At the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco today, Sandy Gupta, the General Manager for Microsoft’s Open Solutions Group, along with Alan Clark, Director of New Initiatives and Emerging Standards for Open Source at SUSE, announced the release of a beta version of the SUSE Manager Management Pack for System Center.

In a blog post, Gupta said the announcement, which was made in collaboration with SUSE, lets this management pack connect the Linux server management capabilities provided by SUSE Manager to System Center, Microsoft’s management platform.

“As a result, customers will be able to administer both Windows and Linux environments from a single management console,” he said.

Gupta positioned the management pack as one example of the work Microsoft is doing to advance interoperability for private clouds. You can try the Linux management capabilities this management pack provides for System Center here.

“On the public cloud front, there’s extensive work going on across the company to facilitate interoperability between Microsoft and open source cloud tools and services. One of the most exciting examples of this comes from the SQL Server Team -- the Hadoop-based service for Windows Azure, for which Microsoft released a second preview last month,” he said.

This solution for managing “big data,” connecting it and turning it into business insight, is a prime example of the type of value customers want to realize as a result of leveraging open source and Microsoft software together, he noted.

You can read his full blog post here.

by jcannon on January 04, 2008 02:02pm

Abstract:
Often SSL or TLS is required to secure data from web applications. Sometimes this is just prudent to prevent confidential or sensitive data from being confiscated. Sometimes this is required by regulations like HIPAA  or industry bodies, such as the Payment Card Industry. This guide will show how to install Apache with SSL on Windows. 

Note: This paper represents testing and documentation in a lab environment. User Account Control (UAC) is an essential security component to Windows and Microsoft does not recommend turning off UAC in production environments.

Download Report Installing Apache on Windows

by billhilf on December 11, 2006 09:00pm

We all use technology every day. This is the list of the 15 technologies that I found most useful (and in some cases extremely fun) in 2006. It includes all sorts of things, devices, software, open source, Apple, Microsoft, and so on. It's not about the manufacturer or the licensing model, just a list of the things I found useful and fun in 2006, and maybe give you some holiday shopping ideas for your geek loved ones.

1. Sonos music system

Blasting Styx's 'Lorelei' throughout your house, streamed wirelessly, is just awesome. Sonos is a Linux-based device (built by former Microsoft engineers). I have it set up to network mount my Windows server, which holds all my digitized music, so I can play literally every song I own anywhere in my house (or different music in different rooms) without pulling wires everywhere. And you all love Styx, don't deny it.

2. Infrant Technologies ReadyNAS

I back up that Windows server with a great and affordable NAS appliance from Infrant Technologies. It's a Linux-based appliance that holds a terabyte of SATA disks with a nifty technology they call 'X-RAID' which allows you to easily swap disks without reconfiguring the RAID setup.

3. Newsgator InBox

Like many, I now live primarily in email and RSS. I rarely visit traditional web sites, most information I get is RSS based. Newsgator delivers my RSS feeds directly into Outlook and is now an indispensible tool for my daily information consumption. Scoble turned me on to Newsgator and I've been a happy user ever since. Some of my favorite feeds? Make magazine, TechCrunch, TED Blog, O'Reilly Radar, National Geographic News, a bunch of personal blogs I follow and customized 'smart feeds' that are like pre-scripted Technorati searches.

4. iWeb

iWeb is easily my favorite graphical Web site builder for simple, personal web sites. I don't use the .Mac services (my personal Web sites run on Windows and Linux of course!), but the iWeb tool is still very easy and quickly builds attractive Web sites. My one significant complaint about iWeb is the actual file size of the sites it builds is just ridiculous, the Apple iWeb team really needs to work on optimizing this – hint: just use some typical storage minimums from the top Web hosters as your target.

5. Ruby on Rails

I don't do any real development any more but I certainly tinker and I've really enjoyed building some Web applications with Rails. The framework is quick to understand and lightweight enough to get simple web apps up and running. I've built apps on Linux and Windows (for the latter this was useful). I also love PHP and we have some great things going on there, but Rails was my programming experiment for 2006.

6. GShock Atomic Solar watch

I paid about $40 for this watch at Costco and I love it. It syncs with the atomic clock in Colorado, so time is always accurate. It runs on solar power (including office lighting). You can drive a tank over it or swim to the bottom of a lake with it on. It has multiple time zones, alarms, and a nifty blue light that automatically turns on when you rotate your wrist to check the time. Only downside is the atomic clock sync is radio based and doesn't work when I'm in Ankara or Manila but it still keeps the last known 'good time' so it's not too big of an issue. It's my perfect watch.

7. Game Systems: Alienware Area-51 PC and XBOX 360

I relieve stress through jogging and gaming (not at the same time). I use good running shoes and I use good game systems. These two are the best. My Alienware PC is juiced heavy, with dual nVidia cards SLI configured, 4GB memory, two Intel procs, etc. etc. It rocks. My 360 is also stellar and I just started using the new 1080p HD output, which makes the games that much more real – Splinter Cell baby!

