Certified Ubuntu images available in Joyent Cloud

Joyent has been providing Ubuntu Linux images for years. Over that time our performance engineers have worked on improving and optimizing performance of the all Linux images based on the lessons we have from building and optimizing SmartOS*. In an effort to also ensure the tools, operations and overall environment is optimal for the Ubuntu user we have partnered with Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, to ensure that we have a fully Certified Ubuntu set of images available to our customers.

Working with Canonical has been exciting since we are engineering focused organizations that strive for quality and performance. Together we have been able to create a set of images that provide both the long time Joyent user and the new to Joyent Ubuntu user a familiar and enjoyable experience.

Versions

Certified Ubuntu images for Joyent Public Cloud included Ubuntu 12.04, 13.10 and the soon to be released 14.04.

Image features & improvements

  • Ubuntu Cloud Images, Certified by Canonical for Quality Assurance
  • Faster system boot
  • Cloudinit (Ability to configure instances well beyond package configuration)
  • Ability to partition, format and encrypt with secondary disk
  • Ability to move swap from primary to secondary
  • Ability to use Juju for orchestration
  • Archive mirrors, hosted in Joyent’s cloud and managed in all availability zones
  • Simple Streams, ensuring you always deploy the freshest image
  • Ability to leverage LXC in 12.04
  • Docker.io

Cloud-Init

Cloud-Init, launchpad.net/cloud-init and cloudinit.readthedocs.org/en/latest, is the defacto multi CSP system that handles early initialization of a cloud instance. With Cloud-Init, you now have the power and flexibility to accomplish practically anything when provisioning on Joyent. For example:

  • Install additional packages at provision time
  • Move swap over to the secondary disk if you need more space on the root disk
  • Encrypt the secondary disk if you need to provide protection for your data at rest
  • Setup and run Chef Recipes and Puppet Manifests

Cloud-Init essentially removes the necessity of having a custom image for each of the services needed to make your business work. This also means if you use Cloud-Init on another cloud provider, you can easily move over to Joyent using the same Cloud-Init file.

Juju

Juju, is an orchestration system with the ability to run on various cloud stacks on both private and public clouds and even on bare-metal. With today’s release, you now have the ability to use juju-local on your instance to create services and establish relationships between them.

Joyent Provider & Charms

We are currently working on adding the Joyent Provider to Juju so that you can orchestrate your services amongst several instances and cloud providers. We are also in the process of making Node.js on Ubuntu have the same experience of deployment using Juju and tooling that currently exists only on SmartOS available.

Joyent is committed to driving performance advantages and overall resiliency in all available images and this is just another step in that effort. We encourage all Linux users to review and upgrade to these new images .

If you have any questions please contact us at support@joyent.com.

Additional resources

Come see Brendan Gregg’s Key Note at the the 12th annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE 12x).
Read Brendan Gregg’s second installment of “10 Performance Wins”.



Post written by Jim Farrell