Canonical and Dell collaborate on PowerEdge server support

Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, has announced that it is partnering with Dell to expand support for Ubuntu on the company's PowerEdge servers. As part of this, Canonical will certify the PowerEdge 11G and 12G products for Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS and Dell will add Ubuntu to its official operating system support matrix.

As part of the collaboration, Dell customers who purchase servers with Canonical's Ubuntu Advantage support contracts will be able to get support directly from Dell that includes all benefits of Canonical's support contract. Both companies will work together on the actual support, as well as on the engineering side in case customers encounter bugs in Ubuntu that impact the server hardware.

The co-operation between the two companies has already resulted in improved support for PCIe SSD and 4K bytes-per-sector Advanced Format drives. EFI boot and support for Dell's PERC (PowerEdge RAID Controllers) has also received developer attention. Management of Ubuntu Server on PowerEdge supports Dell DRAC, IPMI and Dell's Lifecycle Controller. Users interested in purchasing Ubuntu Advantage support for their Ubuntu installations on PowerEdge servers can contact Canonical using a form on its web site.

(fab)