Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Microsoft reckons its forthcoming Azure Stack on-premises cloud needs a special breed of sysadmin to keep it humming.
The company describes that worthy as a " Azure Stack Operator" and says they will be "Responsible for operating Azure Stack infrastructure end-to-end – planning, deployment and integration, packaging and offering cloud resources and requested services on the infrastructure."
[...] True to form, Microsoft will try to monetize these roles: it's flagged a new five-day course titled "Configuring and Operating a Hybrid Cloud with Microsoft Azure Stack" that will debut on September 18th. When, presumably, we'll also learn what it costs to become an Azure Stack Operator and how quickly the certification will expire. ®
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Magic Oddball writes:
"Mozilla's new VP of Content posted an announcement to his blog stating that sometime in the presumably-near future, "sponsored content" will begin appearing in the unused tiles on Firefox's New Tab Page. It will be rolled out first to desktop Firefox, then mobile and FirefoxOS. AdAge: "Mozilla hasn't made a final decision on how to treat third-party tracking technologies, but Mr. Herman said it is investigating solutions such as unique identifiers from Apple and Google as well as other third parties."
DigitalTrends pointed out, "if the scheme proves lucrative, it may be hard to resist rolling them out to all users in some shape or form" and TechCrunch feels it's a trial 'to see how users react before pushing promoted tiles to all users in their new tab pages.'"
https://medium.com/@wtfmitchel/azure-vs-moores-law-2020-65a6fe67e31b
As a result of undershooting their projected capacity by such a large margin, Microsoft was way off on their capacity projections with Azure and only built roughly 1/3 of the data center capacity that was actually necessary. Consequently, they had to over-provision their existing data centers to the point of tripping the breakers and rapidly fill the gaps with an excessive amount of leased space to meet the demand that they projected. All of which effectively doubled the amount of leased space in their portfolio from 25% to 50%, extended their break-even to nearly a decade, and killed their hopes of profitability any time soon.
While an honest mistake and not being able to foresee the future is forgivable, knowingly omitting a mistake of this magnitude is criminal when considering how much Microsoft is hedging its future on Azure. On top of supplying misleading revenue metrics in their quarterly 10K filings to fortify a position of strength and being second only to AWS, Microsoft seems to be wary about reporting Azure's individual performance metrics or news of these failings that would enable investors to conclude this for themselves. Instead, Microsoft appears to be averaging out Azure's losses with their legacy mainstays that are profitable by reporting its revenue within their Intelligent Cloud container instead of itemizing it.
Previously:
- Azure 'Running out of Internets' in UK South, Starts Rationing VMs
- Azure Stack Will Need Special Sysadmins, Says Microsoft
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2017, @11:38PM (2 children)
The trouble is, they're also free to include advertisements even if we do donate.
The advantage of Firefox for me was always the plug-ins, which let me do things like block ads and stop flash. This made the free Firefox better than the free IE which came with my machine.
Now the free IE has a working adblock (same folks that make the Firefox adblock). Firefox keeps changing the UI in annoying ways, and already has annoyed me enough to make me switch to a Mozilla fork rather than use straight Firefox.
So... why should I pay to keep Firefox from getting more annoying, when it's already about par with IE (which I've already kind of paid for)? Especially when the Firefox developers proved willing to ignore the vast number of users who have decried their UI changes? Why should they suddenly start listening now?
At least with IE, I expect the pain. Firefox started as a solution to IE... now it's just moving the pain to a slightly different place.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @12:53AM (1 child)
Is this a DB error? Bug? AC posted in wrong article (last Firefox one was days ago)? The text makes sense... but not in this Azure article.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday August 18 2017, @08:29AM
Maybe its those damn Azure Stack sysadmins dicking around with the hot swap virtual drives again.
I keep telling management that the best sysop is a man and a German Shepard Attack dog.
The man is there to feed the dog, and the dog is there to make sure the man doesn't touch the machine.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday August 17 2017, @11:40PM (11 children)
I met some guy at the Blanchet House Of Hospitality who had just gotten fired by Microsoft.
His fatal mistake?
