Cloud computing takes centre stage with Windows Azure

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Channel 9 man watching PDC onlineI wasn’t planning any major PDC coverage on the blog this week (there will be plenty of that elsewhere) but I did catch the PDC keynote today. It was the first time I’ve seen Ray Ozzie present and I was impressed – none of the Ballmer madness, or the Gates geekiness. Instead, over two hours, backed up with key executives from throughout Microsoft, Ozzie gave a calm and inspiring presentation which in which we finally found out some of the detail behind where Microsoft is heading – and how software plus services is going to transform Windows.

Windows Azure logoToday’s keynote was focused on the back-end – the platform which will be needed to run our datacentres in a world of cloud computing and key points that I picked up on were:

  • Most enterprise computing architectures have been designed for inward-facing solutions whilst the reach and scope is expanding as part of the “the externalisation of IT”. Regardless of the industry, the web has become a key demand generation mechanism – “every organisation’s front door” – and companies now need to serve external users.
  • Software development and operations have become intertwined – developers and IT professionals need to jointly learn how to design, build and develop systems.
  • Organisations over-engineer infrastructure to ensure that there is sufficient capacity (computing, storage, network, power) with multiple datacentres for continuity and the complexity that this introduces.
  • The world of the web needs a different approach to designing a platform. Microsoft has many systems that serve millions of users worldwide – and has used the common expertise from this experience to shape its cloud computing strategy and package Microsoft’s own experiences from managing the externalisation of IT:
    • Tier 1 is experience: the PC on the desk or the phone in your pocket
    • Tier 2 is enterprise: back end infrastructure hosting systems – with the scale of the enterprise.
    • Tier 3 is externally facing: the web tier of computing – with the scale of the web and is named Windows Azure – a new service based operating environment for the cloud.
  • Azure is Windows so it will remain familiar and developer-friendly but it also needs to be different. Rather than being rooted in a scale-up model, it embraces new model-based methods for a world of horizontal scale.
  • It is a service – not software. It is being released as a CTP today, with initial features that are just a fraction of where it will be going. Designed for iteration and continuous improvements and as the system scales out, Microsoft will bring more and more of its own services onto Azure.
  • The platform includes Windows Live Services, .NET Services, SQL Services, SharePoint Services and Dynamics CRM Service.

Windows Azure Services Platform

Amitabh Srivastava, Corporate Vice President for cloud infrastructure services, explained that:

  • The original Windows NT architect, Dave Cutler, is the kernel man behind Windows Azure. Kernels don’t demonstrate well but a good kernel allows others to build killer apps.
  • Windows Azure is an operating system for the cloud – it manages entire global datacentre infrastructure – and provides a layer of abstraction to ease the programming burden.
  • A fabric controller maintains the health of the service. When a service is changed, specify desired end state and the fabric manages services, not just servers. Windows Azure is based on a service model, with roles and groups, channels and endpoints, interfaces, and configuration settings – all stored as XML for manipulation with any tool.
  • When deploying toWindows Azure, there are two things for a developer to provide:
    • The code for a service.
    • A service model defining architecture to guide fabric controller to automatically manage the lifecycle of the application.
  • Windows Azure provides 24×7 availability, with all components built to be highly available under varying loads with no user intervention. This allows a highly available service to be provided using the Azure subsystem, orchestrated by the fabric and deveopers can concentrate on the business application logic.
  • Existing tools transfer to the cloud and Windows Azure works with managed and native code. Steve Marx demonstrated new cloud templates in Visual Studio using standard ASP.NET development skills to create a “hello cloud” application. The cloud may be simulated in an offline scenario so there is no need to deploy an application to the cloud in order to test its functionality.
  • Publishing involves repackaging the application for deployment and using the Windows Azure Developer Portal to create a hosted service with a friendly DNS name, supplying the package and configuration files.
  • Windows Azure is an open platform with a command line interface, REST protocols and XML file formats, as well as managed code support – making it easy to integrate with other platforms.
  • In summary, Windows Azure is an operating system for the cloud, providing scalable hosting, automated service management, and a familiar developer experience for enterprise and hobbiests alike.

Bob Muglia, Senior Vice President for server and tools, spoke of a next generation, services platform looking back at the various models used over the years:

  • Monolithic – 1970s mainframes.
  • Client server – 1980s PC revolution.
  • Web – a new generation of Internet and intranet applications developed in the 1990s.
  • SOA – the web services used today, communicating over standard protocols (web services or REST).
  • Services – going forward, building on web and SOA but with improved scalability.

He went on to discuss: 

  • A new product (codenamed Geneva) which provides a link between Active Directory and cloud services.
  • System Center Atlanta – a portal to provide administrators with access to information about their systems in the cloud – connecting on-premise SCOM to Azure databases using a service bus.
  • Knowledge and skills transfer between on-premise enterprise computing and cloud-based architectures and of how Microsoft is working with partners to take Azure developments and incorporate them into Windows Server, SQL Server etc., so the industry can provide its own Azure services.
  • A next generation modelling platform (codenamed Oslo) which enables consistency between IT and developer processes (built on previous dynamic IT developments) using a new language called M.

