As mentioned in our recent blog post, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS ‘Bionic Beaver‘ will reach the end of the standard five-year maintenance window on 31 May 2023. This means that Ubuntu 18.04 LTS servers will stop receiving updates unless you are an Ubuntu Pro subscriber.
With an Ubuntu Pro subscription, your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS deployment will continue to be fully supported until 2028.
This blog sets out what you need to know if you are still running your EC2, ECS, EKS workloads on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
Note: If you are running Ubuntu 18.04 LTS on any other AWS service other than EC2, EKS and ECS, please contact AWS support for upgrading options.
Upgrading Ubuntu to newer versions
You might consider upgrading to a new LTS release. If so, you can either upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS or freshly install Ubuntu 20.04 or 22.04 LTS and upgrade your application accordingly.
For more information see Ubuntu Server upgrade guide ›
Ubuntu Pro
If you need more time to plan your upgrade, or you want to extend the economic life of a project that does not need upgrading, you can use Ubuntu Pro.
Ubuntu Pro is Canonical’s security and compliance subscription. It’s the same Ubuntu we all know and love but enhanced with extra services. It provides access to `esm-infra`, which extends the LTS release coverage from 5 to 10 years from the release date, allowing for continued security fixes for high and critical common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) for x86-64 and arm64 architectures.
Ubuntu Pro also includes access to `esm-apps`, which covers security patching for 3rd party open source applications, present in the Ubuntu Universe repository, with over 23,000 packages.
This access enables organisations with workloads running on Ubuntu LTS releases to maintain compliance standards by providing a secure environment before upgrading.
Learn more at: ubuntu.com/pro
How to get Ubuntu Pro on AWS
There are two ways to get Ubuntu Pro on AWS:
Ubuntu Pro on AWS EC2 and Marketplace for fresh instances
If your workload is ephemeral or easy to redeploy, for example, if it is regularly rebuilt in a CI/CD, you can launch fresh instances of Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS from different sources on AWS:
- Using the AWS Marketplace to find the Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS listing
- Using AWS CLI tool to get the Ubuntu Pro 18.04 AMI:
aws ec2 describe-images --filters
"Name=name,Values=ubuntu-pro-server/images/hvm-ssd/ubuntu-bionic-18.04-amd64*"
--query 'sort_by(Images, &CreationDate)[-1].{Name: Name, ImageId: ImageId, CreationDate: CreationDate, Owner:OwnerId}'
Ubuntu Pro activation tokens for an in-place upgrade to Pro
When a re-deploy is not viable, you can still upgrade to Pro through an activation token from Canonical.
To get a Pro Token, you can contact us directly at ubuntu.com/pro or via our marketplace listing in AWS Marketplace: Ubuntu Pro Upgrade – Annual Subscription
Through this mechanism you will need to purchase the tokens at an annual rate for the number of EC2 instances. You may make the purchase directly with Canonical or through a Private Offer on the AWS Marketplace. Once purchased, you will get a Pro token that you can attach to your instances, either manually or in an automated way via this command:
`sudo pro attach`
Note: Make sure you have updated the following components:
- ubuntu-advantage-tools: `sudo apt install ubuntu-advantage-tools`
- Updated snap for livepatch
More information at:
Discover more from Ubuntu-Server.com
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
