Many businesses still use Windows Server 2003, even as Microsoft no longer supports the OS

If you’re running a Windows Server 2003 machine, you have a problem. Your already-vulnerable computer is now at severe risk of being hacked.

That’s due to the internet release earlier this month of a batch of updates that paint a bull’s-eye on computers running Windows Server 2003, according to security researchers.

“I can teach my mom how to use some of these exploits,” said Jake Williams, founder of Rendition Infosec, a security provider. “They are not very complicated at all.”

Experts are urging affected businesses to upgrade to the latest Windows OSes, which offer security patches that can address the threat.

But some, particularly those in manufacturing and healthcare, cannot because they rely on legacy software that won’t run on a modern operating system.

“It’s usually very costly to upgrade,” he said. “And again, the machine is working fine, but control has to be done through Windows Server 2003.”

There may be more than 500,000 Windows Server 2003 machines publicly exposed to the internet, according to Shodan, a search engine for devices. But Williams estimates there are many more vulnerable machines running behind company firewalls.

So, for those that can’t, here are some tips to keep your old Windows Server 2003 machine secure.

The danger

The spying tools include several Windows-based exploits, or hacking programs, that target the Windows Server Message Block (SMB) protocol, which is used for file-sharing purposes. The exploits work by remotely triggering the OS to execute code, which can be used to install other malware.

Network segmentation and monitoring

Companies saddled with older Windows Server machines can still protect themselves. Williams suggests they go beyond putting vulnerable servers behind a firewall, and use a tactic called network segmentation.

This can involve restricting access to your most critical servers, and ensuring only system admins can control them. “So instead of giving 20,000 people in a company access, you can cut that number down to 20,” Williams said.

Thus, if hackers ever do breach the firewall, they’ll have access to a smaller segment of the corporate network.

Network segmentation also doesn’t cost a lot of money. Enterprise internet routers often contain access control features that can limit which computers can talk to what, Williams said.

Businesses should also consider monitoring the vulnerable servers, or at least the ones carrying critical information. Any unusual data traffic moving through them is probably a sign they’ve been hacked, he said.

Weighing the risks

To keep malicious activity out of vulnerable systems, application whitelisting can also be used, said Jason Leitner, president of Below0Day, an IT security provider.

Whitelisting works by allowing only trusted applications to run on a computer. It’s the opposite approach of antivirus products, which essentially blacklists malicious programs based on known indicators.

Businesses can also create backups of any sensitive data stored in these machines. One malicious threat that’s been growing in recent years has been ransomware. It works by infecting a computer, and encrypting all the data inside. To free the machine, victims have to pay a ransom, usually in bitcoin.

However, even with these safeguards, the best solution to protecting a vulnerable Windows Server system is to upgrade, according to security experts.

Although it might be costly in the short term, the investment can help businesses avoid a disastrous data breach. Tiago Henriques, CEO of security firm BinaryEdge, encourages businesses to calculate which is higher: “The cost of buying the upgrade or the damage to their brand and their clients if they get hacked?”

By Michael Kan, source by ComputerWorld

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Enterprises that try to slow down Microsoft’s upgrade train by skipping one of the twice-yearly Windows 10 refreshes will have to hustle to stay in support, according to the company’s latest scheduling disclosures.

Corporate users of Windows 10 may have as little as two months to deploy a feature upgrade after passing on the one prior. Only if IT administrators are willing to roll out a consumer-quality version — one that Microsoft has not yet given the approved-for-business green light — will they have up to six months to upgrade employees’ PCs.

Those limitations come from Microsoft’s latest pledge to support any given Windows 10 feature upgrade for 18 months, and the company’s long-standing timeline on how it moves each upgrade from development to release, first to consumers and then to commercial customers.

To illustrate how Microsoft’s scheduling affects businesses — which must, sooner or later, adopt Windows 10 — we’ve illustrated Windows’ software-as-a-service calendar and the options enterprises have.

Feature upgrade timetable. Each feature upgrade goes through a several-step process that, in turn, generates the 18 months that Microsoft has promised to support with security patches and other bug fixes.

