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OpenLogic Backs Linux On Windows Azure With SLA

MikeatWired writes "OpenLogic announced on Thursday that it will provide CentOS Linux — and service-level agreement (SLA) support — through Microsoft's new Windows Azure gallery. Yesterday, Microsoft announced support for Linux instances on its cloud service, among other cloud news, in what Wired Enterprise's Cade Metz dubbed an Amazonian facelift. OpenLogic's Steven Grandchamp writes in a blog post that for 'enterprise developers and IT folks who are multi-source and multi-platform, today's announcement is good news. The Windows and Linux worlds take one step towards each other.' However, Grandchamp notes that despite Microsoft 'maturing its views on open source' with 'significant work' with Node.js, Hadoop, and Samba, the open source community 'will meet [Linux on Azure] with overall wariness and skepticism.' 'Some will view this with hope and a positive step; others will continue to be cynical,' he writes. 'For me, it's part of a larger overall process that continues to signal open source coming of age. What major vendor doesn't have an open source story now? It's such an ingrained part of development, from legacy to mobile to cloud, that we can't live without and we are figuring out how to love living with it.'"

46 comments

  1. What OS is Azure based on? by jhoegl · · Score: 1

    Anyone know what Azure is based on? Something tells me its not the MS Windows Kernel, and probably more BSD....

    1. Re:What OS is Azure based on? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      It is a modified version of the NT kernel.

    2. Re:What OS is Azure based on? by perles · · Score: 1

      Nice Try ®

    3. Re:What OS is Azure based on? by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 2

      The instances themselves don't seem to be modified all that much. Heck, you can RD into them.

    4. Re:What OS is Azure based on? by HyperQuantum · · Score: 1

      [citation needed]

      --
      I am not really here right now.
    5. Re:What OS is Azure based on? by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 1

      i think it based off of hyper-V/custom mod'ed nt

      --
      ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
  2. What an idiot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Open source isn't just now coming of age, and we're not figuring out how to love "living with it". Open source came of age in the 90's, and we've been loving it, not merely living with it ever sense. "We" being people that actually get it. It's people like yourself and Microsoft who are finally understanding its power and coming to a new age in your own evolution, one that can acknowledge how much better this model is than your own. It's sink or swim time for you guys at this point: embrace open source or continue dying a slow death.

    1. Re:What an idiot by Sir_Sri · · Score: 4, Informative

      Except this really has nothing to do with open source. MS offers a computing cloud, and they offer various options on the computing cloud because they want to make money. Some of those things happen to be open source.

      MS open sourcing one of their major product lines would be open source news. This is 'cloud provider has wide variety of services'. It's not going to make open source OS's mainstream on the desktop, and there's a wide array of open source software for windows. Azure is (for the moment) an enterprise product, for enterprise users, and you're right, they've been readily using open source for some things since the 90's.

      Microsoft never got much past 50% of the server market, and I think they're down around 40% these days, depending on how you count it. Considering azure is basically a giant platform service they couldn't aim to be a serious single solutions provider business and only host windows.

    2. Re:What an idiot by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      No fucking kidding? How long has Linux been used in commercial operations? How long has it been put on embedded and dedicated platforms? Hell, how long has friggin' BSD and Emacs been around? Fuck, you'd think Open Source had been invented yesterday.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    3. Re:What an idiot by marcosdumay · · Score: 1

      Except this really has nothing to do with open source. MS offers a computing cloud, and they offer various options on the computing cloud because they want to make money.

      Are you kidding? MS never chooses to simply "make money" on a market. Every market they enter they are only interested in supporting their other monopolies. If that makes them lose money on that maket, well, life is tough...

      The current anouncement could very well be an exception, and a huge one. Of course, it could also be a trap.

  3. Re:Proper They Picked the Only Dist Worse than Ubu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    You do realize configuring CentOS and RedHat are identical... minus the licensing cost. right?

  4. Re:Proper They Picked the Only Dist Worse than Ubu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You do realize configuring CentOS and RedHat are identical... minus the licensing cost. right?

    No, he didn't, but he wouldn't have been able to make his point otherwise.

  5. LINUX with a Windows Hypervisor. by hackus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Let me get this straight.

    You're going to take and scale, a per license based hypervisor, that is admitted to be fairly immature, commercial product with poor scaling abilities and couple it with LINUX GPL licensed based guests which, you can throw away all of the benefits of open engineering, all of the GPL based engineering which is far superior to anything corporation has ever concieved, on a scale that no corporation can match which is the LINUX open source GPL kernel. ...running the largest computing machines ever concieved of by man so far..._ALL_ of them run LINUX.

    THEY DO NOT RUN WINDOWS.

    Is there something I am missing here?

