Port 25: The Open Source Community at Microsoft : Linux

Microsoft and Novell: Three Years and Going Strong

Peter Galli — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:19:00 GMT

Today, Microsoft and Novell marked the third anniversary of the collaboration agreement during a gathering of IT executives at the Society of Information Management SIMPosium 09 conference in Seattle.

As many customers are running heterogeneous IT environments and are looking to their software vendors to address their interoperability needs, over the past three years Microsoft and Novell have been working together to help these organizations future-proof their IT operations by optimizing mixed source IT infrastructures to better support today and prepare for tomorrow.

This collaboration and the resultant joint solutions have already enhanced reliability and efficiency within mixed IT systems environments. These technical solutions help customers centralize or streamline management functions, reduce internal support requirements, and enable greater interoperability without having to dedicate time and resources to devise workarounds.

The Microsoft-Novell Interoperability Lab also remains focused on addressing our customers' priority interoperability concerns, and this technical collaboration has already produced real-world solutions spanning Virtualization, Systems Management, Rich Media and Server Workload Validation.

Those customers who choose to use Windows and Linux together can leverage not only SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell, but also its support offerings, to ensure business continuity, while customers have added peace of mind as a result of the intellectual property (IP) provisions of the agreement between the two companies.

The success of this relationship is also underscored by steady sales, even in the current difficult economic environment: as of July 31, 2009, Novell has invoiced $226 million in certificate revenue, or 91percent of the total $247.5 million investment.

Microsoft and Novell have jointly recruited more than 475 new customers to receive certificates from Microsoft for three-year priority support subscriptions for Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) since the agreement was formalized in November 2006.

To date, more than 20 of these joint customers have also opted to take advantage of Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) Subscription with Expanded Support, which offers upgrades, updates and technical support for customers' existing paid and unpaid Linux deployments, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), while they transition to Novell SLES. Customers most commonly cite value and quality as key factors driving their choice of Novell over Red Hat.

Migration from Red Hat and other Linux offerings to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server also helps these customers optimize the capabilities of their IT systems for the future by allowing them to leverage real-world solutions like Microsoft Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center Operations Manager.

You can read more about all this in an article published to Microsoft PressPass, while a number of customer case studies are also available.

The Business of Open Source

Sandy Gupta — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:25:00 GMT

I am blogging from ApacheCon here in Oakland, where the Apache Software Foundation its celebrating its 10^th anniversary. Congratulations to the Apache community and cheers to the next ten!

Our focus at Microsoft is to make Windows Server a platform choice for both closed source and open source solutions. Many of our customers who run open source on our server platforms pick open source built in the "Apache Way". And so, participation in the Apache communities is important for us and we continue to support the Apache community through our ongoing platinum sponsorship of both the ASF and ApacheCon.

Microsoft also has a sizeable contingent on the ground here at ApacheCon that is delivering technical talks, presenting at BarCamp Apache, giving Lightening talks, participating in MeetUps and, more importantly, learning more about the projects in the Apache community so we can identify opportunities for greater participation.

Yesterday, I participated on a business panel titled: "The Business of Open Source - Power, Prestige, and Propulsion," which was moderated by Sally Khudairi and included Hewlett-Packard's Scott Lamons, Progress Software's Debbie Moynihan, and RedMonk's Michael Coté. The panel was incredibly engaging - in fact, one of the best panels I have ever participated in.

It was very dynamic, there was great audience interaction, and a range of interesting topics were covered. There was consensus on how customers are taking a pragmatic approach and using a mix of closed and open source software based on the value it has for their business and not based on a religious choice.

We also talked about how there is a lot of open source happening on Windows Server, and there is an opportunity to improve on best practices/understanding of open source development on Windows Server and sandbox infrastructure for all Apache projects. We also had a vibrant discussion regarding release cycles: how can open communities make it more attractive to corporations to offer project manager time so as to help move the project along, keep to deadlines, etc. I hope to be able to participate in more panels like this as there is so much to discuss!

