6 ms·

Are there really 20-30% of cloud workloads not on Linux? What do they do? Who uses them?

by photonbeam 3y ago

COGlory 3y ago
I assume Microsoft SQL?
- mcny 3y ago
  > I assume Microsoft SQL? Yes! Especially if your application is legacy/old and requires Windows anyway. I used to think why people would do that when you can dockerize SQL Server and just use Debian or Fedora or whatever but I once tried that on a legacy application and things... were not quite right. It was easier to install on Windows than to debug the issue so I just let it go. I think things would be different if the code was new or I was familiar with it enough to anticipate how it could break in different ways. If the code/framework is new enough, it might be worthwhile diving into that rabbithole.
- borissk 3y ago
  Microsoft SQL Server runs on Linux and Windows.
  - trimethylpurine 3y ago
    But you need SSMS on a Windows client to manage it effectively. Unless you are doing everything cli, which is just not practical in the enterprise. Anyway, running it in Linux is pretty niche. Cool for show and tell, but you need balls of steel if you're going to try running even a small $100 million dollar business on it.
    - borissk 3y ago
      https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/azure-data-studio/download-azure-data-studio?view=sql-server-ver16&tabs=redhat-install%2Credhat-uninstall https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/azure-data-studio/down... It's fully supported by Microsoft on Linux, so if you run into technical problems you have a support line to call.
      - SamuelAdams 3y ago
        Last I checked, Azure data studio did not have feature parity with SSMS. Sure you can write TSQL, view and edit procedures. But that’s about where it ends. You can’t deploy SSIS packages, can’t edit user accounts and permissions, can’t manage linked servers, etc. Sure you might not do those every day, but if you have to jump through all these hoops to do something I wouldn’t call ADS a full replacement.
      - trimethylpurine 3y ago
        ADS can't really do this, as others have mentioned. Years in the future, they will get there. It's not remotely capable yet. And even many of the dialogue boxes that they've added recently are just opening in SSMS which still requires Windows.
mcny 3y ago
> Are there really 20-30% of cloud workloads not on Linux? > What do they do? Who uses them? I don't know about the percentages but there is at least one b2b e-commerce website application thing with the latest version built with ASP.NET MVC on dotnet 4.8 so it has to be on Windows. It isn't "cloud" by any means but you can create an EC2 instance or an Azure VM or whatever and put Windows on it and run IIS and all those things. That and I think on Azure, you can run things like Azure functions and Azure web apps on Windows. I also don't understand why people would pick Windows to run modern software where you have a choice.
locusofself 3y ago
I work at Microsoft and I see so much "cloud" Windows. Some of it is running Kubernetes even. But a lot Azure is Windows VMs orchestrated by "Service Fabric".
- borissk 3y ago
  Azure Service Fabric is actually excellent. Deployed a web service on top of it 5 years ago, so far it hasn't gone down even once. Service fabric is used in scale by internal Microsoft teams such as Bing and Xbox, so the bugs and the scaling issues have been ironed out.
squeaky-clean 3y ago
I have no idea how large they are compared to overall cloud marketshare but most game servers are Windows.

Are there really 20-30% of cloud workloads not on Linux? What do they do? Who uses them?

COGlory 3y ago

I assume Microsoft SQL?

mcny 3y ago
> I assume Microsoft SQL? Yes! Especially if your application is legacy/old and requires Windows anyway. I used to think why people would do that when you can dockerize SQL Server and just use Debian or Fedora or whatever but I once tried that on a legacy application and things... were not quite right. It was easier to install on Windows than to debug the issue so I just let it go. I think things would be different if the code was new or I was familiar with it enough to anticipate how it could break in different ways. If the code/framework is new enough, it might be worthwhile diving into that rabbithole.
borissk 3y ago
Microsoft SQL Server runs on Linux and Windows.
- trimethylpurine 3y ago
  But you need SSMS on a Windows client to manage it effectively. Unless you are doing everything cli, which is just not practical in the enterprise. Anyway, running it in Linux is pretty niche. Cool for show and tell, but you need balls of steel if you're going to try running even a small $100 million dollar business on it.
  - borissk 3y ago
    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/azure-data-studio/download-azure-data-studio?view=sql-server-ver16&tabs=redhat-install%2Credhat-uninstall https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/azure-data-studio/down... It's fully supported by Microsoft on Linux, so if you run into technical problems you have a support line to call.
    - SamuelAdams 3y ago
      Last I checked, Azure data studio did not have feature parity with SSMS. Sure you can write TSQL, view and edit procedures. But that’s about where it ends. You can’t deploy SSIS packages, can’t edit user accounts and permissions, can’t manage linked servers, etc. Sure you might not do those every day, but if you have to jump through all these hoops to do something I wouldn’t call ADS a full replacement.
    - trimethylpurine 3y ago
      ADS can't really do this, as others have mentioned. Years in the future, they will get there. It's not remotely capable yet. And even many of the dialogue boxes that they've added recently are just opening in SSMS which still requires Windows.

mcny 3y ago

> Are there really 20-30% of cloud workloads not on Linux? > What do they do? Who uses them? I don't know about the percentages but there is at least one b2b e-commerce website application thing with the latest version built with ASP.NET MVC on dotnet 4.8 so it has to be on Windows. It isn't "cloud" by any means but you can create an EC2 instance or an Azure VM or whatever and put Windows on it and run IIS and all those things. That and I think on Azure, you can run things like Azure functions and Azure web apps on Windows. I also don't understand why people would pick Windows to run modern software where you have a choice.

locusofself 3y ago

I work at Microsoft and I see so much "cloud" Windows. Some of it is running Kubernetes even. But a lot Azure is Windows VMs orchestrated by "Service Fabric".

borissk 3y ago
Azure Service Fabric is actually excellent. Deployed a web service on top of it 5 years ago, so far it hasn't gone down even once. Service fabric is used in scale by internal Microsoft teams such as Bing and Xbox, so the bugs and the scaling issues have been ironed out.

squeaky-clean 3y ago

I have no idea how large they are compared to overall cloud marketshare but most game servers are Windows.