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Microsoft runs its datacenters on 'Autopilot'

By | February 6, 2008, 7:46am PST

Summary: There are lots of components beyond just the racks of Windows Server boxes that are keeping Microsoft’s online properties up and running. Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure is comprised of many evolving parts. How well will it mesh with the Linux-powered Yahoo back-end infrastructure, if Microsoft’s proposed bid for Yahoo goes through?

With all eyes on what Microsoft is doing in the online-advertising space, it’s easy to give short shrift to the datacenter and back-end infrastructure that is powering not just adCenter, but all of Microsoft’s various Live services.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer reminded Wall Street analysts earlier this week that the cloud infrastructure is key to how Microsoft goes forward with Software+Services (S+S). During his February 4 Strategic Update in New York, Ballmer told analysts:

“And a lot of the things that we have been investing in, in terms of cloud platform, which themselves have no direct business model but come to market as servers, as desktops, et cetera, it will require reasonably significant investments to start commercializing that cloud platform….

“What’s the future of Windows, what’s the future of corporate desktop value? Each and every one of these businesses, on top of a consistent cloud platform, transitions to have additional revenue and profit opportunities, based upon this transformation to the cloud.”

There are lots of components beyond just the racks of Windows Server boxes that are keeping Microsoft’s online properties up and running. Some of the other pieces that have come across my radar screen (thanks to tips from various sources who requested anonymity):

* AutoPilot: The management system for Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger and Live Search services. Word is Microsoft is extending AutoPilot to handle every Windows Live service, as well as some other members of its Live and Online families. AutoPilot performs tasks like network monitoring, power monitoring, performance monitoring, analysis, etc. It also will enable Microsoft to use commodity hardware in deploying its datacenter infrastructure.

* Bedrock: The core shared publishing platform for Live

* Shuttle: The feed-management system for Live. I’m not sure how this fits (or doesn’t) with Microsoft’s FeedSync, which is one of Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie’s pet projects.

* Fuse: A SQL Server diagnostics/monitoring system

* Cloud DB: The project via which Microsoft is scaling out its back-end structured data store. Cloud DB will be the storage platform for many of the Windows Live services and applications. The team is working to make SQL Server more fault tolerant, scalable and highly available.

Microsoft officials have been playing up their desire to combine their datacenter assets with those from Yahoo in order to maximize network effects as one of the primary rationales for Microsoft’s proposed Yahoo takeover. As others have pointed out, Yahoo’s back-end infrastructure — which is as involved and complex as Microsoft’s, no doubt — is powered heavily by Linux and other open-source software.

Sounds like a daunting task to combine the two. Maybe Microsoft should just let Yahoo’s datacenters run Linux and use that as another way to study its competition…

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Topics

Team, Microsoft Word, Data Center, Microsoft Windows Live, Microsoft Corp., AutoPilot, Data Centers, Microsoft Windows, Storage, Hardware, Data Management, Operating Systems, Software, Mary Jo Foley

Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 25 years for a variety of publications and Web sites, and is a frequent guest on radio, TV and podcasts, speaking about all things Microsoft-related. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).

Disclosure

Mary-Jo Foley

Freelance journalist/blogger Mary Jo Foley has nothing to disclose. WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). I do not own Microsoft stock or stock in any of its partners or competitors. I have no business ventures that are sponsored by/funded by Microsoft or any of its partners or competitors.

Biography

Mary-Jo Foley

Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 25 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She has kept close tabs on Microsoft strategy, products and technologies for the past 10 years. In the late 1990s, she penned the award-winning "At The Evil Empire" column for ZDNet, and more recently the Microsoft Watch blog for Ziff Davis.