As you know, Microsoft is already participating in many ASF projects like HBase, Stonehenge, QPid, and POI, and we are giving demos around these projects at our booth here as well as on the Eclipse plug-ins for Azure and Silverlight announced at the recent Eclipse Summit.

Enabling our customers to run open source solutions on Windows Server is important for us. It is great to see many business groups in Microsoft are now participating in Open Source projects in areas where they see there is a common value for our customers.

Congratulations once again to the entire Apache Community for a great decade, and here's looking forward to the next one!

Microsoft and ApacheCon 2009

Peter Galli — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:35:00 GMT

This week marks the 10^th anniversary of the Apache Software Foundation, which is being celebrated at the annual ApacheCon U.S. event. Microsoft is proud to be a platinum sponsor of both the ASF and ApacheCon 2009.

The Apache community is an important one for Microsoft and, as ASF President Justin Erenkrantz noted recently, Microsoft is now contributing to at least four Apache projects: HBase, Stonehenge, QPid, and POI.

"This really continues the significant sea change from within the organization - Microsoft now isn't afraid of having their employees contribute to Apache projects on Microsoft's time. Committers from Microsoft sign the same legal agreements that we require from all of our contributors. Microsoft's involvement in these specific communities range from having their employees being core contributors driving the project, to having folks contributing patches or ideas on our mailing lists, to even commissioning a third-party to contribute to our project as a work-for-hire. In other words, Microsoft is now actively participating within Apache projects in a broad range of way," Erenkrantz said.

A number of Microsoft folks representing the Interoperability, App Plat, DPE, Open Source Technology Center and Platform Strategy teams will be on-site and participating in a number of events.

We will also have a booth and be demoing:

In addition, Sandy Gupta, the Director of Platform Strategy, will participate in a Business Panel today, titled: "The Business of Open Source - Power, Prestige, and Propulsion," while Kent Brown and David Ingham will be giving a technical session on Project Stonehenge and Qpid.

Garrett Serack from the Open Source Technology Center gave two BarCamp sessions earlier this week ("How the heck do I get help from Microsoft?" and "The Road Less Travelled" about the new CoApp he has developed,) while David gave a BarCamp presentation on AMQP and Qpid and Kent did one on Stonehenge.

David also led a MeetUp about Qpid on Windows on Tuesday night; while Kent and the team will give a Lightening Talk on Thursday.

We look forward to meeting those of you attending ApacheCon, and please feel free to stop by the booth.

Another Great Step Forward for Hyper-V, Red Hat Certification

hjanssen — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:06:00 GMT

Hello again! It has been a pretty busy couple of months for us, and I wanted to give you an update on what we've been doing.

We just completed the first step in another major milestone for Hyper-V. As you can read from Mike Neil's Blog, Microsoft and Red Hat just completed certification in each other's virtualization program.

This means that customers now can deploy Microsoft Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux and a range of select applications, virtualized on Red Hat and Microsoft hypervisor virtualization software, knowing that the solutions will be supported by both companies.

This again demonstrates Microsoft's commitment to its virtualization platform, and the Hyper-V team's continuous investment in interoperability and heterogeneity through the datacenter.

And I am very proud that my team has been working very hard on getting the Red Hat certification completed.

But, for my group, this is just the first step: we worked on and got certified for Hyper-V running Red Hat in emulated mode and, now, the next step for us is to get certification for enlightened mode, the mode where the guest OS is Hyper-V aware,and can thus access Hyper-V functionality directly.

So, what is needed for enlightened mode? Well, to get that step, we needed to get the Linux Integration Drivers submitted to the Linux kernel, and then we needed those drivers officially accepted in a mainline kernel.

This has now happened as well, as we have been accepted into the mainline kernel. We are in Linux Kernel release 2.6.32, and that release is currently going through development and testing. Once that one is final and officially released, we can take the next step, which is to get those official Linux Integration Component drivers certified with Red Hat.

The timeline for that is not completely set in stone right now, and I do not know if there is an official expected release date for 2.6.32 as yet. But we should be able to move forward with the enlightened mode certification soon after the 2.6.32 final release.

