Dell Partners With Canonical For Ubuntu Clouds

Canonical has announced the availability of Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud running on Dell PowerEdge C2100 and C6100 servers in an integrated solution.

This new solution enables Dell’s US-based customers to easily deploy IAAS (infrastructure as a service), Canonical officials said.

The standard edition released 2 February enables software developers and IT organisations to run cloud proof-of-concept programs by providing an optimised, pre-configured testing and development environment. Workloads can easily be shared with external providers for capacity growth based on Ubuntu’s open-source implementation of Amazon Web Services cloud computing services.

Open Source Cloud

PowerEdge C Servers and Ubuntu software will ship with tested reference architectures and a detailed implementation guide plus support from Dell and Canonical experts, Canonical said.

“Open source is the driving force of cloud computing however we choose to define the concept,” said Neil Levine, vice president of corporate Services at Canonical, in a statement. “This initiative is a great way for US businesses to realize the power of this approach – the efficiency, savings and flexibility it brings and the power it can deliver to any data centre –  and to start developing their internal cloud infrastructures with hardware and support from a familiar and trusted source.”

“Partnering with Canonical has allowed us to deliver an IAAS solution in a tightly integrated package based on open standards,” said Andy Rhodes, executive director of marketing, Data Centre Solutions (DCS) Division at Dell, also in a statement. “This product release fits into our strategy of bringing technologies to market where we can optimize efficiency at every layer, including servers, storage and code. In this way we are making computing resources more accessible to a wider variety of businesses including telcos, hosters, media and entertainment, and financial services, where there is a substantial amount of software development work.”

Cloud Ready Servers

Meanwhile, “The Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud – based on Eucalyptus – is the leading cloud distribution in the world, popular among software developers and web companies,” said Marten Mickos, CEO of Eucalyptus Systems, in a statement. “The integration and availability of UEC on Dell servers will be ideal for the growing number of organisations that are building new consumer-facing cloud services and need cloud-ready servers. We are pleased that the Eucalyptus private cloud software, as part of the UEC, will now impact an even broader market.”