Port 25: The Open Source Community at Microsoft : PHP, Linux

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!

Integrate Your IT Environment

Peter Galli — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:41:00 GMT

Microsoft is embarking on a 15-city road show to help customers learn more about available solutions that may address their unique interoperability needs.

This is just another of the many ways Microsoft continues to respond to customers working in heterogeneous environments, a mission that was enhanced by the announcement of our Interoperability Principles last year.

The road show is being organized by Microsoft TechNet, and will stop in cities from Mountain View on the West coast to Denver, Atlanta and Chicago as well as Philadelphia, Boston and New York on the East Coast.

The rationale behind these events is simple: many customers work in heterogeneous environments that include Microsoft technologies as well as those from MySQL, Apple and Linux. As such, integration becomes vital in order for their core business applications to maintain business flow and efficiency.

Each event will last four hours, during which three sessions will be offered: Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Interop with Linux and OS X; running Open Source Software on Window Server 2008; and SQL Server 2008 and PHP Web Application Infrastructure.

This program aims to increase understanding of the heterogeneous IT landscape and discuss practical interoperability solutions.

It also complements Microsoft's existing engagement in interoperability at many levels - through its ongoing participation in industry and internal development projects and standards bodies, as well as its publication of technologies under open licenses and strong collaboration with customers, governments and partners.

We hope you'll join us at one of these events!

Japanese LAMP Engineers Visit Redmond

Peter Galli — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:30:00 GMT

I was fortunate enough to spend last Thursday with a group of LAMP engineers who have some experience with Windows Server and IIS, and who are based in Japan.

The three - Kimio Tanaka, the president of Museum IN Cloud; Junpei Hosoda, the president of Yokohama System Development; and Hajime Taira, with Hewlett-Packard Japan - won a competition organized by impress IT and designed to get competitive LAMP engineers to increase the volume of technical information around PHP/IIS and application compatibility. The competition was titled "Install Maniax 2008".

A total of 100 engineers were chosen to compete and seeded with Dell server hardware and the Windows Web Server 2008 operating system. They were then required to deploy Windows Server/IIS and make the Web Server accessible from the Internet. They also had to run popular PHP/Perl applications on IIS and publish technical documentation on how to configure those applications to run on IIS.

The three winners were chosen based on the number of ported applications on IIS, with the prize being a trip to Redmond. A total of 71 applications out of the targeted 75 were ported onto IIS, of which 47 were newly ported to IIS, and related new "how to" documents were published to the Internet. Some 24 applications were also ported onto IIS based on existing "how to" documents.

The first-place winner Kimio Tanaka managed to port 71 applications onto a single IIS server. His technical documents can be found here.

Kentaro Yoshikawa, the Platform Strategy CSI Lead for Microsoft Japan, put the competition together and brought the winners to Redmond, where we arranged for them to meet with folk from the Windows Azure, Windows Server and IIS development teams. They also spent time with Sam Ramji, the Senior Director for Platform Strategy, as well as with Tom Hanrahan and Hank Janssen of the Open Source Technology Center.

Kentaro told me that the three were really impressed by the depth of the discussions they had during the day, which was useful to them as they have, until now, mostly lived outside of the traditional Microsoft ecosystem.

They also appreciated the depth of technical thought, strategy and commitment to open source communities that exists within not only the Platform Strategy group, but across Microsoft.