Bringing Real-time Ubuntu to Amazon EKS Anywhere customers with Ubuntu Pro

Earlier this year at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024 in Barcelona, Canonical announced the availability of Real-time Ubuntu on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Services Anywhere (EKS Anywhere). With this technology enablement, a telecom operator can confidently run its Open Radio Access Network (RAN) software workloads on Amazon EKS Anywhere, thanks to the necessary support for ultra low-latency data processing with high reliability in Real-time Ubuntu.

The enablement work was part of a collaboration between partner companies to make Amazon EKS Anywhere an ideal platform for Open RAN workloads. At the MWC event, leaders from these companies discussed what has been achieved and what the future holds. These discussions focused on the roadmap to achieving successful Open RAN deployments on Amazon EKS Anywhere. The panel included representatives from NTT DOCOMO, Qualcomm, NEC and Canonical, and was moderated by AWS. In this blog, we’ll run through how Canonical engineers helped bring this work to fruition, and the advantages of having Real-time Ubuntu on Amazon EKS Anywhere.

Why Open RAN matters in telecom

Telecom operators constantly seek innovative ways to launch new services that generate revenue while simultaneously reducing operational costs. With the right infrastructure solutions, Open RAN offers operators an ecosystem where technology providers can deliver cost-effective solutions that are interoperable through open and standardised APIs. This technology enables telecom operators to run their RAN systems as disaggregated and distributed components across their edge infrastructure. Implementing virtual RAN functions as software enhances flexibility and operational efficiency in network operations.

What is a real-time kernel?

A real-time OS kernel enables the deployment of any software application that requires bounded low latency in the operating system kernel when executing the application.

For telecom applications with strict latency requirements, a real-time OS kernel is now essential. It significantly enhances performance by efficiently processing and delivering information between applications, external systems, and devices.

How Amazon EKS Anywhere benefits from Real-time Ubuntu

RAN software workloads are highly sensitive to delays in information processing and delivery. This makes it essential to integrate real-time kernel capabilities into Amazon EKS Anywhere for telecom operators like NTT DOCOMO. At their edge locations, these capabilities are crucial for their Open RAN deployments, enabling virtual RAN functions to operate effectively. In fact, beyond virtual RAN workloads, a real-time OS kernel is crucial for enabling any time-sensitive business application on cloud-native infrastructure like Amazon EKS Anywhere, a need that is addressed by Canonical’s Real-time Ubuntu.

The enablement journey

During the panel at the Mobile World Congress, Arno Van Huysteen (Chief Technology Officer for Telco at Canonical) highlighted the collaborative work of the partner companies and the ability to create innovative solutions to deliver what customers truly need. For example, Canonical engineers enabled out-of-tree kernel drivers in an integrated system, and our approach ensured the process was as smooth as possible.

Canonical engineers provided precise guidelines to AWS engineers on how to fine-tune the Ubuntu real-time kernel for the set of necessary boot parameters and the bindings between processes and specific CPUs, to achieve superior performance in Amazon EKS Anywhere operational environments. This process is publicly documented to assist customers and partners in executing similar workloads that necessitate a real-time kernel. 

In addition to optimising the operating system, Canonical engineers also worked with Amazon EKS Anywhere, a Kubernetes distribution, to port any necessary changes and integrations into Ubuntu Pro, Canonical’s subscription service to open source software security. With Ubuntu Pro, Ubuntu machines receive expanded security coverage (ESM) for over 25,000 software packages. 

Extensive testing was conducted across multiple environments where Amazon EKS Anywhere can operate to ensure smooth operations in various deployment scenarios. With Amazon EKS Anywhere seamlessly integrated with Ubuntu Pro images, operators can now take advantage of real-time processing capabilities, combined with the most comprehensive security and compliance support for open source software in Linux. This makes Ubuntu Pro on Amazon EKS Anywhere an excellent platform for telecom operators seeking secure systems with high performance. It will promptly facilitate Open RAN deployment for telecom operators, including NTT Docomo, who have chosen EKS Anywhere with Real-time Ubuntu.

Learn more about Canonical’s solutions for telco

To discover more about Real-time Ubuntu and its advantages for telecommunications networks and applications, visit our blog. For additional details about our telecommunications services, please visit https://ubuntu.com/telco.