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Mark Russinovich, Microsoft Critic, Is Now Building Azure
- jessriedel 12y agoI could use a summary. (New idea for facebook: allow users to submit abstracts/summaries of articles, and show me the one written by someone least removed from me by friendships.)
- digitalengineer 12y agoHere: http://toolong-didntread.com/ http://toolong-didntread.com/
- jerf 12y agoPolitely asking for one on HN ought to do the trick, I hope. (I'd suggest not downmodding this, folks. Politely asking for a summary is nice, as is providing one, and let's not discourage it. It's not the same as just squirting out a "TL:DR?".)
- gedrap 12y agoYup. Whenever I see a link to something like Wired (i.e. 90% of text just more or less meaningless, 10% real information), I just go straight to HN comments. Doesn't feel like I'd be loosing anything.
- jessriedel 12y agoYea, I don't really get why folks have a problem with asking for a summary. As gedrap said, most writing on sites like Wired is 90% fluff, and I don't understand why we all should be reading through that to see if the core 10% is worthwhile. There's a reason journal articles have abstracts. So maybe I'll just start asking for an "abstract" in the future, since that sounds fancier.
- eddieroger 12y agoMicrosoft hired a security researcher and developer by the name of Mark Russinovich, who is famous for developering a powerful set of tools called Sysinternals and gained fame for that and finding issues with Windows and publishing them. He is now considered a "loose cannon" inside Microsoft, breaking them of their monolithic ways in favor of a customer-focused approaches and more open-mindedness (citing Linux availability in Azure as a demonstration).
- akandiah 12y agoI really like him for his contribution towards creating the Sysinternals set of utilities. I'm surprised that Windows doesn't include them by default nowadays.
- rnnr 12y agoIt's about client support. People will break their systems or call MS support for infos about what these tools do etc. Plus they don't concern a lot of people, and proper integration of them would undermine genreal user experience.
- jameshart 12y agoThe sysinternals tools are always available on a webdav-enabled share on live.sysinternals.com. Just run pushd \\live.sysinternals.com from a command prompt, and then run any of the sysinternals tools without any kind of installation - or, I guess, security or validation of the executable. YMMV.
- EvanAnderson 12y agoValidation is provided by Authenticode signatures embedded in the EXEs themselves.
- yuhong 12y agoWhat is interesting is that the kernel mode drivers buried inside procexp is still signed using sysinternals not MS certificates, sometimes with no timestamp!
- voltagex_ 12y agoI didn't know pushd worked like that in Windows. Thanks!
- GFischer 12y agoMark Russinovich is the author of the Sysinternals tools, which have long been essential utilities for troubleshooting Microsoft environments. His blog has some pretty good reads for anyone that wants an in-depth view of Microsoft products: http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/ http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/
- moonlighter 12y agoEvery time I set up a new dev system, literally the 2nd thing after installing Windows was installing all the Sysinternals tools. I've since moved on to OS X as my main dev system, but even my VM's Windows all have the Sysinternals tools installed.
- lnanek2 12y agoI definitely found Sysinternals useful, and I was impressed when I saw Azure with easy to run Linux images way back when. I didn't realize they are becoming a better player. Props to them for hiring the guy.
- dspillett 12y ago> Props to them for hiring the guy. They hired him (effectively) quite some years ago when they bought sysinternals (2007 or there abouts IIRC). Props to them for neither neutering him nor making him leave though, either of which is common with a buy-out that includes a critic. A good critic can be a powerful resource for reflection and positive change.
- kubov 12y agoI recommend watching "Case of the unexplained". Mark is showing practical examples of using sysinternals tools, it really gives a glimpse of how skilled he is. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963887.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963887.asp...
- edsykes 12y agoIt's well worth the time to go and watch these. It teaches you all kinds of things about how windows works
- timthorn 12y ago> Cloud computing was invented by Amazon That's a bit of a journalistic stretch.
- Nursie 12y agoI don't know.... The S3 stuff was kicked off in the late 90s and everyone just kinda-sorta said why? But it seems to have been the first modern cloud-type service. Now, I personally hate the term "Cloud" because it's pretty meaningless, and you can look back throughout the entire history of computing and find examples of distributed, remote storage, compute power etc etc. But if we're going to call anything "Cloud" in the sense we try to use it now, then I reckon Amazon were first to market by a mile.
- icebraining 12y agoThe S3 stuff was kicked off in the late 90s What? As far as I know, S3 launched in 2006.
- Nursie 12y agoI can find reference to AWS based on EC2 going back as far as 2002 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com#Computing_services http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com#Computing_services But I'll happily admit my memory might be faulty! And yes, that's not S3 as it's known now.
- EvanAnderson 12y agoComputer "service bureaus" offered outsourced computing services in the 1960's and 70's. Do some research on "Tymshare", for example, and you'll see that "the Cloud" was alive and well back in the 1960's.
