LiveSide - News blog : cloud computing

“Most, if not all” Sidekick data restored, says Microsoft

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:39:00 GMT

Microsoft is now saying that “most, if not all” Sidekick data thought to be lost in a server upgrade to Danger’s Sun/Oracle platform can now be recovered, according to a press release issued by Roz Ho, Corporate Vice-President for Premium Mobile Services.

We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage. We plan to begin restoring users’ personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.

Mary Jo Foley, in her All About Microsoft blog, has more, confirming Hitachi’s role in the upgrade, and including the interesting tidbit that foul play has not been ruled out:

One of my Microsoft sources told me

“(T)he data loss issue was caused by a hardware update on the existing Danger service that had NOT been ported over to a Microsoft platform and the issue was NOT part of a transition to an MS back end. It was an Oracle dB and Sun SAN solution that got a bad firmware update and the backup failed.”

Since then, I’ve heard from others that this scenario seems likely and that yes, Hitachi Data Systems was the company actually doing the maintenance/update for Microsoft. I’ve also heard that foul play has not been ruled out because the failure was so catastrophic and seemingly deliberate. Microsoft is supposedly continuing to do a full investigation.

MobileCrunch at TechCrunch had a report on October 5th that morale was low with Roz Ho’s team, that many Danger employees had been fired, and that the mysterious “Pink” project was close to collapsing. If indeed sabotage was at play, things might even be worse in Premium Mobile Services than described.

“Non-Microsoft technologies” to blame for Danger/Sidekick failure, Microsoft says

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:11:21 GMT

After more than a week of silence on what caused the Sidekick outage with Danger, the Los Angeles Times today quotes Microsoft spokesperson Tonya Klause, not really explaining what happened, but definitely distancing Microsoft cloud services such as Windows Live and Azure from the Danger platform:

“The Danger Service platform, which experienced the outage, is a standalone service operating on non-Microsoft technologies, and is not related to Microsoft’s cloud services platform or Windows Live," Microsoft spokesperson Tonya Klause wrote in an e-mail. “Other and future Microsoft mobile products and services are entirely based on Microsoft technologies and Microsoft’s cloud service platform and software."

and:

Microsoft drew a further distinction between Danger and its other data assets, saying that "it’s important to note that for native Microsoft services such as Windows Live, Hotmail, Azure, etc., we write multiple replicas of user data to multiple devices so that the data is available in a situation where a single or multiple physical nodes may fail," Klause wrote.

Still no word on what caused the loss of data (which may not be a total loss after all, not much news on that either), although there has been speculation that the failure happened in an attempt to move the open source Danger platform to Microsoft technologies. Microsoft still needs to come clean on exactly what happened, and why, in our opinion.

Microsoft SQL Services Is Now Microsoft SQL Azure, More Software + Services News Next Week At WPC09

Sunshine — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:23:56 GMT

Microsoft is updating the branding for SQL Services and SQL Data Services. From now on SQL Services will be called Microsoft SQL Azure and SQL Data Services will be called Microsoft Azure Database:

This name change doesn’t reflect a change in the products themselves; we will still be providing a powerful relational database foundation to the Azure Services Platform. By standardizing our naming conventions, we’re demonstrating the tight integration between the components of the services platform. More intuitive names also help to reinforce the relationships between our on-premises and cloud solutions. Ultimately, the goal is to drive simplicity and clarity for customers as they consider on-premises and cloud computing approaches for solving their IT needs.

More news and updates related to Microsoft’s Software + Services strategy will be announced next week at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans.

Long Zheng has been digging in deeper as to what might be announced next monday: Potential announcements already on people’s minds include the announcement and subsequent availability of Windows 7 RTM code and pricing and licensing plans for Windows Azure. What also might be announced is the public release of the Microsoft Office Web application that was announced back at PDC08, Long received some information that confirms this one. Can’t wait!

We’ll keep our eyes open, that’s for sure!

Ray Ozzie at the DLA Piper Tech Summit: Cloud Computing has “enormous potential”

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:29:56 GMT

Speaking today at a keynote for the DLA Piper Tech Summit, Ray Ozzie tuned up his cloud computing mantra in preparation for next week’s PDC, by talking about the potential for the internet to speed up software usability. In a question and answer session with Fortune magazine’s David Kilpatrick, Ozzie spoke about the changing nature of the internet::

Ozzie said that cloud computing has enormous potential to speed up data exchange, software development, collaboration, and ultimately, software usability. “The Internet was created during an era of 56k modems and dial-up connections. As a software [developer] you balance what's on the back end with what's on the front end.” Whether bandwith is large or small is a challenge of perspective and application.

