Windows Azure Virtual Machine (1) concept

I've already covered the benefits of Windows Azure PAAs in the previous chapters, summarizing the following:

1. Application-oriented, not the IT base. Microsoft, as a cloud computing provider, lets users focus more on building good software architectures without having to think about the underlying issues, such as networks, operating systems, virtualization and other IT infrastructures. Another example: PaaS (Platform as a Service) allows cloud computing providers to automatically upgrade the operating system, install patches, and on the IaaS cloud platform, upgrade the operating system, the installation of patches requires users to manually configure and upgrade, timeliness, reliability is not high. With PAAs, cloud-computing vendors and software developers can take their own responsibilities and focus on issues within their own domain.

2. Elasticity. Windows Azure has the worker role and web role. Web role can respond to front-end events, and worker role can respond to requests sent by Web role. This architecture makes the cloud computing architecture more resilient while ensuring that the front end responds quickly.

IaaS (infrastructure as a service) in the cloud computing classification, for IT infrastructure services, allowing users to deploy their own needs of the operating system, middleware and runtime. For traditional business software, the time and effort spent migrating to an IaaS platform is much smaller. IaaS is more suitable for traditional applications.

Microsoft has previously launched a VM role to implement some of the IaaS features. But VM role is far from enough for a real IaaS platform. In June 2012, Windows Azure's latest support for IaaS, Microsoft introduced the virtual Machine feature to enable Windows Azure to support IaaS.

What updates and improvements did the virtual machine do compared to VM role? Let's take a look at the following table:

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Virtual machine can support the following operating systems:

Windows

Microsoft BizTalk Server R2 CTP (64-bit) on Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1

SQL Server Evaluation Edition (64-bit) on Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1.

Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, August

Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, July

Windows Server, August 2012

Linux:

Openlogic CentOS 6.2

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS

Ubuntu Server 12.04.1

OpenSUSE 12.1