Open source enterprise support vs free open source use

Many enterprises use open source enterprise support from a vendor, such as Red Hat or Canonical, to boost uptime and peace of mind. Others choose to use open source without any additional vendor support, relying on one of the major benefits of open source – the robust community support that is freely available. Oftentimes, those choices are driven by use cases, with teams opting for added support when running mission-critical workloads vs relying on community support for staging and dev environments.

Ubuntu and CentOS are both popular examples of open source Linux operating systems adopted because of the breadth of community support, but also because of the availability of enterprise-grade support. However, since the announcement last December, the CentOS project as we knew it, will be discontinued. Many CentOS users are currently looking for other OS migration options, and our team has been connecting with users wanting to find out the best way to move workloads from CentOS to Ubuntu.

If you are running CentOS in your estate and are looking to migrate to a stable, supported OS, this post outlines resources and guidance on migration from CentOS to Ubuntu.

CentOS migration live Q&A

If you have concerns about running CentOS in your estate and are considering migrating to Ubuntu, join our live Q&A session for CentOS users on Thursday, March 11th. This Q&A session will provide an overview of migration scenarios, benefits and risks, and will be open to any migration questions you may have.

Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution, with five years of free security maintenance extendable to up to 12 years. It’s very likely that your developers are already using Ubuntu. According to the HackerEarth 2020 Developer Survey, Ubuntu is the preferred Linux distro for over 60% of experienced developers.

Open source enterprise support with Ubuntu Pro

For those looking for a stable open source OS with enterprise support available, adding an Ubuntu Pro subscription provides an added layer of security and compliance to your infrastructure, OS and open source applications. Ubuntu Pro provides up to 12 years of security patching and security maintenance, with coverage for up to 36,000 packages.

Unlike some Linux platforms, Ubuntu comes with no mandatory licenses – so you can choose to subscribe for the workloads that have special security or support requirements. Ubuntu Pro premium images are available on public clouds for extended security and compliance on AWS or Azure. Open source software support for the full stack is also available with two levels of SLA: weekdays (Standard) or 24×7 (Advanced).

Free for Ubuntu community and for personal use

Anyone can use Ubuntu Pro for free on up to 5 machines, or up to 50 machines if you are an official Ubuntu Community member, and a 30-day free trial is available to all enterprise customers looking to explore its security patching and other packaged software, like Livepatch and Landscape.

Find out more by visiting our dedicated Ubuntu Pro page

What’s next?

If you’d like to learn more about moving your workloads to Ubuntu, either with or without commercial support, join our live Q&A session or contact us with your migration questions.