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Canonical's Ubuntu Server 9.0.4 is a Linux distro well suited for VARs, OEMs
Ubuntu Server is a fast, free, no-frills Linux distribution that fills a niche between utilitarian Debian and the GUI-driven and, some would argue, over-featured Novell SUSE and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
In our business transactions benchmarking tests, Canonicals Ubuntu Server 9.0.4 was nearly as fast as the closest Linux cousin we've reviewed recently, Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11.
Ubuntu Server doesn't have a GUI. Instead, at installation, users have the choice of adding services.such as DNS1LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP), mail, OpenSSH, PostgreSQL database, print services, SAMBA and/or TomCat Java services.
Users also can configure the server as a svelte virtual machine (VM) or manually install server applications and utilities.The installation choices are offered through a simple 'VGA (character) graphics menu.
Ubuntu Server also includes a version of Eucalyptus - an open source tool for implementing Linux on public and private clouds. It's compatible with Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Simple Storage Service (S3) and Elastic Book Store (EBS).
Eucalyptus, based on an open source project at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is comprised of a cloud controller, a cluster controller and node controller. Together, various nodes are tied together in local or disparate server locations, according to desired computational strength, and the needs of availability of the nodes to do actual work.
Because communication among the components uses Simple Object Access Protocol, a commonly understood mechanism in application development, we found building clusters into our own cloud to be pretty simple.
OEM opportunities
These selections map to popular uses of Linux servers, and an OEM installation also can be made that makes a distributable "cut" of Ubuntu server for pre-installed application server deployments.
The OEM 'cut' can 'ask questions' of user installers in order to configure or set up the server via a text-based interface. Before this version,...