Canonical Announces "Ubuntu Pro" For AWS

Looking to further capitalize upon the popularity of Ubuntu in the cloud, Canonical today announced Ubuntu Pro premium images for Amazon's EC2 cloud.

Ubuntu Pro images for Amazon Web Services covers Ubuntu LTS releases with extra functionality focused on enterprise deployments of Ubuntu in the cloud. The principal benefits of Ubuntu Pro include:

- 10 years of package updates and security maintenance
- Kernel Livepatch, which allows for continuous security patching and higher uptime and availability by allowing kernel security updates to be applied without a reboot**
- Customised FIPS and Common Criteria EAL-compliant components for use in environments under compliance regimes such as FedRAMP, PCI, HIPAA and ISO
- Patch coverage for Ubuntu’s infrastructure and application repositories, spanning hundreds of open source workloads including Apache Kafka, MongoDB, Node.js, RabbitMQ, Redis and more.
- Fleet-wide systems management with Landscape, including the ability to visualise, screen and selectively apply updates
- Integration with AWS security and compliance features, including AWS Security Hub, AWS CloudTrail and more — available from Q1 2020.

It will be interesting to see where else we could see Ubuntu Pro moving forward. Ubuntu Pro on AWS costs approximately $0.229/hr but varies based on instance type.

More details on the Ubuntu Blog.