Microsoft and the Azure Cloud: The Perfect Linux Ecosystem.

Microsoft does not publish actual sales figures on the Azure Cloud; however, experts estimate sales in the last quarter at around five billion dollars - growth was 64 percent. Azure now also offers the cloud from two data centers in Switzerland. Many of these services have Linux as their operating system foundation. A good example of this is the popular Azure Kubernetes Service, AKS for short. It provides a fully configured Kubernetes cluster at the push of a button, allowing containers to be used immediately.

In recent years, Linux containers have taken the IT industry and the cloud by storm. Containerization makes a new form of application development and implementation possible, based on the pattern of microservices. Today, Kubernetes is the preferred platform for managing containers and microservices, including those in the Azure Cloud. This is partly due to the fact that years ago Microsoft hired one of the co-founders of Kubernetes to lead the container strategy for Azure and to support Microsoft with the introduction of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

Azure Kubernetes for the Hybrid Cloud

Today, the service is widely used. It enables the coexistence of old and new IT infrastructures and, because Kubernetes runs in almost every public cloud environment, it functions as a common denominator for multi-cloud and hybrid cloud implementations. The trend toward the hybrid cloud has led Microsoft to create another new product based on Kubernetes. The new platform is called Azure Arc and allows virtual machines and 'real' machines as well as container workloads managed by Kubernetes to be managed from a single control level[i]. Another relatively new container service based on RedHat's OpenShift Platform is also being offered. Azure OpenShift Service provides a fully managed OpenShift service that is jointly operated with Red Hat.[ii]
 

Linux Virtual Machines on Azure

The service catalogue also contains numerous Linux VMs; all popular Linux distributions are offered on Azure - including Ubuntu, Debian, SuSE, and RedHat. These can be purchased out-of-the-box as virtual machines. Also Microsoft's own database, SQL Server, has been deployable on Linux for some time now and is no longer just available for the in-house operating system. Even Microsoft Defender, until recently marketed as Windows Defender, is to be offered this year Linux-compatible in the corporate version (Microsoft Defender ATP).

At UMB, Azure and Linux are Very Close

No matter if it is a simple Red Hat instance or a complex container landscape: We will support you to leave you more time to focus on your core business.

Even moving a complete internal server landscape into the cloud is no problem with the excellent Linux support in Azure and our know-how. Contact us for additional information

[i]https://azure.microsoft.com/de-de/services/azure-arc/

[ii]https://azure.microsoft.com/de-de/services/openshift/