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Microsoft developer reveals Linux is now more used on Azure than Windows Server
- mr_toad 7y agoI see a lot of government shops picking Azure because nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft. But once they open up to the cloud I see a lot of people installing stuff like Shiney servers, Jupytr notebooks and other open source software on Linux servers that would never have been a starter in an enterprise environment.
- bhouston 7y agoThe government department standardizes on Azure but all the young devs push for Linux servers so all their shiny toys work great. Windows is truly dead on the cloud and has been for a decade. The only thing people use it for is self hosted exchange, and file servers and active domains - legacy stuff.
- kerng 7y agoEveryone uses Active Directory because its basically the only functional solution for its problem space.
- ratiolat 7y agoWhich problem space is that? For group policy part cfengine, salt, puppet are far better (group policy is just modifying windows registry and manipulating files although at first it seemes a bit like magic). For authentication we have kerberos, which Microsoft pulled in from the free world beginning with Windows 2000. Kerberos does not fly in the Cloud world though.
- pjc50 7y agoHave you ever actually done that - managed a large fleet of desktops and a productivity suite, all on Linux with no active directory? Complete with whatever the Kerberos equivalent of a backup DC is?
- ratiolat 7y agoThe problem with AD is that it is for windows only. It does not fly for managing Mac and Linux desktops. So that gives us salt for example, which has clients for all three. The second problem with ad is that if you need to manage any complex settings, you'll need to write your own templates. The included group policies are only for basic level os management + some for basic level Microsoft office managment stuff. Anything else and it's scripting + manual work and AD is only for distribution and selecting hosts/users where to apply those settings. And yes, I've managed multi thousand workstation networks with AD. Do not recommend it.
- issati 7y agoAD isn't just for Windows, which would be weird since it is mostly a fancy key value store (with associated functions and services of course). SSSD for example can use AD. The problem is that Linux itself doesn't support the same functionality client side, which using a configuration manager doesn't really solve. And question wasn't if you have used AD, but if you have managed Linux desktop deployments without it. Since your claim is that it is better.
- ratiolat 7y agoI'm in the process of bulding a solution for managing all three OS'es. AD is not on the table because theres nothing to do with kerberos in our network and AD would be a "windows only" solution.
- gmueckl 7y agoLinux can totally run in a AD domain with auth managed by AD. Client side SMB is also not bad. But you are excluding Kerberos for some unrelated reason, right?
- berbec 7y agoAnd Dropbox is just sshfs, ftp-mount etc. There is a huge advantage to having an all-in-one, it just works, solution. Active directory is such a solution and does really well. Login to a different mschine and things are just setup. Push programs, setting, updates. Change security. It's great.
- closeparen 7y agoThere is an entire parallel community of business IT, basically unknown and unintelligible to the Silicon Valley community, where the Microsoft server-side stack is as obvious a choice as Linux is in our world. You may even have some of it in your company. It's really amusing (and dysfunctional) when our projects require "Eng" and "Corp IT" to cooperate. We're both ostensibly computer professionals who select, write, and operate production services, yet to each side the other may as well be from Mars.
- flomo 7y agoLike 10 years ago, I thought it was great when we garnered a client which was one those "Microsoft only" type shops, because I like C#/NET. But the only justification for using it was really "IT made us do it". And I saw how the IT leadership in these places were older people perhaps maybe fighting older political battles. In any case its been many years since I've stumbled across a pure Microsoft shop. I think Azure means they know they lost, but also have legacy business to support.
- tjpnz 7y ago>But the only justification for using it was really "IT made us do it". And I saw how the IT leadership in these places were older people perhaps maybe fighting older political battles. I've seen this happen too in predominantly Linux shops. In the early 2000s Microsoft worked hard to cultivate relationships with future IT leaders and those relationships have a way of enduring. Even if your CIO can't get everyone onto Windows they might still find a place for Office 365 without much time spent weighing up the alternatives.
- kyllo 7y agoHosting SQL Server has been another common use case for Windows Server for a long time, though it can run on Linux too now.
- cbluth 7y agoThe last time I installed sql server was on Linux
- karmicthreat 7y agoLast I looked many of SQL server advanced features didn't work on Linux. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-release-notes?view=sql-server-2017#Unsupported https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-...
- kyllo 7y agoRight, like no Analysis & Reporting Services on Linux means if you're using it for BI, you're probably still running it on Windows.
- Spooky23 7y agoGovernment does it because Microsoft was genius in sneaking cloud service terms back in 2011/2012 beyond the scope of O365 into the Microsoft EA product use rights before government lawyers and procurement people figured it out. O365 had ROI so it just rolled through. They have a leg up because they have been available to every government entity for almost a decade. AWS and others are still hard to buy for many government entities.
