Microsoft Goes Live With First Azure Hosted Service That Runs On Linux

The first Azure hosted service that runs on Linux has been released, Microsoft announced today.

HDInsight, an Hadoop-based big data service, has gone into general availability and runs on Ubuntu. The platform has previously been in preview for two quarters.

Even though Azure already supports a number of different Linux distributions, HDInsight is the first time Microsoft is deploying, hosting, and managing an Azure-hosted service that runs on Ubuntu Linux VMs.

Growing ecosystem

In a Microsoft blog, T.K. Ranga Rengarajan of Microsoft said that Azure HDInsight on Ubuntu Linux includes a service level agreement of 99.9 percent, as well as full technical support for the whole stack.

“There’s also a growing ecosystem of ISV’s delivering tools to create big data solutions on the Azure data platform with HDInsight,” said Rengarajan.

Back in February, when HDInsight opened for preview, Azure’s director of program management Corey Sanders wrote: “Customers are asking for the scale-out power of Azure and easy-to-use Azure services across many different development and management ecosystems. Hadoop on Ubuntu Linux offers the full power, support and scalability of an Azure hosted service, paired with the Linux ecosystem.

“Customers can leverage the same skills and tools they use for their Linux Hadoop deployments on-premises and migrate to Azure or create simple hybrid deployments without having to manage the infrastructure. Just like our current HDInsight service, customers can enjoy the automated deployment, SLA and comprehensive support but can now choose Windows or Ubuntu Linux when deploying from the Azure Portal.”

Canonical, maker of Ubuntu, said that the move goes some way in proving the platform’s cloud leadership.

“Ubuntu has been the cloud operating system leader for several years, the industry standard choice for scale-out operations and workloads,” said Canonical’s John Zannos.

“We are pleased to support the growth of Linux on the Azure cloud, too. Today, more than 20 percent of virtual machines on Azure are Linux and VM Depot has more than 1,000 Linux images. The vast majority of these images are Ubuntu.”

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