What’s new in Ubuntu 15.10: cloud and server?

• General availability of Canonical’s OpenStack Autopilot, the fastest and easiest way to build an Ubuntu OpenStack cloud
• LXD machine containers: a pure container hypervisor hosting Ubuntu, CentOS and other Linux guests
• Tech Preview:  nova-compute-lxd OpenStack driver for machine containers
• Tech Preview: DPDK fast network packet processing packaged and ready for testing

Ubuntu 15.10 will be available for download from Canonical from today – 22nd October 2015. The new update brings a host of incremental improvements and benefits for business users and Ubuntu developers-alike.

New in 15.10 (Wily Werewolf)

Canonical’s OpenStack Autopilot now GA

• Full high availability of all cloud controller services, deployed using best practice architecture based on available hardware resources
• Smart automated scale out that re-architects cloud controller services as hardware resources are added
• Full integration of Open Daylight SDN controller
• Choice of Swift or Ceph for object storage

New with 15.10, Canonical is debuting its newly launched Ubuntu OpenStack cloud deployer and management tool – OpenStack Autopilot – the most powerful and easiest way to deploy scale and manage Ubuntu OpenStack clouds without the complexity and costs associated with major cloud projects.

The new service, launched alongside Ubuntu 15.10, has been created to allow businesses to build and manage Ubuntu OpenStack clouds quickly, easily without the need for expensive, hard to find OpenStack cloud architects.

Autopilot has been built using the insight, experience and tools that reside within the OpenStack Interoperability Lab (OIL), the world’s only Interoperability Lab in which hundreds of OpenStack clouds are built per day using technologies from over 35 Canonical partners. The reference architecture used has been developed over the last 4 years based on Canonical experience supporting more OpenStack clouds in production than any other OpenStack distribution company.

Autopilot deploys, manages and scales Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu OpenStack Kilo. It has been designed to fully support in place upgrades between releases.

“One of the biggest issues organisations using OpenStack face is how to scale their clouds in line with expansion without having to employ expensive cloud architects to manually re-design them. Autopilot offers enterprises a smart, way to scale their cloud technically and financially.” said Shawn Madden, Autopilot Product Manager at Canonical, “We have built Autopilot to deliver superior scale and economics in a simple to use package.”

Ubuntu is the most widely used cloud platform and Ubuntu OpenStack the most widely deployed OpenStack cloud distribution – 57% according the latest Linux Foundation Survey. As such, many companies are looking seriously at OpenStack cloud solutions as the means to simplify cloud deployments whilst allowing them to scale rapidly.

Ubuntu OpenStack Liberty

OpenStack Liberty has been built around three key themes of Manageability, Scalability and Extensibility:

Manageability

• Common library adoption
• Improved configuration management
• More granular Neutron security settings with RBAC support

Scalability

• Initial version of Nova Cells V2 implementation to improve of single region large scale OpenStack clouds
• Neutron, Nova and Cinder scale improvements

Extensibility

• Support for OpenStack as the integration engine with ‘Big tent’ model of ancillary project identification
• Support for containers with debut of LXD nova driver to enable workloads to be deployed as LXC containers
• First release of Magnum with support for integration of Kubernetes, Swarm and Mesos

Ubuntu OpenStack Liberty is included in 15.10 and available for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS via the Ubuntu Cloud Archive.

What’s new in server

LXD comes of age

LXD, the machine container hypervisor, is now included by default within every Ubuntu server.  That means every Ubuntu Server can now host hundreds of other Linux guest containers.  LXD provides all of the key features expected of a modern hypervisor — image management, snapshots, live migration, Fan overlay networking, IPv4 and IPv6 support, and an industry leading security profile.  Beyond the usual hypervisor features, LXD also provides an open, RESTful API, the network endpoint that any tool can use to start, stop, clone, and live migrate those containers.  The first consumer of that RESTful API is the nova-compute-lxd driver — now available as a Tech Preview in Ubuntu OpenStack Liberty — which uses the LXD hypervisor to provision operating system container instances in an OpenStack private cloud, and integrates with the rest of OpenStack’s core projects (Neutron, Swift, and Ceph).

MAAS is Ubuntu’s Metal as a Service platform, capable of installing onto physical hardware any Linux or Windows operating system, and of scaling to data centers of thousands of machines.  MAAS has a command line interface, a beautiful web user interface, and like LXD, a RESTful API.  New for 15.10, the MAAS web interface has been redesigned, and is fully responsive in any browser on any PC or mobile device.

Ubuntu Server 15.10 ships with a v4.2 based Linux kernel, enabling the latest server hardware and peripherals available from IBM, HP, Dell, and Intel.  The 15.10 kernel delivers new features inherited from upstream such as ACPI support for ARM, LSM (Linux Security Module) Stacking, and the new thermal Power Allocator governor.  We also see notable Ubuntu specific achievements with fan networking for network address space expansion capability and also the introduction of a DPDK (Data Plane Development Kit) tech preview for faster packet processing in network-heavy applications.

High performance networking

New in 15.10 for telcos and enterprises with heavy networking requirements, DPDK (Data Plane Development Kit) previews. DPDK is a set of libraries and drivers for fast packet processing and with a great many high volume OpenStack deployments happening within telecoms companies, DPDK enables virtual network functions to deliver the high performance network throughput required in core network services.

About Canonical

Canonical is the commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu project and the leading provider of enterprise services for Ubuntu cloud deployments. Ubuntu delivers reliability, performance and interoperability to cloud and scale out environments. Telcos and cloud service providers trust Ubuntu for OpenStack and public cloud and it is used by global enterprises such as AT&T, Comcast, Cisco WebEx, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, China Telecom, Korea Telecom, NEC, NTT, Numergy and Time Warner Cable.

Canonical’s tools Juju and MAAS raise the bar for scale-out orchestration in cloud environments. With developers, support staff and engineering centres all over the world, Canonical is uniquely positioned to help its partners and enterprise customers make the most of Ubuntu. Canonical is a privately held company.