6 ms·

Microsoft Announces Azure Stack

100 points by simas 11y ago

scaladdin 11y ago
Let's bring Azure into the trash!
- barranger 11y ago
  Any particular reason for not liking Azure, or just taking out Monday morning frustration on the world?
  - wnevets 11y ago
    because microsoft. its e-cool to hate microsoft
  - Truespeed 11y ago
    Probably because Microsoft was a founding member of the NSA club in 2007.
    - scaladdin 11y ago
      And the winner is...
  - mcintyre1994 11y ago
    No public holiday today over the pond? No wonder this place felt more negative than it should!
  - scaladdin 11y ago
    Yes there are reasons: it's slow and fragile. I know because a system which has been forced upon us is one of the buggiest on the planet. It can't tolerate the "challenges".
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
h43k3r 11y ago
Can anybody explain me in layman terms what this means? I understand that Azure is Microsoft's Cloud Platform that provides services through which you can deploy your application on cloud. Does this mean that you can run Azure on your own datacenter like Microsoft is doing currently?
- BF179580656B 11y ago
  I don't think so. Given how many types of customer's microsoft serves, I think it's a good move. Many of microsoft customer are old sensitive business of banking, healthcare which have tons of regulation and being able to use Azure in their own data center is a really help them modernize their software stack.
  - minot 11y ago
    Moreover, I don't know how we could undercut Microsoft on price either. I mean Azure and all of Microsoft Cloud Services(being Microsoft) probably gets Microsoft Windows licenses and all the licenses for free of cost and people like Rack space would have to pay for the licenses... The only thing we could do is become better than Microsoft at reliability (hah!) and customer service (which there might be a shot at in the short term).
- gvb 11y ago
  Yes. Key phrases: "enterprise on-premise data center" and "private cloud solution for IT pros and makes it easier for developers to scale their apps across their existing data centers and then boost to the cloud if they need more capacity on short notice" (emphasis mine). The "Azure Stack" with those features apparently won't be available until 2016, however.
- sunananth_MSFT 11y ago
  I'm a product manager with Microsoft. With the Azure Stack, you can deploy your applications on your on-premises (private) cloud, just like you would do in Azure - you're essentially retargeting the app. Our ultimate goal is to empower maximum application agility. To enable the same deployment experience, Microsoft is bringing the same Azure portal, user experience framework, and underlying IaaS/PaaS APIs and services to your on-premises environments. We're also being thoughtful in which services we bring on-premises so that enterprise customers get maximum value. We want to enable our customers and partners to run Azure in their datacenter in a way that's appropriate to their business requirements. We understand that not everybody operates at the hyper-scale that Microsoft does - as such, we will translate Microsoft's cloud designs and bring them to customers so it's easy to consume while enhancing flexibility and security in datacenter operations.
la6470 11y ago
It's not clear which X as a service will on premise Azure provide? While it is relatively easy to run virtual machines on private cloud platforms from vmware, Openstack and maybe now azure , it is notoriously difficult to provision DB or LB as a service or any of the other services
mc32 11y ago
These kinds of developments can't make VMware happy. I have not understood why VMware never made a big iaas play when it had the chance to compete before others became established and established mindshare. I only guess they didn't want to compete against themselves, which is understandable but shortsighted.
- Spooky23 11y ago
  VMWare's biggest competitor was itself and it's EMC linkage. IMO, moving towards IaaS t-shirt sized VMs makes it easier to architect around high cost stuff in the datacenter, like SAN.
- frostmatthew 11y ago
  > I only guess they didn't want to compete against themselves, which is understandable but shortsighted I work on vCloud Air (VMware's IaaS offering) and this is just a guess (since I wasn't here at the time) but I imagine it wasn't about "competing against themselves." It's easy to sit here in 2015 and say getting into IaaS early should have been obvious but that's ignoring the reality of what IT departments were saying they wanted. In 2008 88% of IT buyers preferred on-premise deployment, by 2014 that had declined to 13%[1]. FWIW early access to vCloud Hybrid Service (the original name of vCloud Air) was available in June 2013[2] and obviously something like this isn't put together overnight. [1] http://www.softwareadvice.com/buyerview/deployment-preference-report-2014/ http://www.softwareadvice.com/buyerview/deployment-preferenc... [2] http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-vcloud-hybrid-service-052113.html http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-vcloud-hybri...
  - kgilpin 11y ago
