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Community Blog What Is a Linux Server and Why Does Your Business Need One?

What Is a Linux Server and Why Does Your Business Need One?

Despite it being third most popular OS, millions of people worldwide use Linux as their main OS. Learn how adopting a Linux server can benefit your enterprise.

By Rishu Mehra

Enterprises, start-ups, and IT departments aim to relinquish the value of a business by upgrading productivity and delivering services quicker with that retaining flexibility to incorporate their innovations, applications, and data with the cloud, containers, and configuration automation. So, the current workloads, whether they run on bare metal, virtual machines, containers, or private or public clouds, need to be portable and scalable. This requires a modern and secure platform.

The heavy demand and adoption of private and public clouds, multiple architectures, and virtualization, in today's data center, is like another world that includes varying infrastructure options, bringing it dimension and depth. Just like a pilot has to count on air traffic controllers to provide continuous updates, your IT infrastructure/server should be revolutionized by a trusted operating system that fulfills all the IT requirements. This is where Linux comes into the picture, as it is an OS that constantly gets updated and becomes state-of-the-art technology with every update. It has the most potential and secure access to cutting edge technologies such as the cloud, virtualization, containers, Kubernetes, IoT, and much more.

Linux in a Nutshell

It is an operating system built for servers and data centers with portability that can be deployed to more platforms than any other operating system. Linux is a boon to the open-source software community. In the earlier days, it was a source, which was open to use, edit, and configure. That's when developers around the world started porting the Linux Kernel in their development. Today, there is a big influence of the Linux kernel-based Android OS on smartphones, cameras, IoT devices, smart TVs, and many more. Android OS is the largest installed base of all general-purpose operating systems.

Linux is deployed on big enterprise servers, mainframes, and cloud hardware because of its:

  • secure nature
  • adoption to control network traffic
  • compatibility with old and new technologies
  • constant updates and patches
  • server controls on-the-fly
  • better Return on Investments (ROI)

Linux on the Server

As with the listed above reasons, most of the enterprise companies adopt servers with a high-powered Linux operating system. Different Linux distributions are designed to administer the different types of demanding business application requirements, like:

  • Network and system administration
  • Database management
  • Web services
  • Virtualization

Linux servers are often chosen over other server operating systems for their stability, security, and flexibility.

What Features and Benefits Should You Consider for Linux?

An enterprise-grade Linux server should have built-in security controls and scale-out manageability through interfaces that are recognizable to both Linux and Windows system administrators. This will enhance your focus on business growth rather than figuring out the security vulnerabilities and costly management configuration mistakes. The Linux server you select must provide security technologies natively, as per business application requirements, and uphold enhancements to fight intrusions, protect your data, and meet regulatory compliance. To meet all of these requirements, Linux distro should:

  • Deliver resources securely:

    • Using integrated control features, such as centralized identity management and Security-Enhanced Linux
    • Mandatory access controls (MAC)
  • Automate regulatory compliance and security configuration remediation:

    • System and within containers with image scanning that analyze and mediate against vulnerabilities and configuration security baselines
    • Linux OS must centralize and scale out configuration remediation within your entire hybrid environment
  • Receive continuous vulnerability security updates:

    • Delivers all critical issues
    • Security patch updates
    • Vulnerable secure automation

With the foundation of hybrid data-centers, the Linux server must support platform obedience and flexible integration with legacy management and automation infrastructure. It will scale down the unexpected downtime compared to other infrastructure OS platform. Your Linux should have:

  • Fast image creation, deployment, and patch management
  • Manage individual systems including storage, networking, containers, and services
  • Automate consistency and compliance
  • Simplify platform updates
  • Resolve technical issues before they impact business

Linux servers are innovating around the globe This OS platform for an enterprise workload is stable, secure, and performance-driven for the applications that run your complete business continuously. Additionally, with the integration of cloud services, you should choose a Linux distribution based on its nature to acquire all those services with ease that deploys immediately.

If you use Alibaba Cloud services you will be intrigued to know that Alibaba Cloud offers a Linux OS Aliyun Linux 2 that is easy for enterprises to adopt. Aliyun Linux 2 is a next-generation Linux distribution released by Alibaba Cloud. It includes advanced features developed by the Linux community and provides a stable and reliable environment for applications running on the cloud. Aliyun Linux 2 is deeply optimized based on the Alibaba Cloud infrastructure to provide the best experience for users. You can install Aliyun Linux 2 on all types of Alibaba Cloud Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances, including ECS Bare Metal Instances.

It should be your native choice for your cloud infrastructure based on:

Security and Regulation Compliance

Aliyun Linux 2 is a 100% open-source Linux distribution. You are free to download and check the source code of all operating system components and send any issues or suggestions to our community. Alibaba Cloud will continuously fix vulnerabilities in Aliyun Linux 2 to improve system security.

Performance

Aliyun Linux 2 is a Linux distribution deeply optimized based on the Alibaba Cloud infrastructure. You can install Aliyun Linux 2 on Alibaba Cloud ECS instances for higher performance.

Customer Support Benefits

Unlike other free Linux distributions in the Alibaba Cloud Marketplace, Aliyun Linux 2 is developed based on the latest Linux kernel. Aliyun Linux 2 users can get technical support and services through our ticket system, forum, or GitHub. All of these services are free of charge.

Ecosystem Benefits

Aliyun Linux 2 continuously adopts technological innovations from open-source communities, such as the Linux 4.19 kernel, to benefit its users. A high-standard quality control system is also introduced to manage Linux distributions and contribute to the open-source communities. Aliyun Linux 2 is devoted to leveraging achievements from the Alibaba Cloud open-source ecosystem to enrich the open-source software ecosystem.

Learn more about Aliyun Linux 2 at https://www.alibabacloud.com/products/alinux

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