    Next thing you are going to tell me is that central banking histroically has been a major win for all countries that ever adopted it resulting in extremly stable currencies and fair trade for all. ;-)

    Didn't Einstein say that the definition of insanity is trying something over and over and over again, that has a logical single outcome, yet somehow something different is expected?

    So why would we try to scale commercial software when it doesn't work in the private sector, on a cloud and simply just use LINUX?

    I personal response is that obviously, these commercial Azure cloud companies must be INSANE.

    -Hack

    PS: Central Banking is insane too, always destroys civilizations but they keep doing it saying..."Oh, but _THIS_ _TIME_ it will be different."

    --
    Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
    1. Re:LINUX with a Windows Hypervisor. by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 2

      Is there something I am missing here?

      Pricing?

    2. Re:LINUX with a Windows Hypervisor. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      running the largest computing machines ever concieved of by man so far..._ALL_ of them run LINUX.

      I'm waiting for you to demonstrate that is an engineering decision like you implied, instead of a financial decision (which is far more likely).

    3. Re:LINUX with a Windows Hypervisor. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Weirdo Ron Paul supporter, I'd love to hear a list of modern nations that got big without Central Banking. Or for that matter, a list of ancient nations that got big without central banking and went on to last forever and ever with stable currencies the entire time. If a modern nation gave up the idea of Central Banking, the economy would collapse and there would be riots in the streets within a week. You are a nerd on Slashdot and shouldn't be offering extremist ideas on subjects you obviously know nothing about.

      Anyway, what the fuck, how could the Microsoft have anything to do with the Symbionese Liberation Army?

    4. Re:LINUX with a Windows Hypervisor. by Robert+Zenz · · Score: 1

      As much as I agree with you...could you please stop YELLING the name...it's Linux...it's a name, not an acronym...thank you.

    5. Re:LINUX with a Windows Hypervisor. by dhavleak · · Score: 1
      So this is the stuff that passes for 'insight' these days?

      and couple it with LINUX GPL licensed based guests which, you can throw away all of the benefits of open engineering

      How does the hypervisor choice affect the fact that your guest is GPL licensed? Are you supposed to stop looking at the source once you run a Linux VM on hyperv?

      all of the GPL based engineering which is far superior to anything corporation has ever concieved, on a scale that no corporation can match which is the LINUX open source GPL kernel

      Dogma. Recommend critical thinking instead.

      THEY DO NOT RUN WINDOWS. Is there something I am missing here?

      As others mentioned -- price. But its in fact an orthogonal topic. Linux's FOSS roots make it adaptable, and it's been adapted for cluster computing of the supercomputing / number-crunching variety. That type of scalability is different than the scalability required for hosting capacity in the cloud. It's a completely different engineering problem. It makes more sense to compare those kind of clusters with windows compute cluster server. Even that's a relatively new entrant to the game -- Microsoft basically hasn't been after that market. So it's definitely a strong point for Linux, and it's definitely an example of one of FOSS's strengths (that it's adaptability makes it easy to plug in to areas where proprietary offerings don't exist or have weaknesses) but in no way is it a ding on Azure, as related to Azure's ability to host Linux VMs.

    6. Re:LINUX with a Windows Hypervisor. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Largely Irrational New Useless eXtrapolation.

      (anything's an acronym if you try. Mine's more a commentary on people making everything into acronyms than the kernal itself)

    7. Re:LINUX with a Windows Hypervisor. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For the love of god please moderate the parent down, his rhetoric makes my brain hurt.

      Things aren't true just because you _want_ them to be.

  6. If or when should folks move from AWS? by lemur3 · · Score: 1

    Amazon Web Services has been around for a while now.. they have a pretty robust line of tools ...If this move by microsoft.. and others.. to try and get more opensourcey stuff on the azure cloud is a success.. when should people start looking to move stuff to the azure cloud ?

    what is the tipping point ? is there one?

    from my point of view it seems like that is a long way off..

  7. Why CentOS instead of Redhat? by cpu6502 · · Score: 1

    Just reading wikipedia's description: " CentOS exists to provide a free enterprise class computing platform and strives to maintain 100% binary compatibility with its upstream source, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)." - Why not just use Red Hat directly?

    --
    My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
    1. Re:Why CentOS instead of Redhat? by Nixoloco · · Score: 2, Informative

      Just reading wikipedia's description: " CentOS exists to provide a free enterprise class computing platform and strives to maintain 100% binary compatibility with its upstream source, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)." - Why not just use Red Hat directly?

      Because that way they don't have to pay Red Hat anything.

    2. Re:Why CentOS instead of Redhat? by SpaFF · · Score: 0

      Because that way they don't have to pay Red Hat anything.

