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$.
Nope, this is very 2000s (Score:2, Interesting)
This is all about outsourcing.
The more they can develop and use technologies where engineers don't need to be near the machines, the easier it is to fire everyone in western countries and hire people from India, etc...
Not that this necessarily was a bad thing. They do need the work just as much (or well, probably a lot more) than we do.
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Couldn't they just locate some dev servers in India, like companies have been doing for over a decade now?
There will always be some development work that must be done locally, and some can be done from across the world just as easily. It all depends on the task and how much business interaction is required.
Re:Nope, this is very 2000s (Score:4, Funny)
Couldn't they just locate some dev servers in India
We tried that but what we saved in development costs we lost extending all our cat5 . . .
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I knew I should have been a programmer. As each year goes by my hardware skills become less-and-less useful, because they keep moving the equipment to remote locations and handing-over control to programmers or administrators (or lawyers).
Oh well. (signs up for college). Time to earn that second degree (and maybe score with the ladies for a change).
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As someone who is getting into development, I wouldn't say it's a great career choice. I don't think we're any safer from the outsourcing then the hardware guys. I'm in it because i love it, but otherwise I'd get out.
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.
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I knew I should have been a programmer. [snip] Time to earn that second degree (and maybe score with the ladies for a change).
Yep, those babes sure do go for the code geeks!
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Why don't companies build better products to increase profits? Software in general is in dire need of better quality.
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Because better products don't increase profits per se. Getting paid more than you spend increases your profits.
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But that doesn't mean that they should steal our jobs to get it. No reason why they can't develop things in their own country instead of taking our stuff. (how many Americans go and take stuff from India?) Mod me down if you wish, but the truth is that outsourcing only benefits shareholders and upper management. How long do you will it be until the Indian workers who got our jobs get cast aside by the same companies when someone
Re:Nope, this is very 2000s (Score:4, Interesting)
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Thank you for playing, but nope - there will be insufficient tax revenue to provide those to your kids.
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: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.
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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.
Right, but what caused it to become that way? Wealth doesn't just disappear for no reason.
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Of course you can. Remote management consoles have been around since NT4, and WMI [wikipedia.org] has been standard since Windows 2000. You still may need remote desktop access for GUI applications though.
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?
Re:Wait what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wait what? (Score:4, Informative)
I remote into my servers too, but do you really want to drive eight miles away to diagnose a potential hardware issue, or relinquish physical control to a dedicated hardware monkey?
I already do if I'm working on a server at night and it becomes unresponsive or fails to reboot properly. Work is about 7 miles from home. If the server isn't back up within 10 mins of a restart, it's off to the office to figure out why.
During working hours the only time I need physical access to anything is when I'm changing the backup tapes...that's once a week. I do everything through RDP and VNC.
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.
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In a virtualized server environment, the problem of keeping the hypervisors up isn't yours. The problem of keeping the virtual servers running, may or may not be yours, but if it is, you will have a control client access layer that is akin to access to the HW.
C//
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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.
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but do you really want to drive eight miles away to diagnose a potential hardware issue
I get around this by keeping the hardware close at hand but running my servers in VM's - where they reside is anyones guess!
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If you work in a large company, you might already have that situation. Because the server room is considered too sensitive to let everybody who feels qualified tinker with the servers. My last job was in a medium sized company in the 100-200 employee range, and even there the server room was locked up. With access only for the dedicated hardware monkeys.
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Server grade equipment shouldn't be having hardware issues anymore not detected by the management module. In something like a POWER BladeCenter if you have power to the chassis at all, you can do nearly everything remotely you can do standing in the room. Unless it has a physical problem it'll run forever like that.
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Potential Hardware issue?
In my experience hardware works or does not. Generally if a server is always on, then when it fails if completely fails. If it has failed it would probably take about a day to figure out what went wrong and replace it. This is a strange coincidence, because for one day of my time you can buy a new server.
When servers fail, they are usually now thrown in the bin since figuring out what failed is not worth the time a skilled employee will spend on it. Hardware is now so cheap, that di
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Data center is about 21 minutes drive from my current location.