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RE: Microsoft runs its datacenters on 'Autopilot'
dfwekrdfe28-24353597632192352986897683842976 Updated - 12th Nov
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0 Votes
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yes, MS should leave Yahoo infrasture as is
killerbunny 6th Feb 2008
A waste of time, money, stability to port to Windows. Will even further alienate the few Yahoo engineers who will remain after the acquisition.
0 Votes
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No way will they leave it Linux
No_Ax_to_Grind 6th Feb 2008
And there simply is no reason to. Everyone seems to go on endlessly about how hard it would be to make the switch to Windows servers. Pfffttt... Microsoft does it everyday the world over.
0 Votes
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And every day the world over...
Letophoro 6th Feb 2008
Others make the switch to Linux from Windows.
0 Votes
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Simply not true.
No_Ax_to_Grind 6th Feb 2008
But nice try. Linux has made inraods against Unix, but MS is beating at about 5 to 1 in that game and many that tried Linux scrapped it and went to Windows. Put the ideology away and start dealing with facts.
0 Votes
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Care to back that up with facts ????
mrOSX 6th Feb 2008
NT
0 Votes
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No problem, glad to help out those that can't read
No_Ax_to_Grind 6th Feb 2008
http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9805039-16.html

http://www.13bit.com.ar/post/2007/10/Linux-Losing-Market-Share-to-Windows-Server.aspx

http://www.osnews.com/story/18830/Linux_Losing_Market_Share_to_Windows_Server

http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/48999.html

Just let me know if you need more sources, there are hundreds of them...
0 Votes
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The gentleman said people the world over are leaving Windows for Linux.
nomoremicrosoft 6th Feb 2008
Nothing about the fact that Windows market share continues to grow. If even 2 people have switched from Linux to Windows, 1 in the US and 1 in China, then his statement is true. Care to argue that this is not true? Didn't think so. All you can do is prop up Microsoft.
0 Votes
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All interesting articles but..
maldain 6th Feb 2008
The problem is that using sales as a metric is deceptive when one of the products charges by the installation and the other doesn't charge for the software at all. While the figures are correct from a sales stand point, is the assumption correct on a server count stand point?

I take the company I work for as an example. We've purchased 6 Windows servers and about 90 pc's that we installed LINUX on and use as servers. With out a doubt we spent more money on the 6 Windows Server boxes than we did on the 90 Linux servers. In fact the hardware and OS for a single Linux server cost less than half what we paid for the Windows Server software. Those 6 Windows Servers support about 50 users. The Linux boxes support over 1000 including every user supported by the Windows boxes. So I would submit that based on the fact we don't have to pay for licensing for individual boxes on our Linux systems we're able to install and support those systems at a fraction of the running cost for equivalent Windows servers.
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wow
5ri 6th Feb 2008
you are using 6 Windows Servers to support 50 Users!!??

good, very good.
0 Votes
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Thats all wonderful
storm14k 6th Feb 2008
But how do they count the free distros? Oh...you say they don't? Then this simply means MS may be outselling Redhat and Novell.

Its interesting that you mention this on a post about Yahoo where they run BSD and have not paid for ONE of those licenses. All of that goes uncounted. Since I have access to expertise in Redhat I tend to use CentOS like many others do. Dell is considering the sale of Ubuntu servers and none of the OS sales will be counted as Linux revenue. You have MANY hosting services offering CentOS, Fedora, BSD etc. None of these installs are counted as revenue. When a virtual server order comes in a new Linux install can go up unnoticed where a MS install would have been counted. In a nutshell the MS vs Linux revenue argument is one of the dumbest things I have seen on the web in a long time.

You may want to stick to attempting to bash Linux desktops because you look like you will make a complete a$$ of yourself in the server realm.
0 Votes
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Hey Axey!
Sabz5150 6th Feb 2008
Hotmail happy
0 Votes
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oh, you mean the facts that you provided?
Monkey_MCSE 6th Feb 2008
No, you provided opinion, which are NOT facts. I would love to see your made up stats because you are full of it. Please, do us a favor, stop making yourself look like and idiot and show us these facts you speak of. I'd think you'd know by now that we take your words as BS, not fact, until you can provide evidence, you're just blowing smoke up your own rear as usual.
0 Votes
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Well, he's right.
Anton Philidor 6th Feb 2008
Linux publications have acknowledged that far more Linux installations come from Unix than from Windows. And sales of servers with Windows have been growing faster in absolute numbers, though Linux has a higher percentage because of the smaller base.