And we are, of course, continuing to work on the Linux Integration components, adding new features and all that good stuff. But I will write more about those items in the near future.

Sam Ramji is leaving Microsoft

billhilf — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:47:00 GMT

It's been a while since I made an appearance on Port25. I felt it was important to provide some thoughts to the Port25 community on Sam Ramji's impending departure from Microsoft.

After many years helping to carry the open source software banner for the company, Sam is leaving Microsoft at the end of this month. You may have also heard that he has accepted the position of interim President of the CodePlex Foundation as well as a leadership position at a startup in California. (I'll let Sam and his new company share more details there.)

Sam joined my team three years ago to drive open source technical strategy. I have eagerly supported him as he passionately articulated a vision that Microsoft could coexist - and even thrive - in a heterogeneous IT world.

The perspectives on OSS at Microsoft have evolved to the point where Microsoft's open source strategy is no longer just locked in a single ‘lab' on campus - now OSS is an important part of many product groups and strategies across the company. We have become increasingly clear on where we work with open source - development methodologies, projects, partners, products and communities - and where our products compete with commercial open source companies or platforms. Today, there are engineering and business leaders across the company, myself included, looking at how to drive interoperability for customers and as a lever for new growth.

And, because we recognize the importance of having that strong internal advocate for open source, we are actively seeking someone to fill Sam's shoes at Microsoft.

We will not waver in our commitment to open source.

To my friend Sam: Best of luck to you and your family as you move on to your next great adventure, and THANK YOU for all of your efforts and passion.

The CodePlex Foundation Debuts

Peter Galli — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:30:00 GMT

Many of you will, by now, have heard about the formation of the CodePlex Foundation. In order to give you an in-depth look into the thinking behind Microsoft sponsoring the Foundation, I talked to Bill Staples, the General Manager for the Web Platform and Tools Team at Microsoft, a member of the interim CodePlex Foundation board and whose engineering team builds the Microsoft Web platforms.

"Before we dig into the details of the CodePlex Foundation, it is important to note that the Foundation is completely independent from Microsoft. The Foundation's mission to help the exchange of code and understanding between software companies and open source communities is really interesting to Microsoft. To help the Foundation fund its first year of operations, Microsoft is donating U.S. $1 million," Staples told me.

One thing that Staples was very clear about during our conversation was that the CodePlex Foundation will be complementary to the software ecosystem and is not designed to compete with any of the existing open source foundations. He hopes that the CodePlex Foundation will bring commercial and open source software development communities even closer.

"We need the community's involvement to make the CodePlex Foundation a success. We don't have all of the answers today. With today's soft launch, we hope to get critical input that will ensure the Foundation is a respected, neutral party that can enhance collaboration between participating companies, industry partners and open source communities. Over the coming weeks and months, we will be reaching out to many folks to get their feedback and to ask them to get involved with the Foundation," he said.

As such, an interim board has been established, with participation by both community and Microsoft individuals, and the plan is to work together with the open source community and other software companies over the next 100 days to really shape and define the foundation, he said. The intention going forward is to find the best candidates for the full-time board, with the expectation that the Foundation will be run by a combination of representatives from software companies and open source communities.

The interim board will also be creating a project governing process by which projects can be nominated and approved as part of the Foundation.

Microsoft's support of the Foundation is really the next logical step in our work with and engagement of open source software communities, and does not signal a shift in Microsoft's open source strategy, Staples said.

Over the past few years we have become increasingly supportive of open source, including sponsoring the Apache Software Foundation, contributing to the PHP Community, participating in Apache projects - including the Hadoop project and the Qpid project - and participation in various community events such as OSBC, OSCON, EclipseCon, PyCon, and the Moodle Conference.

"Our hope is that new opportunities will emerge for Windows and .NET developers to more actively participate in open source development through the CodePlex Foundation," Staples said.

You can read more about the new CodePlex Foundation at http://www.codeplex.org/.

