Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

July 2023

Why and how to use Rust on Ubuntu

Rust has been the language most loved by developers for the last 8 years and it is seeing increased adoption by software companies of all sizes. However, its many high-level rules and abstractions create a steep initial learning curve which can leave the impression that Rust is the preserve of a select few but this couldn’t be any further from the truth. Let’s examine why Rust is often a great choice and take a look at how to get started with it on Ubuntu.

Why do you also need confidential computing for your private datacenter?

As the adoption of confidential computing gains momentum, a question we often get asked is: why would I need confidential computing in my private data center? However, while it is true that confidential computing has often been associated with addressing security concerns in public cloud environments, its value proposition extends well beyond that.

Start your SNP VMs on Google Cloud

SEV-SNP is a new security feature that is available on AMD’s EPYC processors. It stands for Secure Encrypted Virtualization Secure Nested Pages. SEV-SNP provides a new level of protection for firmware by encrypting the memory pages that contain the firmware code. This makes it much more difficult for attackers to gain access to the firmware and launch attacks.

Vanilla 4.0 release

Last week we released a new major version of the Vanilla framework. Vanilla 4.0 introduces the elements of the new style used for a current rebranding of Canonical’s brochure websites, including typography changes of headings utilising new variable Ubuntu font, wider grid width, removed rounded corners, some updated colours, and updates to any related components.

What does the future of AI hold in store?

On 16 July the world celebrates International Artificial Appreciation Day. In the previous century, science fiction often covered topics and inventions that are now closer to science fact, such as humanoid robots. In the 50s, artificial intelligence met both great successes, including algorithm development, and big failures, caused by compute power constraints.

How to choose an OS for software development in automotive

Automotive as an industry is constantly looking for ways to improve its processes and efficiency. The one common tool that is at the intersection of all software development activities is the operating system (OS). From advanced simulation tools to new vehicle designs, the OS has to be reliable and provide the best platforms for a maximum number of purposes.

Large language models (LLMs): what, why, how?

Large language models (LLMs) are machine-learning models specialised in understanding natural language. They became famous once ChatGPT was widely adopted around the world, but they have applications beyond chatbots. LLMs are suitable to generate translations or content summaries. This blog will explain large language models (LLMs), including their benefits, challenges, famous projects and what the future holds.

Canonical Kubernetes 1.28 pre-announcement

Kubernetes 1.28 is currently planned to be released on the 15th of August 2023. Canonical Kubernetes 1.28 is scheduled to release swiftly afterwards, with MicroK8s 1.28 expected to be generally available within 24 hours of upstream, and Charmed Kubernetes expected to follow within days. 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.

Why you need to protect your confidential virtual machine from itself

In the traditional computing threat model, privileged system software like the hypervisor, host OS, firmware, and DMA-capable devices were all granted access to the data and code of your workloads. This was widely accepted because it seemed necessary for the system managing VM resources (memory, execution, and hardware access) to also have access to the workload’s data. How else could it manage it after all?

An introduction to smart home business models

Smart homes are changing. A modern smart home typically isn’t a self-contained, set-it-and-forget-it, custom installation. It’s a hyper-connected set of devices that work together to automate and enhance the users’ living space. Today’s smart homes contain devices from many manufacturers, running dozens of protocols, interfacing with multiple cloud backends.

Comparing Ubuntu vs macOS for enterprise developers

In the constantly evolving world of software development and IT management, choosing the right operating system for your enterprise developers is a strategic choice. Ubuntu vs macOS, which is right for you? Our latest whitepaper helps you answer this question and make an informed decision. This blog post provides a sneak peek into our findings covering both the developer landscape, and the key considerations for IT administrators. Considering macOS or Linux for your organisation?

ML Observability: what, why, how

Note: This post is co-authored by Simon Aronsson, Senior Engineering Manager for Canonical Observability Stack. AI/ML is moving beyond the experimentation phase. This involves a shift in the way of operating because productising AI involves many sophisticated processes. Machine learning operations (MLOps) is a new practice that ensures ML workflow automation in a scalable and efficient manner. But how do you make MLOps observable?

Charmed Spark beta release is out - try it today

The Canonical Data Fabric team is pleased to announce the first beta release of Charmed Spark, our solution for Apache Spark. Apache Spark is a free, open source software framework for developing distributed, parallel processing jobs. It’s popular with data engineers and data scientists alike when building data pipelines for both batch and continuous data processing at scale.