Oracle launches Autonomous Linux

Oracle has announced the availability of Oracle Autonomous Linux, which it is billing as the first autonomous operating environment designed to eliminate complexity and human error.

Oracle Autonomous Linux is designed to deliver improved cost savings, security and availability for enterprise customers by automating the task of keeping systems patched and secure while maintaining high availability.

It uses a preconfigured Oracle Linux Image with automated daily packaged updates to the Linux kernel and key user space libraries.

Other capabilities include OS diagnostics gathering for self-tuning, known exploit detection functionality for providing automated alerts to attempts to exploit vulnerabilities patched by Oracle, and enhanced OS parameter tuning capabilities.

Oracle is providing both Oracle Autonomous Linux and Oracle OS Management Services in its Oracle Premier Support service. The company is promising total cost of ownership savings for “most Linux workload customers” of 30% to 50% over five years.

The company has also launched Oracle OS Management Service, which is designed to run on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and provide users with control and visibility over systems running autonomous Linux, Linux or Windows.

“Oracle Autonomous Linux builds on Oracle’s proven history of delivering Linux with extreme performance, reliability and security to run the most demanding enterprise applications,” Oracle Senior Vice President of Operating Systems and Virtualisation Engineering Wim Coekaerts said.

“Today we are taking the next step in our autonomous strategy with Oracle Autonomous Linux, providing a rich set of capabilities to help our customers significantly improve reliability and protect their systems from cyberthreats.”

Meanwhile, Oracle has also announced a new Free Tier of Oracle Cloud services, including two Always Free Autonomous Databases for organisations, developers, students and educators.

The Oracle Free Tier program includes two autonomous databases — Autonomous Data Warehouse or Autonomous Transaction Processing services, each with 1 OCPU and 20 GB of storage.

It also includes two compute virtual machines, each with 1/8 OCPU and 1 GB memory, and two 100 GB block volumes with up to five free backups.

The Free Tier service also supports 10 GB Object Storage, 10 GB Archive Storage and up to 50,000 API requests per month, as well as 10 TB per month outbound data transfer. It also includes a free trial for paid services, including $300 in credits for 30 days towards additional services or larger allowances.

The Oracle Autonomous Database offering uses machine learning to provide self-driving, self-repairing and self-securing capabilities to allow for the automation of key management and security processes in database systems.

IDC Group VP for Software Development and Open Source Al Gillen said Oracle’s heavy focus on autonomous capabilities makes sense.

“Adding autonomous capabilities to the operating system layer, with future plans to expand beyond infrastructure software, goes straight after the OpEx challenges nearly all customers face today,” he said.

“This capability effectively turns Oracle Linux into a service, freeing customers to focus their IT resources on application and user experience, where they can deliver true competitive differentiation.”

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