- a-priori 12y ago“If computers of the kind I have advocated become the computers of the future, then computing may someday be organized as a public utility just as the telephone system is a public utility... The computer utility could become the basis of a new and important industry.” — John McCarthy, speaking at the MIT Centennial in 1961 (As quoted at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_computing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_computing)
- krmmalik 12y agoI don't know how closely Nadella and Russinovich are working, but all being well this could be the start of a new collaboration and wave of dominance not much unlike the Jobs-Ive duo. For new product development that is, not for aesthetic design or hardware brilliance. I had been following Mark for quite some time in the early 2000s and was a big fan of his tools but hadn't seen him speak or anything like that. He then did talk on work he was going for the next Microsoft OS, which at the time was Windows 7. His talk was easily the best talk that day. He was confident, knew his subject and was passionate about what he was doing. No one else that day was as authentic and enthusiastic as he was. I'm not sure how many people in that particular audience recognised his drive and talent though. I'm glad to see him written up about and if he's a big part of driving Microsoft into the future, then Microsoft could very well become exciting and relevant again.
- ryanackley 12y agoI feel like this article mischaracterizes sysinternals as something of a Microsoft critic and watchdog which just wasn't the case. They were more like a valued and vital member of the Microsoft ecosystem. If you did development on a Windows machine in the last 20 years, you probably downloaded a sysinternals tool at one point. Many Microsoft KB articles pointed to their tools and articles and when Microsoft announced their acquisition, most people were like "That makes sense".
- weinzierl 12y agoI completely agree but I can at least image where the critic characterization comes from. Mark's articles and the Sysinternals tools gave us wonderful insight many parts of Windows. They showed the good things but often times they also pointed out the flaws. I think Mark is just honest about the technical aspects of Windows and thankfully his attitude has not changed since Microsoft pays his checks. One example of this are his videos about Windows Memory Memory management (from 2011, hosted on MSDN)[1], which besides being a detailed technical explanation don't skip all the shortcomings of Windows' memory subsytem. Sometimes his statements seem harsh but I think it's more sincerity and he has been as sincere about his own tools as well[2]. [1] http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2011/WCL405 http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2011/WCL... [2] http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2009/11/03/3291024.aspx http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2009/11/0...
- jakejake 12y agoI too had always felt that sysinternals was a champion of Microsoft and Windows. Perhaps there were some politics going on that only Microsoft employees would know? Every system has pros and cons and learning how to work with those constraints is how you become a master. From what I understood Mark is one of a small number of people who has an extremely deep understanding of Windows inner workings.
- ma2rten 12y agoExactly! Sysinternals gave lectures about windows internals to Microsoft employees.
- weinzierl 12y agoIf I remember correctly then Mark Russinovich is an Azure architect since at least 2011 and I think he had a leading role even back then. He is with Microsoft since when Sysinternals was bought in 2006. A little off topic, but if you ever wondered what all those numbers shown by Task Manager really mean, Mark did a video[1] that really explains it well. [1] http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2011/WCL405 http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2011/WCL...
- AaronFriel 12y agoThere are a handful of people worth watching at Microsoft conferences - no matter what they're doing. My list is: * Anders Hejlsberg * Mark Russinovich * Scott Hanselman They have the clout and the job security to speak their mind - and they do. They all work on neat projects and are interested in talking about the internals. I saw Mark at Build this year and his talk was about the "fails" of Azure. It was an honest breakdown of how they've had failures that have taken down customers, taken down Microsoft services, and hurt the reputation of Azure. I've followed Mark's blog since before he became a Technical Fellow at Microsoft, and he deserved it, no doubt. Very few people could write or speak with such precision about the internals of Microsoft kit. His interviews on Channel9 are all fascinating, before Azure he did work on the NT Kernel (and who knows what else) and he spoke candidly about dealing with issues scaling up the operating system. He has given interviews solely about removing global locks from the kernel, because that's his domain and he's good at it. If that reminded me of anyone else, it would be Linus Torvalds and his intimate knowledge of the Linux kernel.
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- gavinpc 12y ago> Very few people could write or speak with such precision about the internals of Microsoft kit Indeed, he "wrote the book" on it, which is apparently freely available as PDF now [1]. As someone who knows nothing about OS's, I picked up a cheap copy out of curiosity, and found it highly readable and enlightening (until it got rained on somewhere around chapter 10). EDIT: Do you have a link to the "fails" talk? I've been using Azure for the last few months and have been extremely impressed so far. [1] https://www.google.com/#q=windows+internals+russinovich+pdf https://www.google.com/#q=windows+internals+russinovich+pdf
- curiousDog 12y agoHe also auctions rides in his Ferrari 458 for charity!
