Love the graphic. Does it come large enough for desktop wallpaper?
Microsoft offers Linux certification. Do not adjust your set. This is not an error
Microsoft's decided it needs to offer a Linux certification. The new Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA) Linux on Azure teaches you how to do Linux on Azure by making you do an Azure course and a Linux course. Redmond's bit is the five-day Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions course and …
COMMENTS
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Friday 11th December 2015 08:29 GMT astrax
Not totally surprising
In the context of modern day Cloud implementation, it would be daft not to
a). to some degree integrate/facilitate the use of Linux based solutions
b). market that integration to customers as a fully capable stack
Why spend millions in R&D trying to emulate cloudy stuff when there are preferred Linux based solutions already in place? That way, I guess, they could pump all that residual cash into giving their customers what they want (and if they're lucky, what they need too).
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Friday 11th December 2015 08:49 GMT SecretSonOfHG
<<Wow, a quarter of Azure is Linux?
I thought people would only go there for Windows>>
Well, there are times when people run out of budget for Windows licenses. Or need some standard piece of infrastructure that is already packaged and ready to go under Linux but on Windows needs not only some licenses but also a long install and configuration plus a few ancient god invocations to work reliably and securely. Or purchase some package that is sold Linux only or certified for Linux and they want to save a pinch on license costs, or.... there are a myriad valid reasons for use Windows in the data centre, and a few more to use Linux.
And in all these cases, it is just smart from Microsoft to support Linux, if only to avoid customers deflecting out of Azure. Keep close to your friends, but even closer to your enemies and all that.
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Friday 11th December 2015 11:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Wow, a quarter of Azure is Linux?
I thought people would only go there for Windows."
There are a lot of enterprises who just migrate legacy midrange stuff to Linux as a gap fill until they can move to Windows - which usually requires migrating from Oracle to SQL Server, MQ to BizTalk, etc, etc. All well worth doing, but not an overnight process. Hence they end up running some Linux that's not really strategic and need somewhere to put it.
"Well, there are times when people run out of budget for Windows licenses."
Supported Linux like Redhat is far more expensive to license, and Azure includes much of the Windows licencing in the costs.
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Friday 11th December 2015 13:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
wtf.. If you're paying for RHEL support, you're not going to be on Azure!
Crying because "Redhat support is more than a Windows licence" is pretty damn ridiculous. That's like avoiding MySQL because Oracle DB is expensive.
When you're at the point of even thinking about getting RHEL support, then you're way out of Microsoft's reach.
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Friday 11th December 2015 23:48 GMT Maventi
"There are a lot of enterprises who just migrate legacy midrange stuff to Linux as a gap fill until they can move to Windows"
Citation needed. It's not the early 2000's anymore.
We've migrated tons of stuff to Linux, permanently. Saved a fortune and not just in license costs, it's much easier to support too. The only migration I can see on the horizon from here is to the BSDs as they seem to have their stuff sorted a bit better than Linux.
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Friday 11th December 2015 14:03 GMT TheVogon
"I thought people would only go there for Windows"
As far as I know, Azure is the only hybrid out of the box single vendor cloud. Hence mostly why it is growing so rapidly - Microsoft overtook AWS in total cloud revenue 2 quarters ago.
"If you're paying for RHEL support, you're not going to be on Azure!"
Why not? It's better and cheaper than any comparable Linux based cloud option I know of.
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Friday 11th December 2015 20:04 GMT Richard Plinston
> Microsoft overtook AWS in total cloud revenue 2 quarters ago.
You are well known for your 'analysis' skills, or lack of them. While Microsoft may have been able to record a higher revenue figure, they did so by including many other services. Azure is about 1/4 of that of AWS.
"""Why Amazon Is Crushing Microsoft in the Cloud"""
http://dcinno.streetwise.co/2015/11/09/amazon-web-services-aws-vs-microsoft-azure-cloud-computing-competition/
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Friday 11th December 2015 09:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: So its not Linux, its Linux on Azure.
Not only that, it's a "Microsoft" Cert.
I don't mind admitting that I've cheated on a few of those MS exams. Even a 10 year old could pass them.
(Work made us do them, as a box-ticking exercise - I'm not interested in what they cover, and they're not on my CV).
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Friday 11th December 2015 11:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: So its not Linux, its Linux on Azure.
"I don't mind admitting that I've cheated on a few of those MS exams. Even a 10 year old could pass them."
I guess you havn't taken any recently then. They have been completely redesigned to defeat cheating / learning the answers. Questions are randomly assembled from many different options. It's much harder to cheat these days.
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Friday 11th December 2015 12:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: So its not Linux, its Linux on Azure.
Why would you need to cheat. Unless you're not as clever as a 10 year old?
- Zero interest or use in the subject matter.
- Employer wanting certs, but unwilling to allocate time.
I don't believe I'm cheating Microsoft, or even myself, just a few yes-men 2 pay grades above me.