Tuxera Signs File System IP Agreement with Microsoft

Peter Galli — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:21:00 GMT

Tuxera, a Finnish company that develops NTFS drivers, has entered into a file system IP agreement with Microsoft in the area of data portability for devices

The agreement gives Tuxera access to the exFAT specifications and source code, as well as testing and verification tools, and the company will develop exFAT drivers for host device manufacturers. The company will also join the Interoperability Vendor Alliance.

While this is also the first-ever file system IP agreement that Microsoft has signed with an independent software vendor, Tuxera joins a growing number of companies entering into the exFAT Program.

The Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT) is a new file system that is better adapted to the growing needs of mobile personal storage. It allows a common file system to be used across all platform and devices that implement exFAT, which allows for data portability.

It also handles not only large files, such as those used for media storage, but also enables seamless interoperability between desktop PCs and devices like portable media devices, cameras or even kitchen devices so that files can easily be copied between desktop and device.

"Adding exFAT into our product portfolio is the logical step to help our customers to solve their interoperable file systems needs. Microsoft supports exFAT as the first-choice for many Windows interoperability needs including flash memories in consumer devices. exFAT is for example an integral part of SDXC formats, and the driver is good for flash drives, including devices that use SDXC cards," says Tuxera CTO Szabolcs Szakacsits

For his part, Mikko Välimäki, the company's CEO, believes that his company's ongoing collaboration with Microsoft ensures seamless file system interoperability into the future.

"We were the first to offer exFAT drivers based on our first-hand access to specifications and source code.We are also licensing exFAT drivers to device manufacturers, we are joining Microsoft's partner program, and have also announced a new product: Tuxera exFAT for Embedded Systems, which will be first available for Linux, but we can also port the product to proprietary platforms," he says.

The IP agreement the company has signed with Microsoft is consistent with Tuxera's business model, which is to integrate and license commercial, high-performance versions of its file system drivers to customers, as well as to provide support, maintenance, and product updates, Välimäki says.

ElegantCode Cast Interview

Peter Galli — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:09:00 GMT

David Starr, a Most Valuable Professional for Visual Studio Team System and who runs ElegantCode Cast, a podcast series off his Website, recently conducted an interview with Sam Ramji and me.

It is a comprehensive interview about all things open source at Microsoft. As David says: "Sam explains that the open source community within Microsoft is thriving and goes far beyond CodePlex or EntLib source code. Who knew developers in Redmond wrote Java code? Or that Windows runs PHP like a champ? Or that Microsoft has contributed code to Linux?"

You can find more information on the interview - and download it - here.

Virtualizing Free Linux Distributions in Windows Server 2008 R2

Peter Galli — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Jason Perlow, a columnist over at ZDNet, has written a comprehensive review on virtualizing free Linux distributions in Windows Server 2008 R2.

In his Tech Broiler column, Perlow notes that the updated Hyper-V bare-metal hypervisor virtualization layer in Microsoft's upcoming Windows Server 2008 R2, which is due to be released August 14th to MSDN and Technet customers, now has support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3.

"Additionally, Linux support and performance has greatly improved over the initial Hyper-V release. Microsoft also recently released its Hyper-V Linux Integration Components (Linux ICs) under the GPLv2 Open Source License," Perlow says.

The Linux ICs for Hyper-V, which are in Release Candidate status, provide synthetic device drivers that enhance I/O and networking performance when Linux OSes are virtualized under Hyper-V.

"The source code for the Linux IC's were accepted into the Linux Driver Project and should become part of the Linux Kernel within two subsequent releases and code merges - 2.6.32 is expected to be when they will be integrated, and all Linux distributions using that kernel code base going forward should be Hyper-V enabled out of the box. Yes, you heard that correctly, Microsoft is now an official Linux Kernel contributor," Perlow says.

You can read the rest of Perlow's column here.

MindTouch: Open Source Collaboration Built on .NET

Aaron Fulkerson — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 18:05:00 GMT

It has been a while since I last guest wrote at Port25, which is always a pleasure.

Today, I am writing about the latest MindTouch software release, codename Minneopa, which introduces three new innovative capabilities: the ability to capture and collaboratively edit video, the easy packaging of applications built on MindTouch for distribution, and the new capability to stage content.