8. RadioShack switching power supply

One addition I needed for my 360 system was cooling as I keep the 360 in a tightly closed cabinet space. I use a RadioShack power switching supply to power two cpu fans I have mounted to my wood media cabinet (see bottom of this blog for a photo) to blow out the warm air and keep the 360 in a cool environment. The power supply replaced a kooky 6V battery configuration I had previously and now I just switch on the fans and game away. This isn't necessary for all Xbox systems of course, but my cabinet has really poor air flow. There are some other ways to do this too through liquid cooling (literally modding the console itself), but they are rather complex – check this out.

9. Games: World of Warcraft (PC) and Gears of War (360)

It's hard to pick favorite games, but I've had lots of fun with WoW and GoW in 2006. Lately, I've let my 58 Warlock take a holiday in Azeroth while I build my GoW skills and I really do think that Gears is one of the best games for the Xbox 360 system. The graphic details, game play, challenge, and pacing are phenomenal and it's exciting to see titles like this push the 360's capabilities. And do play with a friend, it is much more fun. If you like shooters, GoW is a must have. As for WoW, I hesitate to recommend too strongly as it can occupy a LOT of your time if you get hooked. But… it is easily the best mmorpg I've played and the next major rev, Burning Crusade, looks fantastic.

10. AvantBrowser

I love IE7 and I use FireFox quite a bit, but most of 2006 I used AvantBrowser, which is based on the IE engine and adds a load of features, like tabbed browsing and RSS capabilities, and it's fast and functional. It's free, but you should donate if you use it to help the developers out.

11. Parallels Desktop virtualization for Intel based Macs

I use Parallels to run various Linux distributions on my MacTel (the Intel based iMac). It's good software and is the only virtualization solution for MacTel's currently. You can also run Windows virtualized. My main complaint: on the wireless iMac keyboard, the right 'Control-Alt' keys escape the mouse from the virtualized OS window but the left 'Control-Alt' keys do not. Silly bug, but annoying.

12. Motorola Q

I try not to carry a bunch of gadgets with me (which is why I love the multifunction gshock watch). The Q is the ideal phone for my day to day communications. It runs Windows Mobile 5.0 and allows me to sync with Exchange and read mail in Pocket Outlook (gzip is used in 5.0 and it helps save serious bandwidth when sync'ing mail, see here). The phone is very slim and you can carry in your pocket easily. Battery life could be better but for the form factor, I can live with recharging nightly. I use the Samsung i830 when I go international as it has both GSM and CDMA capable radios, but the Q is the phone to beat.

13. Microsoft Office 2007 and Office Communicator

Many if not most of Microsoft employees have been using Office 2007 and Office Communicator for most of 2006. This isn't a product pitch, these technologies have made my life significantly easier since I started using them. The new Office 2007 UI is awesome and makes productivity tool illiterates like me seem like power users. Communicator has also significantly changed how we IM at Microsoft, it's integrated with our Exchange server infrastructure and with our phones so I can right click someone's name in my IM window, select 'Call' and my desk phone will automatically flip to speakerphone and dial their number. It's quite literally changed how we communicate at work.

14. Windows Vista

I like Vista. There I said it. Faster, more reliable, more secure, more intuitive and better looking than any desktop system I've used. I'd say this if I worked for Microsoft or not. Chris Sells says it better here. These things among others have made Vista a very important and useful tool for me.

15. SpamBayes

SpamBayes is an anti-spam filter written in Python that plugs into Outlook. It's an open source project maintained on sourceforge. I've been using it since before 2006 and it's saved me from the massive waterfall of Spam that I get from all my various email accounts that I route into Outlook. Runs on Windows (Outlook), Linux/Unix and MacOS.

*Bonus*  15.5 Photosynth

This isn't really something that made my life more useful in 2006, but it's just smoking hot software that is worth spending a few minutes with. It's a tech preview from our Live Labs and it's a very cool new way to look at photos. Some huge possibilities with this technology. Enjoy!

(tech preview requires XPSP2 or Vista and IE6 or IE7)

Happy holidays and here's to a great 2007.

-Bill

Microsoft today signed a collaboration agreement with China Standard Software Corporation (CS2C), the country’s leading domestic Linux operating system provider, to jointly develop, market and sell solutions for the cloud-computing market in China.

The deal will help provide the mixed source infrastructure necessary to facilitate the rapid growth and change taking place across China, where cloud-based infrastructure is budding across cities and provinces.

The primary goal of this agreement, which was announced at a joint event in Beijing today, is to provide public and private cloud solutions to a diverse array of industries through a rich partner ecosystem.

The mixed source solutions stemming from this collaboration will be built on Microsoft’s Hyper-V Open Cloud architecture and will include support to run CS2C NeoKylin Linux Server products.