Is that with a following wind?
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Maybe that will fix "reboot" as the first step of every MS diagnostic routine!
When touching the hardware is expensive it makes you take planning your code and vetting your errors more seriously... THAT is the point of the move.
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This isn't about IT, which is already remotely administered in datacenters around the world. Product groups generally have their own labs containing servers for running builds, tests, etc. These are also remotely administered, including things like installing OS builds. The new datacenter is a way to consolidate these small labs.
Good idea (Score:5, Funny)
I want to be as far away from Windows as possible.
1985 called (Score:5, Funny)
they want their tty back
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Well, in their defense, they were a bit late, but they eventually released real mode Windows for Workgroups (at least for those of us who had NetBEUI installed), didn't they? Oh, wait ...
I want my life back Bill Gates!
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I read this as "they want their titty back". Oh my. The net has effectively turned me into a female body addict. http://domai.com/ [domai.com] Ooops that slipped right out.
Green Data Center??? (Score:4, Funny)
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At least this idea was previously discussed here in 2008 [slashdot.org]
Re:Green Data Center??? (Score:5, Funny)
How can a concrete, environmentally controlled, power sucking, place people drive to be considered green?
Spraypaint.
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How can a concrete, environmentally controlled, power sucking, place people drive to be considered green?
http://advice.cio.com/michael_bullock/internaps_new_data_center_built_green_built_right [cio.com]
Disclaimer: Internap is my employer.
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That's pretty cool & I host with Internap.
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Microsoft Aims To Cure Server-Hugging Engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
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If they did that, it would be hard for them to justify charging per seat for an MSTSC license.
A losing battle (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's how it works (Score:2, Insightful)
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a whole new crop springs up in wild
The trick is to switch the fuses after the server move so they barley can run a workstation on each outlet.
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Sounds like it would cause a lot of lost work as those breakers on the edge of tripping decided they were going to trip (due to some small surge or whatever)
Also in many places computers aren't the only things that need to be plugged in.
Personally I think development servers are fine under the devs desks. Easy for the devs to deal with if they fuck something up. Low density so no real cooling problem and if the power goes out in the office the dev servers wouldn't be much use anyway.
Servers in the wild (Score:3, Funny)
Perfect application for VMWare (Score:3, Informative)
This sort of thing is a perfect application for VMWare. Create some interface where engineers can order up a server, and poof, a cloned vmware system is provided to them. Then they can have console-level access to that single server and do whatever they want with it. When they're done they hit a button, and poof it is disposed of. Since these kinds of development systems tend to sit around idle most of the time you can oversubscribe the hardware.
If you must use physical servers then there are lots of remote administration options. Of course good old RDP works just fine for 95% of the tasks. If you're actually working on OS-level changes then you might need a way to remotely boot off of CDs and get remote console-level access. Lots of server-grade solutions provide this kind of capability. VMWare does as well.
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Assuming the machines are only used for development purposes then one option is to get MSDN subscriptions for all the developers who will use the group of dev servers. MSDN subscriptions are licensed by user not by install.
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Yeah. Right. Seriously. Do you really think Microsoft will become a huge case for VMWare?
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http://src.enomaly.com/ [enomaly.com]
Now it's remote, now it's local, repeat (Score:2, Flamebait)
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The reality of the situation is one $15/hour NOC monkey can effectively be "hands on" support for hundreds.. if not thousands.. of machines. Concentrating machines in one place has a lot of advantages of scale, including security, power, and cooling savings. The costs saved can easily pay for 24 hours of cheap "hands on."
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.
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Indeed. I am surprised at the amount of comments about booting BSOD etc. I thought that people here would about remote control.
It's not rocket science anymore. I have managed about 100 servers on a remote location for a couple of years and only had to visit them once or twice every month. If I had to install new servers, I would just go there and install the hardware and then head back to the office for the software installation.
