Microsoft: Nearly One In Three Azure Virtual Machines Now Are Running Linux

Mary Jo Foley, reporting for ZDNet: Microsoft's self-professed Linux love is helping the company in the cloud. During his keynote at DockerCon 2016 in Seattle today, Azure Chief Technology Officer Mark Russinovich showed off some of the new and upcoming ways Microsoft is adding more container support to its cloud and server products. He also revealed a couple of new interesting datapoints. In the past year, Russinovich said, Microsoft has gone from one in four of its Azure virtual machines running Linux to nearly one in three. The other two-thirds of Azure customers are running Windows Server in their virtual machines. Russinovich showed off the promised Windows Server support that officials said would be coming at some point to the company's Azure Container Service (ACS). Microsoft made Azure Container Service generally available in April 2016, but for Linux containers only. Last year, company execs said Microsoft also would bring Windows Server support to ACS.

Wake me up when 2/3s are Linux

[williamyf]

'Nuff Said!

Re:Wake me up when 2/3s are Linux

[phantomfive]

It's not 1994, you can stop hating MS now.

No thanks, we still know they're just as evil as Google.

Re:Wake me up when 2/3s are Linux

[UnknownSoldier]

> You know what friend? It's not 1994, you can stop hating MS now.

Then why do I have to put up with Microshit's undocumented telemetry crap in Microsoft Visual C 2015 ? This bullshit shenanigans are _exactly_ why I hate M$. It should be opt in, NOT opt out.

* https://www.google.com/webhp?#... [google.com]

Only a complete fucking idiot would trust Microshaft with anything other then what is in their best interest.

Re:

[PCM2]

You obviously don't "put up" with it because you don't even know the name of the product. And in this case, it's an unreleased product with a bug in it.

Re:

[zlives]

i think it doesn;t matter what product, mostly just the brand signifies the trend.

Re:

[UnknownSoldier]

> It is documented.

And the source for Telemetry.cpp are where again? Because they aren't in crt/src/vcruntime/vcruntime_internal.h

//
// Telemetry
//
// Telemetry: Invoked when the exe/dll are invoked. There are two different
// implementations in telemetry.cpp and telemetrydefault.cpp. Because GetModuleFileName
// is not available for Store apps, we return an empty string in telemetrydefault.cpp
// when invoked by store apps. For the desktop in telemetry.cpp, it returns the name
// of the module which invoke

Re:

[haruchai]

I'm more concerned with the way they force or trick users into upgrading to Windows 10. I have to rebuild a PC for a friend whose Win 8.2 Inspiron that she uses for her small business got trashed by Windows 10 after she tried multiple times to cancel out of it.

Re:Wake me up when 2/3s are Linux

[Nunya666]

You know what friend? It's not 1994, you can stop hating MS now.

I disagree. Windows 8 and 10 warrant even more hate for MS, not less.

Shoving Windows 10 down our throats when we already have legitimate, paid-for, still-supported licenses of Windows 7 warrants even more hate for MS, not less.

Sneakily upgrading existing clients to Windows 10, which then bricks older hardware, warrants even more hate for MS, not less.

Hiding Windows 10 upgrades within Windows Updates, which then causes users to disable Windows Updates to avoid Win10, warrants even more hate for MS, not less.

Arstechnica says "Microsoft has no plans to tell us what's in Windows patches." Again, this warrants even more hate for MS, not less.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point.

Re:

[dbIII]

I live in the real world, and that world relies on Active Directory

I don't think I have laughed so much for years.

Re:

[QuietLagoon]

Why 2/3s? 10% is usually considered to be the tipping point where marketshare gains momentum. Regardless, it is the growth rate, rather than the milestone reached, that is important at this point.

Re:

[Merk42]

Why 2/3s?.

Because by that point the whiners will demand 3/4 as a constantly moving goal post because M$ can do no right.

THIS IS THE YEAR OF LINUX ON THE MICROSOFT CLOUDS

[Anonymous Coward]

 

Re:

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

This is the year of the Microsoft Linux desktop

Re:

[bondsbw]

Actually, it is. The next big update to Windows 10, currently in preview, now runs Ubuntu directly on top of the Windows kernel (no virtualization, recompile, Cygwin, etc.).

Re:

[sabbede]

I've been wondering about this... Regardless of how exactly it works (though I am interested) it's pretty dang cool.

Re:

[cfalcon]

No, the headline is correct. "Machines" is plural noun, pairs with plural verb "are".

"One in three" is as singular as .333 is as singular as one thousand- not at all.

What a jump!

[aardvarkjoe]

Wow. One in four to nearly one in three. So that's, what, a jump from 25% to 30%? At this rate, it will be all Linux by 2030.

Re:What a jump!

[ranton]

Wow. One in four to nearly one in three. So that's, what, a jump from 25% to 30%? At this rate, it will be all Linux by 2030.

You think a 32% increase in a single year is a small thing? If it kept growing at this rate (which it won't) you would be looking at 100% Linux in only four years.

Re:

[eneville]

By Microsoft solution, do you mean a cloud that uses Linux as the host?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... [theregister.co.uk]

Microsoft's self-professed Linux love

[sunderland56]

>> "Microsoft's self-professed Linux love"

Say what? Is this like Donald Trump's self-professed love of Mexicans?

Upgrade to Windows 10...

[QuietLagoon]

I wonder when Microsoft will start the forced upgrade of those VMs to Windows 10? :)

Re:

[tehlinux]

Hopefully someone will port GWX Control Panel to linux before that happens!

Re:

[TechyImmigrant]

Isn't that in SystemD already?

On Microsoft Linux, it's svchost.exeD

Re:

[zlives]

that feature is not needed in azure because... all your datas are belong to the hypervisor.

Re:

[cfalcon]

I'm pretty sure it was Microwindows that they came down on. I don't recall the X Window System ever being officially called "X Windows", though, of course, everyone calls it that. Feel free to cite to the contrary ofc.

Re:

[Gadget_Guy]

Years ago, Linux was forced to rename "X Windows" to "X Window" because Microsoft didn't like it.

What rot. Why would Linux be forced to rename another team's project? And Mac OS X also has an X in the name. If Microsoft are going to claim both the word Windows and X, why wasn't Linux also forced to rename OS X?

But seriously, X Windows has never been the correct name. From a newsgroup post in 1993 [google.com]:

The X Consortium requests that the following names be used when referring to this software:

X
X Window System
X Version 11
X Window System, Version 11
X11

There is no such thing as "X Windows" or "X Window", desp

SQL Server on Linux

[tcopeland]

So he demo'd SQL Server:

> Russinovich also showed off a preview of SQL Server on Linux

But, interesting, seems like the Linux version is missing some features [theregister.co.uk].

Re:

[Kjella]

But, interesting, seems like the Linux version is missing some features.

Well, I do hope they'll get all the core services - SSIS, SSAS, SSRS to run not just the SQL database. I don't care about the administration/development tools, if you need a Windows box to work with it that's fine but if you can't run your import/export jobs, cubes and reports it's a bit of a lame duck, if all your data goes in/out via SQL queries and that's the only part you use there are many perfectly good replacements.

That's what Russinovich is doing now?

[sabbede]

He's one of the few people I can point to and say, "he made my life easier." Thank you for SysInternals Mark!