He was a Windows 7 MCSE. Microsoft had just shipped Windows 8.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2017, @11:47PM (9 children)
Explain how a guy "who had just gotten fired by Microsoft" was immediately homeless. Was he an unpaid intern? Not collecting a paycheck? Incapable of saving any money? Formerly living in the break room at Microsoft?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday August 18 2017, @12:00AM
Cocaine is a helluva drug, and many old sysadmins are still stuck in the seventies and eighties.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @12:02AM (5 children)
I believe he is using the word homeless tongue in cheek. Pretty sure you can safely assume he meant jobless.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @12:47AM (1 child)
No I'm not going to assume he meant jobless when he said homeless and he said he met the guy at a homeless shelter.
I'm not going to put up with Michael David Crawford's bullshit is what I'm not going to do. He spins a fucking yarn about Blanchet House conveniently located at NW Flanders Street in Portland [duckduckgo.com]. I say MDC is a Grifty McGrift [memegenerator.net] who wrote the blog on flim flamming [warplife.com].
(Score: 3, Funny) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday August 18 2017, @05:12AM
Their food was better than the Portland rescue mission's.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday August 18 2017, @05:11AM (2 children)
later that day he planned to take a bus to Seattle so he could live with his sister.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @10:03AM (1 child)
One does not simply take a bus into Mordor! What? You can? Cheaper than the train? Well, who knew! But how can you afford a place to live when you get there, what with all the Amazon and Google and Micro(wait for it!)$oft yuppies buying up all the housing and pushing rents to non-sustainable levels? Huh?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday August 19 2017, @05:46AM
I'd much rather live in Portland but Portland has twice the rents as Vancouver.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday August 18 2017, @12:29AM
but even so I never saved a penny of it. I always had more debt than my pay would cover.
Here's how to deal with a collection agent:
"I'm homeless. The only reason I get to eat is soup kitchens."
They never called again.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday August 18 2017, @08:32AM
He took all those mind numbing Microsoft Courses. He was unfit for any IT job.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Friday August 18 2017, @06:23PM
It's been a while since I worked on any Microsoft certs, but from what I remember, MCSE is a server certification not a desktop certification (i.e., he would be certified MCSE on Windows server 2008, or 2012, or whatever)
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday August 18 2017, @12:27AM (2 children)
-GPONIES!!
Using the cloud is supposed to enable you to cruelly fire all your administrators.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by arslan on Friday August 18 2017, @12:38AM
So that you can rehire all of them as stack operators!
The spice must flow!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @12:43AM
> ...fire all your administrators
fire all your well paid administrators and train up some former grocery store cashiers
ftfy?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday August 18 2017, @01:18AM (1 child)
So this is how Micro$erft is saying Linux these days? Hotmail, anyone? Oh, how quickly they forget! Never forget! Always remember!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Friday August 18 2017, @02:11AM
Maybe it should read 'Special', cause you needs to be on the little yellow bus to still be using windows!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @02:28AM
Microsoft's stuff is sufficiently opaque that a training course is probably justified.
But if they wanted to be smart, it'd be a free course, or at least free to people who bought the damn thing. Because otherwise you'll just have a bunch of customers calling support and not enjoying their product.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @09:36AM
Or do they mean another form of special?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday August 18 2017, @10:39AM
What Microsoft says is that Azure will be used to create a new breed of serfs that will be dependent for their income on Microsoft. You can of course defect but then you either have to write of your course investment and find new customers. Or you just continue to add another course on your unpaid time which drags you even deeper into the empire.
(Score: 2) by pendorbound on Friday August 18 2017, @02:12PM (1 child)
VMware has special courses and administrator certifications. This doesn't seem unreasonable. There's a lot of complexity to scaling all the parts of a large virtualized infrastructure and keeping it going.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @07:52PM
Virtualization stacks which is what this is, are becoming a sysadmin role in many orgs. On premise is a big deal in many industries where there is regulatory privacy and contractual up-time requirements. Many of those companies are rolling their own. That VMWare and MS are seeing that their customers are passing on their stacks because it is not on premise is not surprising. That they are bundling it and letting them do on premise for a fee is not too surprising either. At the current org I am at they are currently growing their own. They are going from a 4 month lead time and 2 month design, to 1-2 day standup and build and deliver. That is a huge deal to them. Most of the lead time was to go back and re-audit things and then usually buying more equipment. Stacks like this let you get ahead of it and automate the problem.
Keep those racks going in a 'particular' way does take a different kind of mantra than a toss a bunch of servers together sysadmin. Anyone who thinks differently will find out quick you need to have discipline, repeatably, and higher reliability than you are used to.