Muglia summarised by pointing out that, at a previous PDC in 1992, Windows NT was introduced and it now has a huge presence. As services become more broadly used, Microsoft expects Azure to have the same sort of impact. Dave Thompson, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft Online, spoke of how:

  • Customers with strong IT staff and discipline find it straightforward to deploy software but many others see IT as a frustrating burden – essential but not core to their business.
  • Microsoft Online provides enterprise class software as a subscription service, hosted by Microsoft and sold with partners.
  • In the future all Microsoft enterprise software will optionally be delivered as an online service.
  • Software plus services provides the power of choice. Generally, enterprises don’t want all cloud services, or all on-premise computing but a hybrid must be seamless and easy for administrators – federated identity is one challenge and extensibility is another.
  • With Windows Azure, IT administrators manage Active Directory as they do now and the Microsoft services connector links into the cloud, to the Microsoft federation gateway. Users use the federation gateway but do not know if the service they access is on-premise or in the cloud.
  • Extensibility is facilitated with the integration of online services with on-premise servers, sharing and accessing shared data using a variety of flexible presentation methods. Windows Azure components in business applications allow services to be extended as required.

Ray Ozzie returned to the stage to wrap up Microsoft’s view of the software plus services world. He was very clear in explaining once more that Windows Azure is a community technology preview and that there will be no charges for its use during preview period. As the service moves closer to commercial release, Microsoft will unlock access to more and more capabilities and the business model at launch will be based on a combination of resource consumption and service level.

I really do hope that Windows Azure does not pass the way of previous efforts to provide online services for enterprises (Microsoft Passport was supposed to be the solution for web services authentication) but I have a feeling it will not. Google, Amazon and others have proved the demand for cloud computing but Microsoft has a credible hybrid model, with a mixture of on-premise and services-led software access.

Just a few of the new features to expect in Windows Server 2008 R2

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Windows Server 2008 R2 logoIn case you hadn’t noticed, it’s Microsoft’s conference season – PDC this week, WinHEC next, TechEd EMEA the two weeks after that… lots of announcements – and I’m missing them all!

Luckily, last week I got the chance to catch up with Ward Ralston (a Group Technical Product Manager in Microsoft’s Windows Server Product Group) and he gave me the rundown on what to expect from Windows Server 2008 R2.

For those who are not familiar with Microsoft’s release cycles for server operating systems, ever since Windows Server 2003, the company has aimed to release a major update every 4-5 years with an interim second release (R2) in between. Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 R2 share the same basic code but R2 includes SP1 and new functionality. Similarly, I would expect Windows Server 2008 R2 to include SP2 and it certainly has some goodies for us.

One of the reasons for an interim release is to take advantage of new hardware advances and changes in the overall IT market and one significant point to note is that Windows Server 2008 R2 will be 64-bit only. That’s right – no more 32-bit server operating system – and that is A Good Thing. We all have 64-bit hardware (and have had for some time) but many IT administrators don’t realise it, and install 32-bit operating systems even though driver support is no longer an issue (at least for servers) and most 32-bit applications will run quite happily on a 64-bit operating system.

The main themes for the Windows Server 2008 R2 release are: improved hardware, driver and application support; taking advantage of ever-increasing numbers of logical processor cores and new power management features; improvements around virtualisation, power management and server management; new technologies to lay the foundation for the next version of Windows; and a unified release focus – with the Windows 7 client and Windows Server 2008 R2 providing engineering efficiencies to work “better together”.

There are many new features in Windows Server 2008 R2 and, first of all, is the area of most interest to me – virtualisation. Windows Server 2008 R2 includes the second release of Hyper-V with new features including:

  • Live Migration to allow virtual machine workloads to fail over between cluster nodes with no discernable break in service. I still argue that this is not a feature that organisations need (cf. want) for their server infrastructure but as the dynamic datacentre and virtual desktop infrastructures (VDIs) become more commonplace, it makes sense to support this functionality with Hyper-V (besides the fact that competitors can already do it!).
  • A new clustered shared volume file system (codenamed Centipede) which sits on top of NTFS and allows multiple cluster nodes to access the same storage.
  • Support for 32 logical processors (cores) on the host computer (twice the original limit with Hyper-V), paving the way for support of 8-core CPUs and improved consolidation ratios.
  • Hot-addition and removal of storage (allowing VHDs and pass-through disks on a SCSI controller to be added to a virtual machine without a reboot).
  • Second level translation (SLAT) – moving past Intel-VT and AMD-V to take advantage of new processor features (Intel Nested Page Tables and AMD Enhanced Page Tables), further reducing the hypervisor overhead.
  • Boot from VHD – using a kernel-level filter to take a virtual hard disk and boot from it on hardware – even without hardware support for virtualisation.