My point is, I have first hand experience in how low-value these are. I know some have worked damn hard for these, and I have some certs I'm proud of - but they're not worth much in terms of "proof" to someone else.
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Friday 11th December 2015 13:37 GMT thames
Re: When will we see SQL Server on Linux?
I listened to a podcast interview of one of the leading Postgres developers a while ago, and he said that of the users who were switching to Postgres, more were switching from MS SQL Server than from any other database (including Oracle). So evidently, switching databases is something that businesses actually do on a regular basis.
This particular guy however made a living consulting on large complex database applications, so he may not have as good of an insight into what the users of smaller and simpler MS SQL installations were doing.
MS SQL Server started life as the Windows version of Sybase SQL Server, until Microsoft bought that part of the business from Sybase and licensed the source code from them. I know of someone who switched a medium size business from MS to Sybase to get some really big cost savings, and he said he had no issues. That was before the take over by SAP however, so I don't know how things are going today.
In the long run, I suspect that legacy database systems such as MS SQL Server and Oracle are going to be stuffed. There is a proliferation of new specialised databases, almost all of which are open source, and new applications will be designed around those to avoid vendor lock-in.
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Friday 11th December 2015 11:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Errrrrr
"When will we see SQL Server on Linux?"
Maybe when Linux Linux supports the required fully granular security model without a file system dependency, supports constrained delegation for proper roles based security isolation, and adopts a fully modular network stack?
"When there's not a better alternative on Linux."
The only real alternative that's significantly better in any way is Oracle RAC, and that costs £££££....
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Friday 11th December 2015 09:02 GMT Arctic fox
Re: "Embrace the start of a well know Microsoft-linked phrase?"
Microsoft has not a hope in hell of extinguishing Linux, something the current CEO knows perfectly well and is clearly able to accept in a way that his predecessors were not. Given that, “approximately one in four virtual machines on Azure are Linux, and more than half of Azure Marketplace images are based on Linux”, Nadella would appear to be applying intelligent self-interest rather than the brain dead variety that both Ballmer and Gates specialised in as far as anything remotely related to open source was concerned.
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Friday 11th December 2015 09:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
“is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches”
Yes, and it's even starting to take over Microsoft.
Linux has embraced Microsoft over the years with FAT support, Samba, Wine and Mono. It's now extending, by providing 25% of their VMs, .NET on Linux, and now a certification. We should see the next phase by the turn of the decade.
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Friday 11th December 2015 13:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Let's not bundle all our config into one unmanagable & undocumented basket, with an interface from 1995"
Windows started off with unscalable text files for config all over the place. These type of files can't support even basic requirements like granular auditing of security control of individual settings. Linux is way behind on this one - although I note that some more modern UNIX versions are starting to adopt a config database, although they are still way behind Windows in this regard.
"Microsoft is being embraced and extended by Linux, not the other way round!"
Nope. Microsoft is making Linux users pay to run Linux on a Microsoft OS hosted Hypervisor. Hyper-V Server does after all scale somewhat better than any hypervisor layer on top of Linux option.
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Friday 11th December 2015 20:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
basic requirements like granular auditing of security control of individual settings
There's no demand for something like that.
Linux is way behind on this one
It's not really "behind". It's implemented in Wine. If there was any need for it, then that could be used. It's there for the taking! But... no one wants it.
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Saturday 12th December 2015 00:15 GMT Maventi
"unscalable text files".
This old chestnut again and again. So can you please take a moment to explain to the audience exactly what's so 'unscalable' about text files? I've found them quite ideal for managing 1000s of hosts, if that's what you are trying to state. And I've had years of Windows experience too before discovering 'nix.
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Friday 11th December 2015 10:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
For some reason...
I've got a cold chill running down my spine over this.
It may be M$ track record of dirty tricks, attitude towards open source and general FUD towards the "competition".
Trusting M$ to do Linux a good turn, no matter how self-serving that may be, just goes completely against the grain.
Wish I could articulate this fear and mistrust better...
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Friday 11th December 2015 12:13 GMT Amorous Cowherder
Re: For some reason...
Wakey, wakey. No company does anything for a good reason, they do it 'cos there's a profit. Rather than watch you bugger off to some other company to get your LInux certs, MS hire a few qualified RHEL examiners to write their Linux certs papers and bingo, they can start charging you £2500 for a week's course ( mandatory requirement to take the cert! ) and another £150 for the exam, plus retakes.
Oracle, MS, Apple, they all offer certs purely to get people to attend their education classes at a couple of grand a pop.
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Friday 11th December 2015 13:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: For some reason...
I can understand companies using any leverage it can to maximise profit. That isn't my issue.
The Linux certificates from Microsoft sounds as if M$ they are saying "I've changed, I promise it'll never happen again", thus my trepidation.
I can't help thinking "How will Microsoft use this to undermine Linux?"
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