PentOS works with the KVM hypervisor and MySQL. "We didn't want to get people tied into a whole bunch of licensing discussions," he said. "It's always a challenge. If you give people a ton of options, you're giving them lots of ways to reduce the performance of the system and few ways to improve it."

Once an administrator sets the configurations, the USB stick can be plugged into the server rack. PentOS detects the hardware and installs and configures the operating system.

The setup process can eliminate one important vulnerability: the insider attack. Because all the hardware is configured from the USB stick, an enterprise can give only the most trusted administrator the password. Additional administrators don't need logins to any of the hardware because the setup happens automatically, he said.

PentOS also allows enterprises to add as few as five servers at a time.

Enterprises can buy additional PentOS modules that ensure compliance with certain regulations, like HIPAA for health-care organizations and FISMA for government agencies.