Ubuntu scale out and cloud partner ecosystem expands with IBM POWER8

by John Zannos on 28 April 2014

Public and private cloud adoption has continued to grow, and Canonical has been at the forefront, focusing on scale out and cloud architectures. We have built Ubuntu, Ubuntu OpenStack and Juju to be optimised for cloud and scale out. We recognise that the right ecosystem of hardware and ISVs partners needs to be in place to make sure there is a rich set of solutions.

This week IBM announced its next generation of Power Systems which supply an excellent balance of performance and value. More interesting than the speeds and feeds though is focus on two things close to our own heart: volume and openness.

With POWER8, IBM is working to optimise Power as a server platform for scale out and cloud computing. This has meant designing systems to run the completely Open Source software stacks that dominate scale out computing. As smart devops everywhere already know, when it comes to scale out and cloud computing, Ubuntu leads with significant margins so we are pleased to also announce that Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, released just recently on April 17th supports IBM POWER8 Linux servers. One of the key requirements with Ubuntu on POWER8 was the automation of provisioning, management and scaling of systems. We have enabled MAAS (Metal As A Service) and Juju (workload orchestration tool) to simplify bringing an entire ecosystem of scale out applications to POWER. Whether it is MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Cassandra for data analytics, OpenStack for cloud infrastructure or Cloud Foundry for Platform as a Service, Juju can deliver complete solutions to Power instantly to the point where admins do not have to treat Power any differently from any other platform and can focus on scale. That drives volume.

Openness is also key to cloud and scale out and IBM has not forgotten about this either. With POWER8, led by the OpenPOWER Foundation, IBM has opened the POWER architecture to facilitate an increase in implementations across a diverse vendor ecosystem. Last week, OpenPOWER foundation announced its membership has grown to 26 organisations, with Canonical signing on as one of the most recent. The addition of Canonical and other new members will help expand the roadmap for future OpenPOWER developments. This openness was one of the key factors helping us decide to bring Ubuntu to Power Systems. Openness is the oxygen needed for clouds and scale out to thrive. Developers love openness and Ubuntu. We believe IBM is on the right path with an open approach to POWER8, with Ubuntu. I look forward to seeing how it fares.