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Microsoft offering Linux virtual machines on Azure

windowsazure.com

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Re: Microsoft offering Linux virtual machines on Azure

#71

Post by rbanffy »

edwinnathaniel wrote: post #49
kerbs wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What facorreia said, and I'll add for simplicity that Azure is to Microsoft what AWS is to Amazon (as opposed to your question of Azure being like EC2).

Plus Google AppEngine (yes, Azure has more than 1 flavour: AWS style, GAE style, and the following that I'm about to mention) and also an environment where you can drop your pre-configured Windows 2008 Server VM as well (not sure if it is limited to Windows 2008 VM only).

I think the main difference, according to what I got from a friend who used it, is that the Azure PaaS offering is billed by uptime while Google's App Engine is billed by actual usage (because it can shut down unused instances).

Re: Microsoft offering Linux virtual machines on Azure

#72

Post by technomancy »

rkwz wrote: post #5

Why do I get the feeling that every article about MS is posted with the tone "Hey look guys, MS is doing something stoopid". The same tone seems to be missing when other tech companies are concerned.

I'd guess the fact that hackers are not often painfully forced to test software with products from other tech companies makes a big difference.

Re: Microsoft offering Linux virtual machines on Azure

#73

Post by rbanffy »

robinduckett wrote: post #23

This is great, but you can't actually configure virtual machines unless you're one of the "select members of the community". So, if you sign up today, on the three month trial, you can't just configure a linux machine and test it. If you even manage to get to the correct place, which is a Silverlight powered management console - when HTML5 / AJAX would do. Lots of bloat and lots of cruft and no actual functionality.…

I couldn't get to step 3 on the trial signup. I think we just DDoS'ed Azure.

"The resource you are looking for has been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable."

Re: Microsoft offering Linux virtual machines on Azure

#74

Post by gouranga »

robert_nsu wrote: post #38
runn1ng wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well.... I wont pretend I understand all of it, but it seems their offering is pretty big. So it doesn't have to do much with "Windows" OS in any sense, it's just a little confusing name for their SaaS. Thanks!

Originally Windows was the only OS in this platform, but I iirc they are planning to change the name also.

Correct. They are dropping the Windows bit. Details here:

http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-renames-azure-services

Re: Microsoft offering Linux virtual machines on Azure

#75

Post by rbanffy »

sixcorners wrote: post #39
facorreia wrote: post #34

For those curious to learn more, today (June 7th) at 1PM PDT there will be a live streaming with Scott Guthrie from Microsoft. http://www.meetwindowsazure.com/

Is... Is that a picture of a Mac? ( http://www.meetwindowsazure.com/img/home/hero.png )

I doubt a Dell (or a Sony Vaio, full of blue LEDs) would convey the coolness the ad requires.

Re: Microsoft offering Linux virtual machines on Azure

#76

Post by maslam »

rbanffy wrote: post #73
robinduckett wrote: post #23

This is great, but you can't actually configure virtual machines unless you're one of the "select members of the community". So, if you sign up today, on the three month trial, you can't just configure a linux machine and test it. If you even manage to get to the correct place, which is a Silverlight powered management console - when HTML5 / AJAX would do. Lots of bloat and lots of cruft and no actual functionality.…

I couldn't get to step 3 on the trial signup. I think we just DDoS'ed Azure. "The resource you are looking for has been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable."

Hey, I work on Azure. I'd love to help you get past this problem. Can you email me at bilal dot aslam at microsoft dot com with the LiveID you were trying to sign up with?

Re: Microsoft offering Linux virtual machines on Azure

#77

Post by facorreia »

gouranga wrote: post #74
robert_nsu wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Originally Windows was the only OS in this platform, but I iirc they are planning to change the name also.

Correct. They are dropping the Windows bit. Details here: http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-renames-azure-services

Not really.

https://twitter.com/WindowsAzure/status/199918250652475393

Re: Microsoft offering Linux virtual machines on Azure

#78

Post by leeohsheeus »

RandallBrown wrote: post #67
mcantelon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft also doesn't do much that is interesting. They tend to imitate and their imitations are seldom better, and are often worse, than the originals. The only moderately recent exception I can think of offhand is Kinect. Are there other innovations they've brought to market over recent years? Microsoft's research division does amazing things, of course, but I'm talking about products.

I think Windows Phone is a pretty solid innovation on the smartphone front. It's UI isn't iPhone UI++ like Android, WebOS, and others. It's new and interesting. A lot of their living room entertainment stuff they've done with Xbox and Windows Media Center has been pretty cool. Not necessarily groundbreaking, but still neat.

...and, by extension, Windows 8 and the Metro design language, which are pretty unique in the current tech landscape.

Re: Microsoft offering Linux virtual machines on Azure

#79

Post by leeohsheeus »

JonnieCache wrote: post #28
rkwz wrote: post #5

Why do I get the feeling that every article about MS is posted with the tone "Hey look guys, MS is doing something stoopid". The same tone seems to be missing when other tech companies are concerned.

Most of the hacker animosity stems from MS' history of using underhand tactics to destroy FOSS and the web. Not compete with, but destroy at all costs. The ill-will this engendered in the community will probably never go away, and rightly so. It arguably set our industry back decades. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_Documents

The Microsoft of 1998 is not the Microsoft of 2012. Today's MS releases a tremendous amount of code under open source licenses - most recently, their entire web development stack (ASP.NET MVC, etc):

http://aspnet.codeplex.com/

Re: Microsoft offering Linux virtual machines on Azure

#80

Post by chrislomax »

statictype wrote: post #60
chrislomax wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really hoping they break out of that model. It's great if you want to run single apps on an instance but it falls down once you look at running a series of clients on the same instance. You need to do some hacking to get the IIS setup for many sites which is how we operate. Our current proposed structure would be to use AWS for front end and Azure for the DB which isn't ideal but I find AWS far more flexible for…

Isn't it going to affect performance to have your server talking to your DB over the internet (as opposed to a local network which I presume is the case when running EC2 instances in the same availability zone)?

I thought this but after doing some tests the results are pretty negligible.

A windows 2008 server license on 2 machines for fall back comes in at around £700 - £800 a month per instance. The same redundancy on Azure is around £80 - £100 a month. If it doesn't work then we go back to the drawing board, if it does work then we have saved ourselves an almighty chunk of money.

We cache a lot of data in our application too which we are putting into elasticache, which is local to EC2.

We haven't used it in great stress yet but initial tests were very good

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