As Sandy Gupta, the General Manager for Microsoft’s Open Solutions Group, notes in his blog, Microsoft is working with CS2C to bring about a true, open architecture in the area of cloud management and automation for IT organizations throughout China.

“A cornerstone of this agreement is for CS2C-branded Linux servers to run under the Hyper-V Cloud architecture as a first class guest. CS2C and Microsoft will work together to enable CS2C Linux to run well on Hyper-V and be managed through Microsoft System Center,” Gupta says.

Microsoft and CS2C have also pledged to sponsor a joint virtual technology lab in Beijing for solution development and testing of cloud solutions that will allow customers to move to virtualization and a cloud-based IT infrastructure.

The lab will focus on the certification of CS2C NeoKylin Operating System on Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V, creating Microsoft Systems Center management packs for CS2C NeoKylin Operating System application workloads, and incorporating support for CS2C NeoKylin Operating System within the Hyper-V Cloud architecture.

As part of the collaboration, CS2C will also join the Interop Vendor Alliance, an established community of software and hardware vendors that have been working together to enhance interoperability with Microsoft systems.

In addition to establishing market and technology collaboration, the two companies have also signed a customer legal covenant agreement.

In line with Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to Interoperability, Gupta notes that “interoperable Linux and Windows offerings will empower customers to build solutions that will enable them to capitalize on opportunities to expand, grow and achieve the focus necessary to fuel innovation.”

Han Naiping, the president of CS2C, notes that this is an “important opportunity to collaborate with Microsoft to deliver comprehensive, flexible, cloud-based solutions that will serve as a platform for business growth.”

You can read more about this agreement on Sandy Gupta’s blog and in the press release.

by Peter Galli on March 11, 2011 01:23pm

Today the Interoperability team here at Microsoft updated the the WebSockets prototype on our HTML5 Labs site, which brings the implementation in line with the recently released WebSockets 06 Protocol Specification. 

We have extended our interoperability testing so that now, along with LibWebSockets, interoperability was tested with Jetty, an open-source project providing an HTTP server, HTTP client, and javax.servlet container, developed by the Eclipse community, and code was tested with a Firefox Mindfield version with an implementation of the 06 Protocol Specification.

WebSockets interoperability was tested between our HTML5 Labs prototype client and Jetty server, which recently added support for the 06 version of the spec (you can find the Jetty code here.)

WebSockets interoperability was also tested with a test Firefox build that supports the 06 protocol specification. A chat demo page is hosted on Azure, which can be opened in Firefox and will use native browser WebSocket instead of the Silverlight-based one.

WebSockets is a technology designed to simplify much of the complexity around bi-directional, full-duplex communications channels, over a single Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) socket. It can be implemented in web browsers, web servers as well as used by any client or server application.

This fourth update of our WebSocket prototype brings ping-pong support: automatic client to server ping every 50 seconds. It also now supports the binary and fragment frames feature defined in the WebSocket protocol specification, but they are not yet exposed to javascript because the W3C API working group is still working on defining a set of APIs that can work with binary data.

Read Claudio Caldato's blog post for all the details on this.

by MichaelF on February 22, 2007 06:06pm

This paper will cover the installation and initial configuration of PostgreSQL 8.2 on Windows up to a point where a database is created and plpgsql is installed in it.  We assume an ability to walk through the install wizard in general, though screens that do require additional information will be covered (with screenshots).  Important options in the postgresql.conf and pg_hba.conf will be covered, as will database creation in PgAdmin III.

Attachment: postgresql on windows_final (revised).pdf

by Claudio Caldato on February 02, 2011 06:05am

Google recently announced that its Chrome web browser will stop supporting the H.264 video format. At Microsoft we respect that Windows customers want the best experience of the web including the ability to enjoy the widest range of content available on the Internet in H.264 format.

Today, as part of the interoperability bridges work we do on this team, we are making available the Windows Media Player HTML5 Extension for Chrome, which is an extension for Google Chrome to enable Windows 7 customers who use Chrome to continue to play H.264 video.

We believe that Windows customers should be able to play mainstream HTML5 video and, as we've described in previous posts, Internet Explorer 9 will support playback of H.264 video as well as VP8 video when the user has installed a VP8 codec.

We are committed to ensuring that Windows customers have the best Web experience, and we have been offering for several years now the extremely popular Windows Media Player plug-in for Firefox, which is downloaded by millions of people a month who want to watch Windows Media content.

We also recently provided an add-on for Windows 7 customers who choose Firefox to play H.264 video so as to enable interoperability across IE, Firefox and Chrome using HTML5 video on Windows.

For many reasons - which you can read about on other blog posts here, here and here - H.264 is an excellent and widely-used video format that serves the web very well today. As such, we will continue to ensure that developers and customers continue to have an optimal Web experience.

Claudio Caldato,

Principal Program Manager, Interoperability Strategy Team

by billhilf on September 10, 2009 12:47pm

It's been a while since I made an appearance on Port25. I felt it was important to provide some thoughts to the Port25 community on Sam Ramji's impending departure from Microsoft.