Each upgrade is numbered in Microsoft’s yymm format; 1703, for example. Once an upgrade is completed, Microsoft issues it to devices assigned to the Current Branch (CB), the release track adopted by virtually all consumer PCs. Over the next four months (shown in blue in the following figure), Microsoft feeds the upgrade to an increasing number of CB devices, monitors telemetry and feedback, and then quashes the inevitable bugs that users uncover. Think of CB as the upgrade’s shake-down cruise, taken before the real paying customers arrive.

Gregg Keizer/ IDGE

Only after a feature upgrade has run the consumers’ testing gauntlet does Microsoft certify it as business-ready. After four months on the CB, the theoretically-more-stable-and-more-reliable build is released to the Current Branch for Business (CBB), the most popular track for enterprise PCs. Yellow marks the CBB in Figure 1 above.

Microsoft supports just two upgrades on the CBB concurrently. This part of Windows 10’s support is important in understanding how the whole schedule plays out.

If N equals the current upgrade, say, 1703, then Microsoft will support N+1 (this year’s September release, labeled 1709) as well when the two are simultaneously on the CBB. That 12-month span would be February 2018, when 1709 reaches the CBB, through July 2018, when N+2, or next year’s March upgrade (1803) is promoted to the CBB.

Gregg Keizer/ IDGE

But Microsoft does not suddenly drop N, or 1703, from support as soon as N+2 makes the CBB. Instead, the company starts a 60-day-or-so countdown. Only at the end of those 60 days does it scratch N from the support list. N+1 then becomes N and N+2 morphs into N+1.

See Figure 2 for how this works; the 60-day grace period is in green.

That means for the months of August and September 2018, Microsoft will support 1703, 1709 and 1803.

Not surprisingly, the combination of Microsoft’s every-six-month upgrade delivery cadence, the four months an upgrade spends on CB, and the two-month grace period at the end all generate a support lifecycle of 18 months. Yes, Microsoft planned it that way.

Endless upgrading. Because of the timing of Windows 10 feature refreshes, businesses that adopt each will be upgrading every six months, assuming they deploy the builds at the same point in their CBB timelines.

Gregg Keizer/ IDGE

If the organization rolls out each upgrade at the beginning of the CBB, the tick-tock is a regular tempo. The company would deploy 1703 in August 2017, 1709 in February 2018, and 1803 in August 2018.

Figure 3 illustrates the cadence, with the red arrows showing the jumps from one build to the next.

There is some flexibility. Enterprises can increase the interval between upgrades, providing some flexibility; but there’s a limit to how far things will stretch and how long a refresh can be put off. In many ways, it’s a rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul deal.

For example, an organization that adopted 1703 as soon as it landed on the CBB (August) could stay on that version for 10 months by delaying the move to 1709 until early June 2018. But because of 1709’s hard support stop (coming in March 2019), the enterprise would be on 1709 for just seven months if it wanted to give itself, say, three months to upgrade to 1803.

Check out Figure 4 for how this would work.

Gregg Keizer/ IDGE

The maximum amount of time between upgrades — without skipping one — would be 14 months, but only by migrating at the last minute, as the grace period expires. However, that would leave just 6 months on the next version before another upgrade.

Rule of thumb: Assuming no version is skipped, the total length of support for two consecutive builds can be no more than 20 months. Extend support for the first, and support for the second shrinks.

Hustle-bustle to skip an upgrade. Organizations can skip a Windows 10 feature upgrade, but the price will be steep.

Microsoft’s schedule will give companies just two months — the grace period of the version upgrading from — to migrate. Figure 5 shows the small window, no pun intended, if the version being upgraded to, in this case 1803, has been certified as business-ready and thus planted on the CBB.

Gregg Keizer/ IDGE

The only way to expand that window would be to begin upgrading while 1803 was still being tested by consumer guinea pigs, still on the CB. Backing the migration into the half-way point of the CB, for instance, would give the organization about four months to finish the upgrade from 1703 to 1803.

Depending on when the company starts an upgrade, its PCs will remain on a version for 12 to 14 months.

By Gregg Keizer, source by ComputerWorld

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Azure Functions, Logic Apps, Azure Stack, and .Net come together for the next stage of PaaS both in the cloud and on-premises

Microsoft’s adoption of serverless computing is a big piece of Azure maturing as a platform. There’s a lot going on here, as architectures and services evolve to take advantage of the unique capabilities of the cloud and we as users and developers migrate away from traditional server architectures.

