eBay, Dell, HP Get Microsoft's Azure ''Appliance''

By Kevin Parrish
published

Microsoft's is introducing an Azure "appliance" that will first be used publicly by eBay, and sold by the likes of Dell and HP.

eBay said Monday that it will be one of Microsoft's first customers to use the new Windows Azure platform appliance for cloud computing. The Windows Azure platform appliance is the first turnkey cloud platform that customers can deploy--in their own datacenter--across hundreds to thousands of servers. The platform appliance includes Windows Azure, SQL Azure, and a Microsoft-specified configuration of network, storage and server hardware.

"Microsoft’s focus on and investment in the Windows Azure platform appliance shows they are committed to world-class cloud computing solutions," said James Barrese, eBay vice president of technology. "eBay has the right blueprint for next-generation software-as-a-service-based applications with our platform’s architecture, scale and reliability. Joint engineering on the Windows Azure platform appliance with eBay’s massive, high-volume systems allows Microsoft to demonstrate its leadership in this space and helps eBay improve our user experience through a flexible, scalable and cost-effective solution."

HP also said that it plans to work with Microsoft on a Windows Azure platform appliance that will be managed by HP Converged Infrastructure on-premises (although customers will also have the option of using HP data center hosting services). The Converged Infrastructure for the Windows Azure platform appliance will include HP Networking (opens in new tab) and HP ProLiant servers (opens in new tab), and could be deployed in HP Performance-Optimized Datacenters (opens in new tab).

Dell is also jumping on the Azure bandwagon, adding Microsoft's new appliance to its current Dell Services Cloud. "The Windows Azure platform appliance will allow Dell to deliver private and public cloud services for Dell and its enterprise, public, small and medium-sized business customers," the company said. "Dell will also work with Microsoft to develop a Dell-powered Windows Azure platform appliance for enterprise organizations to run in their data centers."

to learn more about the Windows Azure platform appliance, head here (opens in new tab).

11 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Humans think
    Is there any reason not to hate clouds, as a user and not as a developer?
    Reply
  • cryogenic
    Humans thinkIs there any reason not to hate clouds, as a user and not as a developer?Yes there is at least one: my hard drive failed this Saturday night, thank god for flicker, else I would have lost years of collected photos (call me sloppy for not having backups, but who does have backups for everything)

    I'm happy to have my bookmarks out there, my feeds also, my picture too, my games (steam), It means I can never loose by means of a unfortunate hard drive failure anymore.

    I know I's not ideal, but it's definitely convenient.

    Reply
  • Drag0nR1der
    They make life easier ... at least that's my experience using googles services... I like having my info available at any pc I log in to just by logging in to my google account, and I'm not paranoid enough to worry about the chance of someone breaking googles security and caring enough to check through my, lets face it, uninteresting data.
    Reply
  • frenetic88
    I have backups of everything its not that hard. You purchase a 2tb hard drive for less than $175. Have your choice of auto syncing programs. So whenever you add data to your picture,video,or music folder it backups automatically to your 2tb hard drive either immediately or on a schedule when you choose. Not that difficult and you dont have to worry about Google or Microsoft handling your data.
    Reply
  • shovenose
    frenetic88I have backups of everything its not that hard. You purchase a 2tb hard drive for less than $175. Have your choice of auto syncing programs. So whenever you add data to your picture,video,or music folder it backups automatically to your 2tb hard drive either immediately or on a schedule when you choose. Not that difficult and you dont have to worry about Google or Microsoft handling your data.YES but what if theres a fire...the backup drive would die too :)
    Reply
  • cadder
    Do you trust yourself of the "cloud" to take better care of your data?

    I trust myself, I don't trust the cloud. They could have disasters, policy changes, whatever and decide to erase your data without you knowing it. I at least have control over how many backups I make and where I put them for safe storage.
    Reply
  • mikem_90
    shovenoseYES but what if theres a fire...the backup drive would die too
    And that is where I tell all my business friends, "Get two backups, Swap them every week, and put the backup in a firesafe."

    Or hell, just invest in those USB firesafes. USB cord goes into a firesafe, data stays safe up to the rating of the safe.
    Reply
  • frenetic88
    cloud computing would centralize everyones data to one location. making it possible for everyones data to be collected from one location versus on your physical hard drive in your home.

    There are definetly pros to cloud computing but cons outweigh the pros by a lot.
    Reply
  • dEAne
    cloud computing is the future - But I believe in the future there are lots of problems too with that one location idea, hope the developer of that idea should take that into account.
    Reply
  • jsm6746
    now cloud hosting should hopefully become a bit more affordable... with more data centers utilizing azure, competition should increase lowering prices for consumers.

    scalability has always been an issue, and the only fix was to throw more money at it (buy more servers). with a cloud infrastructure, you should theoretically be able to get more serving power out of less hardware. buuuut, it could also lead to developers becoming lazy, and performance dropping in applications... which would go down the 'throw money at it' spiral...

    that, and i don't know how big of a pain maintaining azure would be... microsoft's products are quite notorious for requiring a lot of maintenance... hopefully an open source solution will step up to take on azure... the current issue is sql... >_
    Reply