After many years helping to carry the open source software banner for the company, Sam is leaving Microsoft at the end of this month. You may have also heard that he has accepted the position of interim President of the CodePlex Foundation as well as a leadership position at a startup in California. (I'll let Sam and his new company share more details there.)

Sam joined my team three years ago to drive open source technical strategy. I have eagerly supported him as he passionately articulated a vision that Microsoft could coexist - and even thrive - in a heterogeneous IT world.

The perspectives on OSS at Microsoft have evolved to the point where Microsoft's open source strategy is no longer just locked in a single ‘lab' on campus - now OSS is an important part of many product groups and strategies across the company. We have become increasingly clear on where we work with open source - development methodologies, projects, partners, products and communities - and where our products compete with commercial open source companies or platforms. Today, there are engineering and business leaders across the company, myself included, looking at how to drive interoperability for customers and as a lever for new growth.

And, because we recognize the importance of having that strong internal advocate for open source, we are actively seeking someone to fill Sam's shoes at Microsoft.

We will not waver in our commitment to open source.

To my friend Sam: Best of luck to you and your family  as you move on to your next great adventure, and THANK YOU for all of your efforts and passion.

by Peter Galli on November 17, 2009 12:14pm

Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, used the company's annual Professional Developers Conference here in Los Angeles to announce the availability of the Windows Azure platform.

That platform consists of Windows Azure, the operating system as-a-service, and SQL Azure, a fully relational database in the cloud. The Service Bus and Access Control services, formerly known as the .NET Services, now run directly within Windows Azure and are known as Windows Azure platform AppFabric Service.

Microsoft will continue to offer Windows Azure as a Community Technology Preview until the end of this year, after which it will switch to a production service under which Azure's cloud services will be made available to enterprises. But users will get a fee pass in January, since charges will only start accruing in February.

In his opening keynote, Ozzie also announced that a small number of customers will go into production today, including Automattic, Inc., the maker of WordPress, which is now live on Azure. Matt Mullenweg, founder of  Automattic, Inc., took the stage to demonstrate MySQL, PHP, and Apache support on Windows Azure, as well as to announce that his company is launching a new site that runs on SQL Azure.

Ozzie also used his keynote to made clear that reaching all developers was top of mind for Microsoft.

"To most developers, to developers like you, Windows Azure appears as a model based extension to Visual Studio, enabling you to build apps that leverage your skills in SQL, IIS, ASP.NET, and .NET Framework. Alternatively, and of course it's your choice, you might leverage your skills by using MySQL and PHP within Azure, or you might instead take advantage of our new Azure tools for Java and Eclipse. Reaching all developers is incredibly important to us," he said.

Windows Azure now supported any kind of Windows code and programming model, and any kind of multi-role, multi-tier service design pattern, supporting extremely flexible binding and arbitrary relationships between roles, Ozzie said.

"Because you wanted it, we've broadened far beyond just the .NET programming model, and the Web role, worker role service design pattern. We added support for FastCGI, enabling high scale Web apps to be written in any of a variety of programming languages. And, in sessions this week, you're going to see the Windows Azure team quickly building and deploying Java apps, running under Tomcat. You'll see PHP apps under MySQL," he said.

Earlier this year, Microsoft enabled .NET full trust and native code applications. This functionality allowed developers to spawn xcopy deployable processes.  As a result, Java applications can now be packaged and run.

Today, we announced that we are delivering a solution accelerator for Tomcat, an open source software implementation of the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies, as well as launching a Java SDK for Windows Azure Storage (tables, blogs, and queues). External endpoints (inbound traffic) to worker roles have also been enabled, which enables applications that receive internet traffic that aren't running under IIS.

During his keynote Ozzie also introduced Vivek Kundra, the Federal Chief Information Officer at the White House, who spoke via live feed from Washington D.C., and who encouraged developers to take advantage of the vast amount of public data to create applications using this new Microsoft technology.

"I'm really excited about what NASA is doing in cooperation with Microsoft with the launch of the Pathfinder Innovation Challenge ... anybody can participate and look at the data that has been democratized through NASA on the Azure platform, that allows people to look around the red planet, slice and dice, and cube, and create information, and advance our understanding of the universe," Kundra said.

This commitment to all developers is not new. When Ozzie first announced the Windows Azure platform at PDC last year, Sam Ramji blogged that developers will also be able to choose from a range of open source development tools and technologies, and be able to access Azure services using a variety of common internet standards, including HTTP, REST, WS* and Atom.   

"The Azure platform's goal is to support all developers and their choice of IDE, language and technology.  We are also providing programmable components that can be consumed by other applications, and Microsoft is funding and sponsoring open source software development kits to enable Java and Ruby developers to take advantage of Azure. This is significant as this is the first time we are delivering cross-platform software development kits at the same time as Microsoft Developer Network software development kits," he said.