Microsoft server use is growing in part because of its connection to other Microsoft software and in part as a Unix replacement. I haven't read much about Windows replacing Linux, nor Linux replacing Windows in large numbers.

But when the two do compete directly, I wouldn't expect Linux to win easily or quickly. If it can win at all.
0 Votes
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growth of Windows Servers: must be all those Novell Netware installations
killerbunny 6th Feb 2008
finally being replaced wink
0 Votes
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Absolute and relative
Yagotta B. Kidding 6th Feb 2008
Linux publications have acknowledged that far more Linux installations come from Unix than from Windows. And sales of servers with Windows have been growing faster in absolute numbers, though Linux has a higher percentage because of the smaller base.

Care to back that up? According to the last few years' data that I've seen, the absolute growth as well as the relative growth is greater for Linux. However, I'll be happy to have you show me otherwise.
0 Votes
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Hmmm, just curious
maldain 6th Feb 2008
But how do you compare something where you sell the software once and it's installed many times to something that you buy once and install once? That's the primary difference between Linux and Windows. And nobody seems to mention it. When you buy a Linux distro you purchase the right to install that on multiple systems because that's a basic part of the GPL. You might have to obtain licenses for commercial software if any that's provided by the distro. But that's usually a very small cost compared to the price of Windows server.
0 Votes
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Fact and opinion
Yagotta B. Kidding 6th Feb 2008
No, you provided opinion, which are NOT facts.

Good luck with that approach.
0 Votes
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I figured
Monkey_MCSE 6th Feb 2008
that one day it would start to seep in. I'm not holding my breath.
0 Votes
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You figured? Buwahahaha, did you borrow
No_Ax_to_Grind 6th Feb 2008
someone elses fingers to count on?
0 Votes
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As you can see Yagotta...
Monkey_MCSE 6th Feb 2008
I have failed in trying to brighten poor old no_facts vocabulary. Guess it is true, we should do the humane thing and just take away his pain. The old dimwhit needs to be taken out to pasture and put down.
0 Votes
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Gee, I provided facts, where ae yours?
No_Ax_to_Grind 6th Feb 2008
Look at the above post containing multiple links to the facts. Do let me know if you need more sources, there are hyundreds of them, if your religion allows you to read them that is...
0 Votes
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Guess you should have read those articles first
Monkey_MCSE 6th Feb 2008
It's the same exact article on all 4 of your links, just restated in the beginning. Care for me to bring you articles showing the opposite? I wont even use the same article, each will have different numbers. When trying to provide facts no_facts you might wish to at least read the article and make sure it's not the same article every time, makes you look foolish. Nice try, but you failed.
0 Votes
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Were are your links?
No_Ax_to_Grind 6th Feb 2008
I mean I provided mine so lets see you show ANYTHING that says I am wrong. Oh yeah, you can't because I am correct and you know it. As I said, put the religion away and start looking at the real world.

Class dismissed...
0 Votes
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Here ya be, one of the largest
Monkey_MCSE 6th Feb 2008
computer manufacturers in the world. Then again, I also found numerous articles debunking the stats in your 1 article that has been re-released over numerous publications. Figured i'd keep it simple at first, since you're simple in the head.
http://software.silicon.com/os/0,39024651,39168818,00.htm
0 Votes
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History repeats
Yagotta B. Kidding 6th Feb 2008
No way will they leave it Linux

I have to agree -- just as with Hotmail, they'll spend whatever resources it takes to switch. They'll probably do it in less than five years this time, too.
0 Votes
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Reasons are many
SpikeyMike 6th Feb 2008
Pfft yourself.

http://www.securityoffice.net/mssecrets/hotmail.html

"As this paper will show, while the core features of Windows 2000 are able to run the service, its administrative model is not well suited to the conversion."