However, if you are new to MindTouch, allow me to introduce the product. The canned statement reads as follows:

MindTouch Inc. is changing the way businesses share information, consume content, and collaborate. The company's open source platform, MindTouch 2009, combines the ease of use of a wiki with the scalability, security and integration capabilities of an enterprise portal, connecting enterprise systems, databases, web services, and Web 2.0 apps to create collaborative networks.

The gist, however, is that MindTouch offers an easy to use platform that looks a lot like a wiki, but behaves more like a portal with rapid application development capabilities. The architecture is unique and quite innovative because MindTouch is implemented in C# on .NET (or Mono) and consists of the following components:

A decoupled PHP client that provides a wiki like interface for collaboration, document management, mashups, and for creating composite and situational applications
Composition of more than 120 ReSTful web services
A web service orchestration engine
An acess control layer
An extensible HTTP message bus

To really appreciate the capabilities of MindTouch it is best to watch a demo as we' are truly defining a new category in collaboration.

This new Minneopa release of MindTouch buoy's our efforts to help those who are building collaborative networks on MindTouch. This is especially useful for developers, IT workers and business users to package their enterprise dashboards, composite applications and mashups for distribution.

For the collaborative video capabilities, we partnered with Kaltura, the developer of the world's first open source online video platform. The integration with Kaltura gives MindTouch users the built-in ability to collaborate, edit, publish and syndicate video directly within MindTouch. End users can record video and have multiple parties edit while retaining a complete version history -- all within a MindTouch page.

Download MindTouch Core, the free and open source edition that runs on Windows Server with IIS, Linux or even with a VMware virtual image, which should run in hypervisor without issue. Or download the native Windows Server version of MindTouch 2009, which is packaged in an easy to install Microsoft Installer (MSI) and supports Windows Server 2003/2008.

With the commercial edition, MindTouch 2009, users also benefit from a rich set of desktop tools, more features and a collection of adapters to popular enterprise systems and databases.

Introduction to the Linux Integration Components

hjanssen — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:02:00 GMT

Well, here is blog number two. The initial shock has worn off a bit I hope.

The feedback I have received so far has been pretty positive. This really all started in October of 2008 in a meeting with Mike Neil (GM of Hyper-V) and Tom and myself from the Open Source Technology Center (OSTC) at Microsoft.

In that meeting I proposed to Open Source the Linux Integration Components and contribute them to the Linux Kernel. And, secondly, to have the OSTC continue contributing to these IC's after they made it to the Linux Kernel. Well after some discussion, we all agreed that this was the right thing to do.

And so the whole process started inside of Microsoft. Hey, what can I say, we like to push the envelope a bit here at the OSTC, and we have a reputation to uphold!

Before I go on, I again wanted to thank the Kernel community (specifically Greg Kroah-Hartman) in helping us with explaining and guiding us through community process. It gave us a very nice jumpstart to get all of this going, and provided the groundwork for a good working relationship with the community.

I have also seen a few patches already submitted by community members, which is excellent! (Moritz Muehlenhoff gets major kudos for the first community contributed patch ) I will start submitting patches myself next week once the initial submission has stabilized a bit.

It is my plan to use the kernel as my primary development area, and of course I will continue to provide Greg with my patches. My first step is to clean up the code to make sure it fulfills all Kernel coding standards and requirements.

So, here is blog number two: what are the Linux Integration Components?

1. Overview of Linux VM with ICs

Linux Integration Components(IC) take advantages of the VMBUS and synthetic devices provided in Hyper-V to enhance the performance and usability of Linux guests running on Windows servers.

Figure: Conceptual Architecture overview of Linux guest & Hyper-V. Linux IC modules are painted in yellow color.

Glossary:

VSP: Virtualization Service Provider.

VSC: Virtualization Service Client.

VMBus: Data channel between VSP and VSC.

