Canonical collaborates with SnapRoute to create new switch stack for network operators

In an official statement, Canonical has declared collaboration with SnapRoute, an organization well known for creating and maintaining large data center network, for developing a new switch stack for network operators.

The newly proposed integrated network stack will enable a reliable mechanism for white-box and brite box switch deployment in large environments. In this stack, FlexSwitch - a microservice architecture switch control plane developed by SnapRoute will be integrated on top of Ubuntu cloud operating system which has already found its position in cloud deployments.

SnapRoute and Canonical announced today an integrated network stack, creating a rock solid software foundation for white-box and brite-box switch deployments in large environments. FlexSwitch from SnapRoute is a modern, micro-services architecture switch control plane, and Canonical’s Ubuntu is the most widely trusted OS in enterprise cloud computing.

The FlexSwitch+Ubuntu stack is certified on multiple white-box switches including the Facebook Wedge 100. It dramatically simplifies deployment and operations for out-of-band management, top-of-rack, leaf, and spine networks since the switch control software can be deployed as a normal Ubuntu application in the datacenter. The move to Ubuntu brings a new degree of freedom to the white-box switch market thanks to its huge cloud software ecosystem.

For more information on FlexSwitch and collaboration between Canonical and SnapRoute, read original announcement made in Ubuntu Insights.

Canonical and NetApp enters in collaboration to deliver open cloud solutions

Canonical and NetApp - a leading data management and cloud storage solution provider- collaborates together to deliver open source cloud solutions. These solutions will be based on Ubuntu OpenStack and NetApp storage systems.

The Open Cloud solution by Canonical & NetApp joint venture will facilitate easy management of scalable, hybrid clouds. This will help enterprises to build automated, scalable and reliable private and hybrid clouds based on open source technologies like OpenStack and Juju. The NetApp storage and data management systems can be easily integrated with such cloud systems.

Credit : Ubuntu Insights

More than ever, enterprises realize that OpenStack hybrid and private cloud deployed with market leading storage solutions give them assurance that OpenStack solutions will be easy to manage, upgrade and operate.

“Many organizations are challenged to build IT models based on OpenStack and move them into production. Our work with Canonical will make it easier for customers to deploy Ubuntu OpenStack with NetApp’s storage and data management solutions,” said Anthony Lye, senior vice president, Cloud Business Unit, NetApp. “We are excited to be a part of Canonical’s OpenStack Technical Partner Program and are committed to the continued development of integrated cloud solutions to simplify IT delivery and rapidly advance new ideas from concept to production.”

For more information, see complete news in Ubuntu Insights portal.

Carleton University builds Research Cloud with Ubuntu OpenStack on IBM

The Canonical has announced completion of its work with Carleton University of Ottawa, to build a Research Cloud using Ubuntu OpenStack on top of IBM power servers. This cloud system will provide rapid, self servicing computation resources to handle complex scientific inquiries. These resources will be available to researchers inside university campus and other innovative projects running in collaboration with the university.

Carleton University was looking for a cloud environment to deploy on their hybrid system powered by IBM Power and other x86 based servers. Soon they found that OpenStack can serve their purpose and joined with Canonical to deploy OpenStack.

They also wanted a solution that included support for the robust POWER Architecture, so researchers could opt for the faster processing power available from the symmetric multi-processing and wider memory bandwidth available from POWER. Multi-platform support was important since commercial software packages used by researchers run on various platforms.  So, an OpenStack environment that could manage a heterogeneous environment across POWER and x86 platforms was their ideal goal.

Carleton University was pleased to discover that Canonical now offered OpenStack, in addition to Ubuntu, MAAS, and Juju for the POWER platform.  Canonical, working with IBM, provided Canonical Cloud Tools: Ubuntu, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS with OpenStack Liberty, MAAS and Juju to create a single Ubuntu OpenStack deployment on IBM Power Systems and x86 servers in a hybrid cloud.  Using Juju to deploy all OpenStack services across POWER8 and x86 based servers, the university then used Canonical’s MAAS to deploy to bare metal, spinning up the new cloud in matter of minutes.

