All About Microsoft

Mary-Jo Foley

Ruby on Rails becomes latest open-source offering to run on Microsoft's Azure cloud

By Mary Jo Foley | December 1, 2009, 12:00pm PST

Summary

For a while now, Microsoft has been courting open-source software makers to convince them of the wisdom of offering their wares on Windows. So it’s not too surprising that many of those same apps also are being moved to the Windows Azure cloud platform. The Ruby on Rails framework is the latest to get the Azure treatment.

Topics

Microsoft Azure, Ruby, Microsoft Corp., Ruby On Rails, Open Source, Microsoft Windows, Software/Web Development, Web Development, Operating Systems, Software, Mary Jo Foley

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At the end of November, Microsoft architect Simon Davies blogged that he had gotten the open-source Ruby on Rails framework to run on Windows Azure. By using a combination of new functionality in the November Windows Azure software development kit (SDK), plus some new Solution Accelerator technology, Davies said he managed to get Ruby on Rails to run. (The fruits of Davies’ labors are available at http://rubyonrails.cloudapp.net/.)

Davies blogged:

“One of these (new November SDK) features enables Worker Roles to receive network traffic from both external and internal endpoints using HTTP, HTTPS and TCP. This new feature enables many new scenarios, one of then is the ability to run existing applications that receive traffic over sockets in Windows Azure.”

There are a bunch of these Azure Solution Accelerators available for download from the Windows Azure Platform Web site. There are also new SDKs for Microsoft’s recently unveiled AppFabric middleware for Java, Ruby and PHP developers, as well, availble for download.

Davies noted that Microsoft has demonstrated a number of open-source apps, including MySQL, Mediawiki, Memcached and Tomcat, can run on Windows Azure. Microsoft has been working on delivering PHP and Eclipse tools for Windows Azure.

Recently, CNet open-source blogger Matt Asay expressed some concern that Microsoft’s “super-friendly, super-dangerous bear hug” of open-source applications — especially in the cloud realm — could do open-source more harm than good.

Some open-source vendors — SugarCRM comes to mind — have developed their own Azure ports of their wares. But in other cases, Microsoft is the instigator, either moving the open-source applications and tools onto Azure or working with a third-party to do so.

I don’t see the same kind of potential danger that Asay does in this scenario, since what really matters is whether developers and customers are interested in using what’s hosted on Azure, rather than who “put” the apps in the cloud. Do you agree?

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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).

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Interesting. Let's see if fellow ZDNet bloggers will acknowledge this..

The more offerings, the better, as far as Microsoft is concerned. However, I'd like to see if the other ZDNet bloggers will even acknowledge this move...

Other blog postings by other authors still call Azure proprietary when all of the storage offerings are REST based (just like Amazon and Google's which somehow are not proprietary).

In terms of the Open Source advocates concerns, what is it they want, exactly? They'd complain (correctly) if Microsoft only let Microsoft technologies run and access Azure. If they allow other technologies, its viewed with suspicion. Even when the amount of 'openness' matches the competitions offering.

So, what, exactly, does Microsoft have to do to have the Open Source advocates as happy as they are with the Rackspace / Amazon AWS / Google App Engine offerings? It can't be source code: Google and Amazon don't offer the source code behind their offerings. The cost is approximately the same as well.

How about a nice, "Good Job Microsoft.. It's a nice start, and we hope you'll continue allowing Open Source, non MS software to interact and run on your platforms."

But, I guess that'd be too much to ask for.
FearTheDonut

(Edited: 12/01/2009 12:55 PM)
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That would be fine if it were not for a minor problem

Microsoft is only driving them into position. Microsoft wants to get them in the right place in order to produce maximum damage when delivering the coup de grâce.
The Mentalist

12/01/2009 02:38 PM
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Produce maximum damage against whom?

Let's take your argument - Microsoft wants to get 'them' in the right place in order to produce Maximum damage. My first question is, damage to whom?

If your answer is open source-ish groups, it doesn't seem very logical. Google, Amazon, and Rackspace (to name a few) offer competition, as was pointed out in the article (and have offered them for a while). There are plenty of other places to put the applications. Copy your files onto the new hosted environment, change a DNS, and you're down an hour, max. I'm not sure what the coup de grace would be. Cutting off service? Microsoft would lose revenue, and the client would simply move their service to one of the aforementioned services in short order. And Microsoft's terms of service / SLA contractually prevents outages, so they'd be legally liable.

If your answer to maximum damage is to other cloud services, there's nothing preventing people from using one or more different services from other vendors, so I'm hardpressed to see how they could damage them.

Was this a serious response? Or just paranoia?
FearTheDonut

12/01/2009 05:23 PM
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Pavlov's dog

Most likely there's not even any thought behind it, it's just a conditioned response. Certain people read 'Microsoft' and they automatically post something about how Microsoft is still planning to take over the world. Pavlov would be proud.