2. Linux IC modules -- VMBus and VSCs

Communication with parent partition is done through Linux VMBus
VSCs are the Linux drivers for synthetic devices (SCSI, IDE, and Ethernet) provided by Hyper-V.
They translate between Linux I/O requests and Hyper-V VSC commands
Devices are registered with Linux Driver Model (LDM)
Every VSC module contains two portions:
o Driver Interface Mapper (DIM): Released as open source

This portion of the VSC component interacts with the Linux kernel like a regular Linux device driver.

o VSC Core: Released as Open Source

The core portion of the VSC module is implemented based on the protocol of the corresponding VSP at Hyper-V host. The VSC core interacts with VSP via the VMBus interface.

3. Descriptions for each Linux IC module

3.1 VMBus driver (hv_vmbus.c)

The VMBus driver is a Linux kernel module. It provides both a lightweight bus driver and library functionality. As a bus driver, it registers with Linux Driver Model framework (LDM) to provide simple bus and device integration and device tree integration (sysfs). As a library, it implements the VMBus channel protocol and provide an abstraction of channel to its clients (Disk and Network VSCs).

3.2 StorVSC driver (hv_storvsc.c)

The Storage VSC interacts with the Windows Storage VSP. The "wire" protocol defined by the storage VSP determines how a VSC interacts with it. The Linux Storage VSC (LSVSC) basically abstracts the Linux I/O stack from needing to understand the Storage VSP's protocol. At the upper-edge of the LSVSC, it talks to the Linux SCSI subsystem. The Linux SCSI subsystem sees the LSVSC as a SCSI low-level driver (LLD) in Linux parlance. It passes SCSI requests (scsi_cmnd) to LSVSC which in turn converts them into the "wire" format understood by the Windows Storage VSP (VSTOR_PACKET). The bottom-edge of the LSVSC talks to Linux VMBus (LVMBUS) which in turn talks to the Windows VMBus to route the packets to the Storage VSP.

3.3 BlkVSC driver (hv_blkvsc.c)

BlkVSC (BlockVSC) supports "fast boot" and fast access to IDE disks. To enable enlightened IDE support for enhancing the performance of Linux when virtualized on Windows, a separate BlockVSC component is used as a Linux block device driver. Like StorVSC, the BlockVSC component is comprised of an upper edge wrapper that interfaces with the Linux block layer and a lower-edge through the infrastructure modules. The infrastructure modules with Hyper-V through the Linux VMBus.

3.4 NetVSC driver (hv_netvsc.c)

The network VSC send and receive network traffic between a Linux guest and Hyper-V host which has direct connection to physical network. The mechanism that this is used to accomplish is the Remote NDIS (RNDIS) protocol. Thus the communication that flows between the VSP and the VSC primarily happens over the RNDIS protocol which then is packaged and forwarded as payload over to the other side over NetVSP / VMBus protocol.

4. Linux IC's, Location in the Kernel tree

Hopefully you now have a better idea what they are. But where in the kernel tree can you find them?

Well, you can find sources in linux-next tree in /drivers/staging/hv directory.

And the git repository you can find them in right now is:

git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/sfr/linux-next.git

Or give this command (assuming your system is set up correctly) to download this repository to your machine:

git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/sfr/linux-next.git <your local name>

Since the IC's are part of the kernel now, we follow the normal community process of getting this all migrated into Linus mainline kernel.

Getting Ready for OSCON 2009

Peter Galli — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:13:00 GMT

I'm back at the San Jose at the McEnery Convention Center after attending the Community Leadership Summit this weekend, where we are setting up the Microsoft booth in preparation for the formal opening of the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) tomorrow.

In addition to our booth presence, where a number of product groups will be represented, including folk from the Education, External Research, Open Source Technology Center, Interoperability and CodePlex parts of the company, all of whom will be giving technical demos and chatting to attendees, including the Hyper-V Linux Integration Components and the Microsoft Live Services Plug-in for Moodle, both of which are licensed under the GPL v2

The booth will offer a lounge area, where attendees can play any of a number of Xbox games, including Guitar Hero and Halo 3.