And, earlier this year, Microsoft introduced the PHP SDK for Windows Azure, an open source effort for which Microsoft has provided funding, with development by RealDolmen, whose goal is to provide high-level abstractions that enable PHP developers to interoperate readily with Windows Azure.

The PHP SDK for Windows Azure focuses on REST and provides PHP classes for Windows Azure blobs, tables and queue, helper classes for HTTP transport, AuthN/AuthZ, REST and error management, as well as manageability, instrumentation and logging support.

Next up at PDC 2009 was Bob Muglia, President of Microsoft's Server and Tools Business, who noted that Microsoft is converging on a common developer platform for both servers and services, that will enable developers to continue using familiar .NET Framework and Visual Studio tools and technologies, as well as third party tools such as Eclipse, to create and monetize applications that run on the server and as services in the cloud.

Muglia also announced the company's plan to offer Windows Server Virtual Machine support on Windows Azure, enabling customers to more easily support virtualized infrastructure across the continuum of on premises and cloud computing.

In addition, Muglia announced the new release of ASP.NET MVC beta 2, a free, fully-supported framework that enables developers to rapidly build standards-based Web applications through rich AJAX integration and enhanced extensibility.

In other related news, SugarCRM, a provider of commercial open source customer relationship management software, today also announced that it will offer its CRM applications on Windows Azure to enable its customers and value-added resellers to benefit from the real-time scalability, high availability and on-demand infrastructure of Azure.

"With Windows Azure, Microsoft has built a true cloud computing platform going well beyond the simple hosted infrastructure that most service providers offer today. Windows Azure enables SugarCRM value-added resellers to create and deploy unique solutions for customers around the globe. This new service is another key component of the Sugar Open Cloud, the SugarCRM cloud strategy for delivering simple, affordable CRM anywhere based on customer need," said Larry Augustin, CEO of SugarCRM, in a press statement.

Microsoft's SQL Server team yesterday announced the availability of a preview release of the SQL Server ODBC Driver for Linux, which allows native developers to access Microsoft SQL Server from Linux operating systems.

For customers with native applications on multi-platform, the existing, reliable and enterprise-class ODBC for Windows driver (a.k.a. SQL Server Native Client, or SNAC) has been ported to the Linux platform.

You can download the driver here.

"In this release, the SQL Server ODBC Driver for Linux will be a 64-bit driver for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. We will support SQL Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2012 with this release of the driver. Notable driver features (in addition to what you would expect in an ODBC driver) include support for the Kerberos authentication protocol, SSL and client-side UTF-8 encoding. This release also brings proven and effective tools and the BCP and SQLCMD utilities to the Linux world,"said Shekhar Joshi, a Senior Program Manager on the Microsoft SQL Server ODBC Driver For Linux team.

This is another example of both Microsoft and the SQL team's commitment to interoperability.

You can read Shekhar's full blog post here, while additional information on the first release of Microsoft ODBC Driver for Linux can be found here.

Here is great news for open source developers: Brian Harry announced today at the Microsoft’s ALM Summit that Git is now fully integrated into Visual Studio as well as the Team Foundation Service, Microsoft’s cloud-powered Application Lifecycle Management tool.

Here at Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc., we are excited to hear such news as this offers more choice and flexibility to development teams. We happen to work on a daily basis with developers on Git in the context of projects such as Node, Dash, Redis or Solr so we totally get the goodness of this news.

The Visual Studio Tools for Git work great against Git repositories locally, in Team Foundation Service, on GitHub, CodePlex, BitBucket etc. That’s all because they are using Git as the distributed source control solution and they talk to Git repositories via the open source library LibGit2. LibGit2 is a portable C library that runs on many different platforms including Linux and Mac.

Microsoft engineers in Brian’s team have been contributing to LibGit2 for a number of months now as they worked with the community to add Git support in Visual Studio – some of them earning committer rights on this popular and very active open source project. Even better as the team started testing the integration, all the bug fixes and security fixes that they found also have been contributed back to the project.

Therefore not only is Brian’s announcement good news for developers in Visual Studio wanting to use Git to contribute to open source projects, it’s also great news for others building on top of the LibGit2 library on any platform.

The Visual Studio Tools for Git are provided as an extension for Visual Studio 2012 but Brian also says that they should be included in the box with all editions of Visual Studio in a future release – including the Express editions.

I can tell you MS Open Tech engineers can’t wait to take full advantage of the Visual Studio Tools for Git in their daily interaction and collaboration with the open source developers’ community.

by Peter Galli on May 12, 2009 07:29pm

Vijay Rajagopalan, a Principal Architect here at Microsoft, is at TechEd India, where he will demo later this week a new set of interoperability projects related to PHP.

These projects include the PHP SDK for Windows Azure, an open source effort for which Microsoft has provided funding, with development by RealDolmen, whose goal is to provide high-level abstractions that enable PHP developers to interoperate readily with Windows Azure.

