Ubuntu 9.10 Server to Focus on Cloud Computing

Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of the Ubuntu foundation, announced today the plans for Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala”. The server version will focus on developments both in the Amazon EC2 cloud as well as allowing users to build their own elastic computing clouds utilizing the Eucalyptus platform.

Ubuntu started offering official AMI’s to run on EC2 just a short time ago and is planning on building out its list of images to allow users to deploy pre-installed packages of the OS and applications to run on EC2 and other clouds as well as building on the ubuntu-vmbuilder software as well. Ubuntu-vmbuilder is an application that lets users automate the creation of virtual machines for testing and development purposes as well as deployment of applications which is right on track with the elastic computing idea. Shuttleworth promises to make an easier way to interact with clouds: “Wouldn’t it be apt for Ubuntu to make the Amazon jungle as easy to navigate as, say, APT?”

The other thing they will be focusing on with the new release is integrating the Eucalyptus platform into the OS. Eucalyptus is an open source suite to build an elastic computing cloud similar to Amazon’s EC2 using your own hardware. It uses the Xen hypervisor just like EC2 and it meant to be able to interface with EC2′s web services as well as query interfaces. Plans for Ubuntu server are to allow the “cloud” resource pool to grow and shrink with the resource requirements of the cluster. In theory, all servers would run during peak hours and as resources are no longer required, the physical hosts would be suspended or shutdown all together to conserve energy.