Microsoft Has Built a Linux Distro

jbernardo writes: Microsoft has built a Linux distro, and is using it for their Azure data centers. From their blog post: "It is a cross-platform modular operating system for data center networking built on Linux." Apparently, the existing SDN (Software Defined Network) implementations didn't fit Microsoft's plans for the ACS (Azure Cloud Switch), so they decided to roll their own infrastructure. No explanation why they settled on Linux, though — could it be that there is no Windows variant that would fit the bill? In other news, Lucifer has been heard complaining of the sudden cold.

Comments

Re: Wrong choice

[BitZtream]

Linux powers a lot of things that its not the best choice for simply because they hired some Linux fanboy so thats all he'll suggest. Doesn't mean its the best at the job, just means they picked it. Spending an extra $20k/year on someone with a clue could save them millions on hardware.

Rendering farms aren't indented to be fast at routing packets, they're intended to use CPU cycles to render, which any OS that gets out of the way ASAP is probably good for, here its more important that the application you want to use runs on the OS you want to use. So its not surprising the more cluster apps run on Linux any more surprising that more Desktop apps run on Windows.

So while there may be a lot of Linux rendering clusters, still doesn't make it the right choice. Do you think that because a lot of people do Cocaine that its the right thing to do too? Or do you actually evaluate the situation and make a sane decision?