Today, we’re excited to announce the availability of Clear Linux* OS for Intel® Architecture in Azure Marketplace. Clear Linux OS is a free, open source Linux distribution built from the ground up for cloud and data center environments and tuned to maximize the performance and value of Intel architecture.
Microsoft Azure is the first public cloud provider to offer Clear Linux, and we’re really excited about what it means for Linux users in the cloud and the community at large. Here’s a little bit more about the Clear Linux offerings in Azure Marketplace that we are announcing today:
- A bare-bones VM, intended to serve as a starting point for those wanting to explore and build out a system with bundles of their choosing
- A container image that includes the popular Docker container runtime, and,
- A sample solution image for developing machine learning applications, pre-loaded with popular open source tools
In addition to the performance features of Clear Linux, we believe that DevOps teams will benefit from the stateless capabilities of Clear Linux in Azure. By separating the system defaults and distribution best practices from the user configuration, Clear Linux simplifies maintenance and deployment which becomes very important as infrastructure scales. This also pairs well with bundles, a powerful way of distributing software that allows for scenarios like this system update with new kernel and reboot in just a few seconds:
![clip_image001[4]](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ae87724e-bfe2-4392-a277-510c553660c8.gif "clip_image001[4]")
The availability of Clear Linux in Azure Marketplace adds more open source options to the portfolio of teams and organizations that are looking to accelerate business value and increase agility in the cloud, and it’s a testament to our continued focus on great experiences for Linux users in the hybrid cloud.
It also highlights the openness and flexibility of Azure, enabling teams to choose from a wide array of Linux and open source solutions from Marketplace, partner offerings or their own portfolio, and adding value with a rich and powerful set of cloud services, and is an important milestone of the broad collaboration between Microsoft and Intel as we worked together throughout 2016 to bring the Azure Linux Agent to Clear Linux, and collaborated in kernel and system improvements focusing on improving boot times and performance.
“Our team is delighted to have worked with Intel since day one on this project, and to bring Clear Linux to Azure Marketplace and our customers as a result of that collaboration”, said KY Srinivasan from the Enterprise Open Source Team at Microsoft.
Get started with Clear Linux in Azure today by deploying any of the images in Azure Marketplace, and checking out the Documentation on the Clear Linux site. Don’t have an Azure subscription yet? Get started with a free 30-day trial!
