The most popular operating system on Microsoft's Azure cloud today is -- drumroll please
- LINUX
Three years ago, Mark Russinovich, CTO of Azure, Microsoft's cloud program, said, "One in four [Azure] instances are Linux." Then, in 2017, it was 40 percent Azure virtual machines (VM) were Linux. Today, Scott Guthrie, Microsoft's executive vice president of the cloud and enterprise group, said in an interview, "Slightly over half of Azure VMs are Linux.
That's right. Microsoft's prize cloud, Linux, not Windows Server, is now the most popular operating system. Windows Server isn't going to be making a come back.
"Every month, Linux goes up," Guthrie said.
And it's not just Azure users who are turning to Linux.
"Native Azure services are often running on Linux," Guthrie added. "Microsoft is building more of these services. For example, Azure's Software Defined Network (SDN) is based on Linux."
It's not just on Azure that Microsoft is embracing Linux.
"Look at our simultaneous release of SQL Server on Linux. All of our projects now run on Linux," Guthrie said.
Why is Microsoft joining the move to Linux?
As Russinovich said years ago, when Microsoft started its turn toward open-source software and Linux, it's being done because it's a "practical business decision."
And that's because, as Microsoft CTO of Data Raghu Ramakrishnan recently explained, "We meet customers where they are, and in particular if you want Linux we'll give you Linux; if you want MySQL, well we'll give you MySQL; you want NoSQL well we'll give you NoSQL -- that means you need to be part of open source; open source by nature is a community thing."
https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-now ... tes-azure/