Mark Russinovich, Microsoft’s CTO of Azure, has a distinct view on the evolution of cloud as a platform. “Infrastructure as a service [IaaS] is table stakes,” he said at an Azure Serverless computing event at Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters last week, “Platform as a service [PaaS] is the next step, offering runtimes and developing on them, an API and an endpoint, where you consume services.” That’s where we are today, where we still define the resources we use when we build cloud applications.

Then comes serverless computing. “Serverless is the next generation of computing, the point of maximum value,” Russinovich said.

What he’s talking about is abstracting applications from the underlying servers, where code is event-driven and scales on demand, charged by the operation rather than by the resources used. As he said, “I don’t have to worry about the servers. The platform gives me the resources as I need them.” That’s the real definition of serverless computing: The servers and OS are still there, but as a user and a developer you don’t need to care about them.

Serverless computing is the next phase of virtualization

You can look at it as a logical evolution of virtualization. As the public cloud has matured, it’s gone from one relatively simple type of virtual machine and one specific type of underlying hardware to specialized servers that can support IaaS implementations for all kinds of use cases, such as high-performance computing servers with massive GPUs for parallel processing and for scientific computing working with numerical methods, or such as arrays of hundreds of tiny servers powering massive web presences.

That same underlying flexibility powers the current generation of PaaS, where applications and code run independently of the underlying hardware while still requiring you to know what the underlying servers can do. To get the most out of PaaS (that is, to get the right fit for your code), you still need to choose servers and storage.

With serverless computing, you can go a step further, concentrating on only the code you’re running, knowing that it’s ephemeral and you’re using it to process and route data from one source to another application. Microsoft’s serverless implementations have an explicit lifespan, so you don’t rely on them being persistent, only on them being there when you need them. If you try to use a specific instance outside that limited life, you get an error message because the application and its hosting container will be gone.

Three serverless computing models

Nir Mashkowski, principal group manager for Azure App Service, noted three usage patterns for Azure’s serverless offerings.

The first, and most common, pattern is what he calls “brownfield” implementations. They are put together by enterprises as part of an overall cloud application strategy, using Azure Functions and Logic Apps as an integration tool, linking old apps and new and on-premises systems and cloud.

The second pattern is greenfield implementations, which are typically the province of startups, using Azure Functions as part of a back-end platform—that is, as switches and routers moving data from one part of an application to another.

The third pattern is for internet of things applications. It is a combination of the two, using Azure Functions to handle signals from devices, triggering actions in response to specific inputs.

For enterprises wanting a quick on-ramp to serverless computing, Azure Functions’ closely related sibling Logic Apps is an intriguing alternative. Drawing on the same low-code foundations as the more business-focused Flow, it gives you a visual designer with support for conditional expressions and loops. (You can even can run the designer inside Visual Studio.)

Like Azure Functions, Logic Apps is event-triggered and can be used to coordinate a sequence of Azure functions. Wrapping serverless code in a workflow adds more control, especially if it’s used to apply conditions to a trigger—for example, launching one function if a trigger is at the low end of a range of values, another if it’s at the high end.

In the cloud and on-premises: Portable serverless computing

Russinovich described three organizations working with serverless computing:

• Accuweather uses it to handle its server logs, replicating them between datacenters and handing them off to analysis tools.
• Similarly, Plexure, a marketing company, uses it to handle feeds from point-of-sale systems, replacing a complex stack of tools with a workflow that drives information from one service to the next.
• At the other end of the scale, the Missing Children Society of Canada used Logic Apps to build a bot that could bring research about missing kids together from various sources, including social media, in a project that took a mere four days to deliver.

One of the more interesting aspects of both Azure Functions and Logic Apps is that they’re not limited to running purely in the cloud. Functions themselves can be developed and tested locally, with full support in Visual Studio, and both Azure Functions and Logic Apps will be supported by on-premises Azure Stack hybrid cloud systems.

Inside the Azure datacenters, its serverless options are all containerized for rapid deployment. That same model will come to your own servers, with Azure Functions able to run on any server, taking advantage of containers for rapid deployment.

Currently, Azure Functions is based on the full .Net Framework release, so there’s a minimum requirement of Windows Server Core as a host. But that’s going to change over the next few months with an open source release based on .Net Core and the upcoming .Net Standard 2.0 libraries. With those in hand, you’ll be able to run Azure Functions in containers based on Windows Server Nano, as well as on .Net Core running on Linux. You’ll be able to migrate code from on-premises to hybrid cloud and to the public cloud depending on the workload and on the billing model you choose.

Such a cross-platform serverless solution that runs locally and in the cloud starts looking very interesting, giving you the tools to build and test on-premises,then scale up to running on Azure (or even on Linux servers running on Amazon Web Services).

There’s a lot to be said for portability, and by working with REST and JSON as generic input and output bindings, Microsoft’s containerized serverless implementation appears to avoid the cloud lock-in of its AWS and Google competitors while still giving you direct links to Azure services.

By Simon Bisson, source by InfoWorld

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All customers can now access the Azure hybrid use discounts previously limited to companies that had enterprise agreements with Microsoft

IT professionals who want help getting a handle on a potential cloud migration have a new tool from Microsoft. The company is offering a Cloud Migration Assessment service that walks customers through an evaluation of the resources they currently use, in order to determine what a move to the cloud would cost.

Microsoft’s cost calculation is driven in part by the Azure Hybrid Use Benefit, which lets customers apply their existing Windows Server licenses with Software Assurance to virtual machines running in Microsoft’s cloud. That means customers only have to pay the base price for the compute resources they use.

Also starting Wednesday, all customers can invoke the discount from the Azure Management Portal. In the past, this type of deployment of discounted virtual machine images was limited to companies who have enterprise agreements with Microsoft. Others had to use Azure PowerShell to configure the discounts.

The moves are part of Microsoft’s overall push to get its enterprise customers to move more of their workloads from on-premises servers to the Azure public cloud. The tech titan has been emphasizing tools for running hybrid cloud configurations for quite some time.

“In the past year, we’ve seen lots of other vendors also starting to talk about hybrid and realizing that it’s central to the vast majority of organizations’ IT strategies,” Julia White, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Azure marketing, said. “And this push here, whether it be the migration tools or in general, better amplifying and clarifying our hybrid capabilities, is all in the essence of recognizing that [hybrid] is the approach for most customers, and it needs to be done in a way that can be durable.”

The Cloud Migration Assessment tool lets users manually enter the compute, networking and storage resources that they’re already using, or import the same information from an Excel file that’s either user-composed or generated by the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit.

Microsoft’s tool takes that information and provides users with a graph that shows them a model for the costs of continuing to run a data center, along with how much they’ll pay for running the same workloads in Azure. The tool offers a set of default assumptions about how much an on-premises deployment costs, but customers who have information about the costs associated with their environment can input those, instead.

In order to get access to the tool, users have to hand over their name, contact information, and the name of their company. Microsoft will use that to follow up with users about their experience, and will also work to connect those companies with partner businesses that can help with migration if that makes sense.

“Much like Microsoft in general, we remain very partner-led,” White said. “And so, when we can match a great partner with a customer that needs them, that’s what we aim to do.”

On top of all this, Microsoft also announced that its Azure Site Recovery migration tool will be updated in the coming weeks so that users can more easily use AHUB discounts when migrating from other environments. When that update goes through, users will be able to “tag” Windows Server VMs that they’re migrating for hybrid use discounts. That may entice people to move their Windows Server virtual machines from AWS and on-premises hardware into Azure by making it easier to do so.

By Blair Hanley Frank, source by InfoWorld

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The deal will help Microsoft better support the Google-originated orchestration system

Microsoft is acquiring Deis, a company that makes tools to work with the Kubernetes open-source container orchestration system. The deal, announced Monday, marks Microsoft’s continued interest in container orchestration.

Deis creates tools that aim to simplify the development of modern, containerized applications. Containers allow developers to write an application for an isolated, portable runtime that is supposed to be easily transferrable from a workstation to a server environment.

Tools like Deis’s Workflow, Helm, and Steward are supposed to ease the complex process of managing multi-container applications. They build on top of Kubernetes, the popular open-source container orchestration system that Google released in 2014. Deis plans to continue its contributions to those tools as part of Microsoft, company CTO Gabe Monroy said in a blog post.

Microsoft has invested a great deal already in technology that lets developers create applications that run in Windows and Linux containers. The company expects Deis’ technology to help with the use of those existing tools, according to a blog post by Scott Guthrie, the executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise division.

Deis’ Kubernetes expertise will be a key benefit for Microsoft, which has been investing in the popular open-source container orchestration system.

