Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

March 2023

Automotive industry trends for 2023 and beyond

After the rough COVID-19 years, 2022 has seen the start of economic improvements. Although the automotive industry is experiencing its worst sales numbers in over a decade, it saw increased profits thanks to strong demand, allowing for higher prices. Geopolitical issues such as the war in Ukraine and microchip shortages are forcing analysts and OEMs to remain careful regarding their forecasted results.

3 reasons why OTA updates are important [Part II]

Devices are everywhere but they all need maintenance. Maintaining household gadgets such as laptops, printers and smart watches has become easier over the years as update technology evolves. Today, users do not have to even think about updates – they can seamlessly take place in the background or overnight. These updates take place over-the-air (OTA) and have revolutionised the way that we keep hardware, software or firmware maintained.

Charmed Kubeflow 1.7 is now available

Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, announced today the general availability of Charmed Kubeflow 1.7. Charmed Kubeflow is an open-source, end-to-end MLOps platform that can run on any cloud, including hybrid cloud or multi-cloud scenarios. This latest release offers the ability to run serverless machine learning workloads and perform model serving, regardless of the framework that professionals use.

How to create a VSCode Linux remote environment

Developers love Visual Studio Code (VSCode) for its flexibility and for its goldilocks balance of powerful features and lightness / speed. VSCode is a popular choice for developers using Linux, but even those using VSCode on Mac or Windows often look for ways to use VSCode with a Linux environment. This can present a challenge.

What is System Hardening? Definition and Best practices

System hardening means locking down a system and reducing its attack surface: removing unnecessary software packages, securing default values to the tightest possible settings and configuring the system to only run what you explicitly require. Let’s take an example from daily life.

Security and real-time Linux in a shifting automotive world

Software is completely changing the automotive industry - from vehicle design to use and maintenance. The whole lifecycle now relies on software and vehicles resembling “computers on wheels”. But vehicles aren’t regular devices like smartphones. They move humans at hundreds of kilometers per hour and need to be safe and secure at all times. When there is software involved, there are always security vulnerabilities. No cybersecurity expert can say the opposite. How can the automotive industry navigate the shift towards software-defined vehicles while ensuring the best level of security?

MicroK8s is now on AWS marketplace

Everyone knows that MicroK8s is an extremely lightweight, extensible, reliable, CNCF-compliant distribution of Kubernetes. What you didn’t know until now is that it is even easier to install and manage as part of your AWS marketplace experience. First, a quick reminder of why MicroK8s is great: What is new is that MicroK8s is now available on the AWS marketplace, combining all of MicroK8s advantages with the convenience of AWS.

Canonical joins the confidential computing consortium

Canonical is committed to enabling Ubuntu users to leverage the strong run-time confidentiality and integrity guarantees that confidential computing provides. That is why we are happy to announce we have joined the confidential computing consortium, a project community at the Linux Foundation that is focused on accelerating the adoption of confidential computing and driving cross-industry collaboration around relevant open source software, standards and tools.

Automotive consortiums: Setting new standards for safety and cybersecurity

Canonical strongly believes that the future of automotive will rely on open source to define and run the next generation of vehicles. To drive this transition, state-of-the-art cybersecurity and functional safety are critical. To learn more about the industry’s specific constraints, we are actively involved in several automotive consortiums and are contributing to automotive-related standards.

Avoid kubernetes security risks with hardening best practices

Hardening a system is synonymous with reducing its attack surface: remove unnecessary software packages, lock down default values to the tightest possible settings and configure the system to only run what you explicitly require. Why would you want to harden your infrastructure and systems to start with? Isn’t Linux secure enough already? A fully secure system is made up of many layers, from the hardware to the operating system and the application servers running your mission-critical code.

What is cloud repatriation?

Cloud repatriation is undoubtedly one of the hottest trends in the cloud infrastructure space as of 2023. It enables organisations to regain control of their cloud spend, workloads and data. According to a report on cloud repatriation by 451 Research group, 48% of IT decision makers confirmed that they had moved their applications away from hyperscalers to other venues in 2021.

Kubernetes vs OpenStack: which one to choose?

Kubernetes vs OpenStack is a common dilemma that organisations face when considering the modernisation of their IT infrastructure. Both are well-established open-source technologies for building cloud infrastructure, and both bring tangible benefits, especially when used in combination. Yet, they differ significantly and need to be properly bundled to feel like a fully-integrated solution. What does this mean in practice? Let’s take a look!

The Lunar Lobster has landed ahead of Ubuntu 23.04

Astrologers will be excited to discover a new constellation has appeared in the night sky ahead of the Ubuntu 23.04 launch next month. A rising Lunar Lobster is rumoured to bring good luck to IT managers looking to deploy and manage Ubuntu Desktop at scale. Also ascendant are Ubuntu gamers as the Steam snap moves closer to a stable release.

Functional safety in automotive: contributing to ISO 26262 and ISO 21434 standards

If you’ve been reading our recent automotive blogs and white papers, you know that the automotive industry is highly complex and regulated, especially when it comes to functional safety and cybersecurity. Standards and consortiums help ensure that companies provide a common framework and follow compatibility and interoperability approaches. Usually, these standards define constraints in how specific components and systems are designed or how they should work together.

Roundtable: Energy sector experts discuss the migration from CentOS

As support ends for CentOS, the HPC community is left to decide what platform to migrate to. For many, the decision comes down to cost and support. This roundtable brings together HPC experts and energy industry leaders in HPC to discuss the impact of the CentOS reitirement on the energy sector, HPC and AI/ML technology, and how companies can navigate this transition. This discussion took place on June 28, 2022.

Charmed Kubeflow 1.7 Beta is here. Try it now!

Canonical is happy to announce that Charmed Kubeflow 1.7 is now available in Beta. Kubeflow is a foundational part of the MLOps ecosystem that has been evolving over the years. With Charmed Kubeflow 1.7, users benefit from the ability to run serverless workloads and perform model inference regardless of the machine learning framework they use.

What is real-time Linux? Part III

Welcome to the final post of this three-part series on real-time Linux. As market adoption of real-time computing continues to rise, real-time in the Linux kernel is emerging as a valuable solution on the software side. A real-time Linux kernel on its own, however, will not necessarily make a system real-time. We clarified this point in Part I and listed the common misconceptions and stack components.

Canonical joins the Eclipse Foundation's Software Defined Vehicle working group

Canonical is excited to announce it is now an official member of the Eclipse Software Defined Vehicle Working Group (SDV WG). Eclipse SDV focuses on software-defined vehicles (SDVs) and pushes innovations in automotive-grade solutions using open-source software. By offering an open technology platform, automotive companies can use and integrate open standards and powerful developer experience for their own software development.