- bezoisevil 7y agoYeah not really
- m0zg 7y agoThis is great, IMO. The sooner MS abandons Windows on Azure the better for everybody. You could argue that "monoculture" is not good, but, TBH, from a purely pragmatic standpoint, I struggle to name a single use case where I'd _not_ choose Linux over anything else when the use case is not desktop-oriented (cloud, edge, embedded).
- steve19 7y agoI guess when you want to run software than only runs on Windows, such as IIS. You won't find them here, but there are plenty of Windows-only IT service providers out there. It seems crazy that any system administrator, or programmer, in 2019 would only have any interest in Windows, but they exist and there are a lot of them out there.
- FigmentEngine 7y agoseems to me that windows is still where you are going to find better (or even a driver) drivers for hardware. is this still true? if new cutting edge hardware released does it now have good linux drivers? (sorry i was scarred by the printing experience on linux)
- jorams 7y agoLinux supports much more hardware than Windows. The situation with bad cutting edge hardware support applies only on desktop machines, where manufacturers don't bother with anything but the OS they put in the box.
- la_barba 7y agoDriver support is mostly a non-factor for cloud installs though. You can carefully chose what hardware you use, unlike the desktop, where the end-user can plug in any number of peripherals.
- jtdev 7y agoI wish MS would just create a Linux or BSD distro like Amazon Linux, ClearLinux, Darwin etc. to replace Windows Server outright...
- mushufasa 7y agocheck out their kernel for WSL: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel.
- jtdev 7y agoDoesn’t WSL depend on a Windows host though? Can WSL be used as an independent OS?
- a012 7y agoW is for Windows in WSL, so no.
- tyingq 7y agoBased on reading this: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel/issues/1 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel/issues/1 I think the MS kernel would run fine without Windows.
- lozenge 7y agoIf I were implementing it, I would definitely want to be able to test it using qemu without Windows.
- TallGuyShort 7y agoThey could probably partner with Red Hat. I would've laughed at the idea 10 years ago, but these days, I wouldn't be that surprised. When they've had OS-ish integrations needed for things like machine-based authentication, RHEL has been treated like a first class citizen. I'm not sure how much Amazon Linux really changes other than branding and some baked-in tuning - unless you're really going to commit to maintaining the OS, just providing a minimal RHEL-based image makes a lot of sense.
- hawaiian 7y agoMy favorite part about Azure is that Microsoft shops are totally fine with spinning up a Debian install simply because the image is available.
- lacampbell 7y agoIt's the default choice when you set up a VM.
- ape4 7y agoWhy would anyone select Windows on purpose
- paxys 7y agoI'm surprised it took this long. With Linux support for .NET and SQL Server, there is zero reason to host anything new on Windows now (of course legacy enterprise software is another story). I wouldn't be surprised if Windows Server is fully EOL'd in a few years.
- cwyers 7y agoI think you underestimate how slowly things move in some places. There are still shops running COBOL on mainframes. Windows is going to have a place on servers for decades to come.
- paxys 7y agoYes, but in the same way companies are still running XP. There is zero chance there will be new releases of Windows Server a decade from now. Microsoft itself is starting to host its services on Linux.
- bitwize 7y agoI don't see a Linux version of Exchange or Active Directory yet. For internal email, it's pretty much Exchange or GTFO.
- t0astbread 7y agoOpenLDAP, Postfix/Dovecot?
- united893 7y agoThis is a side note, maybe it's been covered before. Has anyone noticed that microsoft.com runs on Apache now? http://dpaste.com/3HTHQ96.txt http://dpaste.com/3HTHQ96.txt
- sieabahlpark 7y agoWhy would they bother paying nginx the outrageous price for their server?
- the_common_man 7y agoOr use iis
- jamra 7y agoOr use Kestrel, which should be able to be front facing. It does very well with speed.
- tiffanyh 7y agoYears ago, Microsoft used Akamai as their CDN. Akamai ran on Linux/Apache. Don’t know if that’s still the case though.
- dimitar 7y agoWindows VMs in Azure are significantly more expensive than Linux VMs because Microsoft still charges for the licenses. Only if your organization has already purchased a lot of them it can use the Hybrid benefit to get similar, but still higher prices. Seems like a bad strategy for Windows Server in the long run, but they may have decided that it is already dead.
- numlock86 7y ago> "major cloud provider uses linux more than windows" Well, that's to be expected. Sorry, this is in the same category as "Huawei CTO uses iPhones" or "amount X of Google employees use Surface Pro". I don't quite get what the article is trying to tell me.
- BoiledCabbage 7y agoThose are extremely poor analogies. You listed two things entirely irrelevant to a business as comparisons to a key component to a business. "Satya Nadella once used a linux computer" is the category of thing you listed. "Apple building android phones" would be a better snalogy for this.
- belltaco 7y ago> "Apple building android phones" would be a better snalogy for this. Not really. Apple selling Android phones at Apple Stores is probably the best analogy.
