PDC 2009: Windows Server's plan to move customers back off the cloud

Virtual machines migrate to Azure

One of the distinguishing factors between Microsoft's cloud platform and Amazon's has been the distinction in what's being served. Specifically, Amazon's EC2 gives customers a way to deploy entire server images on its cloud, while Azure provides an active cloud-based .NET runtime for the deployment of applications rather than servers. Still, that distinction will grow fuzzier, first with last week's announcement by Amazon of an SDK for cloud-based applications deployment, more similar to Windows Azure.

Then there's Microsoft's announcement Tuesday -- effectively made by Ottaway during an afternoon press conference -- of a system for deploying Windows Server virtual machines to its cloud.

"What we're announcing is that we will have what we're calling Windows Server Virtual Machine Roles on Windows Azure," Windows Server senior product manager Scott Ottaway told a press gathering Tuesday afternoon at PDC 2009. "What these will be, are pre-configured images of Windows Server -- one might have .NET [Framework] 3.5 on it, the next one might have .NET 4.0 when that's available. And you can bring your existing app, that you're running on-premises now on Windows Server, to Windows Azure, deploy it in this virtual machine image, and there you have existing applications support or migration -- you don't have to necessarily write new apps to take advantage of the Windows Azure service."

Notice the distinction still exists, if lessened a bit: VM Roles will provide Windows Server admins a way to deploy apps in the cloud as though they were being deployed on virtual machines locally. It's still not deploying servers, like the Amazon model, but it's closer. One big reason, Ottaway said: Customers already have applications that they paid for; they don't want them redeveloped.

But the other reason (and here's the basis for Microsoft's new value proposition for Azure) is that it makes less sense for customers to deploy servers in the cloud (including from a licensing perspective) when their goal is really to add scalability to their applications and public-facing services, not to Windows.

"Certain companies out there say everything's going to move off-premises, and everything's going to be a service. But there are two issues here: Network latency, the sweet nectar of having a big pipe and fast response time, is a big inhibitor for a lot of things moving off, that might make a lot of sense. And then, you want Print Server nearby, right? You don't want to send your print requests to Dublin [the Microsoft service, not the country] before it gets to your printer. Then for security servers and your management servers for managing all your clients, you're definitely going to want them to be on-premises."

Ottaway pointed to a compelling demonstration during the Tuesday morning keynote, of an online automobile shopping service provided by Kelley Blue Book using Silverlight. That service was devised to take advantage of a feature called cloudbursting -- using the cloud where necessary, such as in periods of heavy traffic, but not necessarily as a principal deployment platform.

"The scenario they were talking about on there was, in general, most of the time, their application and business presence runs on Windows Server and SQL Server and Silverlight. But currently, they've had to have a large amount of investment in server hardware, for a peak capacity that occurs very rarely across their year. And what they're essentially using Windows Azure for [instead] is for cloudbursting, so when they do have unexpected peak capacity, they can very quickly spin up a bunch of new instances of their Silverlight application and be able to meet the demand that's occurring.

"The key thing that's really interesting here -- and where Microsoft, again, is differentiated from other cloud providers -- is that Kelley Blue Book also wants to be able to scale down, and bring everything back on-premises when that demand isn't as great. It's a hybrid scenario; they're using off-premises Windows Azure to meet their increased capacity demands. That's a unique advantage of having a Microsoft infrastructure on-premises, as well as Windows Azure."

One reporter asked Ottaway today, is there a way for Azure customers to utilize any kind of capacity planning tool -- to estimate what it might cost to cloudburst under varying traffic circumstances? The long answer from Ottaway -- who seemed to take some inspiration from this question -- was no. Online calculators do exist to help customers set caps on their expenditures, and to turn off service once those caps are exceeded to avoid tremendous billing. Azure can also provide customers with warnings in advance of heavy charges. Even with those stopgaps in place, he acknowledged, it may become cheaper for certain customers to keep their applications on-premises.

Customers will need to consider those possibilities and scenarios for the future, Ottaway said. But for now, the templates and policies and best practices -- the "solution accelerator" for the cloud, to borrow a phrase -- is very much in the works.