Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

June 2023

EV charging infrastructure: overcome the challenges with open source

When people ask about the negative points preventing higher electric Vehicles (EV) sales, two points are raised systematically: range anxiety and the availability of charging stations. Range anxiety refers to the fear of running out of battery while driving. Of course, with more range or more charging stations, range anxiety decreases. Unfortunately, most countries lack EV charging infrastructure that meets consumer expectations.

The founding moments: Tracing the origins of confidential computing

In Ernest Hemingway’s novel “The Sun Also Rises,” there is a memorable exchange between the author and the main character, Mike. When asked how he went bankrupt, Mike responds with a concise yet profound answer: “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” Innovation happens much in the same way. Gradually, then suddenly. Ideas simmer and evolve, gaining traction until they reach a tipping point.

Managing security vulnerabilities and compliance for U.S. Government with Ubuntu Pro

Complying with US government security standards such as FIPS, FedRAMP, and DISA-STIG is essential for federal agencies and any business that deploys systems and services for U.S. government use. However, maintaining a compliant IT ecosystem is a major undertaking, as each regulation brings a host of specialised requirements. And dealing with the never-ending stream of security vulnerabilities that require patching only adds to this task.

Strengthen your cloud cyber security with Ubuntu Pro and confidential VMs

In today’s digital landscape, organisations of all sizes have expanded their presence in the cloud. But with this expansion comes a significant increase in the attack surface, making security a top concern. In this blog, we will dive into the exciting world of cloud cyber security, and explore a stronger approach to securing your workloads with the help of Ubuntu.

Canonical Joins Eclipse Adoptium Working Group to Strengthen Commitment to Open Source Java Runtimes

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, is thrilled to announce its membership of the Eclipse Adoptium Working Group. As an esteemed project under the Eclipse Foundation, the Adoptium Working Group brings together renowned OpenJDK builders and distributors such as Alibaba, Azul, Huawei, IBM, Microsoft, Red Hat, Rivos, and, most recently, Google.

Kubeflow vs MLFlow: which one to choose?

Data scientists and machine learning engineers are often looking for tools that could ease their work. Kubeflow and MLFlow are two of the most popular open-source tools in the machine learning operations (MLOps) space. They are often considered when kickstarting a new AI/ML initiative, so comparisons between them are not surprising. This blog covers a very controversial topic, answering a question that many people from the industry have: Kubeflow vs MLFlow: Which one is better?

Open Source MLOps on AWS

With the rise of generative AI, enterprises are growing their AI budgets, looking for options to quickly set up the infrastructure and run the entire machine learning cycle. Cloud providers like AWS are often preferred to kick-start AI/ML projects as they offer the computing power to experiment without long-term commitments. Starting on the cloud takes away the burden of computing power, reducing start-up time and cost and allowing teams to iterate more quickly.

Tuning a real-time kernel

This blog expands our technical deep-dive into a real-time kernel. You will need to be familiar with a real-time kernel to understand the tuning concepts in this blog. If you are starting from scratch and need to revisit the basics of preemption and a real-time system, watch this introductory webinar. If you are interested in the primary test suites for real-time Ubuntu, an explanation of the components and processes involved, head over to the first part of this mini-series.

Kubeflow vs MLFlow

Learn the main differences between the MLOps tools of choice: Kubeflow and MLFlow Started by Google a couple of years ago, Kubeflow is an end-to-end MLOps platform for AI at scale. Canonical has its own distribution, Charmed Kubeflow, which addresses the entire machine-learning lifecycle. Charmed Kubeflow is a suite of tools, such as Notebooks for training, Pipeline for automation, Katib for hyperparameter tuning or KServe for model serving and more. Charmed Kubeflow benefits from a wide range of integrations with other tools such as MLFlow, Spark, Grafana or Prometheus.

Securing open source software with Platform One and Canonical

Our own Devin Breen and Mark Lewis discussed Securing Open Source Software with the Chairman of Iron Bank at USAF Platform One Zachary Burke at AWS Summit Washington, DC. The topic includes: Securing Open Source Software, Secure Minimal Containers, and Software Security Scanning.

How we improved testing Ubuntu on WSL - and how you can too!

As the popularity of Windows Subsystem for Linux increases, the Ubuntu development team is committed to delivering a first class experience for Linux developers on Windows. To achieve this we’ve made improvements to our automated testing workflows via the creation of WSL-specific GitHub actions. In this post, Ubuntu WSL engineer Eduard Gómez Escandell talks us through the motivation for this approach and how you can implement these actions for your own CI workflows.