The PHP SDK for Windows Azure focuses on REST and provides PHP classes for Windows Azure blobs, tables and queue, helper classes for HTTP transport, AuthN/AuthZ, REST and error management, as well as manageability, instrumentation and logging support.

Rajagopalan will also announce the launch of a series of projects that offer samples and a toolkit that enable PHP developers to include Silverlight controls, Microsoft Virtual Earth maps and IE Webslices and Accelerators in PHP web applications; as well as automatically generated a simple "Create, Read, Update, Delete (CRUD)"  PHP application from a table in SQL Server.

These projects, for which Microsoft has provided funding and which are available on Codeplex under a BSD license, are yet another proofpoint of the company's commitment to interoperability, and developers will be happy to know that the first batch of these have already been developed by Accenture.

Read Rajagopalan's full blog here for all the details.

The Azure Services Platform has been designed to be open, standards-based and interoperable, and its support for XML, REST and SOAP standards means that any of the Azure services can be called from other platforms and programming languages.

Microsoft has provided funding for two other SDKs that support third party programming languages: Java SDK for Microsoft .NET Services and Ruby SDK for Microsoft .NET Services so as to facilitate interoperability between the Azure Services Platform and non-Microsoft languages and technologies.

The inclusion of FastCGI in Windows Azure's hosting environment was announced at MIX 2009, and the protocol enables developers to run web applications on Windows Azure that were written using third party programming languages, including PHP. This opens up new options for PHP developers to deploy their applications.

A Technology Preview of the PHP SDK for Windows Azure will be released under a BSD license, while a functionally complete version of the SDK, which will support tables and queues, should be available for download by this fall of 2009, but the team is calling on developers to provide feature requests, test the toolkit, and join the user forum.

So, stay tuned, as there's a whole lot more to come!

by admin on March 31, 2006 02:00pm

Microsoft’s Open Source Software Lab is an ambitious research project. Located on the company’s main campus, the lab houses more than 300 servers, which collectively run more than 15 versions of UNIX and 50 Linux distributions. It boasts a team of senior-level programmers and system administrators, some of whom were architects of popular Linux distributions or authors of well-regarded books. In short, the lab is one of a few such facilities in the world dedicated to open source research.

The driving force behind the lab is Bill Hilf, General Manager of Platform Strategy at Microsoft. Hilf joined the company in 2004 after working at IBM, where he was instrumental in driving IBM's Linux technical strategy for its emerging and competitive markets organization. Prior to his stint at IBM, Hilf was VP of Engineering at E-Toys, where he helped build the company's e-commerce infrastructure.

When Hilf speaks about the lab and his involvement, the usual response he gets is, “At Microsoft? Why run Open Source in a mixed environment at Microsoft?” While theories abound—ranging from “Microsoft is working on its own Linux implementation” to “Microsoft is considering porting Windows to Linux”—the truth is far simpler. The lab provides Microsoft with deeper insight into the world of open source software, and it helps the company improve how Microsoft products work with open source software.

“Contrary to the belief that Microsoft is anti-open source, the reality is not so black-and-white,” says Hilf. “Most customers don’t live in an either/or world, nor do they choose a technology based on its development model. Instead, they choose a technology based on its ability to serve a business need or solve a particular problem. By running open source software in a Windows environment, we’re learning how those technologies can work better together so that our customers can benefit from a broader range of choices.”

One of the issues being addressed in the lab is how Microsoft management tools can do a better job in heterogeneous environments. For example, for customers who are using Microsoft Systems Management Server or Microsoft Operations Manager and need to manage a Linux or UNIX server, the lab can provide input on which third-party technologies can enable that scenario.

Another example is the testing it has done with Windows Server 2003 R2, which includes a variety of UNIX-based services like Network File System (NFS) and Network Information Service (NIS). Collectively called the Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications, the lab tested those services extensively to see how well they could interoperate with open source software in a data center environment.

Practicing the Art of Coopetitition
Although testing interoperability between Microsoft products and open source software is one of the lab’s primary roles, it’s not the only one. The lab also helps Microsoft to build better products through a deeper understanding of open source software.

“Licensing restrictions permitting we analyze and benchmark open source software in areas where Microsoft competes or has an interest,” says Hilf. “We share those results with other teams at Microsoft, who use the data to determine how we can improve our own products.”

One recent example is the work the lab did for the Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, which the company announced in late 2005 as part of its entrance into the high performance computing (HPC) market. Today, that market is largely dominated by Linux.

“When the product team first began building Compute Cluster Server, they asked us to find the best HPC solution from an open source perspective,” says Hilf. “We built a large, clustered system using Linux and did extensive benchmarking, then we wiped out that installation and ran the same tests for Compute Cluster Server. The data we collected will help us to deliver a more compelling product.”