- mzeef 7y agoApple opening an electronics market and selling washing machines, iPhones and Android Smartphones and a lot of other things.
- numlock86 7y agoIn essence it's all "Company/Organization X buys/sells/makes/uses stuff/services for/from Company/Organization Y". Well, that's what's business is all about. Overlapping market shares and interests included. This article is nothing but based on the old "Windows VS Linux" discussion. So yeah, I think it's in the same category as "Satya Nadella once used a linux computer" category and fits very well.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- oxfordmale 7y agoOn Azure, a Windows VM instance tends to cost about 50% more than the equivalent instance running Linux,so it is a no brainer to use Linux if your application is operation system independent.
- reacweb 7y agoIf I encounter an issue on Linux (that I can reproduce), I can investigate it to its root (sometimes in the kernel driver) and fix it (or find someone who has fixed it). On windows, I have only seen issues fixed either by reinstalling applications (mostly randomly) and praying or by using annoying work arounds. IMHO, the cost is higher in Windows.
- h1d 7y agoStuff suddenly starting to work on reboot for Windows is getting old. I don't know what to use Windows servers for if it wasn't for a project that uses MetaTrader.
- butteroverflow 7y agoWe have these old Windows admins now learning to work with Linux. What drives me insane is their habit of randomly rebooting machines if something isn't working right. There is a problem with a Linux box, they ask you to take a look at it, you SSH in, type "uptime"... bam, it's two and a half minutes. A lot of precious diagnostic information has been lost.
- h1d 7y agoalias reboot='echo "This is not Windows!"' Real Linux admins know how to invoke the real 'reboot' command.
- skocznymroczny 7y agoMake sure to set SSH to log in directory to vim. Unlike Real Linux admins know how to quit vim so it will be no issue for them.
- acd 7y agoPrediction for the future: Microsoft will open source Windows but sell commercial support packages for it. Windows server will be offered as a compatibility layer in Linux on top of Docker.
- intea 7y agoThat's very unlikely atleast in the near future due to things like https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/?p=98755 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/?p=98755
- z3phyr 7y agoOn one end, I really like the open source movement; Having said that, I can't do anything but blame it for the slow pace of computer systems research. My reasoning is that the OS does not sell anymore (partly due to FOSS movement) and thus research computing environments hardly come out of the labs for use in production. We are forever stuck with Unix's interpretation of what an OS could be, and there is very little compulsion/motivation/incentive (can't think of the correct word) to explore. People who do explore (example at MS research or Later Bell labs, remains in the labs)
- pjc50 7y agoThis is not a new phenomenon, though; I was considering an OS research PhD all the way back in 2000, in the research group that brought out Nemesis ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_(operating_system) ) - but even back then I could see that the compatibility issue was a colossal barrier. Back then we thought Windows had won the desktop and the UNIX-like OSs would remain in a niche. The only thing that disrupted that was mobile. First Symbian, then iOS and Android. Sufficiently different use case that backwards compatibility was rendered irrelevant.
- gmueckl 7y agoI guess thus is the same kind of evilution that s lotnpf technology goes through as it is adopted. Eventually, standards evolve (lane sizes, driving sides, electrical voltages and current limits etc...) and because they are adopted so widely, any change becomes almost impossible. C and UNIX look like they are going to be that standard for the computing world for the next few centuries.
- raylangivens 7y agoMicrosoftie here, a lot of Microsoft's own infrastructure is hosted on Windows Server instances. Won't comment further than that, So Windows for server scenarios is certainly not dead.
- kabwj 7y agoI don’t see how the article says that “windows server is dead”. And Microsoft infrastructure is obviously running on windows, I don’t think anybody expects otherwise.
- raylangivens 7y agoPeople would misconstrue the increased usage of Linux VMs on Azure to assume Windows Server instances are no longer used for Server scenarios, which is not the case.
- kdmytro 7y ago> a lot I see what you did there ;)
- arcosdev 7y agoPlease release the Linux-flavoured Windows desktop OS Microsoft.
- quasi 7y agoMicrosoft should do an Apple and build the Windows 13 on GNU/Linux.
- benreesman 7y agoI also prefer a GNU userland, but Dave Cutler and his team did a pretty serious job with the NT kernel. A post from a blog I like a lot about how Linux and NT aren’t so different: https://manybutfinite.com/post/how-the-kernel-manages-your-memory/ https://manybutfinite.com/post/how-the-kernel-manages-your-m....
- z3phyr 7y agoIn my eyes that would be a demotion of technology. They should instead do a Xerox Parc and invent newer/different kinds of hardware operating environments (and try to ship them too).
- robteix 7y agoEven if they would, they couldn't do with Linux what Apple did with BSD because the licensing situation is different: BSD allowed them to develop a proprietary OS, GPL doesn't.
