Microsoft Aims To Cure Server-Hugging Engineers 285
1sockchuck writes "Microsoft wants the engineers in its labs to manage their servers remotely, and is moving development servers from a bevy of computer rooms in labs to a new green data center about 8 miles from its Redmond campus. 'I see today as a real transition point in our culture,' said Rob Bernard, chief environmental strategist at Microsoft, who acknowledged that the change will be an adjustment for veteran developers but will save money and energy use. Microsoft expects its customers will run their apps remotely in data centers, and clearly expects the same of its employees."
lol. (Score:5, Insightful)
welcome to 1970s unix, M$.
Wait what? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been remoting into my servers for years, because Microsoft Active Directory and some DNS services makes it so easy...
And Microsoft hasn't?
Microsoft Aims To Cure Server-Hugging Engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
A losing battle (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wait what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Could you please reboot xatl0as36? (Score:3, Insightful)
Another Microsoft marketing revolution (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing you can always remain impressed by Microsoft is how they manage to spin something that everyone has been doing for 20 years and talk about it as a trend.
SMEs are using Rackspace and the like, people are shifting stuff to Amazon Web Services and Microsoft's own strategy is about Azure and the cloud with virtualisation as "normal". In other words what Microsoft are doing here is well behind what they are talking about in the market as being normal.
But they've still managed to spin a press release out of shifting a bunch of servers into a Data Centre in the sort of move that wouldn't have got any press coverage 10 years ago. Brilliantly however they've added a "green" angle to it all thus turning what looks like a move they should have done ages ago into something worthy of comment.
Genius
You have to admire a press release in 2009 that can make shifting to a DC sound like a revolution.
Here's how it works (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nope, this is very 2000s (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Wait what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of my servers are ~10 floors over my head and I still have to call someone to let me into the room if I need physical access to them. My production servers are in another state and I doubt anyone on my team has ever seen them. There's a lot to be said about having physical control over the hardware when you want it, but there's also a lot to be said about making it someone else's job to make sure you don't need it. It also teaches you a more proactive approach to server management.
Cheap remote hardware management (Score:2, Insightful)
What I want in a remote control box:
* alternative boot media in case HD won't boot, e.g. bootable CD in the drive
* remote access to keyboard, video, and mouse
* remote access to power switch
All of these are available today. Now for my final requirements:
* Cheap
* Secure - only authorized users can get remote access
Ruh-roh.
Re:How is it possible ?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
With SUN servers, on the other hand, I've set up their serial ports back-to-back such that I could SSH into a box's 'partner', shut down the OS, wipe the drive and re-install the OS without setting foot in the server room (not that I ever needed to make use of that functionality, but it was reassuring to have it in place, given that the boxes were a 3-4 hour drive away and across an international border (US/Canada)).
I have no problems administering Unix/Linux boxes 200 miles away, but -- MS PR aside -- I'd want to keep a Windows box 'close to home'.
Re:Wait what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yup... I'm not really an administrator, but I have a couple of departmental web servers I need to run... and damnit, sometimes I gotta hit the button.
Re: Microsoft Aims To Cure Server-Hugging Engineer (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, not exactly. MS will just use RDP. It's a decent enough protocol on its own, and better than many others in its domain.
On the downside for MS, this move will likely mean a bigger focus to find and exploit holes in RDP. Until now, I don't think there have been many (in no small part because RDP has been relegated to internal terminal server use and remote in-house networking - Windows admins don't seem to like it all that much, at least compared to *nix admins who love SSH).
Re:Now it's remote, now it's local, repeat (Score:5, Insightful)
In the modern era we use this thing called a "remote access card" or an ip enabled pdu.
If you're at the datacenter and you're not:
A) Installing or Removing hardware
B) Physically rewiring something
C) Replacing a failed piece of hardware
You're doing it wrong.
Re:Wait what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Could you please reboot xatl0as36? (Score:2, Insightful)
IPMI is your friend. You can mount ISOs on bare hardware, and remotely push the power button.
Oh, yeah, gimmie, gimmie, gimmie. IPMI is one of the most underrated, underreported technologies around. IPMI 2.0 on a cheap Dell R300 is even better than Sun's LOM, which I loved. Remote serial port to the motherboard over ethernet, including access to the BIOS. OS integration with a simple driver gives you watchdog functionality & the ability to send a software three-finger-salute before having to resort to using the virtual reset button. It's really one of those things that, once you get used to it, makes you realize that things really sucked before you had it. 90% of the users of these servers probably don't even realize they have this capability; it doesn't exactly jump out & scream at you, you have to know what it is and that it's there.
Re:Nope, this is very 2000s (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank you for playing, but nope - there will be insufficient tax revenue to provide those to your kids.
Strangely... (Score:3, Insightful)
As a developer, I've often thought the inverse.
