The open cloud future is here: Ubuntu 13.10 and OpenStack Havana

We’re very happy to announce the arrival of Ubuntu 13.10 and OpenStack Havana. Ubuntu is the fastest and easiest way to deploy an OpenStack Havana-based cloud.

Of course, we’re not the only way to deploy an OpenStack cloud – the diversity of OpenStack’s contributors is part of what makes it so appealing to both us and the people who use it. But Canonical launching 13.10 on the same day as OpenStack Havana is not a coincidence. We’ve backed OpenStack since day one and as the platform and our contributions to it have grown, so too has the depth of the connection between Ubuntu and OpenStack.

A quick canter through Stackalytics.com’s numbers shows that Canonical sits at number 8 currently by ranking of the organizations who have contributed the most to OpenStack’s core since its inception.

As we all know, things not considered ‘core’ at this very moment sometimes become the next big innovations to transform computing. But for Havana at least, working on its core so closely has given us fuel to make 13.10 the most OpenStack-aligned Ubuntu distribution yet, and capable of supporting delivering the cloud’s key benefits better than any other operating system (OS):

Flexibility and Scale: Ubuntu is the OS of choice for very large cloud deployments, making it the perfect match for OpenStack’s rapid adoption by telecom operators with big cloud plans. But smaller organizations also start to explore OpenStack deployments for more development and testing, and we’ve responded in kind by tuning 13.10 for very small clusters of only five servers. On the other end of the spectrum, we collaborated closely with Calxeda and other silicon and hardware manufacturers to ensure 13.10 will support the latest generation of ARM processors. For all the Facebooks, Googles and large scale enterprises of the world, this new high density hardware will ensure the fastest, most efficient use of processing power for truly large-scale deployments.

Performance and Compliance: 13.10 features a supercharged new version of Landscape that comes with a full suite of new real-time monitoring and security update tools and dashboards that work not just on OpenStack but across all cloud and physical environments.

Faster Service Deployment: We’ll soon be announcing the winners of our Juju Charm Championship, but before we do, Ubuntu 13.10 users will get their hands on the latest version of Juju that makes deploying complex, sophisticated applications in the cloud up to five-times faster than any other Linux distribution. Additionally, for large-scale data centers that provision and re-provision services constantly, Juju’s improved installer enables cloning of containers in less than one second. Juju now also lets admins manage LXC containers to allow multiple services to run on the same physical or virtual machine for greater overall efficiency.

On a final note, 13.10 also represents the deepest example yet of our dedicated focus on long-term support for VMware-based virtual and cloud environments. Another quick look at this slice of Stackalytics data will show you that our engineer Yaguang Tang has accounted for almost 20% of our contributions to Havana. Yaguang’s work is almost entirely focused on VMware integration, so Ubuntu OpenStack users can benefit from strong interoperability with VMware vSphere and ESXi.

Many organisations have realised that the road to the cloud is paved in open source technology, such that it is increasingly hard to have one without the other. Ubuntu 13.10 demonstrates our commitment to not just a great open-source desktop experience, but also in supporting the future of the open cloud.

For more about 13.10 and how to deploy Ubuntu with OpenStack Havana, check out http://www.ubuntu.com/download/cloud