5) Windows is too complex to understand at first, particularly during a conversion from UNIX. There are just too many things about it for a planner in a startup to understand. Typically there is little time to attend training. The problem is most Computer Science graduates come to their startups already understanding enough about UNIX to be confident that they can use it effectively. We do need to be careful to balance the complexity and transparency carefully.


I don't know why I bother with you, No Facts. You seem to have this all figured out on your own. Just turn 180 degrees to the right and you'll be there.

-Mike
0 Votes
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Interesting
storm14k 6th Feb 2008
Then that would make it just as easy to switch from Windows to Linux which is contrary to what MS has to say. So it really is cheaper to go Linux...thanks for pointing that out.
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Miscalculation.
Prestwick 7th Feb 2008
Having worked at Yahoo for a few months at one of their data centers, I'd have to say that you simply don't know how bad a state Yahoo's back-end is right now.

Most of the server boxes they had ranged from vaguely new to extremely old, running mostly FreeBSD 4 or on rare occasions RHES running in facilities which were designed for a completely difference purpose. Change control via their own in house change management tool was so muddled and confusing that it may as well should be non-existent and there was a fundamental element of mistrust between Yahoo staff managing the various services and the Yahoo staff actually on site at the datacenter. Relations between Anglo-American staff and their counterparts in France were practically sub-zero which was interesting because allot of the services were being run and developed by French staff.

To be blunt, if Microsoft does blunder down the road of buying up Yahoo, they are going to have to fundamentally change the way Yahoo runs its services, its datacenters, its procurement policies for servers and other equipment. Basically, its going to have gut everything out and start again. That simple.
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virtualization is key
USArcher 6th Feb 2008
I think Microsoft and Yahoo will look at ways to scale using Microsoft backend systems going forward. Windows Server is the future. But you are right, leaving Yahoo's backend somewhat intact gives them an opportunity to study various interoperatability issues. I'm 99% certain virtualization comes into play. This should help speed up the innovation around virtualization and eventually translate into new Windows Server capabilities. Win-Win if you ask me.
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They may replace linux.. but they wont replace the apps
Been_Done_Before 6th Feb 2008
Fact is that many linux or open source apps are ported to windows and used on windows servers. They are generally great apps with little problems.

Linux and unix may not survive if microsoft gets its way, but alteast the open source legacy will remain.
0 Votes
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Three words, Windows Presentation Foundation.
No_Ax_to_Grind 6th Feb 2008
Goodbye to all the existing apps. hello new apps.

You can rant all you like but if you have not seen what Windows Presentaiotn Foundation can do then your spouting from a position of ignorance...
0 Votes
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I have seen it....
storm14k 6th Feb 2008
And its nothing spectacular. You sound like a 16 year old cheerleader. You really spouted that off as if WPF is even worth talking about. Like most other MS revolutions its a set of beautiful demos with no practical use and is mostly capable with current technologies.
0 Votes
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Message has been deleted.
nomoremicrosoft Updated - 7th Feb 2008
  • Flagged
0 Votes
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RE: Microsoft runs its datacenters on 'Autopilot'
rgdcc@... 7th Feb 2008
I JUST DOWNLOADED SERVER 2008 64 BIT.
THERE APPEARS THAT ONE CANNOT SURF IE 7 64 BIT.
THE BUG IS ADOBE FLASH DOES NOT SUPPORT 64 BIT BROWSER!!!!
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THIS IS A GOOD ONE!!!!!
0 Votes
+ -
SERVER 2008 64 BIT
rgdcc@... 7th Feb 2008
I DOWNLOADED SERVER 2008 64 BIT. TRIED TO SURF WITH IE7 64 BIT AND DID NOT WORK!!!
THE BUG IS FLASH DOES NOT SUPPORT 64 BIT BROWSERS!!!
THAT IS A GOOD ONE!!!!
MICROSOFT BEING HAD BY 3RD PARTY SOFTWARE!!!!
0 Votes
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Apparently, so is your shift key.
panzrwagn 7th Feb 2008
So, what is your point?
0 Votes
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RE: Microsoft runs its datacenters on 'Autopilot'
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