubuntu Desktops with the same credentials they use for Microsoft 365 or their Windows clients.

Ubuntu Desktop 23.04 release roundup

Every new release of Ubuntu Desktop comes packed with new features and functionality to enable developers, gamers, creators and tinkerers. Ubuntu 23.04 is no exception. Our focus, as always, has been improving quality, performance and enjoyment for all our users, whether that’s more elegant update handling for snaps, improved UI for installation and quick settings or a more accessible gaming experience.

Azure AD Authentication for Ubuntu

Ubuntu Desktop 23.04 is the first and only Linux distribution to provide native user authentication with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) enabling users on Microsoft 365 (M365) Enterprise plans to authenticate Ubuntu Desktops with the same credentials they use for M365 or Azure. This is possible thanks to aad-auth, our new cloud authentication client which makes use of Microsoft MSAL library.

Cloud storage at the edge with MicroCeph

Over the years, our enterprise data centre users have told us how much they love the end to end experience of an application-centric solution like Juju to manage their entire infrastructure. Juju is a software operator framework that abstracts the specifics of operating complex software and makes it simple and straightforward to deploy, operate and relate complimentary pieces of software, reducing cost and providing flexibility.

Canonical Kubernetes 1.27 announcement

Following the release of upstream Kubernetes on 11th of April, Canonical Kubernetes 1.27 is generally available in the form of MicroK8s, with Charmed Kubernetes expected to follow shortly. We consistently follow the upstream release cadence to provide our users and customers with the latest improvements and fixes, together with security maintenance and enterprise support for Kubernetes on Ubuntu.

Charmed Kubeflow is now available on AWS Marketplace

Canonical is proud to announce that Charmed Kubeflow is now available as a software appliance on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) marketplace. With the appliance, users can now launch and manage their machine learning workloads hassle-free using Charmed Kubeflow on AWS. This reduces deployment time and eases operations, providing an easy-to-install MLOps toolkit on the public cloud.

Four Challenges for ML data pipeline

Data pipelines are the backbone of Machine Learning projects. They are responsible for collecting, storing, and processing the data that is used to train and deploy machine learning models. Without a data pipeline, it would be very difficult to manage the large amounts of data that are required for machine learning projects.

Build the foundation for your zero trust strategy with Ubuntu confidential computing

Why do we want to eliminate trust? Isn’t trust a good thing that we should foster and grow? And shouldn’t computing platforms trust their end-users, and vice versa? The short answer is no. And I would argue that the very goal of system security has always been to reduce trust.

Tutorial | Microsoft Intune for Ubuntu

Microsoft has recently released Intune for Linux with Ubuntu as the first target platform. As a mobile device management (MDM) software, Intune on Ubuntu monitors the endpoint compliance status and uses this information to make access decisions for resources protected by Azure Active Directory. In this video, Canonical Product Manager Massimiliano Gori gives us a brief introduction and walks us through Microsoft Intune on Ubuntu.

Ubuntu compliance monitoring with Microsoft Intune

In recent years, data science, AI and software development have become a key focus area for organisations operating in every sector of the economy. This creates a pressing need to adopt Linux desktops in the enterprise, as research clearly shows a growing number of data scientists and developers prefer operating systems like Ubuntu.

Canonical releases Landscape 23.03, delivering simplified licensing through Ubuntu Pro

April 4th, 2023, London, UK: Canonical announced the release of Landscape 23.03 with broader CPU architecture compatibility, and improved management and monitoring capabilities for Ubuntu. Landscape 23.03 manages all Ubuntu versions and derivatives from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS onwards, in addition to Debian Bullseye. Launching and configuring Landscape is faster and simpler than ever before.