Ozzie promised appliance-like features for devices soon:

Devices, he said, will be “appliance-like” in the near future. “You'll buy one, log in, and the data you need will be there.”

We should be hearing more about Ozzie’s vision very very soon, with major announcements about Microsoft’s live services platform expected at PDC.

Ballmer drops a bombshell: “Windows Cloud” coming at PDC

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:53:30 GMT

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, speaking at an IT conference in London, revealed that Microsoft will unveil a new operating system, which he dubbed “Windows Cloud”, at PDC at the end of this month. According to a post at The Register, Ballmer hinted at the new OS:

We need a new operating system designed for the cloud and we will introduce one in about four weeks, we’ll even have a name to give you by then. But let’s just call it for the purposes of today ‘Windows Cloud’,” said Ballmer.

“Just like Windows Server looked a lot like Windows but with new properties, new characteristics and new features, so will Windows Cloud look a lot like Windows Server.”

Ballmer also hinted at what would be built into the new OS, including geo replication, how to design apps intended to commingle [we think he means appeasing regulators by providing more interoperability], management modelling and an SOA model, to effectively create a new platform.

So if we’re reading this right, the new OS would be used to handle some of the issues that are unique to “cloud computing”, building in services that would have to be added or built from scratch in existing Windows Server environments. Again, if we’re reading the Ballmer tea leaves, this wouldn’t be something you would run on your desktop, but would be a special Windows Server built to manage the special needs of services in the cloud. Pure conjecture at this point, but we’ll know more soon.

Ballmer also took the opportunity to take a shot at Google, saying:

“If you talk to Google they’ll say it's thin client computing but then they’ll issue a new browser that’s basically a big fat operating system designed to compete with Windows but running on top of it,” he said.

“Steve Ballmer observation," machine gunned the fragrant CEO.

Of course we’ll have lots more from PDC, stay tuned.

How to build a cloud: Debra Chrapaty on data centers

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:29:00 GMT

When we talked to Bill Gates last November at Mix n Mash, he described Windows Live:

All those consumer services are basically big, big volume. They're tiny businesses in a sense, but they're very important for the population of users that you connect up to and the opportunities you get out of that.

Some of the things like state in the sky, obviously we want to do a lot more innovation so that everybody just understands that they should use that. Today, no matter whose thing it is, .Mac or the various eDrive cloud store type things, they actually are all pretty small share, they're kind of messy to use. We think that by the way that we'll connect up to Windows in a rich way we'll be able to do something pretty dramatic there, but that awaits the next big wave that comes along.

So what is “the cloud”, and why is it so important? Specifically, the cloud is a network of data centers, a system that will soon dwarf what exists today, a system that Microsoft is furiously building out. In addition to data centers online now or soon to be in Quincy, WA, Chicago, San Antonio, Ireland, Irkutsk, and a just announced (in this video?) a new center in Iowa, if you listen to Debra Chrapaty talk to Om Malik at Structure 08, Microsoft is just getting started:

Debra Chrapaty with Om Malik video (sorry embedding the BlipTV video didn't play well with Community Server)

Debra Chrapaty talks to Om Malik at Structure 08 in San Francisco

It is clear that Microsoft plans to be a big player in “cloud infrastructure”, and they’re working hard on efficiencies in power and scale, not only to power Microsoft’s online services, but to offer those services to other customers. When Bill Gates talks about the opportunities that Windows Live provides, he’s not interested in “tiny businesses”. The scale and speed at which Microsoft is planning to build out their services, cutting the start to finish time for a data center from 1.5 years to “months”, pre-provisioning with containers to “knock the socks off anything anyone in the industry is doing” is going to drive Windows Live, Office Online, Exchange Online, and more. From what Chrapaty is hinting at, a lot more.

Red Dog: Ray Ozzie's answer to the Google App Engine?

