Microsoft teams up with Red Hat to offer its Linux OS on Azure cloud platform

By John Callaham
published

Microsoft is making friends with a long-time rival in the enterprise space, Red Hat. The two companies announced a partnership that will, among other things, include a way for customers to run Red Hat's version of Linux on Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform.

Microsoft has been making more moves to support open source-based operating systems and applications in the last few years. The company's press release stated:

"Customers will be offered cross-platform, cross-company support spanning the Microsoft and Red Hat offerings in an integrated way, unlike any previous partnership in the public cloud. By co-locating support teams on the same premises, the experience will be simple and seamless, at cloud speed."

In addition, Microsoft says it plans to add support for managing Azure workloads from Red Hat CloudForms sometime in the next few months.

Source: Microsoft{.nofollow}

John Callaham
John Callaham
24 Comments
  • Wow this partnership is impressive. I never thought I'd see the day.
  • Agreed having Linux on Microsoft's cloud is a next step in platform engineering, however I think this couldn't had happened if it wasn't because of VMWare in the past decade.  The day I installed RedHat on my Windows laptop is the day I understood that virtualization would start a revolution in the server industry.  All of this is also possible thanks to all the recent cyber attacks which made Linux vulnerable, having your service hosted on the cloud is much more secure than managing physical infrastructure.
  • Centos it's already available and it's free equivalent of red hat
  • Linus Trovalds must be very happy. Large enterprises are going to be happy with Azure cloud to reduce physical server purchases, however the parthnership for more than 20 years that Dell and Microsoft had, is going to end.  Dell just purchased EMC and Dell wants big companies to use EMC Cloud, Azure Cloud vs EMC cloud is going to be a long battle.
  • He certainly will be. Well, at least on bright side the EMC cloud will bring more competition to the table and that should keep everyone from resting on their laurels.
  • Except your forgetting ms put up on their financing of dells buyout.
  • Implying that Microsoft helped out one of their largest partners to blackmail them down the road
  • What if MS and Dell have upper still one and the same owner? Ever thought of that?
  • This marks the beginning of the death of Windows.
  • I'm glad that Microsoft doesn't have fanboys like apple defending them but I'm sad we have over reactors like u.
  • +1
  • Yep, people be like "Windowsphone is dead, Windows is dead, Microsoft is dead" what the F.... Non of these aren't dead. I would say that WP is like Baby. It was born later than Android ot iOs but it has grown up very fast. This I mean that WP isn't yet "Ready".
  • WP wasn't only born later, it was born off the wrong hole... And the father was a dyslexic accountant :)
  • Wait what?
  • You're an idiot
  • The catch? Can't use more than a TB of storage.
  • Nice partnership. (y)
    Not a fan of open source though. :3
  • Most people commenting here don't seem to realize that Azure has had Linux-based guest OS offerings in addition to various versions of Windows and Windows-based services for some timealready. This just expands the portfolio further, offering more options to customers wishing to host a diverse farm of servers in the cloud. Up until now, they have had Suse, Ubuntu and CentOS available. What is special about the Red Hat partnership is the support that is included with it (similar to Windows Server support).
  • Yep, more than half the world webservers run on Linux so as much as MS did not like it they had to do it anyway and offer Linux based os-es on their infrastructure.
     
  • Linux seems so useless....
  • Well then you have no clue...
  • You do realize Linux is on every Android phone? And also MacOS/iOS. Also 60% of web servers worldwide. Also 75% of cloud solutions. Also 90% of supercomputers. Also 80% of computers in Holywood on which movies are processed. Also NASA. Also Google. Also every appliance you can think of: fridges, microwave ovens, TV sets, electronics in cars, planes, ships, WHATEVER you can think of... Actually 90% of electronics in this world runs on Linux. Yep, totally useless OS. IT's f**kfaces like you that make this world such a sad place...
  • MacOS is UNIX-based, I believe and so Linux being on it is not quite true. Also, interesting that 80% of computers in Hollywood are Linux-based. But how do they edit their movies and sound effects. Most of these softwares are Windows/Mac only and the few graphic editing tools like GIMP, Krita and Inkscape do not seem to support non-destructive editing. Do you know anything about that?
  • I remember a friend of mine had to use that to install win on xbox orig.