In addition to having a booth on the show floor, Tony Hey, the Corporate Vice President for Microsoft External Research, will deliver a keynote address on Thursday July 23, titled "Open Tools and Services on Microsoft Platforms," while Erik Meijer, one of Microsoft's Principal Architects, will also give a keynote talk on Friday July 24 and titled "Fundamentalist Functional Programming."

Following his keynote, Erik is also presenting on using the LiveLabs Reactive Framework to democratize the cloud.

Vijay Rajagopalan, a Principal Architect in Microsoft's Interoperability group, is also giving a talk on Wednesday July 22 in the Product and Services Track, titled "Interoperability - Build Mission Critical Applications in PHP, Ruby, Java and Eclipse Using Microsoft Software & Services."

We are also hosting a rountable panel that will look at Microsoft and PHP, and include IDC analyst Al Hilwa, Garret Serack from the OSTC, Aaron Fulkerson of MindTouch and John Keagy of GoGrid.

So, feel free tostop by the booth, We look forward to talking to you!

More on the Hyper-V Linux Integration Components

hjanssen — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:24:00 GMT

Well, there is no easy way to say this, so I am simply going to start this blog with the following line.

Microsoft just submitted source code for the Hyper-V Linux Integration Components to the Linux Kernel Community Under GPL v2.

Well, there's a conversation starter! Are you still all sitting in your chairs???

Let me summarize:

Yes, our device driver code was released directly to the Linux Kernel
We released the code under GPL v2
We are working with Greg Kroah-Hartman so it is ready for the next release of the Linux Kernel, version 2.6.32
We will continue to update the driver code to enhance interoperability on an ongoing basis, but it's our hope that other developers in the community will find the code useful and worthy of collaboration.

Fallen off your chair yet?

Microsoft developed the Linux device drivers to enhance the performance of Linux when virtualized on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. My team and I were responsible for testing and validating the driver components that were contributed for this first release.

Now, my team and I will be responsible for further developing this code going forward. (Yes, that does mean that I have gone back to leverage my very early roots as a Kernel programmer. Let the world be warned!!!!). Haiyang Zhang has been working on this code with me, and he will continue to work with me on this going forward.

When I joined Microsoft three years ago, the primary reason was to put my money where my mouth was. You see complaining about something is easy, but it becomes a little more complicated when somebody offers you the opportunity to be part of helping change what you have complained about.

So, three years after taking the job that made me put my money where my mouth was (and still often is!), I for one am EXTREMELY happy to see one of the most significant fruits of our work here in the Microsoft Open Source Technology Center (OSTC). But I have to say, even I would have been hard-pressed to think three years ago that we would consider contributing to the Linux Kernel.

As you know, two years ago Microsoft announced a partnership with Novell, and Tom Hanrahan ran the lab on a day to day basis till about 9 months ago. Since then I have had the pleasure of running the technical side of the execution of that lab under Tom Hanrahan for the OSTC. One of the primary tasks for that lab is to make sure Windows runs well on top of XEN and Linux runs well on top of Hyper-V, and we do this in very close cooperation with Novell.

We do most of this work as an extension to Mike Neil's Hyper-V team.

As part of this, we were asked to help develop and maintain a crucial part of this work called the Linux Integration Components. This code is designed so that Linux can run in an "enlightened mode" on top of Hyper-V (enlightened mode is roughly the Hyper-V equivalent of "paravirtualized mode" for the Xen hypervisor). Without this driver code, Linux can run on top of Windows, but without the same high performance levels. It is this device driver code that we are releasing today, directly to the Linux Kernel.

We're not talking a few hundred lines of code here; we're talking about roughly 20,000 lines of code.

Is this a Dump and Run from Microsoft? Absolutely not! We plan to enhance the functionality of this code, and we will continue to work with the Linux Community to support the drivers and to ensure continued interoperability.

As you can imagine, this was the result of a lot of hard work: Hiyang Zhang, who has been co-writing this code; Hashir Abdi, who has been testing all this stuff; as well as Vijay Tewari and Mike Sterling from the Hyper-V team who have been taking care of the Hyper-V side.