“Both Windows and open source software will continue to be around for years to come, so it’s important that we test and analyze interoperability with open source software even if we may sometimes compete with some of this software – this is the real world where mixed environments exist,” says Hilf. “Coopetition – cooperating and competing – is part of the real world. Customers exist in the real world so we focus on what they care about, not what people philosophize about.”

Although there are many different ways that Microsoft could gain that desired knowledge about open source software, Hilf believes that one of the most effective ways is through a hands-on approach in which his team must address the same challenges as customers who run open source software in real-world scenarios.

“Deeply understanding a technology without actually using it would be like trying to deeply understand a foreign country without spending any time there,” says Hilf. “Listening to Berlitz language CDs or reading travel guides might help familiarize you with a foreign culture before you visit, but you’ll remain a tourist until you’ve lived there for a while.” Rather than function as a third-party trying to understand the open source phenomenon by looking in from the outside, the Microsoft Open Source Software lab is immersing itself deep into this space, relying on hands-on experience and hiring the necessary technical expertise to generate fact-based, unbiased information.

“We’re out to find the science that proves or disproves the statements made about open source software, so that we don’t need to guess or draw abstract conclusions,” says Hilf. “By being a center of knowledge and competency, we’re able to provide hard facts to Microsoft product teams when they ask questions on the state of management for open source software or the state of a certain open source application.”

A Piece of Fiber and a Hole in the Wall
When Hilf was asked to build a lab and hire a team of researchers, he had no idea that he would literally be starting from scratch. Microsoft runs everything on Windows, yet Hilf had to make the lab a resemble a real-life, open source environment, meaning that he would probably get limited help from Microsoft’s IT group.

“During one of my first days on the job, I stood in an empty room while some IT guys threaded a network cable through a hole in the ceiling,” said Hilf. “I was still standing there, staring at the piece of fiber, when one of the guys came downstairs and said, ‘That's it—you're on your own now.’ Other than that cable, we literally had to build the lab from scratch.”

Hilf’s first step was to hire the lab’s staff, which would be its most important asset. The lab employs a mix of employees and contractors, all of whom have been senior developers or systems administrators in the open source community. Some have been chief architects or technical leads for Linux distributions, such as Daniel Robbins, the founder of Gentoo Linux, who worked in the lab from June 2005 to December 2005.

Other lab staffers have deep UNIX experience and are authors of UNIX books or tools. The lab also boasts open source software security experts, embedded developers, virtualization and clustering experts, and developers with strong backgrounds in GTK+, GNOME, KDE, and Localization.

After hiring a staff, Hilf began to assemble a vast array of different hardware, software, and applications. The lab contains more than 300 servers from vendors including Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microtel, Penguin, Pogo, and Sun. The lab’s software is even more diverse, with some 15 versions of UNIX and 50 distributions of Linux—including many lesser-known ones like Asianux, CentOS and NetBSD.

“We run dozens of different versions of Linux to test open-source interoperability in a multitude of scenarios,” says Hilf. “And because we do everything on our own, from running our own network and security services to patching and updating, our environment mimics those of real customers.” If a Microsoft product makes it through this lab, it will probably survive in 90 percent of the UNIX, Linux and open source customer environments out there.”

An Open Source Bubble in a Sea of Microsoft
One of the more interesting and unexpected dynamics at the lab is that this very large open source and UNIX shop is surrounded by the world’s largest all-Microsoft IT environment, which includes Windows-based security services, Internet proxies, mail services, and other IT infrastructure elements.

“Customers frequently ask us how we manage open source software inside such a Microsoft-centric IT environment,” says Hilf. “They want to know how we get the platforms to work together, how we handle software deployment, and what kind of tools we use. We’ve had to figure out ways to interoperate not just within the lab, which itself is incredibly complex and diverse—but also between the lab and the rest of Microsoft.”

The lab’s breadth of management tools parallels its diverse servers, operating systems, and other applications. For software management and distribution, the lab uses a combination of Microsoft Systems Management Server and mainstream open source software, solutions, and services, such as Vintela VMX, Kickstart, Red Carpet, Portage, and Red Hat Network. To remotely manage the lab’s more than 300 systems, lab staffers use SSH, VNC, X-Windows Tunneling and Windows Terminal Services.

While it’s highly unlikely that any single customer would run such a diverse range of technologies, mimicking a broad range of scenarios allows lab personnel to better understand the challenges that customers face and hopefully play a role in remedying those issues.

“Running such a diverse range of technologies within a Windows-centric IT infrastructure has allowed us to test interoperability on a daily basis,” says Hilf. “In the process, we’ve learned some very interesting things. Some are simple, like how to access the Internet from Linux machines behind a Microsoft ISA proxy. Others are more complex, like how to set up highly mixed storage and backup systems .

Building and Testing Interoperability at the Lab
One of the lab’s more interesting discoveries came about while testing the interoperability of management tools—specifically, in extending Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) so that it can be used to manage UNIX, Linux, and even Apple systems.

