mike.mainguy

OK, I realize from a previous post that it in a previous post it may seem like I think that windows is completely non-functional in a cloud environment. Let me back up a little... From my perspective, running production servers on virtual machines spun up on demand is not useful (yet) with the windows operating system. The windows OS strategy is just not responsive enough to this sort of business requirement (yet). That having been said, I just finished spinning up a windows 2003 server instance on rackspace... Why? I need to investigate some Active Directory problems we're trying to solve at work right now. I spent 4 hours downloading the massive DVD install image (and a bunch of crazy MS registration stuff) for a 10 day TRIAL version of the OS. I then went over to my rackspace account (because of a different problem) and realized they could set up the server I needed. I clicked "create server" and they set up a virtual server in 15 minutes. Yes, it costs ...

Quick question, "why is windows not suited for deployment in the cloud?" Take a look at amazon's pricing . Next, take a look at rackspace linux and windows pricing. Do you notice anything? A keen observer might see: #1 Windows costs between 1.5x - 2.6x more than linux per compute cycle. #2 Windows is in BETA for the rackspace cloud. Now some folks might argue that this cost is offset by fact that windows servers are more managable (after all, you get a nice pointy clicky user interface right?). Those folks should try to push an update to 100 windows servers using the pointy clickly technique. Any administrator worth their salt is going to use scripting and automated deployment techniques which is where linux really shines. Windows as a desktop platform is pretty good (although ubuntu is catching up, but it windows as a server platform still suffers from it's high TCO. All this having been said, I guess I'll restate my subject in a slightly d...