You can read complete article on collaboration of Carleton University and Canonical in a blog post published on Ubuntu Insights.

Canonical joined Document Foundation project advisory board

The Document Foundation - team behind popular open source office suite LibreOffice - has announced joining of Canonical - team behind Ubuntu - on project advisory board of document foundation.

LibreOffice productivity suite is an integral part of Ubuntu since it's first release on 2011. Also, LibreOffice will be one of the first applications that make use of snap - universal package management system introduced by Canonical which will make it easier to maintain LibreOffice packages.

Canonical is one of the well wisher of Document Foundation projects since it's beginning and is one of the major sponsor. Canonical as member of project advisory board can help to share it's insights and experience in making of LibreOffice to take into another level - Said Marina Latini, Chairwoman of The Document Foundation.

Canonical is the company behind Ubuntu, the leading operating system for cloud and the Internet of Things. Most public cloud workloads, new smart gateways, self-driving cars and advanced humanoid robots are running on Ubuntu. Additionally, Canonical leads the development of the snap universal Linux packaging system for secure, transactional device updates and app stores.

“Canonical has been an active member of the LibreOffice community since the early days, and one of the most frequent sponsors of the LibreOffice Conference. By becoming a member of the project Advisory Board, Canonical will provide the experience and the insights necessary to improve the presence of free software – and LibreOffice – inside enterprises and public administrations worldwide”, says Marina Latini, Chairwoman of The Document Foundation.

“We are extremely pleased to become a member of the LibreOffice Project Advisory Board and having the opportunity to provide our guidance and insights to help improve LibreOffice for users around the world,” said Will Cooke, Desktop Engineering Manager for Canonical. “At Canonical, we believe in the power of open source software. We are committed to developing it, and will support projects and initiatives that help to promote its benefits to a wider audience.”

See original press release published by Document Foundation for more insights on this news.

Screenly Digitial Signature Solution choose Ubuntu core

Screenly, the most popular digital signature solution for Raspberry Pi devices has announced their collaboration with Canonical to build Screenly on Ubuntu core, a cut down base system of Ubuntu. This will help Screenly to provide it's customers with a stable platform that is secure, robust, user friendly and all on a Raspberry Pi device costing around 35 dollars.

Viktor Petersson, CEO of Screenly explains, “Ubuntu Core enables us to be more flexible and to focus on our software rather than managing an OS and software distribution across our large fleet of devices.”

Ubuntu Core also offers standardised OS and interfaces, available across a variety of chipsets and hardware. This means that Screenly can expand their portfolio of players across platforms without the costs traditionally associated with porting software to a new architecture.

Viktor Petersson at Screenly continues, “In terms of hardware, it can run on multiple hardware platforms and therefore if one of our partners requires a different hardware platform, the need to rebuild and retest our whole solution for a new OS goes away. This takes away bargaining power of the hardware vendor and gives the power back to the service providers, which for us means we’ll see greater innovation in this area.”

For more information, see original news published in Ubuntu Insights.

ScaleDB joins Canonical's Charm Partner Programme

Canonical, the team behind Ubuntu, announced joining of ScaleDB in Charm Partner Programme. ScaleDB provides a pluggable  storage engine for MariaDB/MySQL which will enable it to handle large volume and velocity streaming time-series data.

By joining Charm Partner Programme, ScaleDB can make best use of Canonical's universal application modeling tool Juju, which will help them in instant workload deployment, integration and achieving scalability.

source : Ubuntu Insights

“ScaleDB is a great fit for Canonical’s Charm Partner Program, and we are thrilled to be a part of it,” said Tom Arthur, CEO of ScaleDB. “The Canonical/Juju marketplace exposes ScaleDB to a whole new group of developers and DBAs who can now handle millions of inserts per second, with simultaneous ad hoc queries.”

“This enables a whole new class of high-velocity time-series applications. The ability to handle this level of data flow in a SQL database in the cloud is truly amazing,” said Stefan Johannson, Global Director of Software Alliances at Canonical. “Having this ability in our Charm ecosystem will enable Juju users to create a whole new class of time-series applications.”

Read original announcement in Ubuntu Insights blog.