Ubuntu Pro is now generally available. It is designed to help teams get timely patches for CVE-entry vulnerabilities and keep their systems secure and compliant with standards and certifications such as FedRAMP, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS. Until now, the subscription was only available as a beta, or for large cloud customers.
It’s a subscription model from Canonical, which adds 10-year security coverage and optional tech support to an additional 23,000 packages beyond the core OS. It is intended for companies that want to improve their IT security, not only for the main Ubuntu repository, but for thousands of open source packages and toolchains.
Ubuntu Pro: Rapid security updates
Canonical wants to react particularly quickly to security gaps and provide patches for the Ubuntu main program. Critical vulnerabilities and other security risks are patched in less than 24 hours on average. Ubuntu Pro provides critical, high and selected medium CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures entries of security vulnerabilities) from Ansible, Apache Tomcat, Apache Zookeeper, Docker, Nagios, Node.js, phpMyAdmin, Puppet, PowerDNS, Python, Redis, Rust , WordPress and more, Canonical explains.
In addition to the security patches, Ubuntu Pro also offers tools for compliance management in regulated and audited environments. For example, the Ubuntu Security Guide (USG) helps with the implementation of hardening and compliance standards such as CIS benchmark and DISA-STIG profiles. To meet compliance regulations such as FedRAMP, HIPAA and PCI-DSS, Ubuntu Pro also offers FIPS-certified encryption packages.
“Landscape” is used for extensive system management and automated patching. In addition, Ubuntu Pro supports Livepatch, which allows kernel vulnerabilities to be patched in memory at runtime, minimizing the need for reboots.
Ubuntu Pro is available for any Ubuntu LTS from 16.04 LTS. It is already in productive operation for major customers who offer services worldwide. Tens of thousands of users have already registered for the beta version, which has been available since October 2022.
Different versions
For Ubuntu Pro, Canonical estimates $25 per year for workstations or $500 per year for servers; the standard subscription covers security updates for all packages in the Ubuntu Main and Universe repositories. It is also available on the marketplaces of public cloud partners AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Billing takes place on an hourly basis directly with the cloud provider and amounts to around 3.5 percent of the average underlying computing costs.
A slimmed down version is available as an Ubuntu Pro (Infra-only) subscription and is suitable for bare metal deployments. It supports the basic operating system as well as private cloud components. According to Canoncial, it is suitable for companies building private clouds that use other guest operating systems for applications. $225 per server is then due.
Optional 24/7 full support for the Ubuntu operating system, MAAS, LXD, Kubernetes, OpenStack or Ceph storage and a number of unnamed open source applications costs $300 per desktop and $3,400 for servers per year. If you can do without support at the weekend, you only pay half.
Home and small business users can use Ubuntu Pro on up to five computers for free. Official members of the Ubuntu community are even allowed to use it on 50 computers. All you have to do is sign in to your Ubuntu One account or create a free account and you’ll receive a token that you can use to activate Ubuntu Pro.
Ubuntu Pro can be obtained as a 30-day trial from the Canonical website.
(dmk)
