Ubuntu Pro debuts on Google Cloud: Here's what it offers

Canonical and Google Cloud have announced the launch of Ubuntu Pro for Google Cloud, a premium version of Ubuntu focusing on enterprise and production use. Available to all Google Cloud users, the new offering provides customers with an improved experience, expanded security coverage, and integration with critical Google Cloud features.

"The availability of Ubuntu Pro on Google Cloud will offer our enterprise customers the additional security and compliance services needed for their mission-critical workloads," noted June Yang, VP and GM, Compute, Google Cloud.

Ubuntu Pro on Google Cloud provides access to the following features:

• 10-year lifetime security updates - Canonical backs Ubuntu Pro for 10 years, ensuring security updates are available throughout, with a guaranteed upgrade path.

• FIPS & CC-EAL2 certified - Ubuntu Pro includes officially certified components to enable operating environments under compliance regimes like FedRAMP, HIPAA, PCI and ISO.

• Open-source security coverage - Ubuntu Pro adds security coverage for the most important open source workloads like Apache Kafka, NGINX, MongoDB, Redis and PostgreSQL.

• Multi-version availability - Pro images are available for the three most popular Ubuntu Server distributions: 16.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS, and 20.04 LTS.

• Kernel Livepatch - With the Livepatch service, Ubuntu kernel patches are delivered immediately, without the need to reboot your VMs.

• Optional CIS and DISA STIG profiles - For companies looking to leverage industry benchmarks for hardening, Ubuntu Pro makes two leading implementation profiles available.

• Cloud-based pricing - Ubuntu Pro pricing tracks the underlying compute cost and price varies between 3-4.5% of an average hourly compute cost, depending on the instance type. This means the more computing resources you consume, the smaller percentage you pay for Ubuntu Pro.

• Optional 24/7 support - Additional enterprise-grade support available via private offer for Pro.

Google Cloud customers can now purchase Ubuntu Pro directly from Google Cloud by selecting Ubuntu Pro as the operating system straight from the Google Cloud Console.

"With the launch of Ubuntu Pro on Google Cloud, we build on our joint investments with Google to optimize Ubuntu performance on Google Cloud, and add comprehensive security patching and Long Term Support for another 30,000 open source packages the widest range of security-maintained open source on the planet," said Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical.