[nazik1]

Hello Sriram,

I am enjoying reading your book the second time around after I got a hard copy version given to me by a friend. Reading hard copy version is so much enjoyable than reading the PDF version.

One thing I love about Azure programming is that operating system and hardware is abstracted away so developers can concentrate primarily on writing applications. However, I read an article recently that hardware will matter tremendously in the cloud in terms of performance in the coming years. For example, various virtualization technologies in place today in the cloud are very inefficient. Some cloud computing operators are moving to “machines running a lean, stripped OS and/or a tiny hypervisor providing the barest minimum isolation from the hardware and no server virtualization layer the way the term is understood today.”

My question is to you, has Microsoft has any plans for Azure to move to more efficient hardware platform and be competitive with other cloud service providers?

Sincerely,

Nazik Huq - http://twitter.com/nazik_huq

[sriramk]

I'm thrilled you enjoyed the book (I say that everytime and it is so true everytime).

I'm not very involved in the deep hardware side of Windows Azure so frankly, I really don't know what our plans are if any. Your post does make the assertion that cloud virtualization is somehow not fast enough today which I disagree with. We already have a very lean, mean hypervisor. The difference between running on a Windows Azure VM vs bare metal (on the same hardware) is hardly noticeable for most workloads.