“SMS was built to use an open protocol—called OpenWBEM—to communicate with other software that runs on non-Microsoft systems,” says Hilf. “By using that capability to extend SMS using Vintela Management Extensions (VMX), we’re able to manage all of our servers and desktops through a single interface..”

Another useful lesson in how commercial third-party software can be used to extend Microsoft products for use in a non-Windows environment involved Microsoft partners Centrify and Vintela, whose solutions the lab used to integrate its UNIX and open source systems with Microsoft’s Active Directory directory service, which provides identity, user access, and policy management services.

“The combination of Active Directory and Centrify Direct Control gives us a really powerful single authentication solution across a highly mixed environment. Although there are other ways to do this, we’ve had good success with this solution,” says Hilf.

The lab also played a role in helping test support for Linux in Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, Service Pack 1, which can virtualize Linux and Sun Solaris operating systems on servers running Windows. “We ran all 50 Linux distributions as guest operating systems on a single machine running Virtual Server,” says Hilf. “It worked out very well because we didn’t need a separate server to test each version of Linux.”

In “A Look Inside Microsoft’s Open Source Software Lab – Part 2,” (available here the week of 4/10/2006), we examine some of the lab’s other areas of focus, including work to facilitate skills transfer between Windows-based and UNIX/open source environments. We also look at research the lab is doing to better understand related aspects of the open source software where it may be headed next, including a look at the community development model and other key trends.

Today Microsoft is hosting the Learn Windows Azure broadcast event to demonstrate how easy it is for developers to get started with Windows Azure. Senior Microsoft executives like Scott Guthrie, Dave Campbell, Mark Russinovich and others will show how easy it is to build scalable cloud applications using Visual Studio.  The event is be broadcasting live and will also be available on-demand.

For Java developers interested in using Windows Azure, one particularly interesting segment of the day is a new Channel 9 video with GigaSpaces. Their Cloudify offering helps Java developers easily move their applications, without any code or
architecture changes, to Windows Azure.

This broadcast follows yesterday’s updates to Windows Azure around an improved developer experience, Interoperability, and scalability. A significant part of that was an update on a wide range of Open Source developments on Windows Azure, which are the latest incremental improvements that deliver on our commitment to working with developer communities so that they can build applications on Windows Azure using the languages and frameworks they already know.

We understand that developers want to use the tools that best fit their experience, skills, and application requirements, and our goal is to enable that choice. In keeping with that, we are extremely happy to be delivering new and improved experiences for popular OSS technologies such as Node.js, MongoDB, Hadoop, Solr and Memcached on Windows Azure.

You can find all the details on the full Windows Azure news here, and more information on the Open Source updates here.

by Peter Galli on September 10, 2009 11:30am

Many of you will, by now, have heard about the formation of the CodePlex Foundation. In order to give you an in-depth look into the thinking behind Microsoft sponsoring the Foundation, I talked to Bill Staples, the General Manager for the Web Platform and Tools Team at Microsoft, a member of the interim CodePlex Foundation board and whose engineering team builds the Microsoft Web platforms.

"Before we dig into the details of the CodePlex Foundation, it is important to note that the Foundation is completely independent from Microsoft. The Foundation's mission to help the exchange of code and understanding between software companies and open source communities is really interesting to Microsoft. To help the Foundation fund its first year of operations, Microsoft is donating U.S. $1 million," Staples told me.

One thing that Staples was very clear about during our conversation was that the CodePlex Foundation will be complementary to the software ecosystem and is not designed to compete with any of the existing open source foundations. He hopes that the CodePlex Foundation will bring commercial and open source software development communities even closer.

"We need the community's involvement to make the CodePlex Foundation a success. We don't have all of the answers today. With today's soft launch, we hope to get critical input that will ensure the Foundation is a respected, neutral party that can enhance collaboration between participating companies, industry partners and open source communities.  Over the coming weeks and months, we will be reaching out to many folks to get their feedback and to ask them to get involved with the Foundation," he said.

As such, an interim board has been established, with participation by both community and Microsoft individuals, and the plan is to work together with the open source community and other software companies over the next 100 days to really shape and define the foundation, he said. The intention going forward is to find the best candidates for the full-time board, with the expectation that the Foundation will be run by a combination of representatives from software companies and open source communities.

The interim board will also be creating a project governing process by which projects can be nominated and approved as part of the Foundation. 

Microsoft's support of the Foundation is really the next logical step in our work with and engagement of open source software communities, and does not signal a shift in Microsoft's open source strategy, Staples said.

Over the past few years we have become increasingly supportive of open source, including sponsoring the Apache Software Foundation, contributing to the PHP Community, participating in Apache projects - including the Hadoop project and the Qpid project - and participation in various community events such as OSBC, OSCON, EclipseCon, PyCon, and the Moodle Conference.

"Our hope is that new opportunities will emerge for Windows and .NET developers to more actively participate in open source development through the CodePlex Foundation," Staples said.

You can read more about the new CodePlex Foundation at http://www.codeplex.org/.