Reducing costs, accelerating processes and simplifying management are all vital to thesuccess of an effective IT infrastructure. Companies are increasingly turning to moreflexible IT environments to help them realise these goals. Cloud computing enables tasksto be assigned to a combination of software and services over a network. This network ofservers is the cloud. Cloud computing can help businesses transform their existing serverinfrastructures into dynamic environments, expanding and reducing server capacitydepending on their requirements. 

Why cloud computing?

Adopting a cloud computing strategy can help businesses conduct their core businessactivities with less hassle and greater efficiency. Companies can maximise the use of theirexisting hardware to plan for and serve specific peaks in usage. Thousands of virtualmachines and applications can be managed more easily using a cloud-like environment. Businesses can also save on power costs as they reduce the number of servers required.And with IT staff spending less time managing and monitoring the data centre, IT teamsare well placed to further streamline their operations as staff complete more work on fewermachines. 

Canonical and cloud computing:

Canonical, which provides commercial services for companies using Ubuntu, aims toprovide businesses with the tools they need to adopt a cloud computing strategy, alongwith a path for migration between clouds. We are committed to helping businesses deploy,test and experiment with cloud computing offerings both inside and outside the firewall.That's why we are supporting a suite of cloud computing solutions to meet differentcompanies' requirements

Ubuntu cloud computing solutions

Ubuntu cloud computing solutions can help businesses to experience the benefits of thecloud in different ways. The emphasis is placed firmly on providing companies with choiceand control. Ubuntu Server Edition enables businesses to choose between Ubuntu Serveron Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Ubuntu Enterprise Cloudenvironment

Ubuntu Server on Amazon EC2:

Gives businesses the power of Ubuntu combined withthe flexibility of Amazon's cloud computing service. Ubuntu's modularity, range ofapplications and optimised performance make it the perfect solution for businessesdeploying applications on Amazon EC2 - a web service that provides resizable computingin the cloud. This solution enables companies to deploy everything from web servers tomail servers on a secure, external cloud. Furthermore, organisations can build andmanage Ubuntu Server Edition on Amazon EC2 using a wide range of popular tools suchas CohesiveFT, Landscape and RightScale

Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud brings Amazon EC2:

Like infrastructure capabilities inside thefirewall. Part of the Ubuntu Server Edition product, the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud ispowered by Eucalyptus, an open source implementation for the emerging de-factostandard of EC2. This solution is designed to simplify the process of building andmanaging an internal cloud for businesses of any size, thereby enabling companies tocreate their own self-service infrastructure. 

Set-up

 • Users can install Ubuntu Server Edition and enable partner repositories.

 • Ubuntu Server Edition offers easy package deployment and configuration. 

 • Users can configure multiple clusters into a single cloud. 

Cloud

• Interface compatibility with EC2 reduces the cost of learning a new interface whenmoving from a private to a public cloud. It enables users to adopt popularmanagement tools for private cloud computing and to develop skills using the sametechniques that they would deploy on Amazon's popular public cloud.

• An extensive range of popular development services including an elastic blockstorage (EBS)-equivalent and an S3-compatible storage manager eases integration.

• Support for elastic IP assignment enables users to assign static public IPs to anyvirtual instance. 

• SOAP with WS-security ensures secure internal communication. 

• Support for instance control operations enables users to reboot virtual machines.This helps users troubleshoot more effectively. 

• KVM hypervisor provides users with best-of-breed virtualization technology. 

Management

• Ubuntu Server Edition comes with basic 'Cloud Administrator' tools for systemmanagement and a web-based interface for cloud configuration. 

• Ubuntu Server Edition is compatible with with popular cloud management tools.Technical Specifications

• Recommended minimum specification of a dual-core 2.2 GHz Intel processor withVT-X, 4GB RAM and 100 GB hard drive.