    Personally I believe that the best insights don't come from customers. As Jobs said, "Customers don't know what they want" http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2011/10/17/five-dangerous-lessons-to-learn-from-steve-jobs/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2011/10/17/five-danger... People working in IT data centers didn't work with cloud much, so they didn't understand the advantages. It's very dangerous to do product design in an echo chamber.
cies 11y ago
Dear MS. Thanks for going open source with dotNet. We will use it on our Linuxes and BSDs, with gratitude and joy. But when it comes to your intention of bringing your non-open-source'ed software to our data centers: we were actually almost finished taking them out, and feel much better that way.
- BF179580656B 11y ago
  Microsoft is on par with Linux and BSD machines. Until you are reading all the source code, there's no point in switching to Linux or BSD if you're already using Microsoft. Microsoft has the best and robust tools for the job.
  - devicenull 11y ago
    Not quite... when I run into an issue with my Linux machine, I can trace the code all the way down to the kernel. When I run into a problem with my Windows machine, I have to resort to random searches and hoping that someone else has seen it.
    - WorldWideWayne 11y ago
      What percentage of Linux users do you think have the capability or the desire to spend their time tracing calls through various libraries and kernel source? When I run into a problem on my Linux machine, I typically have to do a lot of searching. More searching than I must do with Windows, because while there is generally only one Windows (at least relative to Linux), there are hundreds of Linuxes, distros and versions of those distros - many that are majorly different than the previous version. Do you think it's easier for the average Linux user to find answers?
      - devicenull 11y ago
        Who said anything about average linux users? We're talking about a product designed to be run on multiple servers, in a datacenter. At that level, you're generally talking about professionals.
tumba 11y ago
This has been a consistent direction from Microsoft for some time. When Microsoft talks about private cloud or hybrid cloud, they refer to a design approach in which infrastructure and applications are separated. Even today, using the latest versions of Windows Server and System Center, you can manage physical hardware, storage and networking as a "fabric" and even offer self-service server provisioning. In large shops, this allows for a real separation of roles between infrastructure and applications. I think this is a useful separation. Even in small shops where the same people are doing everything, this mental separation enables better management. Many small and medium sized businesses still operate in the mode that deploying an application or a major upgrade involves starting with deploying a new server.
- justindz 11y ago
  I was in the Azure TAP program many years ago and they talked about this extensively to the participants. I would echo the consistency of direction on this. I had a vague sense that it was an attempt to quell enterprise fears about the cloud and lock-in, but perhaps not.
istvan__ 11y ago
Amazing! This is again a smart move from MS. There is still a market segment that does not want to move to the cloud but looking for cloud like services, for example fast provisioning.
sjg007 11y ago
Makes sense. I think this will be huge for them. Especially if administration is easier than openstack.
- ams6110 11y ago
  Yes. OpenStack is a nightmare for small shops without resources to have full-time OpenStack admins. The configuration and deployment is complex, and keeping it running demands a lot of attention. Plus the new releases every six months, and desupport of anything more than two releases old, make you feel like you're on a 100mph treadmill.
jameshart 11y ago
Microsoft always referred to Azure, from the beginning, as a new operating system - it was, after all, originally branded as "Windows Azure". This actually feels like it delivers on that promise - a datacenter operating system. This has the definite advantage of limiting fear of being 'locked in' in deploying into Microsoft's Azure cloud - you can always run your application on your own Azure fabric. So does this also open up the opportunity for alternate Azure hosting providers to enter the market? It also opens up the possibility of private-cloud versions of Microsoft's cloud offerings. Office365 runs on Azure fabric; can Microsoft now package that up as something you can deploy into your own Azure datacenter?
- rbanffy 11y ago
  > This has the definite advantage of limiting fear of being 'locked in' in deploying into Microsoft's Azure cloud - you can always run your application on your own Azure fabric. This lock-in is no different than the fear of being locked in into Amazon's AWS, Google's or Rackspace's services (even App Engine has open-source source-compatible equivalents out there). With the right tools (and there are open-source ones), you can deploy your applications to machines (real, virtual, containers) mostly anywhere.