- Angostura 7y agoAlso known as doing a Novell - if you want an example that didn't turn out so well for the company.
- DaiPlusPlus 7y agoWindows’ driver ecosystem is important to Windows’ market success - switching out the kernel (and so, the driver interfaces) would throw that all away.
- pjc50 7y ago.. unless they build an adapter. If this sounds horrifying, consider that Windows already has a subsystem for allowing graphics drivers to crash and restart seperately. The reverse also exists: https://wiki.debian.org/NdisWrapper https://wiki.debian.org/NdisWrapper
- ThinkBeat 7y agoI am on one hand glad that Linux is being adopted, but I am mostly sad. We only have two operating systems now Windows and Linux. (MacOS for the desktop as well). It becomes a mono culture, and it takes away healthy competition and innovation. I want many more operating systems, not fewer. I with MS would make it free to run Windows Server, (something they move towards with the CLI only version). In order to hopefully increase adoptation. I dont think that will happen as long as MS has a lot of enterprise custoemrs who are paying huge for the Server licenses.
- southern_cross 7y ago> We only have two operating systems now Windows and Linux. That all depends on what platform(s) you're using. For example, IBM still gives you zOS, AIX, the System i OS, and so on. And there are other operating systems for other platforms. The computing world doesn't begin and end with Wintel, you know; it may seem that way sometimes, though.
- z3phyr 7y agoAIX is very unixy, though zOS looks pretty alien from it's description. I would love to work on zOS, but there is very little window of opportunity for that. I would love to see something like https://pharo.org/ https://pharo.org/ booting directly. Its an OS for all intents and purposes (To my realization, languages like Smalltalk, Lisps, Forths ARE Operating Systems)
- z3phyr 7y agoI want more "kinds" of operating systems. It is ripe time to look forward to building ones not based on Unix, files, forks and execs. I want to explore different ideas which were not tested because Unix model became popular. There is a lot to explore on the side of Smalltalk machines, Oberon, Lisp Machines of old. As a developer, live programming language based environments is my kind of thing.
- pjc50 7y agoSure, but an OS that can't run a browser (i.e. it's difficult to port to) is going to have a massive adoption hurdle. I was a big fan of the QNX demo floppy (1.44MB OS with browser), but that didn't lead to me using it on the desktop. http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html
- ohthehugemanate 7y agoEvery few months we get another post like this, with a slightly different measure. Yes, lots of Azure workloads run Linux, and Microsoft makes it a priority. It's not news anymore. At the same time, Azure itself runs largely on Windows servers in Service Fabric (https://github.com/Microsoft/service-fabric https://github.com/Microsoft/service-fabric), so it's hard to count. With nested hypervisors as the normal architecture nowadays, this whole tally is pretty suspect. But we (the tech community) never seem to get bored with the "Microsoft is eating humble pie on OSS" story. Maybe that's exactly what Microsoft deserves after so many years of big-bad-wolf behavior. Unfortunately it makes their real engineering and OSS feats hard for us to see or acknowledge. Like Service fabric. Did you know that Microsoft built and open sourced an orchestrator that can manage tens if millions of nodes with totally diverse workloads (containers, VMs, and bare metal), nested hypervisors, and even nested orchestrators in a secure multi tenant context? That beats the crap out of kubernetes on a capabilities front, but it's not an easy story to sell. Or that Windows Hyper-V has done thin-VM/M container isolation on par with kata and firecracker for years? Or that many (if not most) Azure services are open source? You can run the entire azure stack on your home server closet if you like, especially including their biggest growth areas of kubernetes and ML/cognitive services. If you want an open source alternative to AWS, azure can be a real option. I enjoy the historical irony of this as much as the next guy, but we really have to stop letting it blind us to the awesome things MS is doing that don't fit that narrative. Microsoft is benefiting mightily by adopting open source culture, code, and practices as fast as it can. And if we can get our heads out of our own self-righteous asses enough to upvote the stories, we can profit from it too.
- cyborgx7 7y agoYou are trying to defend Microsoft from these stories. But "Microsoft eats humble pie on OSS" is exactly the narrative they want out there. It gives them the cover they want to embrace extend extinguish Linux and other major open source projects.
- TimTheTinker 7y ago> It gives them the cover they want to embrace extend extinguish Linux and other major open source projects. Were you alive when Microsoft reigned as the dark lord? The contrast between life then and now is so dramatic. They simply lack the power they once wielded over the world of computers and the internet - to everyone’s great benefit, including theirs.
- jandrese 7y agoWho wants to deal with licensing headaches on cloud servers? Plus if you want to run headless then you need to go through the AD setup process to manage Windows hosts, where the Linux hosts are fine with just ssh access.
- neop1x 7y agoIt's always fun to watch opinion changes to where the money is. Of course it's not about freedom, community or niceness. Their revenue from cloud services is growing fast. :)