Landscape 1.4 Adds UEC Support

Cloud management dominates the theme for Landscape 1.4 with new features that allow you to manage your private Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) as easily as you manage your instances on Amazon EC2. Also released are new features that help system administrators be more efficient including time based package updates and role based access. These new features will be available this week on both the Hosted and Dedicated Server Editions of Landscape.

Cloud Computing: UEC Support

Building upon our support for Amazon’s EC2 Cloud, users can now start, stop and manage their private Ubuntu instances on their UEC from within Landscape. Users simply enter their credentials directly through Landscape to start, stop and manage an instance. We’ve designed Landscape to work directly with both Amazon and Eucalyptus console pages so you can manage your instances without having to use any other tools. Landscape securely stores your security credentials making is easy to spin up new instances on UEC or EC2 at anytime. Once the instances are initiated, they all display on the same page allowing you manage all your physical, virtuali and Cloud instances in one place.

New Timed Package Updates

Users can now schedule package updates, system reboots and shutdowns in the future with minute increments. This gives System Administrators the flexibility to schedule activities for systems to occur during planned maintenance windows or low use periods to minimise the impact on the network. Now that we have developed the time / scheduling function, look for us to add this to other areas of Landscape where it it makes sense, like scheduling scripts in the future.

Administrator Roles

As Landscape is deployed in larger enterprises the need to delegate and limit access to systems has become a key need. Now, in addition to having a master admin who can manage all systems within a Landscape account, you can delegate access to systems to other administrators. This builds on our tags function (which allows you to tag computers performing the same function and update them with a single command) to allocate full access to systems by admin. Typically this means sys admins in different areas can be given full access to their local systems, but not to those in another area or country. Like tags, assigning systems to other administrators is completely flexible so you can use what ever criteria you need.

The Landscape 1.4 client is available today and is included with Ubuntu 9.10 server edition. Details are at www.canonical.com/landscape

Ken Drachnik, Landscape Manager