Canonical solutions reduce SmartNIC time-to-market and drive efficiency in enterprise data centres

Data centre efficiency is a central cost factor in enterprise IT environments. So, in the face of rising energy costs and increasingly resource-intensive workloads, it is more important than ever for businesses to seek out greater optimisation. Traditionally, CPUs have been used for the majority of data centre workloads, including network related tasks.

Canonical extends its commercial OpenStack offering to small-scale cloud environments with project Sunbeam

June 13, Vancouver, OpenInfra Summit – Canonical today announced the extension of its commercial OpenStack offering to small-scale cloud environments with a new project Sunbeam. The project is 100% open source and is available free-of-charge. Early adopters can also opt-in for comprehensive security coverage and full commercial support under the Ubuntu Pro + Support subscriptions once they complete the deployment themselves.

Minimising latency in your edge cloud with real-time kernel

From applications in telecommunications to edge cloud and industrial digital twins, experimenting with real-time capabilities in cloud technologies is a trend in the industry. Applications for the edge often have an additional requirement as they interact with real-time systems: they need to run deterministically. It means that time constraints their execution and interaction within the system.

Technical deep-dive into a real-time kernel

Canonical announced the general availability of Ubuntu’s real-time kernel earlier this year. Since then, our community raised several questions regarding the workings of the kernel and tuning guidelines. We aim to provide answers in this and an upcoming follow-up post. Depending on your background knowledge, you may wish to start with the basics of preemption and a real-time system. In that case, this introductory webinar or our blog series on what is real-time Linux, is for you.

Charmed MLFlow Beta is here. Try it out now!

Canonical’s MLOps portfolio is growing with a new machine learning tool. Charmed MLFlow 2.1 is now available in Beta. MLFlow is a crucial component of the open-source MLOps ecosystem. The project announced it had passed 10 million monthly downloads at the end of 2022. With Charmed MLFlow users benefit from a platform where they can easily manage machine learning models and workflows.

How telco companies can reduce 5G infrastructure costs with open source

5G has the potential to revolutionise the telecommunications industry, offering high speed and connectivity for a wide range of devices ranging from radio access networks (RAN), user equipment (UE), and core networks. However, the high costs associated with 5G infrastructure have been a significant blocker for adoption, hindering innovation and growth in this area. This blog discusses the primary challenges faced in the telecom industry and how open source technologies are helping to resolve them.

A holistic approach to securing Spark-based data engineering

Apache Spark is an open-source toolkit that helps users develop parallel, distributed data engineering and machine learning applications and run them at scale. In this webinar, Rob Gibbon – product manager, and Massimiliano Gori – senior information security lead, will survey the state of big data security best practices and outline both high level architectures and pragmatic steps that you can take to secure your Spark applications – wherever they may be running.

Docker container security: demystifying FIPS-enabled containers with Ubuntu Pro

In today’s rapidly changing digital environment, the significance of robust Docker container security measures cannot be overstated. Even the containerised layer is subject to compliance standards, which raise security concerns and compliance requirements. Docker container security measures entail safeguarding our lightweight, appliance-type containers –each encapsulating code and its dependencies– from threats and vulnerabilities.

Canonical & Ampere: Building Sustainable, Power-efficient Computing Solutions Together

Canonical's Taiwan General Manager Tony Chiang was invited to join the Ampere event at Computex 2023 and had a great talk with Jeff Wittich, Chief Product Officer of Ampere Computing. Ampere and Canonical have been partnered to build sustainable and power-efficient computing solutions together and we can foresee more opportunities on the way from the cloud to the edge. Watch the video to learn more.

Securing Apache Spark Big Data Operations

Apache Spark is an open source toolkit that helps users develop parallel, distributed data engineering and machine learning applications and run them at scale. In this webinar, Rob Gibbon – product manager, and Massimiliano Gori – senior information security lead, will survey the state of big data security best practices and outline both high level architectures and pragmatic steps that you can take to secure your Spark applications – wherever they may be running.

Business benefits of artificial intelligence in retail

The retail industry is going through a period of major upheaval. AI is transforming the landscape at a rapid pace. Grand View Research evaluated the market value at USD 5.79 billion in 2021 and this is expected to grow at a 23.9% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2022 to 2030. For retailers, this translates into a need to adapt to an entirely new paradigm of customer expectations.