Azure HDInsight on Ubuntu Linux brings Microsoft closer to hybrid cloud

Grazed from CBR. Author: James Nunns.

Ubuntu has been selected by Microsoft as its first Linux-based Azure offering. Microsoft’s cloud offering will run its Hadoop-based Big Data service offering, HDInsight, on Ubuntu and Hortonworks. Microsoft’s decision is backed by 20% of virtual machines on Azure being Linux, and VM Depot has more than 1,000 Linux images, most of these being Ubuntu.

The goal for the companies is to help enable hybrid cloud computing, it aims to achieve this by increasing the choice of on-premise or on-cloud computing for customers. T.K. Ranga Rengarajan,corporate vp, Data Platforms, Microsoft, said: "The general availability of Azure HDInsight on Ubuntu Linux, which includes a service level agreement guarantee of 99.9% uptime and full technical support for the entire stack with the choice of running Hadoop workloads on Hortonworks Data Platform in Azure HDInsight using Ubuntu or Windows." HDInsight on Ubuntu helps to make it easier to move on-premise Hadoop deployments to the cloud, while it also aims to bring together customers running the Hortonworks Data Platform on premise, in their data centres.