100 points by simas 11y ago

scaladdin 11y ago

Let's bring Azure into the trash!

barranger 11y ago
Any particular reason for not liking Azure, or just taking out Monday morning frustration on the world?
- wnevets 11y ago
  because microsoft. its e-cool to hate microsoft
- Truespeed 11y ago
  Probably because Microsoft was a founding member of the NSA club in 2007.
  - scaladdin 11y ago
    And the winner is...
- mcintyre1994 11y ago
  No public holiday today over the pond? No wonder this place felt more negative than it should!
- scaladdin 11y ago
  Yes there are reasons: it's slow and fragile. I know because a system which has been forced upon us is one of the buggiest on the planet. It can't tolerate the "challenges".
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

h43k3r 11y ago

Can anybody explain me in layman terms what this means? I understand that Azure is Microsoft's Cloud Platform that provides services through which you can deploy your application on cloud. Does this mean that you can run Azure on your own datacenter like Microsoft is doing currently?

BF179580656B 11y ago
I don't think so. Given how many types of customer's microsoft serves, I think it's a good move. Many of microsoft customer are old sensitive business of banking, healthcare which have tons of regulation and being able to use Azure in their own data center is a really help them modernize their software stack.
- minot 11y ago
  Moreover, I don't know how we could undercut Microsoft on price either. I mean Azure and all of Microsoft Cloud Services(being Microsoft) probably gets Microsoft Windows licenses and all the licenses for free of cost and people like Rack space would have to pay for the licenses... The only thing we could do is become better than Microsoft at reliability (hah!) and customer service (which there might be a shot at in the short term).
gvb 11y ago
Yes. Key phrases: "enterprise on-premise data center" and "private cloud solution for IT pros and makes it easier for developers to scale their apps across their existing data centers and then boost to the cloud if they need more capacity on short notice" (emphasis mine). The "Azure Stack" with those features apparently won't be available until 2016, however.
sunananth_MSFT 11y ago
I'm a product manager with Microsoft. With the Azure Stack, you can deploy your applications on your on-premises (private) cloud, just like you would do in Azure - you're essentially retargeting the app. Our ultimate goal is to empower maximum application agility. To enable the same deployment experience, Microsoft is bringing the same Azure portal, user experience framework, and underlying IaaS/PaaS APIs and services to your on-premises environments. We're also being thoughtful in which services we bring on-premises so that enterprise customers get maximum value. We want to enable our customers and partners to run Azure in their datacenter in a way that's appropriate to their business requirements. We understand that not everybody operates at the hyper-scale that Microsoft does - as such, we will translate Microsoft's cloud designs and bring them to customers so it's easy to consume while enhancing flexibility and security in datacenter operations.

la6470 11y ago

It's not clear which X as a service will on premise Azure provide? While it is relatively easy to run virtual machines on private cloud platforms from vmware, Openstack and maybe now azure , it is notoriously difficult to provision DB or LB as a service or any of the other services

mc32 11y ago

These kinds of developments can't make VMware happy. I have not understood why VMware never made a big iaas play when it had the chance to compete before others became established and established mindshare. I only guess they didn't want to compete against themselves, which is understandable but shortsighted.

Spooky23 11y ago
VMWare's biggest competitor was itself and it's EMC linkage. IMO, moving towards IaaS t-shirt sized VMs makes it easier to architect around high cost stuff in the datacenter, like SAN.
frostmatthew 11y ago
> I only guess they didn't want to compete against themselves, which is understandable but shortsighted I work on vCloud Air (VMware's IaaS offering) and this is just a guess (since I wasn't here at the time) but I imagine it wasn't about "competing against themselves." It's easy to sit here in 2015 and say getting into IaaS early should have been obvious but that's ignoring the reality of what IT departments were saying they wanted. In 2008 88% of IT buyers preferred on-premise deployment, by 2014 that had declined to 13%[1]. FWIW early access to vCloud Hybrid Service (the original name of vCloud Air) was available in June 2013[2] and obviously something like this isn't put together overnight. [1] http://www.softwareadvice.com/buyerview/deployment-preference-report-2014/ http://www.softwareadvice.com/buyerview/deployment-preferenc... [2] http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-vcloud-hybrid-service-052113.html http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-vcloud-hybri...
- kgilpin 11y ago
  Personally I believe that the best insights don't come from customers. As Jobs said, "Customers don't know what they want" http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2011/10/17/five-dangerous-lessons-to-learn-from-steve-jobs/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2011/10/17/five-danger... People working in IT data centers didn't work with cloud much, so they didn't understand the advantages. It's very dangerous to do product design in an echo chamber.

