Dell and Ubuntu Team Up for Linux Cloud Computing Technology

Canonical, one of the vendors of Ubuntu Linux, is expanding their cloud horizons thanks to a new cloud partnership they have formed with Dell. The partnership consists of Dell making the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) technology available on the Dell PowerEdge C2100 server as well as the Dell PowerEdge C6100 server. The UEC deal marks a huge milestone for Ubuntu as it moves from Dell desktops to Dell servers.

According to Nicolas Barcet, Ubuntu Server Product Manager, "It is the first offer that involves Ubuntu Server Edition at Dell so it's a major step extending the strong relationship we have had on Ubuntu Desktop and Netbook editions."

UEC has been a part of the Ubuntu Linux distro since Januty Jackalope was released in April 2009. Other releases by Ubuntu have improved the technology that is based on the open source Eucalyptus project. Ubuntu stated back in April 2010 that it had 12,000 active deployments of UEC with as many as 200 being added each day. This deal with Dell also involves a fair amount of money but an exact amount is unclear.

"Dell receives a share of the UEC Assist contracts it sells; details are not public. Dell does the entire sell, which includes the reselling of UEC Assist contracts," said Barcet.

There were some questions raised as to why Dell has decided to make UEC available now, and Barcet noted that Canonical and Dell have been working on making a simple yet stable deployment methodology. This methodology is reflected in both reference architecture documents as well as a set of pre-configuration files.

Barcet noted that UEC is not certified or integrated with other hardware from major system vendors other than Dell as of right now. UEC offers Ubuntu the ability to enable their infrastructure to run as either a private cloud deployment or a public cloud deployment. While the price utility of cloud computing has made it a good business investment for some companies, there are still challenges that need to be tackled.

According to Barcet, "Novelty of infrastructure as a service is the strongest barrier. We believe that seeing trusted partners join forces to provide an end-to-end solution will help establish the solution."

Source: Server Watch

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