Microsoft acquired the company from Engine Yard, a platform-as-a-service provider that previously purchased Deis in 2015. The companies didn’t disclose the terms of the deal.

The news comes roughly a couple months after Microsoft announced the general availability of Kubernetes in Azure Container Service, its platform-as-a-service offering for containerized applications. Last week, the company also announced the general availability of Azure Container Registry, a service that lets customers store and manage different container images in the cloud.

By  Blair Hanley Frank, source by ComputerWorld

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Microsoft’s Embedded family of operating systems, tools and services seems to be on its way out; its replacements have limitations.

Ah, Windows Embedded. The Microsoft operating system that millions of devices and machines are running, typically with a custom application or skin running on top of it so that users don’t automatically notice the OS. The operating system that underpins hundreds of thousands of medical devices, automatic teller machines, kiosks at airports and other crowded public places, industrial machinery and control planes, set top boxes, game consoles.

Windows Embedded is a relatively unheralded version of Windows whose existence might surprise you. But it seems like Windows Embedded’s existence might also surprise a lot of folks up in Redmond. Here, at the Microsoft campus, despite all of the hullabaloo about Windows 10 and device updates — and the new Creators Update and Redstone versions that will be coming down the pike at an almost breakneck speed — Windows Embedded suffers from an opposite problem. It appears unfortunately stuck in a place where no future has clearly been laid out for it.

One indication that Windows Embedded may be on its way out is the introduction of Windows 10 IoT, which Microsoft has started pushing as a replacement. However, first, a bit of background of Windows Embedded.

A brief history of Windows Embedded to date

How has Windows Embedded worked in the past? Most vendors chose Windows Embedded because, unlike the traditional desktop operating system, it was modular: You could choose which features to install or not install, both to reduce the supportability burden on the vendor (you don’t need Solitaire on an ATM, for example) and to reduce the potential attack surface, since laser cutting machines do not generally need IIS web serving capabilities, for instance.

The modularity also included the ability to customize some parts of the OS that were not open to modification in the full version, like splash screens and filters, so you could insert your own branding or the branding of the machine directly into the OS. Essentially, you wanted a stripped-down operating system so you can fully customize both the hardware and the software in a system, as well as save space on often limited storage media in devices.

These were the most recent Windows Embedded versions:

• Windows Embedded Standard 7 (WES7): Windows Embedded Standard 7 was essentially Windows 7 with different parts ripped out and different levels of customization ability. There were three “notches,” called, C, E, and P, each of which denoted different additions of features to the base image of Windows Embedded and had correspondingly different prices. P was the most expensive and was essentially identical to Windows 7 from a features perspective.
• Windows Embedded 8 Standard (WE8S): This took Microsoft’s embedded operating system but pulled it up to Windows 8. It also got rid of all of the C, E, and P versioning so if you bought WE8S, then you received authorization to run all of WE8S — and you paid for all of it, too. You did not have to use all of the features and you could still carve out parts and do any required customization, but you could not opt out of some of the features and pay a cheaper price, either.

There were also versions that came with a full pre-built image of Windows Embedded and were mainly for use in otherwise full computers that were deployed in appliance-like settings, such as point-of-sale devices and cash registers, digital signage, or thin clients that booted only to connect to a full user session running on some other machine.

Embedded into the internet of things

Now Microsoft has decided that if you want to build devices and large machines out of discrete components, what you’re really building is a Thing. The naming is a nod to the internet of things (IoT) phenomenon, where the reflectors in the roadway and sensors in your refrigerator are all connected to the internet and possess “smart” capabilities.

The fact of the matter is that the IoT versions of Windows 10 are replacements for the line of Windows Embedded SKUs that have existed before now. There are now three editions of the IoT version of Windows 10, and they are each designed for different device form factors, as follows:

