We are pleased to announce the availability of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS server for new setups. This release has been code named Xenial Xerus. The official release notes are available from the Ubuntu team here.

Our new VPS images are based on the official builds provided directly from http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com

Significant updates in this release include Python 3 and PHP 7. Both of which offer major performance improvements for web site development over previous versions. Also available are the latest Golang and updated Node.js toolchains.

Xenial includes updated container support, with Docker release 1.1 and LXD, along with the more traditional Qemu and LibVirt.

Support for HTTP/2 has been included in Nginx. This can help improve security and performance especially when deploying SSL enabled content.

There are updated versions of popular databases like MySQL 5.7, MariaDB 10, and PostgreSQL 9.5. We are anticipating that MSSQL server may also be supported very soon

Also in this image is the Ubuntu package of cloud-init which has been closely integrated with Systemd. This tool can facilitate automated setups and configuration management on server boot.

Anyone familiar with our VPS setups may notice we installed systemd-timesync for new Xenial setups, instead of the traditional ntpd server. This is a lighter client mode only service to help keep your system clock accurate.

If you are upgrading in place from a previous release of Ubuntu, please check our upgrade guide.

Anyone looking to migrate an existing server or spin up a new one, consider installing Ubuntu 16.04 on one of our awesome servers. Contact us anytime if you have any questions.