Canonical Blog

Cloud management dominates the theme for Landscape 1.4 with new features that allow you to manage your private Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) as easily as you manage your instances on Amazon EC2. Also released are new features that help system administrators be more efficient including time based package updates and role based access. These new features will be available this week on both the Hosted and Dedicated Server Editions of Landscape.

Cloud Computing: UEC Support

Building upon our support for Amazon’s EC2 Cloud, users can now start, stop and manage their private Ubuntu instances on their UEC from within Landscape. Users simply enter their credentials directly through Landscape to start, stop and manage an instance. We’ve designed Landscape to work directly with both Amazon and Eucalyptus console pages so you can manage your instances without having to use any other tools. Landscape securely stores your security credentials making is easy to spin up new instances on UEC or EC2 at anytime. Once the instances are initiated, they all display on the same page allowing you manage all your physical, virtuali and Cloud instances in one place.

New Timed Package Updates

Users can now schedule package updates, system reboots and shutdowns in the future with minute increments. This gives System Administrators the flexibility to schedule activities for systems to occur during planned maintenance windows or low use periods to minimise the impact on the network. Now that we have developed the time / scheduling function, look for us to add this to other areas of Landscape where it it makes sense, like scheduling scripts in the future.

Administrator Roles

As Landscape is deployed in larger enterprises the need to delegate and limit access to systems has become a key need. Now, in addition to having a master admin who can manage all systems within a Landscape account, you can delegate access to systems to other administrators. This builds on our tags function (which allows you to tag computers performing the same function and update them with a single command) to allocate full access to systems by admin. Typically this means sys admins in different areas can be given full access to their local systems, but not to those in another area or country. Like tags, assigning systems to other administrators is completely flexible so you can use what ever criteria you need.

The Landscape 1.4 client is available today and is included with Ubuntu 9.10 server edition. Details are at www.canonical.com/landscape

Ken Drachnik, Landscape Manager

Today we are announcing the Landscape Dedicated Server Edition — a stand alone version of Landscape that users can install on-site giving them complete control of their Ubuntu environment. This is one of our most requested features so we modified the Hosted version of landscape, keeping all the management, auditing and monitoring features, packaging it as a software appliance you install on your systems. Now Landscape can operate locally so all your information transfers over your local network and all system configuration, policies and profiles are stored on your infrastructure.

New features available with the Dedicated Server and Hosted edition in the October release include:

• Manage your Cloud and physical systems in one console – including server, desktop and Amazon EC2 Cloud instances.

• Scheduled package updates – Now you can schedule package updates and machine restarts for maintenance windows or when network usage is low minimizing the impact to your users.

• Administrator Delegation – Group your systems to meet your needs then assign permissions to different administrators enforcing work rules and enhancing security.

To be the first to know about availability of the Landscape Server, get informed about upcoming Webinars and download the brochure.

Of course we will continue to offer the Hosted version of Landscape along side the Dedicated Server giving users a choice in how they want to manage their Ubuntu systems. All the new features mentioned above are planned to be available in October when we release the next major update of Landscape and Ubuntu Karmic Koala. The Landscape Dedicated Server is available for order now, but installation will not be available until late September / early October.

Click for detailed information on Landscape, Support and our Training products and services.

Ken Drachnik, Landscape Manager

Announcing the release of Landscape 1.3 – the next version of Canonical’s management and monitoring software that lets you manage multiple Ubuntu systems as easily as one. In addition, Landscape enables you to monitor all your systems from a single Web interface reducing the complexity of managing multiple systems. The theme of 1.3 is Cloud and scalability.

Cloud Computing: EC2 Support
Landscape 1.3 introduces support for Amazon’s EC2 Cloud service. Users can now start, stop and manage their Ubuntu instances on Amazon EC2 from within Landscape.  Just enter your EC2 credentials directly through Landscape to start, stop and manage one of our pre-configured versions of Ubuntu that include the Landscape Client.  We have both 32 and 64 bit server versions available in both the US and EU regions. Once you started, you can use Landscape to manage and monitor them as you would your physical systems. Landscape saves you time by allowing you to manage your physical, virtualized and Amazon EC2 instances from one page.

New Custom Graphs
Users can now create and store trends of key system parameters allowing them to view and act on issues before they impact system performance. This gives System Administrators the flexibility of writing a script to monitor any machine readable parameter that is important to them such as temperature, memory and disk usage.

Knowledge Base
We’ve taken the experience our support engineers have gained with Landscape and created a library of articles that are now available in our knowledge base. There are hundreds or articles that you can search through that will save you time by allowing to quickly find and learn about common procedures and fixes.

The Landscape 1.3 client is available today and is included with Ubuntu 9.04 server edition (Jaunty Jackalope). Read more at the Landscape blog or get product details here

Ken Drachnik – Landscape

We have just released Landscape 1.2 which is the next version of our management and monitoring software that lets you manage multiple Ubuntu systems as easily as one. In addition to provisioning, package and security updates management, Landscape enables you to control and monitor all your systems from a single Web interface reducing the complexity of managing multiple systems. The theme of 1.2 is customization – giving you the ability to use generic Landscape features to meet your needs and automate the tasks you want.

The script execution feature has been greatly improved by adding a repository. Now scripts can be stored in the Landscape server for easy use on one or more systems on your network. Scripts can also have attachments, making it really easy to update files on many machines at once and opening up many new possibilities for remote system administration. The scripts are automatically shared with other administrators of the same account to facilitate routine system analysis and reporting.

We have updated Landscape to warn the administrator when something important comes up. Instead of polling the Landscape pages to see what has to be done, what about letting Landscape alert you? We now have notifications that can be configured to send an immediate alert via email so you know when the latest patches are available or a system has upgrades that need approval.

We have made Landscape more useful for people without a subscription to the service. The idea is to provide a quick summary of the system at login so that an administrator can get a very quick systems status check. The landscape-sysinfo program gives you a simple system status display and is based on a fully modular architecture that can be easily expanded with more plugins.

As a bonus, the client part of Landscape (including the new landscape-sysinfo tool) is officially part of Ubuntu starting with the 8.10 “Intrepid Ibex” release. This includes an integration with the installer so that administrators can have a fully configured Landscape client right after the first boot.

The full list of major features that we have added to Landscape 1.2 can be found on the Landscape blog.

Landscape remains free of charge for all of Canonical’s support customers. System Administrators who want access to Landscape’s powerful system management and monitoring features without a support contract can also subscribe to the Landscape service.

Want to try Landscape? Register for a Free 60 day trial to see how it can simplify you management and monitoring tasks.