• Windows 10 IoT Core, for small devices: This version of Windows 10 has no shell and essentially supports only universal apps — those coded to run in the managed environment of the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and not traditional x86 or x64 apps. This OS version has a maximum of 256MB of RAM and 2GB of device storage, and can run on the x86 chip platform or the ARM platform for low-power devices. Currently, this is the only edition of Windows 10 IoT that can be obtained directly by end users.
• Windows 10 IoT Mobile Enterprise, for mobile devices: This version of Windows 10 adds the “tablet” shell — the skin that you run apps from the Windows Store in — and also supports universal apps and drivers. Storage and memory support are doubled, but you can run this version of Windows 10 only on ARM-based devices; there is no x86 chip support. Windows 10 IoT Mobile Enterprise is specifically intended for use with mobile point-of-sale and handheld systems with display sizes less than eight inches. Think bar-code scanners, automotive testers, control pads, and the like. This edition of Windows 10 IoT is available to OEMs and system builders only.
• Windows 10 IoT Enterprise, for industry devices: This version of Windows 10 brings the traditional desktop shell back to the fray, doubles the memory and quadruples the RAM supported by the OS. It also adds x86 chip platform support, but it removes ARM support. This edition of Windows 10 IoT is available to OEMs and system builders only.

The lifecycle of Windows 10 IoT Enterprise is: Give five years of regular production support plus another five years after that of extended, security update only-style support. For those familiar with the branches of Windows 10, this is the Long Term Servicing Branch, or LTSB, choice. This edition also includes deferred online activation, the Unified Write Filter, Embedded Boot Experience and Logon (the customizable splash screens and boot sequence), and the Windows Shell Launcher.

One interesting note: according to Direct Insight, Microsoft has created three levels of license pricing for Windows 10 IoT Enterprise: (a) Entry, which targets lower performance processors like the Atom and Celeron, and provides a 75% reduction in cost; (b) Value, which targets the Intel Core i3, Core i5, and Core M processors, with a 50% reduction in cost; and (c) High End, targeting the Core i7 and Xeon, with no cost reduction.

The consequences of these divides between editions of Windows 10 IoT are pretty clear.

• If you want to use Windows on an ARM-based device, you can only use the “small devices” or “mobile devices” editions, since the full edition is not yet ready to run on the ARM platform.
• If you want to build mobile devices with more than 256MB of RAM, they had better support the ARM platform, because there is no x86 chip support in an edition that supports more RAM than that.
• If you want more than 4GB of storage, you are dealing with x86 chips, insofar as embedded Windows goes.
• If you are looking to provide an operating system for single-board solutions or very small embedded devices, then the Windows 10 IoT Core edition could be suitable. The most frequent target for this type of development seems to be hobbyists working with the Raspberry Pi and other single-board devices — these “makers” are really whom Core is aimed at, although there is little preventing its use in other applications and scenarios.

It also appears that users have lost the option of purchasing a “license-only” version of Windows 10 IoT, something that was possible for Windows 7 Professional for Embedded Systems and Windows Embedded 8.1 Pro. This was essentially a feature that allowed you to license a full installation of Windows on a system that was part of a larger device. The operating system itself could be standard, an identical copy of Windows 7 or 8, but since it was a component of a larger system or machine, you could assign a less expensive license to it.

No such option appears to exist for Windows 10 IoT, although nothing is preventing Microsoft from putting this old practice back into availability at any time.

What changes? The implications

For applications that currently run on Windows Embedded that are not Universal Windows applications, but that are instead standard x86 apps, it’s difficult to see any advantage for the IoT editions of Windows 10, save maybe the Enterprise version. The other editions are essentially just stub operating systems that can run limited applications that understand how to make Windows API calls and interpret the results.

While developers can target each of the IoT editions of Windows 10 easily within Visual Studio, porting existing x86 apps to the Universal Windows platform is another project entirely. And recreating existing apps from scratch just to meld to Microsoft’s new vision of what embedded operating systems should look like is an entirely different question — one that would require some justification, and some return on the time and money invested in the porting effort.

The best that could be said about these IoT editions of Windows 10 is that they are additions, augmentations, and extensions of the Windows Embedded platform, and that they make new applications possible. It seems unlikely that Chase Bank or American Airlines is going to rewrite their ATM or kiosk software to target Universal Windows Platform-capable operating systems, especially when, at this point, UWP apps have capabilities that are a subset of full x86 apps (which is likely what these companies are currently running). These apps also will not generally run on the ARM platform, so these companies will most likely stay with what they know and what works well, at least for their existing applications.

For that reason, it is unlikely that Windows 10 IoT is going to replace Windows Embedded 7 and 8. Instead, we might see Chase Bank developing a new payment machine using Windows 10 APIs or American Airlines deploying new RFID bag tags that run Windows 10 IoT.