cies 11y ago

Dear MS. Thanks for going open source with dotNet. We will use it on our Linuxes and BSDs, with gratitude and joy. But when it comes to your intention of bringing your non-open-source'ed software to our data centers: we were actually almost finished taking them out, and feel much better that way.

BF179580656B 11y ago
Microsoft is on par with Linux and BSD machines. Until you are reading all the source code, there's no point in switching to Linux or BSD if you're already using Microsoft. Microsoft has the best and robust tools for the job.
- devicenull 11y ago
  Not quite... when I run into an issue with my Linux machine, I can trace the code all the way down to the kernel. When I run into a problem with my Windows machine, I have to resort to random searches and hoping that someone else has seen it.
  - WorldWideWayne 11y ago
    What percentage of Linux users do you think have the capability or the desire to spend their time tracing calls through various libraries and kernel source? When I run into a problem on my Linux machine, I typically have to do a lot of searching. More searching than I must do with Windows, because while there is generally only one Windows (at least relative to Linux), there are hundreds of Linuxes, distros and versions of those distros - many that are majorly different than the previous version. Do you think it's easier for the average Linux user to find answers?
    - devicenull 11y ago
      Who said anything about average linux users? We're talking about a product designed to be run on multiple servers, in a datacenter. At that level, you're generally talking about professionals.

tumba 11y ago

This has been a consistent direction from Microsoft for some time. When Microsoft talks about private cloud or hybrid cloud, they refer to a design approach in which infrastructure and applications are separated. Even today, using the latest versions of Windows Server and System Center, you can manage physical hardware, storage and networking as a "fabric" and even offer self-service server provisioning. In large shops, this allows for a real separation of roles between infrastructure and applications. I think this is a useful separation. Even in small shops where the same people are doing everything, this mental separation enables better management. Many small and medium sized businesses still operate in the mode that deploying an application or a major upgrade involves starting with deploying a new server.

justindz 11y ago
I was in the Azure TAP program many years ago and they talked about this extensively to the participants. I would echo the consistency of direction on this. I had a vague sense that it was an attempt to quell enterprise fears about the cloud and lock-in, but perhaps not.

istvan__ 11y ago

Amazing! This is again a smart move from MS. There is still a market segment that does not want to move to the cloud but looking for cloud like services, for example fast provisioning.

sjg007 11y ago

Makes sense. I think this will be huge for them. Especially if administration is easier than openstack.

ams6110 11y ago
Yes. OpenStack is a nightmare for small shops without resources to have full-time OpenStack admins. The configuration and deployment is complex, and keeping it running demands a lot of attention. Plus the new releases every six months, and desupport of anything more than two releases old, make you feel like you're on a 100mph treadmill.

jameshart 11y ago

Microsoft always referred to Azure, from the beginning, as a new operating system - it was, after all, originally branded as "Windows Azure". This actually feels like it delivers on that promise - a datacenter operating system. This has the definite advantage of limiting fear of being 'locked in' in deploying into Microsoft's Azure cloud - you can always run your application on your own Azure fabric. So does this also open up the opportunity for alternate Azure hosting providers to enter the market? It also opens up the possibility of private-cloud versions of Microsoft's cloud offerings. Office365 runs on Azure fabric; can Microsoft now package that up as something you can deploy into your own Azure datacenter?

rbanffy 11y ago
> This has the definite advantage of limiting fear of being 'locked in' in deploying into Microsoft's Azure cloud - you can always run your application on your own Azure fabric. This lock-in is no different than the fear of being locked in into Amazon's AWS, Google's or Rackspace's services (even App Engine has open-source source-compatible equivalents out there). With the right tools (and there are open-source ones), you can deploy your applications to machines (real, virtual, containers) mostly anywhere.