      I think they are going to find it tough to keep Enterprise-level SLAs using Centos vice Red Hat. Anytime there is a major security vulnerability, rather than waiting on Red Hat to release an Erratum, they are going to have to wait on Red Hat to release AND then wait on the CentOS folks (who have no financial motivation to do things with any urgency) to take what Red Hat released and rebuild it for CentOS.

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      -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GIT d? s: a-- C++++ UL++++ P++ L+++ E- W++ N o-- K- w--- O- M+ V PS+ P
    3. Re:Why CentOS instead of Redhat? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not an unusual occurance for the Centos folks to find a bug and send an upstream patch to Red Hat. That's how open source works.

    4. Re:Why CentOS instead of Redhat? by Xtifr · · Score: 1

      I think they are going to find it tough to keep Enterprise-level SLAs using Centos vice Red Hat.

      They're already running on a Windows hypervisor. It's not like switching from RHEL to CentOS is going to affect their SLAs more than that will! :)

  8. Re:Proper They Picked the Only Dist Worse than Ubu by Microlith · · Score: 1

    Congratulations, you missed the point of CentOS, or rather, RHEL. RHEL/CentOS isn't supposed to be bleeding edge and full of fancy features. It's designed to work, being secure and stable for many years on end.

    You did know that CentOS is basically a 1:1 open source release of RHEL, right?

  9. Re:Proper They Picked the Only Dist Worse than Ubu by ilikenwf · · Score: 2

    The support is where it's at with RedHat... That said, I personally never use it or Cent anymore because they both are behind in terms of everything. Debian rocks for servers.

  10. Re:Proper They Picked the Only Dist Worse than Ubu by Microlith · · Score: 1

    s/open source/subscription-free/

  11. Re:Proper They Picked the Only Dist Worse than Ubu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Something tells me (probably the childish way you rant) that your servers are for play, come talk to us about your production Mint when you've "configured" a thousand or so of them.

  12. Re:What an idiot and the horse he rode in on by Alex+Belits · · Score: 1

    I commend you for the use of "M$" despite Microsoft trolls deriding it.

    Microsoft has nothing of any importance other than monopoly power they inherited from IBM and money they got through abuse of that monopoly power. Technologically they are just as bankrupt as they are morally.

    --
    Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
  13. openlogic expertise in Open Source? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I just checked a couple hundred code bases and can't find openlogic.com email addresses in commits/etc. on anything. They don't appear to have any people involved in the Open Source projects they claim to provide enterprise support for. When you look at Red Hat or SuSE you'll find them involved in thousands of OpenSource projects which is how they are able to provide the expertise to fix broken things. OpenLogic appears to be a hollow company

    1. Re:openlogic expertise in Open Source? by eric_herm · · Score: 1

      Well, look where the company management :
      http://www.openlogic.com/company/team/

      The first one ( COO ) is some ex-manager from Microsoft. Does Nokia/Elop ring a bell ?

      I think Microsoft realised that RHEL is one of their serious competitor, and so want to erode their user database with such a move. I would not be surprised to see Microsoft as a investor of Openlogic ,and the fact that Olex interoperate with Exchange does seems weird.

  14. Re:What an idiot and the horse he rode in on by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Trollolololol

  15. Re:What an idiot and the horse he rode in on by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah.. I definitely know IBM gave them the source code for MS Office and Windows XP/Vista/7 . No .. wait.. they bundled MS Office, MS Exchange, Outlook and Visual Studio with Windows.. oops.. no.. wait..

    MS won because people overwhelmingly chose their software and continue to want it. To abuse monopoly, you have to first become a monopoly. You don't get to hundreds of millions of users by accident or luck. Continue to spew bullshit..., but throw in a joke or two and make it entertaining. You are a funny clown indeed... can I purchase you at a store to keep me entertained?

  16. Re:Proper They Picked the Only Dist Worse than Ubu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    hahahaha

  17. Except for GUI Polish by frankgerlach11 · · Score: 1

    ..Windows is in all other aspects RetardWare. Slow networking, Buggy SMB (still with Win7), in-transparent config (that registry crap-pile), MFC, slow to launch/stop processes, lots of security issues.
    It is only advocated by people who are too lazy to learn Unix.

    1. Re:Except for GUI Polish by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Solid comment. Fact-free, dogma-filled, and over-generalized, all within 2 sentences. Well done!

  18. It is called "MEETOO" by frankgerlach11 · · Score: 1

    Surely all the PHB drones will be interested, as they are fascinated by .Net and the other polished turd from M$. They grew their careers on polished PPT crap.

  19. Rockefeller and JP Morgan by frankgerlach11 · · Score: 1

    ..would surely be proud of that Great American Company "Microsoft". They use all the old dirty tricks and invented some more. In that process they made themselves some very powerful enemies, as words are more powerful than dollar bills on the long run.