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:09:00 GMT

(Note: while we've been serving up a number of potential new Windows Live logos recently, this isn't one of them. I just happen to like Clifford the Big Red Dog)

Much has been made recently about last night's announcement of the Google App Engine, along with some discussion of the seeming lack of a counterpart coming from Microsoft. For those of you not accustomed to frequent visits to Techmeme, Google App Engine is, according to the Google App Engine Blog:

...a developer tool that enables you to run your web applications on Google's infrastructure. The goal is to make it easy to get started with a new web app, and then make it easy to scale when that app reaches the point where it's receiving significant traffic and has millions of users.
Google App Engine gives you access to the same building blocks that Google uses for its own applications, making it easier to build an application that runs reliably, even under heavy load and with large amounts of data. (...) Google App Engine packages these building blocks and takes care of the infrastructure stack, leaving you more time to focus on writing code and improving your application.

Amazon has a similar service, although perhaps not as neatly bundled, called EC2. So with all the talk from Microsoft about cloud services, what are they up to? Well we did a little digging, and although nothing specific has been announced yet (and we don't have a timetable), new set of services, part of Ray Ozzie's four layer platform of services, is indeed being readied. One of these, the Microsoft Utility Computing Platform, code named Red Dog, sounds very much like a platform for building a Google App Engine type service (except maybe quite a bit better). In a job posting for an SDET, the Cloud Infrastructure Services (CIS) team has provided us with some of the juicy tidbits we found. The posting itself is a little dense, written to appeal to seasoned developers looking for new challenges. But to paraphrase a bit, here's what the (CIS) team is building with Red Dog:

an "efficient, virtualized" environment
a "fully automated service management system" (like the Google App Engine, you won't have to worry about managing the system)
on "highly scalable" storage services (you only use the storage you need)
the service will "scale to millions of machines" across Microsoft's data centers (geo-located, easy to maintain data centers, remember?)
"will lead the marketplace as the best platform for rapid development, deployment, and maintenance of internet services and applications"
SDK and tools will be included for external and internal customers
V1 for external customers in the coming year

We don't know a whole lot more about Red Dog at this point, or even, truthfully, how closely a go to market product will resemble the Google App Engine. But the job posting, along with some other indications, seem to point to a Microsoft response sometime "in the coming year". Clifford will be so happy.

Its not all about search: Yahoo! and cloud computing

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:57:00 GMT

Yahoo! announced today a new collaboration agreement with Computational Research Laboratories (CRL), which is owned by India's Tata Sons Limited, to utilize Tata's giant supercomputer, the fourth fastest in the world, to "leverage CRL's expertise in high performance computing and Yahoo!'s technical leadership in Apache Hadoop, an open source distributed computing project of the Apache Software Foundation, to enable scientists to perform data-intensive computing research on a 14,400 processor supercomputer". First, a bit about the computer:

Called the EKA, CRL's supercomputer is ranked the fourth fastest supercomputer in the world - it has 14,400 processors, 28 terabytes of memory, 140 terabytes of disks, a peak performance of 180 trillion calculations per second (180 teraflops), and sustained computation capacity of 120 teraflops for the LINPACK benchmark. Of the top ten supercomputers in the world, EKA is the only supercomputer funded by the private sector and is available for use on commercial terms. EKA is expected to run the latest version of Hadoop and other state-of-the-art, Yahoo!-supported, open-source distributed computing software such as the Pig parallel programming language developed by Yahoo! Research.

While Microsoft is trying to portray itself as "the little engine that could", far behind in search and needing a Yahoo! acquisition to have a chance at competing with Google, Yahoo! has been investing heavily into research and development in cloud computing, an area Microsoft is known to be heavily involved in as well. Yahoo!, while it is using open source tools like Hadoop and not Microsoft technology, still has significant assets in cloud computing research that would be highly beneficial to Microsoft.

"We have made our leadership in supporting academic, cloud computing research very concrete by sharing a 4,000-processor supercomputer with computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University for the last three months. With this supercomputing cluster, researchers were able to analyze hundreds of millions of Web documents and handle two orders of magnitude more data than they previous could," said Ron Brachman, vice president and head of academic relations for Yahoo!. "Launching our cloud computing program internationally with CRL is another significant milestone in creating a global, collaborative research community working to advance the new sciences of the Internet."

So while Steve Ballmer jumps around onstage and plays up Microsoft the underdog in search, the move to buy Yahoo! may well bring benefits down the road that aren't readily noticed by those intent on watching a Google/Microsoft battle.