

Microsoft “loves Linux” as it makes Azure bigger, better - junto
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/10/microsoft-loves-linux-as-it-makes-azure-bigger-better/

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junto
Some really interesting stats. First usage of Linux:

    
    
      Nadella told us that some 20 percent of VMs on Azure use
      the open source operating system.
    

Also, new regions including Australia:

    
    
      Two new Australian regions are coming on line, taking Azure 
      up to 19 in total. This is twice as many as Amazon's AWS 
      platform has, three times as many as Google. Each region 
      sports about 600,000 servers, for a grand total of more 
      than 11 million. Last year's capital expenditure on Azure 
      was $4.5 billion—meaning that functionally, only Microsoft, 
      Amazon, and Google can compete at this scale.
    

And finally the specs on some of these machines:

    
    
      Announced today were a new series of virtual machine types 
      that offered not just the scale out that cloud is known for, 
      but also scale up. The G-series instances offer up to 32 Xeon 
      cores, 450 GB of RAM, and 6.5 TB of local SSD storage. Azure 
      also has a new premium storage facility, offering up to 32 TB 
      of storage per virtual machine, capable sustaining more than 
      50,000 IOPS, with a sub-1 ms read latency.
    

Could we be seeing Microsoft's own "turn-around moment" like Apple did when
Steve Jobs returned?

