Ubuntu is becoming increasingly popular in data center servers

Ubuntu has been widely used on desktops. As a server operating system with a long history, it will also have a place in the field of data centers. In a recent Ubuntu global user survey, nearly 1/3 of respondents were from small companies with fewer than 10 employees, only 28% of people work in the United States (55% in Europe ). Most people mainly use basic functions such as web pages, printing, files, databases, and server backup. Only a small number of people are using advanced functions such as virtualization and group computing.

Ubuntu has been widely used on desktops. As a server operating system with a long history, it will also have a place in the field of data centers.

In a recent Ubuntu global user survey, nearly 1/3 of respondents were from small companies with fewer than 10 employees, only 28% of people work in the United States (55% in Europe ). Most people mainly use basic functions such as web pages, printing, files, databases, and server backup, only a small number of people are using advanced features such as virtualization and group computing (the latter's low usage is also a good portrayal of TechTarget's findings on the Linux operating system of the data center last year ). Ubuntu's most popular industry is the technology and education sector, which of course is not surprising.

On the other hand, most respondents said they are using Ubuntu to complete some key tasks and intend to increase the number of Ubuntu servers in the future. Although they do not rush to take action, they have realized that Ubuntu is a good platform for cloud computing. In addition, although Ubuntu accounts for the largest proportion of users in small companies, the number of employees in medium-sized companies between 100 and 500 accounts for only 16%, however, these medium-sized companies may have high requirements on service performance.

The survey was conducted by Redmonk in Wash. Seattle, Ubuntu user community, and Canonical, Ubuntu business partner in London.

Deven Phillips is Ky. louisville Metal Sales Manufacturing Corp. the company's senior system director, he said, in a company with fixed assets of up to $0.45 billion, he runs many functions on Ubuntu server, including web applications, firewalls, virtual hosts (with several running client windows), ftp and telephone systems.

Metal Sales is running Ubuntu on all 55 servers except 2, and plans to purchase Canonical support to use the Landscape manager to integrate server configuration and updates, he estimates that this plan will save him 70 to 80 hours a month.

He said that the only drawback of Ubuntu is the lack of business applications suitable for small and medium-sized companies.

"Ubuntu has made great products," he said. "I like Ubuntu's simplicity, efficiency, and operability ."

Ubuntu is in the leading position in the desktop field, but its application on servers is relatively slow.

According to Canonical spokesman Gerry Carr, Ubuntu's server usage growth rate is at least the same as that in the desktop field (but the Server field has a lower starting point ), last year, due to the impact of Security Update Requirements, the usage of Ubuntu in the server field in the United States has doubled to that of desktops. He said that Ubuntu's growth has not damaged N. c. state Raleigh Red Hat Inc. and Mass. the benefits of State Waltham Novell are at the cost. On the contrary, Ubuntu is growing because it encourages people to open source code and develop the courage of the market.

"What we see now is completely different user types. They are less and less interested in Linux, but for Ubuntu Landscape Manager (integrated configuration and update) these solutions are getting more and more interested. They are trying to use these solutions to manage their own infrastructure, "he said." Ubuntu can save a lot of cost compared with Unix, when managing APT software packages, it requires a relatively small number of managers."

Carr is more willing to say that Canonical has won the support of paying users based on its open source code service software, rather than saying that the company has no choice.

A Canonical spokesman admitted that the company needed help to move its data center business from the edge field to the core field, which is also a problem it is trying to solve by providing professional services, this can help complete the migration and compensate for the lack of Linux skills. Some unauthenticated applications may not be suitable for running on Ubuntu and other professional applications such as high availability or cluster, but for the general workload, ubuntu has saved a lot of resources ..

Carr says the other obstacle that Canonical is working to overcome is the lack of hardware authentication for server operating systems. HP will authenticate ubuntu9.04, which will be released for the ProLiant server in a few months. Dell and IBM are also discussing it.

Carr said that workstations integrated with Windows operating systems cannot prevent the popularization of Ubuntu, because many mature cross-platform open-source applications such as MySQL databases, Apache Web servers, and similar software allow administrators to monitor Ubuntu servers through the windows activity directory. Although Canonical is the first Linux vendor to choose KVM as its System Management Program, Ubuntu can also run any system management program as a customer. However, Canonical is not currently looking for authentication to run on Microsoft Hyper-V as a customer, he said.