And last, but certainly not least, Greg Kroah-Hartman, who has been helping me to make all this code land in the right area in the kernel. He has patiently worked to help me correct my obvious mistakes and to get the code contributed into the kernel.

So where are we today? Well, Greg Kroah-Hartman will make the code visible to the outside world today. (For those who want to get a head start, the code will sit under <your kernel tree>/drivers/staging/hv). After it becomes visible, I will write a few more blogs this week that should help you to understand, build and run them.

The titles I am thinking for these blogs are:

Where do the Linux ICs reside in the kernel tree and how do I build them?

And

How do I install, configure and run the Linux IC's?

I had almost forgotten how wrapped up you can be once you start writing code again. So I have not gotten much sleep this past week, but it has been a joy to get back into coding again!

Microsoft Releases Device Driver Code to the Linux Community

Peter Galli — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:48:00 GMT

In what many may see as a surprising move, Microsoft today released 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community under the popular General Public Licence v2.

The code includes three Linux device drivers, and has been submitted to the Linux kernel community for inclusion in the Linux tree.

The drivers will be available to both the Linux community and customers, and will enhance the performance of the Linux operating system when virtualized on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V.

In an article posted to Microsoft's PressPass site, Tom Hanrahan, director of Microsoft's Open Source Technology Center, notes that this is a significant milestone because it's the first time the company has released code directly to the Linux community. "Additionally significant is that we are releasing the code under the GPLv2 license, which is the Linux community's preferred license," he said.

In the same article, Sam Ramji, senior director of Platform Strategy at Microsoft, points out that Microsoft communities and open source communities are growing together, which is ultimately of benefit to customers. An example of this is the Linux community, which has built a platform used by many customers. "So our strategy is to enhance interoperability between the Windows platform and many open source technologies, which includes Linux, to provide the choices our customers are asking for," he said.

Ramji also alluded to the fact that people are often surprised when they hear how much open source community and development work is happening across Microsoft, which is largely due to the fact that these collaborations focus more on getting the work done and engaging with the various communities on a one-to-one basis and less about promoting them.

One example of how Microsoft participates with, and contributes to, open source is its relationship with the PHP Community. The company's involvement includes contributing to the PHP Engine, optimizing PHP 5.3 to perform strongly on Windows, and working to improve the performance of numerous PHP applications on Windows. Then there is the ongoing participation in various Apache Software Foundation projects, such as Hadoop, Stonehenge and QPID.

"In short, we're focused on building sustainable business strategies for open source at Microsoft ... we see open source playing into three key areas, one of which is the use of 'inbound' open source and the open source development model to make our software development processes more efficient."

"Good examples of this include what we did recently with jQuery in Visual Studio 2008, the implementation of OpenPegasus connectors and adaptors into System Center Operations Manager, and work that the Microsoft High Performance Computing team did with the Argonne National Lab (ANL) to source its MPICH2 implementation, which is a portable implementation of the Message Passing Interface (MPI) used in cluster computing and super computers," Ramji said.

We'll be posting a number of other articles on the release of the device driver code to the Linux community over the week, several of which will be penned by Hank Janssen from Microsoft's Open Source Technology Center, so look out for those.

Silverlight 3 Hits the Street

Peter Galli — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:19:00 GMT

Microsoft Silverlight 3 is now available for download, as is the Release Candidate for Expression Blend, while the associated Expression 3 tool suite will be available within 30 days.

This media and rich Internet application solution, along with Microsoft Visual Studio, provides a highly collaborative development and design environment that simplifies the process of delivering engaging user experiences.

Silverlight remains a free runtime that almost anyone can use to deliver great Web experiences. You can find more info about this release on Scott Guthrie, the corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Platform at Microsoft's blog, while Program Manager Tim Heuer's blog has a lot of detail on all the new features.

Microsoft is also working with the open source community to ensure that Silverlight content is available to them. Earlier this year, Moonlight 1.0 was released. Moonlight is an open source project that gives Linux users access to Microsoft Silverlight content, and is available for all major Linux distributions, including openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Fedora, Red Hat, and Ubuntu.