- Touche 12y ago> “I ranted at some of the architects when I was at Microsoft. They were constraining the sorts of things you could do,” Brown told us in 2012. “Microsoft likes to do a really big up-front design, where they define the physics of a new universe. They birth this new universe, and they say: ‘This is how you do it’–instead of starting out with something simple and letting people show them how it should be done.” I really hope this advice is taken by others, particularly the Windows team. Powershell is a golden example of this. Great idea, piping around objects instead of text, but wait, they must be .NET objects. So the entirety of the language community cannot participate other than Microsoft languages. I'm hoping they revitalize the command line taking this advice, start with something simple and let others build on top of it.
- stephengillie 12y agoWhat would it take for a homebrew language to interact with the OS as a CLR language?
- ori_b 12y agoThey tried it. It's called COM. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model
- brudgers 12y agoPowerShell's specification is publicly available. Has been for several years. http://www.powershellmagazine.com/tag/language-specification/ http://www.powershellmagazine.com/tag/language-specification...
- mh_yam 12y agoIt was interesting to find out who the people behind Sysinternals were. The article, though, has an embarrassing number of typos...
- stpe 12y agoFor background, this is Mark Russinovich's original blog post from 2006 about Microsoft acquisition of Sysinternals/Winternals. http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2006/07/18/on-my-way-to-microsoft.aspx http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2006/07/1... "I’m joining Microsoft as a technical fellow in the Platform and Services Division, which is the division that includes the Core Operating Systems Division, Windows Client and Windows Live, and Windows Server and Tools. I’ll therefore be working on challenging projects that span the entire Windows product line and directly influence subsequent generations of the most important operating system on the planet. From security to virtualization to performance to a more manageable application model, there’s no end of interesting areas to explore and innovate."
- wnevets 12y agohis Sysinternals stuff was pretty solid.
- Zigurd 12y agoWithout an attractive, desirable suite of cloud services, their endpoint devices and OSs are going nowhere. WITH world-class cloud services, Microsoft could derive revenue from Apple and Android users. It appears that Microsoft's biggest problem was egos. People wanted to "leave their mark" rather than play to strengths and achieve the possible. Microsoft could readily be 3X bigger if they focus on what they are good at and on the customers most likely to welcome Microsoft products.
- benjaminpv 12y ago>People wanted to "leave their mark" TBF this had a lot to do with the stack-ranking MS was famous for. When you've got to justify your job every year making a name for yourself is mandatory.
- cheez 12y agoSo what is their new method of measuring performance?
- Zigurd 12y agoI think what benjaminpv is getting at is that a system like stacked ranking drives people within an organization to build fiefdoms of their own creation, where they are permanently on top. That way you don't get reorged into some group with established cliques and you end up on the bottom of the stack.
- 616c 12y agoWell, those Sysinternals tools were open source before MSFT acquired them. If you want to see the magic before MSFT force it behind the wall, here you go. https://code.google.com/p/akeo/downloads/detail?name=sysinternals_site_rip.7z.torrent https://code.google.com/p/akeo/downloads/detail?name=sysinte... And fuck you, Microsoft, and long live Russinovich. Could not have done without them in sysadmin work, open or closed.
- yuhong 12y agoThis reminds me of how michkap had access to Jet source code and was able to get permission to release the TSI utiliities.
- malkia 12y agoprocmon/procexp are my power-tools. Thank you Mr.Russinovich.
- mgleason_3 12y agoCleverest?
- dang 12y agoCan anyone please suggest a more neutral, less baity title? Edit: No takers? Ok, I'll try to come up with one.
- ww520 12y agoHe's a very smart man, a true hacker in the technical sense. His set of free tools revealed amazing details about Windows internal. Those have helped me tremendously back in the days when I work on Windows kernel internals as an outsider. Thanks to Mark.
- pdknsk 12y ago> So he’s now working to merge the platform service and the infrastructure service, giving people the power to run any software while still ensuring this software operates in an automatic way. “We want to blend the two worlds,” he says. That sounds very much like App Engine Managed VMs. https://developers.google.com/cloud/managed-vms https://developers.google.com/cloud/managed-vms
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- ed_blackburn 12y agoInterested to read the comments about IaaS and re-visiting PaaS. I expect PaaS services to be the differentiator that make people ship their new open source .NET vNext stack to Azure / Microsoft servers as opposed to alternative clouds / hosts. Seamless scaling of web servers, persistence stores, monitoring, analytics etc...
- euroclydon 12y agoI find it strange that Wired would spend several paragraphs describing standard software licensing practices as a "fraud".
- bashmohandes 12y agoAs someone who worked for Microsoft for years (left few years back), everybody in Microsoft criticize Microsoft, there is no red lines to cross. The bad things usually come from the fanboys of Microsoft inside Microsoft, especially if one of them is guarding a pretty strategic area, and the good thing is, these people have been leaving (or asked to leave) for quite some time now, the likes of Steve Ballmer & Sinofsky, while other super geeks like Satya Nadella, Scott Guthrie, Qi Lu are taking over.