Carl Rapson
rapson

12/02/2009 07:02 AM
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Don't waste your time on a mental case...nt

nt
transposeIT

12/03/2009 01:05 AM
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For once I agree

Microsoft uses the technique of "divide and conquer" to weaken opposition technologies. Because of their market share, they can interject a proprietory tecnology into a market where they see other technologies already working. Recent examples of this have been Active-X and Silverlight, but the principle goes back to Internet Explorer.

Eventually they may bring some net benefit, but their primary goal is to weaken the originator of the idea.
jorjitop

12/02/2009 05:25 PM
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RE: Ruby on Rails becomes latest open-source offering to run on Microsoft's Azure cloud

I still don't understand what in Azure is different (for the better or worst) than Amazon's or Rackspace's or other instant-server-on-demand cloud offerings.
tim.hobbes

12/01/2009 01:01 PM
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The difference is in the offerings

Amazon offers instant servers with a variety of OS's to choose from (Linux, Windows, and maybe a BSD-variant Unix flavor as well). It also offers REST-based Queuing (FIFO not guaranteed last I checked), storage, and file hosting.

Rackspace offers just one or two flavors of Linux (last time i checked..)

Microsoft Azure does not offer instant servers. It offers a platform for a developer or developers to host their offerings. Think of it similar to building a "plug-in". The dev builds the plug in, Azure hosts the plug in, offers redundancy, CPU horsepower, Service Bus, etc.. It's a different approach to the cloud (closer to that of the Google App Engine than Amazons AWS or Rackspace's offerings). You can expand the CPU horsepower as needed, and there is a defined Service Level Agreement, where Google does not offer one (last time I checked, a few weeks ago).

Different tools for different purposes. It's why "the cloud" means different things to different people. To some, it's just a virtual server sitting at Amazon. To others, it's a full-fledged dynamic host.

Hope this helps.
FearTheDonut

12/01/2009 01:12 PM
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Here are a few differences

With Amazon or Rackspace, you are responsible for creating, managing and updating your OS images and writing the code that enables your application to scale out to multiple machines. With Windows Azure, the fabric contoller does that for you. You don't need to worry about creating OS VM's, applying patches etc. and you don't need to write massive amounts of new code to enable your app to scale out. For example, say you create the next Twitter. On day 1 you only need one machine. On day 2 you need two. On day 10 you need 100. On day 20 you need 1000. With Amazon or Rackspace you'd need to (somewhat exagerating but you get the point) essentially re-write large portions of your app each time you add new machines. With Windows Azure it just happens by setting a parameter. Say on day 10 you need to apply an OS update or patch. With Amazon or Rackspace you'd need to do that yourself, re-built your VM's and redeploy them. With Windows Azure, the fabric contoller rolls out the updates for you automatically - on the schedule that you want...without bringing down your application. Also, with Windows Azure you can request geo-distribution of your application. You can specifiy that you want X instances running in the Chicago datacenter, X in the Dublin datacenter etc. The rest just happens.

Finally, the Windows Azure development environment works with Visual Studio and, soon, Eclipse. When using Visual Studio you can do development and test on your local machine and then deply when the app is ready. It's pretty simple.

The biggest downside of Windows Azure is that - today - you can't just drop an existing application running on Windows Server onto Windows Azure and expect it to work. It's better for net new applications - at least until Microsoft offers raw VM's that you can manage yourself. But that sort of defeats the purpose of the fabric controller and the other management features of Windows Azure.
marksashton

12/02/2009 09:40 AM
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we will not fall victim to the infamous triple 'E'

Embrace, extend , extinguish...no way M$!
Linux Geek

12/01/2009 01:38 PM
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Yes because

Running data centers with tens of thousands of servers will somehow get "open sourced" and it will somehow be "free".

I'll pass you the electric bill when it comes.

The usual drum of open source matters much less with respect to virtualization in the cloud.

Just give people the choice, in which case, Amazon is better - businesses can run LINUX (for most of their server needs) or Windows (legacy, vertical market apps).

-M
betelgeuse68

12/01/2009 02:39 PM
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Who is we?

Are you a developer?
Slunk

12/15/2009 05:30 PM
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RE: Ruby on Rails becomes latest open-source offering to run on Microsoft's Azure cloud

Now if Expression Web 4.0 would gain RoR and Python support. Microsoft has been pretty open about embracing and supporting PHP.
anonymuos

12/02/2009 12:47 AM
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I hate Freetards

Every time you jack asses open your mouths all that comes out is the same old crap... MS this and MS that... Oh!!! They are out to get you!! They are just trying to lure you in so they can do bad things to you because they are evil.

You know... I develop on 100% OS stack. I live and breath Open Source. I walk the walk. And yet I CANNOT STAND freetards. You do more damage braying this karma wh0ring garbage than any sort of good I can ever imagine. How, in the name of all that is not asinine, do your comments do one lick of good other than painting FOSS "advocates" as a bunch of ranting paranoid nitwits?

You are ruining it for yourself and other so STFU for the love of Linus.
Slunk

12/15/2009 09:52 AM
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