Microsoft also spoke to me about a dynamic memory capability (just like the balloon model that competitors offer). I asked why the company had been so vocal in downplaying competitive implementations of this technology yet was now implementing something similar and Ward Ralston explained to me that this is not the right solution for everyone but may help to handle memory usage spikes in a VDI environment. Since then, I’ve been advised that dynamic memory will not be in the beta release of Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft is evaluating options for inclusion (or otherwise) at release candidate stage. These apparently conflicting statements, within just a few days of one another, should not be interpreted as indecisiveness on the part of Microsoft – we’re not even at beta stage yet and features/functionality may change considerably before release.

Looking at some of the other improvements that we can expect in Windows Server 2008:

  • On the management front: there is a greater emphasis on the command line with improved scripting capabilities with PowerShell 2 and over 200 new cmdlets for server roles as well as power, blade and chassis management – working with vendors to deliver hardware which is compatible with WS-Management – and new command line tools for migration of Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, file and print servers; Server Manager will support remote connections, with a performance counter view and best practices analyzer (similar to the ones which we have seen shipped for server products such as Exchange Server for a few years now); and a new migration portal will expose step-by-step documentation for migration of roles and operating system settings from Windows Server 2003 and 2008 servers to Windows Server 2008 R2.
  • Power management was an improvement in Windows Server 2008 and R2 is intended to take this further with features such as core parking to reduce multi-core process power consumption (only using the power required to drive a workload) as well as centralised control of power policies (allow servers to throttle-down during quiet time, using DMTF-compliant remote management interfaces).
  • Active Directory Domain Services is improved with: a new management console (with PowerShell integration) to replace the disparate tools that have existed since early NT 5.0 betas; a new AD recycle bin to aid with recovering deleted objects; improved support for offline domain joins (similar to the pre-staging support used in Windows Server 2008 for RODCs); improved management of user accounts and identity services (manage service accounts); and improved authentication assurance in Active Directory Federated Services.
  • IIS continues to improve with: server core support for ASP.NET; an integrated PowerShell provider (more than 50 new cmdlets); integrated FTP and WebDAV support (previously provided as extensions); new IIS Manager modules (e.g. to support new FTP, WebDAV, request filtering and ASP.NET functionality); configuration logging and tracing (building on IIS 7.0’s feature delegation functionality by providing the ability to centrally log and audit changes made by site managers and web developers); and extended protection and security (channel-binding tokens to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, hardened accounts to prevent application spoofing, and improved management for custom service accounts).
  • Scalability and reliability improvements with: improved multi-processor support, reduced Hyper-V overhead and improved storage performance; greater componentisation – server core installations will support more roles and will also support ASP.NET within IIS as Microsoft.NET Framework support will be added (which also allows PowerShell to run on server core installations); DHCP failover, with the ability to pair DHCP servers as primary and secondary servers (based on an IETF draft for the DHCP Failover protocol); and DNS Security, using DNSSec to validate name resolution and zone transfers using PKI to secure DNS records (preventing the interception of DNS queries and return of illegitimate responses from an untrusted DNS server – a real issue with huge potential impact across multiple platforms that was recently highlighted by security researcher Dan Kaminsky).

Finally, whilst there has always been a good, better, best story for integrating the latest client and server releases with Microsoft products, Microsoft is really pushing “better together with Windows 7” with the Windows Server 2008 R2 marketing. New features like Direct Access and Branch Cache are intended to take existing connectivity technologies and couple them in a less complex manner, connecting routed VPNs over firewall-friendly ports with end-to-end IPSec whilst improving branch office performance by caching HTTP and SMB traffic. Read-only DFS improves branch office security (in the same way that read-only domain controllers did for Windows Server 2008). Then there’s more efficient client power management, BitLocker encryption on removable drives and the new DHCP Failover and DNSSec functionality mentioned previously – I’m sure as we learn more about Windows 7 the list will continue to grow.

So, when do we get to use all this Windows Server 2008 R2 goodness? Well, Microsoft is not yet ready to release a beta and, based on previous versions of Windows Server, I would expect to see at least two betas and a couple of CTPs before the release candidates – but the product team is currently not committing to a date – other than to say “early 2010” (which, incidentally, will be 2 years after Windows Server 2008 shipped). They’re also keen to point out that, although Windows Server 2008 R2 is being jointly developed with the Windows 7 client operating system, there are no guarantees that the two will release together – maybe they will, maybe they won’t – read into that what you like, but some are predicting a late-2009 release for Windows 7 and I would expect the server product to follow a few months after that. No-one needs to get a new server operating system out in time for the holiday season but they do want it to be rock solid.

Of course, at this early stage in product development, there could still be a number of changes before release. Even so, with these new features and functionality, Windows Server 2008 R2 is certainly not just an insignificant minor release.