Most of the time they should just have a standard image installed but when I ne
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KVM over ip.. (Score:2)
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Sometimes, a real live human needs to walk out to the machine and toggle the power. Layer upon layer of clever hardware abstraction can help (usually at the cost of performance), but at the end of the day, you still need someone to go flip the switch occasionally.
or get network-connected power buttons and video cards
Network connected video cards rock - Locally. Move beyond the local network segment, though and I hope you
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Sometimes, a real live human needs to walk out to the machine and toggle the power. Layer upon layer of clever hardware abstraction can help (usually at the cost of performance), but at the end of the day, you still need someone to go flip the switch occasionally.
Sure occasionally they do, the trick is to
1: reduce it to a level that it is rarely a problem
2: seperate the tasks of dealing with a hardware issue (which may require physical access even in a virtualised environment) and rebooting/reimaging becaus
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.
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Obvious quote (Score:2)
Expects their customers to run Visual Sourcesafe, I hope they expect the same from their engineers.
Virtualization! (Score:2)
Of course, Microsoft will want to run its virtualization on Windows so that could pose a problem for them.
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In our data center we've moved a lot of the Windows workloads to virtual servers. That gives you "the console" and "the hardware" even when you're remote, so it's very nice.
IP KVM called. They want to know what year it is!
Too easy one... (Score:5, Funny)
How do you cure engineers from loving their servers?
By installing Windows on them! *BA-DUM-TISH*
I'm here all night! Try the cake!
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.
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how do you reboot it ? (Score:2, Informative)
Server-Hugging? (Score:4, Funny)
What could POSSIBLY go wrong? (Score:2)
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Remote controlled power strips, remote consoles (like RealWeasel [realweasel.com] or HP iLO), and so on mean remote PC management is almost as convenient as remote server management. It's not serial consoles, but it's workable.
OS group (Score:2)
I bet the OS group gets to keep their hardware. While windbg via named pipe is cute, the last thing you need during OS/driver bringup is more complexity. I tend to do just find with IPMI/ILO/IP-PDU/RS-232/etc for remote management during kernel work, but there are some weeks where I have to walk into the lab 100 times a day to move a card/cable, or press the reset button because the particular machine isn't on the IP-PDU and the buggy IPMI card got confused due to a PCIe bus hang or whatnot.
I wonder... (Score:2)
What?? (Score:2)
what software do they use for remote access? (Score:2)
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If a part goes crispy, you can smell it, and sometimes hear it. You can get to the server in time to avert what could be a larger problem if something were to catch fire. I'll take sitting by my equipment, thanks...
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.)
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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
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That's what the data center monkeys are for.
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You can always flag that box for maintenance and move to the next one
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I actually develop an appliance - Uplogix - that hooks into the serial ports on your devices. We hook into pretty much everything DRAC, ILOM, ILO, IPMI, and the plain old serial console. I can forward ports. I can launch a remote instance of firefox with access to my remote network. I can ssh. I can control power controllers in case the remote access card hangs.
I only go into the office twice a week and almost never have to walk into the server room. There's no reason with modern technology to have to visit
Re:How is it possible ?!? (Score:4, Funny)
> The company says the consolidation, which physically separates Microsoft engineers from the servers running their test code
So, if engineers are fare away from the server running their test code, how do they press the reset button when the server shows the BSOD ?!?
They've found a way to punch servers in the face over standard TCP/IP.
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They've found a way to punch servers in the face over standard TCP/IP.
Ahhh...I see Chuck Norris has now taken up software development.
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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
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That's why the server sit is only 8 miles away.. It's close enough that you can drive over and hit 'reset' once a day, if you have to.
That seems like a lot of wasted gas, all those cars going back and forth between the DC and the development campus. Maybe they should use an express shuttle to get more employees going back and forth at a time, and save on fuel.
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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'.
An thanks to ILOM, DRAC, et al, I have no problem looking after Windows machines on the other side of the planet. What's your point ?
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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'.
An thanks to ILOM, DRAC, et al, I have no problem looking after Windows machines on the other side of the planet. What's your point ?
"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer" ?