Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

When the codename for Ubuntu 26.10 was announced, I suspect there was a measurable surge in users searching for the definition of “stonking” across search engines and the various popular AI chatbots.

Open source provides the world with access to cutting-edge software, and the learning that comes with it. But how do you validate someone’s skills in an open ecosystem? Canonical Academy is a highly rigorous, job-focused qualification platform designed to empower individuals and enterprises with industry-recognized credentials. The platform addresses a critical gap in tech: validating real-world, hands-on capability rather than rote memorization.

Some support cases are routine. Others take you off the documented path entirely, into territory where the only way forward is deep, hands on open source expertise. This series looks at how Canonical Support navigates the unexpected: cases where standard playbooks aren’t enough, and a support engineer helps a customer find a solution in real time. This is one of those cases.

Across the global landscape, telecommunications operators have already deployed machine learning for predictive maintenance, customer care chatbots, and anomaly detection. However, as the industry transitions toward Autonomous Networks Level 4 (AN L4), where networks can make intent-driven, predictive decisions and perform closed-loop management with minimal human intervention, a fundamental architectural challenge has emerged.

Canonical is now part of the Open Secure AI Alliance, announced by NVIDIA with partners across cloud computing, cybersecurity, enterprise software, open source foundations, and AI research. The alliance aims to develop and share open technologies, techniques, and tools to safeguard software and agents in the age of AI.

Confidential computing is moving quickly. The foundation is already here: AMD SEV-SNP and Intel TDX have made it possible to run confidential virtual machines (VMs) with stronger protection for data in use. Ubuntu 26.04 Long Term Support (LTS) brings integrated host and guest support for both of these technologies, making confidential computing a native part of the Ubuntu virtualization offering..

Most organizations already understand encryption at rest and encryption in transit. These controls are mature, widely deployed, and often explicitly referenced in security frameworks. However, runtime is different: when an application processes sensitive information, that data is typically available in memory.

The Enterprise Store makes software distribution manageable and scalable behind firewalls or in air-gapped environments. Available with an Ubuntu Pro subscription, the Enterprise Store respects the security protocols of strict environments, in a way that is controllable, auditable, and predictable.

Some memory leaks are straightforward to detect. A process allocates memory, forgets to free it, and grows until something breaks. This was not that kind of leak. This is the story of how Canonical Support helped a global retail organization trace the cause for an unusual memory leak originating in PID 1, the very first process started by the kernel during the system boot sequence. The memory footprint was 10 times higher than expected.

Modern infrastructure teams are expected to deliver cloud-like speed, consistency, and reliability, even when their workloads run on physical servers. Bare metal remains essential for many environments: private clouds, Kubernetes clusters, AI infrastructure, edge sites, regulated platforms, and large Ubuntu estates. But operating physical infrastructure at scale is difficult when provisioning, patching, monitoring, and lifecycle management are handled by disconnected tools and manual processes.