No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

ClearScale Ubuntu 26.04 LTS vs ClearScale Windows Server 2025 comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

ClearScale Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
Ranking in AWS Marketplace
419th
Average Rating
10.0
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ClearScale Windows Server 2025
Ranking in AWS Marketplace
450th
Average Rating
10.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2855598 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud DevOps Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
CIS hardening has simplified secure container workloads but AppArmor still blocks Docker by default
The CIS L1 AppArmor enforcement breaks Docker out of the box. Containers fail to start with a permission denied on the containerd task directory. There is no documentation about this. A simple note explaining that Docker users need to either update the runc AppArmor profile or disable it would save a lot of debugging time. It takes a while to trace the failure back to AppArmor blocking runc writes to /run/containerd/.
reviewer2858658 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
Automated hardening has standardized our servers and reduces effort for secure Windows workloads
The first-boot time is longer than a stock Windows AMI. Sysprep and the initial hardening pass add a noticeable delay before the instance is reachable, which is something to account for if you autoscale and need nodes ready quickly. The hardened defaults also occasionally trip up common installers and agents. A few of our deployment and monitoring tools assumed services or policies that the image had locked down, so we had to add exceptions. A short compatibility checklist of what the hardening changes from a default Windows install would have saved us that debugging. I would also like the option of a CIS Level 2 build for our more sensitive workloads since the image currently only ships a Level 1 baseline. Thanks.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Once you get that launch template dialed in, the image is incredibly solid."
"The pre-applied CIS L1 benchmark is the main selling point, as getting a hardened baseline without manual effort is genuinely useful and the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS base also means I'm on a supported, up-to-date kernel with long-term security patches."
"The hourly software charge is small relative to the engineering time we used to spend building and maintaining our own hardened AMI."
"ClearScale Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is an excellent choice for organizations adopting cloud-native technologies and modern DevOps practices."
"The same-day engineering support has been very valuable."
"Because the image arrives CIS Level 1 hardened with the AWS tooling already in place, our servers come up patched, locked down, and ready to join the domain without a separate build out pass."
"Windows Server 2025 is a strong fit for enterprise environments heavily reliant on Microsoft technologies."
 

Cons

"Enterprise management and compliance tooling could be more comprehensive out of the box."
"It'd be cool to have more detailed changelogs with each new release so we can see exactly what packages got updated without having to boot up a test instance and diff it ourselves."
"The CIS L1 AppArmor enforcement breaks Docker out of the box."
"Because the firewall ships default-deny, the first launch in a new environment takes a little planning to open the exact ports the app and load balancer health checks need."
"The hardened defaults also occasionally trip up common installers and agents: a few of our deployment and monitoring tools assumed services or policies that the image had locked down, so we had to add exceptions."
"Initial configuration complexity can still be high for teams without prior Windows Server expertise."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which AWS Marketplace solutions are best for your needs.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ClearScale Ubuntu 26.04 LTS?
The hourly premium is honestly negligible compared to the salary hours I was wasting building, patching, and maintaining my own custom images. If you have a decent-sized fleet, look at the total co...
What needs improvement with ClearScale Ubuntu 26.04 LTS?
It would be cool to have more detailed changelogs with each new release so I can see exactly what packages got updated without having to boot up a test instance and diff it myself.
What is your primary use case for ClearScale Ubuntu 26.04 LTS?
I run a bunch of stateless REST APIs and web apps in AWS behind an Application Load Balancer. Everything lives in Auto Scaling Groups (ASGs). I use this AMI as the default base for those instances ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ClearScale Windows Server 2025?
The software charge sits on top of the underlying Windows EC2 cost, which is already higher than Linux, so model both together before you commit to a large fleet. The hourly model suited our autosc...
What needs improvement with ClearScale Windows Server 2025?
The first-boot time is longer than a stock Windows AMI. Sysprep and the initial hardening pass add a noticeable delay before the instance is reachable, which is something to account for if you auto...
What is your primary use case for ClearScale Windows Server 2025?
We use ClearScale Windows Server 2025 as the base image for our .NET and IIS application servers on EC2. These instances host internal line of business web applications and Windows services, and se...
 

Comparisons

No data available
No data available
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about ClearScale Ubuntu 26.04 LTS vs. ClearScale Windows Server 2025 and other solutions. Updated: July 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.