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AWS Aims Linux Container Image at On-Premises and Cloud

Enterprises looking to get started with container technology can use a new offering from Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) targeting both on-premises and cloud implementations.

The cloud giant this week announced Amazon Linux Container Image, expanding the reach of the technology that backs its Amazon Linux AMI.

Amazon Linux AMI was updated in September, with support for new editions of Python, PostgresSQL, PHP and other technologies.

As described on its Web site, "The Amazon Linux AMI is a supported and maintained Linux image provided by Amazon Web Services for use on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). It is designed to provide a stable, secure and high performance execution environment for applications running on Amazon EC2. It supports the latest EC2 instance type features and includes packages that enable easy integration with AWS. Amazon Web Services provides ongoing security and maintenance updates to all instances running the Amazon Linux AMI. The Amazon Linux AMI is provided at no additional charge to Amazon EC2 users."

Now, responding to customer feedback, its underlying software components are available in the new container image that allows for in-house installations along with public cloud implementations, according to spokesperson Jeff Barr.

"Many of our customers have asked us to make this Linux image available for use on-premises, often as part of their development and testing workloads," Barr said in a blog post on Tuesday.

"Today I am happy to announce that we are making the Amazon Linux Container Image available for cloud and on-premises use," Barr continued. "The image is available from the EC2 Container Registry .... It is built from the same source code and packages as the AMI and will give you a smooth path to container adoption. You can use it as is or as the basis for your own images."

Site documentation says it can be used in any environment as a base image for Docker workloads, so enterprises building and managing applications using the stock Amazon Linux AMI with the EC2 compute service can simply containerize those apps with the new offering.

"You can use the Amazon Linux container image in your local development environment and then push your application to the AWS cloud using Amazon ECS," the documentation states. It can also be used with the existing Amazon EC2 Container Service.

About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer for Converge360.

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