Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition by Amazon

Adopted as a trusted server platform by large and small organisations around the world, Ubuntu Server Edition is a powerful, reliable and flexible operating system. It's easy to install and maintain, and includes frequent updates throughout its lifecycle.

Ubuntu Server Edition helps users to quickly deploy common services such as web, email, file and database servers. It also comes with proven virtualization technologies that can help companies better manage their resources. An excellent platform for innovation, Ubuntu Server Edition includes leading-edge cloud technologies. As a result, it can help users create an agile server environment that can scale to meet their requirements.

If you're thinking of moving your production systems onto a new platform, Ubuntu and Canonical make it easy. With deployment, training and support services, along with systems management tool Landscape, Ubuntu sponsor, Canonical, can help organisations get the most out of their server infrastructures.

Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC)

Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition introduces Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) as a fully supported technology. This is an open source cloud computing environment, based on the same Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) as Amazon EC2, that will allow businesses to start taking advantage of the possibilities of private clouds. Private clouds allow businesses to reap the benefits of flexible compute environments while avoiding the security, regulatory or policy restrictions inherent in pushing data onto a public cloud.

Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) is powered by software from Eucalyptus Systems, and provides an open source software infrastructure for implementing on-premise cloud computing. UEC makes it extremely easy and fast for system administrators to set up, deploy and manage a cloud environment. Users familiar with elastic compute environments will be able to build similar infrastructure behind their firewall, avoiding any regulatory and security concerns that prevent many enterprises from taking advantage of cloud environments.

Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud is preparing a store capability that will provide users with easy access to ready-to-deploy appliances in the UEC environment. A first preview of this store is available in Ubuntu 9.10, together with a sample appliance. It will demonstrate the solution to software vendors and additional appliances will be added after the release.

Additional Refinements

The core server product and kernel have also received significant attention in this release. MySQL 5.1 has been added. The directory stack and Single Sign On tools have been upgraded for improved directory integration. Django now ships as a fully supported framework enhancing web server options.

There have been numerous kernel improvements to better support both Xen (guest) and KVM (host and guest) virtualization, and to improve caching performance. Support for the USB 3.0 protocol has been included to support super speed transfer rates when devices become available. System management support has been extended through support for the WBEM (web-based enterprise management) protocols which open up support of Ubuntu environment to the most popular system management tools currently deployed in enterprises. Ubuntu's own systems management tool, Landscape, has added a dedicated server to its hosted version allowing deployments to be managed entirely within the firewall and will fully support Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition and Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud.