Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

I’ve read and watched more than a few articles about ChatGPT in the last couple of months. It seems the large language model AI hype machine just can’t stop.

While information technology continues to evolve rapidly, virtualization remains a cornerstone of modern computing, enabling businesses to maximise resource utilisation, enhance flexibility, and reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO). It is a key building block of the cloud computing paradigm, and millions of organisations use it daily worldwide. All existing cloud platforms, such as AWS, Azure, Google or OpenStack, use virtualization underneath.

We are pleased to share that Azure is now offering an in-place upgrade from Ubuntu Server to Ubuntu Pro. This functionality, made possible through our strategic partnership with Azure, provides a straightforward way to leverage the advanced features and extended security maintenance of Ubuntu Pro, all without redeploying your Virtual Machine (VM) or scheduling a maintenance window.

Balancing high performance operations against the need to reduce total operating costs is a classical dilemma faced by both large and small organisations. This dilemma becomes particularly important when you choose the foundation of your IT infrastructure: the operating system. A recent case study by Tech Mahindra, the multinational IT services and consulting firm, details how their partnership with Canonical enabled them to shift the balance for a major Fortune 500 life insurance company.

Delivering a comprehensive real-time solution for industrial systems requires careful work at every layer of the stack. Since standalone hardware or software components are not sufficient, Canonical and Intel have joined forces to deliver an out-of-the-box real-time solution. This solution is now generally available on Intel Core processors.

Canonical works closely with Microsoft to ensure that running Ubuntu on Azure is a great experience. One of the key aspects of this collaboration is ensuring the longevity and security of Ubuntu releases, such as Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, even beyond their Standard Security Maintenance period. We are excited to announce the integration of Ubuntu Pro update awareness into Azure through the Azure Guest Patching Service (AzGPS) and Update Management Center (UMC).

Rust has been the language most loved by developers for the last 8 years and it is seeing increased adoption by software companies of all sizes. However, its many high-level rules and abstractions create a steep initial learning curve which can leave the impression that Rust is the preserve of a select few but this couldn’t be any further from the truth. Let’s examine why Rust is often a great choice and take a look at how to get started with it on Ubuntu.

As the adoption of confidential computing gains momentum, a question we often get asked is: why would I need confidential computing in my private data center? However, while it is true that confidential computing has often been associated with addressing security concerns in public cloud environments, its value proposition extends well beyond that.

SEV-SNP is a new security feature that is available on AMD’s EPYC processors. It stands for Secure Encrypted Virtualization Secure Nested Pages. SEV-SNP provides a new level of protection for firmware by encrypting the memory pages that contain the firmware code. This makes it much more difficult for attackers to gain access to the firmware and launch attacks.

Last week we released a new major version of the Vanilla framework. Vanilla 4.0 introduces the elements of the new style used for a current rebranding of Canonical’s brochure websites, including typography changes of headings utilising new variable Ubuntu font, wider grid width, removed rounded corners, some updated colours, and updates to any related components.