Canonical announces general availability of systems management and monitoring tool Landscape launches with free trial

Launches With Free Trial

Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, announced today the general availability of Canonical Landscape, the systems management and monitoring tool for Ubuntu.

Available for its commercial support customers and as a standalone commercial service, Landscape will provide the growing number of businesses deploying multiple instances of Ubuntu on servers and desktops the means to more easily manage and maintain their systems. Landscape significantly reduces the cost of ownership and maximizes the efficiency of resources for any Ubuntu deployment.

“We are committed to making Ubuntu the right choice for business,” said Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu project. “I am delighted that the feedback from the beta programme indicates that Landscape meets that commitment. We challenged the development team to build a tool that was simple to use but powerful for support customers and they delivered. I expect Landscape to drive many more large-scale Ubuntu deployments.”

“We have been very impressed by what we have seen in Landscape,” said Fredrik Jonsson of ASCI Sweden AB, a participant in the beta programme. “Ubuntu already has an impressive reputation for ease of use, and the growing ecosystem of packages available makes it a great choice for businesses today. Landscape looks like the ideal tool for both managing and monitoring business-scale deployments.”

About Landscape

Landscape provides users with a hosted web interface on which all machines are registered. From this single interface, packages and security updates are deployed to the entire network of servers and/or desktops with a single click. Additionally a wealth of monitoring data is provided graphically to the administrator showing process and resource use as well as flagging any available security fixes for the system.

System Management Features:

• Manage many machines at once: All operations in Landscape can be applied to one or more machines with the same ease.
• Group machines: Not all machines need to form a single group, machines can be split into multiple groups for different requirements but all can be administered through a single interface.
• Manage packages across the network: Landscape allows the user to see a package inventory for each computer and allow administrators to install, upgrade, or remove packages from one or more computers.
• Integrate custom repositories: For users maintaining their own repository — even internally — Landscape can report on and manage the packages in it.
• Manage users easily: System users may all be managed from a central interface, and may have actions delivered to be performed in one or more systems in a comfortable way.Handle security updates efficiently: Landscape highlights those package upgrades with security fixes (with links to detailed information) ensuring any vulnerabilities are dealt with as quickly as possible.
• Support disconnected users: Users who disconnect from the network can be handled asynchronously with updates provided when they next get online.

System Monitoring Features:

• Understand system resource usage quickly: Landscape constantly monitors the system's health and performance, and graphs that data in ways that enable a user to quickly pinpoint bottlenecks or other problem areas.
• Manage processes centrally: A simple web interface displays all the recently active processes running across all systems and enables users to search and manage those centrally.
• Maintain a detailed hardware inventory: Landscape removes the complexity from hardware inventory by showing complete and easy to understand hardware information for all your systems.
• Simplify security audits: Auditing and security are simplified with Landscape's detailed history logs that display actions performed by all administrators, even if they were performed locally on the machines themselves without using Landscape.
• Access full package information: The convenient web interface allows browsing of all packages installed, available, and available for upgrading, on all registered machines, including security notices.

Enhanced Support Experience:

• Streamline exchange of information with the Canonical support team: Canonical support experts receive read-only information on hardware and configurations that will allow them to more rapidly diagnose and resolve tickets.
• Access the integrated support portal: Administrators can log, view and track support cases right in Landscape, thus providing all management needs in a single convenient location.

Pricing and Availability

Ubuntu users are invited to register for a free trial at www.canonical.com/landscape/register. Trials will be restricted to users who register five or more machines on the system. The free trial lasts for 60 days. Landscape is available as a stand-alone option without commercial support from Canonical priced at $150 per node with discounting available on larger volumes.

It is possible to get the goodness of Landscape even if commercial support is not immediately required. Users can apply for details at: www.canonical.com/landscape/register.

About Canonical Ltd and Ubuntu

Canonical Ltd, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, is a global organization headquartered in Europe committed to the development, distribution and support of open source software products and communities. World-class 24×7 commercial support for Ubuntu is available through Canonical's global support team and partners. Since its launch in October 2004, Ubuntu has become one of the most highly regarded Linux distributions with millions of users around the world. Ubuntu will always be free to download, free to use and free to distribute to others. With these goals in mind, Ubuntu aims to be the most widely used Linux system, and is the centre of a global open source software ecosystem. For more information visit www.canonical.com or www.ubuntu.com.