CANONICAL UBUNTU MANAGEMENT TOOL GETS HEFTY UPGRADE
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Canonical sees its Landscape software as central to its success in the enterprise.
Anticipating greater usage of Ubuntu within the enterprise, Canonical has released a significant update to its Landscape Ubuntu system management tool.
“We have really been cranking up the level of effort with Landscape over the past year or so,” said Federico Lucifredi, Canonical’s Landscape product manager. “Landscape is a very important piece of our enterprise strategy, and so Canonical’s commitment has increased dramatically.”
The new version of the software, Landscape 12.09, is designed to better manage systemwide software updates. It offers more compliance reporting. This version also exposes its API (application programming interface) so it can be connected with other system management tools, such as Puppet. Also, the for first time, the software allows administrators to install Ubuntu over a network, in a process called bare-metal provisioning.
Launched in 2008, Landscape is systems management software that administrators can use to centrally monitor and update a fleet of computers running either Canonical’s desktop or server Linux distribution.
Other new features: Machines can be assigned specific policies for when to update themselves, with options to update only security patches or to go through with all updates. Machines can also be instructed to do updates only during certain hours, so the updates won’t slow the servers during times of heavy usage.
Landscape is typically updated around twice a year. This version, however, is the first updated in nearly a year. The new version however comes with a wealth of new features, aimed squarely at providing all the functionality typically enjoyed by Microsoft Windows management tools.
To better serve enterprise compliance efforts, Landscape offers a dashboard that shows which machines in a network have been updated.
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