The Internet of Things adoption is growing faster than ever before. As connected devices become more affordable, they find their place in many aspects of our lives. Users worldwide can benefit from a large ecosystem of IoT solutions. However, this rapid growth comes at a cost. Different IoT edge devices have different interfaces, speak different languages and many are not supported soon after manufacturing. Over time, this presents challenges not only to usability, but also to security and privacy.

This blog post is part of our data centre networking series: In the previous blogs, we covered the architecture and main drivers behind software-defined networking. In this one, we discuss the impact of softwarisation on the other important data centre building blocks, culminating in software-defined data centres (SDDC).

Kubernetes is everywhere! In the public and private cloud, and from the enterprise to startups, the majority of IT executives around the world have explored Kubernetes, and how it has evolved the way many organisations are developing and deploying their applications. But what is scary about it, and how can organisations better leverage one of the greatest tools in the field while overcoming the biggest challenges facing CIOs when adopting Kubernetes?

2 November 2021: Canonical published the first Ubuntu images optimised for the next generation of Intel IoT platforms, which address the unique requirements of the intelligent edge across multiple industry verticals. Both companies are dedicated to enabling on Ubuntu the Intel IoT platforms’ specific features such as real-time performance, manageability, security, and functional safety, as well as allowing users to take advantage of their improved CPU and graphics performance.

1st November 2021: Today, Canonical announced support with Microsoft for Microsoft SQL Server with Ubuntu Pro on Microsoft Azure. Canonical has worked with Microsoft to bring a highly performant and fully supported solution for SQL Server to market, based around the Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS operating system.

It’s official: since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, cybercrime has increased by 600%. Among these, ransomware attacks are estimated to cost $6 trillion in 2021 alone. And there were nearly 550,000 ransomware attacks per day in 2020. The question is: are your workloads secure enough? In this blog, we will discuss how to make your Open Source workloads more secure in one second.

OpenStack vs AWS is a discussion that almost every organisation must conduct when adopting a cloud strategy. This is because OpenStack and AWS are undoubtedly some of the most popular cloud technologies in both public and private cloud space. While AWS is the most popular commercial cloud platform, OpenStack remains its most popular open source equivalent. Both have their own pros and cons. But which one is better for you?

Are you spending time on high-impact, high-value activities, or are you constantly derailed by maintenance, support, and deployment challenges? Does your organisation consume open-source software that needs security patching? Where do you get the security updates from, and how do you track what’s available? Are you responsible for vulnerability management, compliance, and long term maintenance of the software running on top of Ubuntu in your organisation?

Juju re-imagines the world of operating software securely, reliably, and at scale. Juju realizes the promise of model-driven operations. Excellent observability is undeniably a key ingredient for operating software well, which is why the Charmed Operator ecosystem has long provided operators the ability to run a variety of open source monitoring software. We collectively refer to these operators as the Logs, Metrics, and Alerts (LMA) stack.

The release of OpenStack Charms 21.10 brings native support for OpenStack Xena in Charmed OpenStack. This latest version of OpenStack comes with initial support for SmartNICs in Nova and further improvements around Neutron Open Virtual Network (OVN) driver integration. In order to further simplify the job of the cloud operations teams, the OpenStack Charms 21.10 release offers improved day-2 automation, including additional charm actions and better upgrade experience, and new operations documentation.