Microsoft Announces Azure Stack

http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/04/microsoft-wants-to-bring-azure-to-your-data-center/

by simas • 11 years ago

100 40 11 years ago

h43k3r• 11 years 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?

BF179580656B2• 11 years 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• 11 years 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• 11 years 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_MSFT2• 11 years 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.

sunananth_MSFT2• 11 years ago

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/products/azure-i... - go hear to learn more about our vision.

charlesnw• 11 years ago

This is great news. Thank you very much for the explanation.

Will I be able to "burst" from on premise into Azure in this model? I'm in the process of deploying cloudstack/Ubuntu MAAS now for my on premise (and generally longer duration deployment) needs and using Azure for when I need rapid setup/teardown or a large amount of capacity (on demand).

If I could have one stack locally and in "the cloud", I would be VERY happy (especially if it's all tied in with AD, federated etc).

kordless• 11 years ago

The cloud is the new OS. SaaS becomes MSaaS.

Sanddancer• 11 years ago

Yes. I have a housemate who is doing a rather interesting project with Azure at his workplace. Can't give any more real solid details than that, but Azure is essentially more open than AWS in the terms of giving the source of the special sauce it provides.

danudey2• 11 years ago

Every implementation needs a differentiating factor. AWS is its flexibility and ridiculous amount of built-in functionality - message queues, databases, DNS, storage, map reduce, etc. Azure moving from one-click deploy to the cloud to one-click deploy to your own cloud is amazing. It's the primary appeal of OpenStack for me.

The real question will be what will this take? If I have to put Windows Server 20xx on my hardware to run the fabric, I'm out.

mc322• 11 years 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• 11 years 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.

frostmatthew2• 11 years 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-preferenc...

[2] http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-vcloud-hybri...

kgilpin• 11 years 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-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.

mc322• 11 years ago

I understand hindsight is 20/20, but they should have been testing this alternative service, at least internally, with the other divisions, to see how well they could compete, if this thing caught on they could be somewhat ready. It's not that they need to predict the market, they should try for contingencies, what if that iaas does take off? Let's not get caught flat-footed.

cies2• 11 years 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.

BF179580656B2• 11 years 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.

devicenull3• 11 years 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.

wstrange• 11 years ago

Windows is not free software, so there is certainly risk in building out on a proprietary O/S.

Increasingly, many tools and environments work best on Linux - which is quite an amazing shift from a decade ago.

jforman• 11 years ago

You sure about that? They're doing better than Rackspace and Google:

http://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/RightScal...

yarrel• 11 years ago

.net is a bridgehead.

mobiplayer• 11 years ago

Dude, if there's one thing in abundance in a DC is non-open-source software. Can't imagine many DCs without one of these: Cisco, Juniper, Checkpoint, VMWare, Microsoft, Dell/HP on ILO/DRAC, F5 or Brocade; you effing name it. Your network, your SAN, all your effing data, everything! goes through some non-open-source'ed software stack. Oh yes, and let's not forget about all your NIC drivers for starters.

cies2• 11 years ago

I was attacking MSs non-open-source data center software, and of the brands you just name I also avoid some.

Some proprietary software vendors are not _that_ bad.

tumba• 11 years 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• 11 years 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__• 11 years 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• 11 years ago

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

ams6110• 11 years 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• 11 years 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• 11 years 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.

Microsoft Announces Azure Stack

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