Canonical has announced that it’s the first Linux provider to integrate a snapshot service through Azure’s update mechanism for Ubuntu instances on Azure. It was able to do this in collaboration with Microsoft to give admins a safer and more predictable way to deploy updates.
The new snapshot service is an archive found at snapshot.ubuntu.com. It provides a complete archive of the Ubuntu repository beginning in February 2023. This gives system admins the ability to update an Ubuntu virtual machine (VM) or contain based on the state of an archive as it was at a certain time or date.
When adding the repository URL in the sources.list file, admins will add something like deb https://snapshot.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/20230401T000000Z lunar main and just amend the snapshot date as desired.
Explaining the need for this new archive, Canonical writes:
“On Ubuntu, like in most Linux distributions, new security updates are included in the archives whenever they are available. That means that, if you simply install all available updates from the Ubuntu archives in a staging environment and then gradually do the same across production instances, the available packages can change over time.
What is installed on instances at the end of the rollout process can therefore be different to the packages that were installed on the initial instance that you tested. That undermines the value of the testing and gradual rollout and can increase the risk of an update impacting production services.”
Commenting on the development, Brendan Burns, Corporate Vice President, Cloud Native/Linux/OSS, Microsoft Azure, said:
“We are pleased to release an integrated solution for Microsoft Azure customers to enable Safe Deployment Practices (SDP) on both their Azure VMs and containerized workloads. This functionality enables cloud native developers to innovate faster and at the same time operators to increase the resiliency and security of their popular Linux workloads.
We are pleased to be the first cloud to integrate cloud scale/aware management and update services with Ubuntu’s new repo snapshot service.”
The announcement by Canonical comes just a day before the start of the Ubuntu Summit. Microsoft has confirmed that it will be making an appearance at the event and holding several talks.
Source: Ubuntu