Piston Cloud Computing, a developer for the OpenStack OS, recently announced the general availability of its enterprise-ready operating system, pentOS.

The new operating system will be the first OpenStack-based OS to focus on both security and the operation of enterprise private clouds, while utilizing Piston's Null Tier Architecture to combine storage, computing and networking to deliver extensive scalability to businesses.

pentOS is also the first operating system to implement CloudAudit, an open security standard for cloud and virtualized environments.

Operating on a customized version of Linux, pentOS will deliver a 99.999 percent automated, hands-free software to servers and switches. And it's hardware vendor agnostic, meaning users won't be burdened by having to use a single proprietary architecture. Adding to its flexibility is interoperability with all other OpenStack public cloud environments, which includes Amazon, Dell, Rackspace and AT&T.

Piston claims that the operating system only takes about 10 minutes to install and that it will provide security updates automatically through a subscription service.

Pricing for the pentOS starts at $3500 per server.