Minimal Ubuntu Pro: lean images backed by enterprise-grade security

Deploy Minimal Ubuntu Pro across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud

The security landscape is growing continually in complexity. Whatever industry you work in, your organization has to contend with evolving threats and ever-stricter compliance requirements, whilst at the same time facing pressure to build fast and scale smart. This is especially true when innovating on the public cloud.

Minimal Ubuntu Pro is built to help you meet those challenges. 

Minimized attack surface. Enhanced security.

Users of Ubuntu value its accessibility, robustness, and mature ecosystem. That’s why Canonical works with major cloud vendors to make optimized Ubuntu images available on their platforms. This includes Minimal Ubuntu – Ubuntu images which are optimized to have the smallest footprint possible and make security more straightforward. Minimal Ubuntu Pro builds on these images by making security in the public cloud more efficient.

Ubuntu Pro is Canonical’s comprehensive subscription for open source security. Through Ubuntu Pro, organizations receive up to 15 years of security maintenance (with the legacy add-on), tools for compliance automation, and kernel live patching. Minimal Ubuntu Pro brings these features to Minimal Ubuntu, combined with a convenient, metered per-hour billing on Amazon EC2, Google GCP and Microsoft Azure. By bringing these two technologies together, customers can combine the smallest Ubuntu footprint with enterprise-grade security and compliance features. It is the perfect starting point for automated cloud deployments in your production environments. 

Whether you are deploying cloud workloads, containers, or regulated infrastructure, Minimal Ubuntu Pro offers a unique blend of minimalism, control, and long-term support, without sacrificing compatibility or flexibility.

Why security-aware companies choose Minimal Ubuntu Pro

Perfect for cloud operations

Minimal Ubuntu Pro builds on the strengths of Minimal Ubuntu: the smallest Ubuntu base image for VMs and containers. Its lightweight design enables faster provisioning and scaling, with a 50% smaller image size and 40% faster boot times. At the same time, it retains optimizations for leading cloud hypervisors (AWS, GCP, Azure, KVM, LXD) through a custom kernel, drivers, and agents.

If you’re running microservices, containerized applications, or ephemeral workloads, this is the image you want on the public cloud.

Tight control over installed software

Minimal Ubuntu Pro is fully compatible with the entire Ubuntu package ecosystem. Applications that already work on classic Ubuntu Server will retain full compatibility, provided dependencies are installed. You decide exactly what your environment includes, with the added benefit of extended security coverage for critical and high CVEs, including third-party open source packages, delivered through the Ubuntu Pro subscription.

This fine-grained control is crucial for DevSecOps practices, automated CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code workflows.

Reduced attack surface by design

Every unnecessary package is a potential risk. Minimal Ubuntu Pro ships with only the essential components required to boot and connect, dramatically reducing exposure. Fewer packages mean fewer CVEs to track, fewer patches to apply, and less overall maintenance. For example, documentation, text editors, and locale files are removed, leaving only what’s necessary to run your workloads.

This makes Minimal Ubuntu Pro ideal for teams building golden images, zero-trust environments, or security-hardened cloud instances.

Enterprise-grade hardening and compliance

Ubuntu Pro unlocks advanced security and compliance features, including up to 15 years of CVE patching across both Main and Universe repositories for Ubuntu LTS releases, optional FIPS 140-3 certified cryptographic modules for government compliance, and CIS and DISA-STIG hardening profiles for regulated environments.

Whether your target is FedRAMP, NIST, HIPAA, or another framework, Minimal Ubuntu Pro helps accelerate compliance with trusted tooling and validated configurations.

Available on all the major cloud platforms

Minimal Ubuntu Pro is available on AWS, Azure, and GCP. Whichever platform you choose to innovate on, Minimal Ubuntu Pro offers consistency and robustness:

• Comes with an optimized kernel tailored for each cloud environment
• Certified across all supported virtual machine types and instance families
• Maintains the same deep cloud integration as standard Ubuntu Server, including support for telemetry, fleet management, and platform-specific services

How to get it

On AWS:

• Using AWS Marketplace by searching for “Minimal Ubuntu Pro”  
• Using AWS CLI:

aws ssm get-parameters --names /aws/service/canonical/ubuntu/pro-minimal/$VERSION/stable/current/amd64/hvm/ebs-gp2/ami-id

Where $VERSION is one of 20.04, 22.04 or 24.04 (For 24.04 you need to change ebs-gp2 to ebs-gp3)

On GCP:

• Using Google Cloud Console by selecting “Ubuntu Pro” in the operating system selection and “Ubuntu 2x.04 LTS Minimal Pro” as the version.
• Using Google Cloud Shell and booting a VM, specifying “image=projects/ubuntu-os-pro-cloud/global/images/ubuntu-minimal-pro…”

On Azure:

• Selecting Minimal Ubuntu Pro Azure Marketplace or Portal:
  • For 20.04 LTS, use the dedicated Ubuntu Pro Minimal 20.04 listing.
  • For 22.04 and 24.04 LTS, find the unified Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or 24.04 LTS offers and select the “Ubuntu Pro Minimal” plan.
• Using CLI:

az vm create \
  --name $VIRTUAL_MACHINE_NAME \
  --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME \
  --image $UBUNTU_IMAGE_URN \
  --generate-ssh-keys

Where $UBUNTU_IMAGE_URN is either:

• Canonical:0001-com-ubuntu-pro-minimal-focal:pro-minimal-20_04-lts:latest
• Canonical:ubuntu-22_04-lts:ubuntu-pro-minimal:latest
• Canonical:ubuntu-24_04-lts:ubuntu-pro-minimal:latest

Next steps

Minimal Ubuntu Pro offers a powerful combination of performance, precision, and protection. It’s a practical solution for organizations seeking to scale confidently while adhering to the most stringent security and compliance standards. With Minimal Ubuntu Pro, you gain precise control over your environment, resulting in a minimal attack surface and expanded security coverage against critical and high-severity CVEs from the moment it’s deployed.

Get Minimal Ubuntu Pro 24.04 on AWS | Azure | GPC 

Further reading

• Ubuntu base and minimal images – Public Cloud documentation
• What is Minimal Ubuntu