That being said, I think the outsourcing fever has largely run its course in development. More managers have come to learn the hard way that some development can be smart to outsource, but it's a lot less than the "nearly everything" than they thought five years ago.
Re:Nope, this is very 2000s (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, MS actually doing what unix did 40 years ago is very "2000s".
Of course, it will also suck, as Winders is completely not designed to be used remotely. Or by more than one person at a time. Even their so-called 'server' versions.
Re:Nope, this is very 2000s (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually in the last days of Rome there were very few wealthy people. Even the emperor himself lacked enough money to raise a decent army, which is why the barbarians so easily took-over France, Spain, and Italy.
The reason why Rome was so poor was because it had evolved into a Serfdom (slavery) where people were tied to the land, and there was little desire to engage in entrepreneurship. It devolved into a parasitic slothfulness where nobody felt any need to do anything, and the overall wealth in 400 A.D. was vastly smaller than that which had existed in 100 A.D.
Re:Could you please reboot xatl0as36? (Score:4, Insightful)
And if you're not at your desk the moment the computer catches fire, you now have a fire in your office, rather than in a data centre designed for containing fires (e.g. with those inert gas displacement systems).
(How often do computers catch fire anyway? I remember one, which was in a tiny building that was struck by lightning, but the fire didn't spread outside the case. We didn't know until someone tried to turn it on the next morning.)
Re:Nope, this is very 2000s (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nope, this is very 2000s (Score:1, Insightful)
Foolish jingoistic nonsense. (Score:4, Insightful)
This bravo-sierra about socialized medicine pisses me off. It's like all these people who claim to be "self made" and "nobody did anything for me". Bull. You stood on the back and shoulders of all those who came before you and made it possible for you to do what you did. Get over yourself.
As far as healthcare --
#1. Most of the worlds wealthy countries get by just fine with an actual socialized medicine structure, not the (finally) regulated capitalistic one currently being proposed in the US.
#2. We already spend more on healthcare than most of those countries, we just don't do it well.
#3. Our economy is currently crippled because people are afraid to change jobs, afraid to start businesses, and afraid to hire employees because of health care. (BTW: If you're anti-universal healthcare, you're anti-small business) -- I personally believe that if you removed the health care portability and availability restrictions from health care and did nothing else at all, our economy would grow so rapidly as to more than cover the costs of doing so. Cutting taxes is only one way to retire debt. The historically more effective method is to grow the economy and thus generate much more revenue. It worked quite well for both Regan and Clinton (then Bush turned all the money into bombs and bullets, but that's another argument).
#4. PLENTY of services are performed by the government quite well, as is appropriate. For example, water, sewer, sanitation and roadwork - while outsourced in most cases, are managed by local and state governments. I cite these first because they're more similar to the way health care will likely end up than are my next examples, which are decided more socialist in nature. Firefighting, Police, EMS, Schools, Medicare, Social Security, Flood Insurance, Banking Insurance, the National Parks service. All of these are best run by governments, even when the tasks are themselves subcontracted to bid.
Here's a reality check: The job of a corporation is to maximize profit. The larger a corporation gets, the more effective it can be at controlling market conditions in a way that favors it. That's why some regulation is required in order to prevent a cycle that leads to the monopolization or stagnation through collusion of a few top earning corporations.
What regulations are needed are quite simple:
#1 - Any health coverage plan which is offered, must be available to anyone who wishes to buy it. That is to say, if GlobalInsurance Corp. wants to sell an HMO for $xxx / month with a specific set of coverages, then they should be allowed to -- provided anyone can purchase it. Failing to do so, means that anyone who is above average in cost to insure, is uninsured and thus gets foisted on the taxpayer to have medical care provided at maximum expense in the least efficient manner possible.
#2 - Provide a tax credit of "xxx" dollars for any taxpayer who purchases a qualifying health insurance plan. To qualify, a plan would have to meet minimum coverage standards. Additional coverage could be purchased for more money, but the tax credit would remain the same amount regardless of how much more you spend.
#3 - Move regulation of the health insurance companies from the state to federal level. Currently, any insurance company who wants to sell a product, must tailor it to 50 different sets of rules and regulations, provide 50 different administrative processes, and so on. This makes the plans more expensive in all cases, and reduces the availability of competing plans in smaller markets.
Fix those three things, and the economy will completely open up -- oh, and people will be covered.
Personally, I'd like to see the whole thing be publicly managed, but I don't realistically see that happening the US any time soon.
Re:Nope, this is very 2000s (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually, it seems like both the things you outline above, and more traditional "liberal politics" (high taxes and giant social-welfare systems that reward the lazy and punish the hard-working), have the same end effect: no one bothers to work hard and do anything difficult or risky in order to create more wealth.
Re:Nope, this is very 2000s (Score:2, Insightful)