Windows in the cloud: long boot times, other difficulties not seen with Linux

“Running Windows servers in the Amazon cloud may have just
gotten a lot easier, but a project by the management vendor
RightScale to improve Windows support shows that people who use the
Microsoft operating system in cloud networks face difficulties not
seen in the Linux world.

“Moving servers and applications to the cloud certainly reduces
internal hardware costs, but it doesn’t save IT professionals from
the work of managing, updating and patching the virtual servers
that run in the cloud. That’s why a company like RightScale exists
– to simplify the grunt work faced by customers of the Amazon
Elastic Compute Cloud, with software-as-a-service that builds and
clones virtual servers, performs load balancing, storage backups,
and various other automation, reporting and monitoring tasks.

“Windows Azure and Amazon EC2 on collision course

“RightScale may be an expert in managing cloud-based virtual
servers, but the work it does is still time-consuming and tricky.
And it turns out that managing Windows instances is more complex
than managing Linux ones.”

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