The question then becomes: Is this more than an IoT play? Is Windows 10 IoT a play to get Windows back on ARM? Shades of the ill-fated Windows RT operating system and Surface RT immediately come into mind, but it’s hard not to draw the comparison. Windows has been for decades exclusively x86. Linux, on the other hand, has a vibrant community around the ARM chipset and has pretty much a complete repository of software and packages available to run on ARM.

Microsoft is just getting started in ARM and its single entry into ARM did not end well (can you say billion-dollar writedown?). Is this another trip to nowhere?

Another question: What is the roadmap for those currently running Windows Embedded? Confusingly, this statement from Microsoft seems to hint at an end of support coming: “Through July 17, 2017, Skylake devices running Windows Embedded 7, 8 and 8.1 will be supported according to the lifecycle support policy for those products. During the 18-month support period, these systems should be upgraded to Windows 10 to continue receiving support after the period ends. After July 2017, the most critical security updates will be addressed for these configurations, and will be released if the update does not risk the reliability or compatibility of the Windows Embedded 7/8/8.1 platform on other devices.”

Much is still unclear. But there are tons of devices and systems bigger than a Raspberry Pi but different than a full desktop that a typical knowledge worker would use, and these Windows 10 IoT editions do not seem to be full replacements for the Windows Embedded versions you would have chosen for these applications until now. Buyer beware.

By Jonathan Hassell, source by ComputerWorld

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IBM follows Google and Microsoft in offering hosted Kubernetes as a service, with direct access to the container orchestration system’s APIs

It’s only a matter of time before every major cloud vendor offers a version of Kubernetes as a service. Now it’s IBM’s turn.

This morning IBM announced the next logical step in its work with Docker containers: Kubernetes support on its Bluemix Container Service. Currently available in a limited beta, its feature set should match Google’s and Microsoft’s offerings.

Kubernetes, the Bluemix way

Previously, the default for managing Docker containers on Bluemix Container Service was to spin them up individually by hand or to use Bluemix’s container groups metaphor, where Bluemix directly managed multiple containers running the same image.

Kubernetes is meant to provide several advantages for container deployments: easier scaling, better visibility into the state of a cluster, and so on. IBM says its implementation of Kubernetes on Bluemix includes everything users would expect from a stock Kubernetes deployment, as well as some IBM-specific features.

For example, see how it deploys master nodes, the parts of a cluster that accept commands and delegate them to the other machines in the cluster. IBM claims master nodes in its Kubernetes implementation are “highly available and fully managed by IBM”—presumably in contrast to simply providing and supporting a VM with Kubernetes that’s spun and run by the customer.

Some features for Bluemix Container Service are essentially conventional Docker/Kubernetes features writ large—such as a per-organization Docker private image registry with image scanning and vulnerability detection built in, or support for Kubernetes secrets (API keys and more) when communicating with other Bluemix resources. Other features, like “binding of Bluemix services, such as Watson APIs, Blockchain, data services, or internet of things” to Kubernetes-deployed apps, more prominently promote Bluemix, allowing Kubernetes-powered apps plug into Bluemix-exclusive services.

Why mess with a good thing?

IBM arrives late to a party that already includes Google and Microsoft. Google has had a leg up on everyone else in offering Kubernetes as a service because it invented the underlying technology. It also worked to Google’s advantage that its public cloud was relatively sparse; it could provide Kubernetes support on its cloud without having to make concessions to many legacy components.

Microsoft late last year added Kubernetes for its container services, after originally supporting Docker Swarm and Mesosphere DC/OS as orchestration solutions. Microsoft delayed its entry because a lot of behind-the-scenes work was needed to add Kubernetes support to Azure and to open-source that work. Kubernetes clusters themselves are provisioned and managed on Azure by way of a QuickStart template, rather than a dedicated managed service.

Amazon’s ECS (EC2 Container Services) doesn’t have a dedicated Kubernetes service; instead it offers a more general Docker as a service, with orchestration and scheduling provided by ECS itself, or through the Blox projects.

Though late to the party, IBM is taking one crucial step for any cloud incarnation of an open source service: It’s allowing the user to lift the hood and plug directly into the original API set. That’s important with cloud container services like Kubernetes, since the promise of a cloud built from open components was that workloads wouldn’t become dependent on the clouds where they’re hosted.

Granted, IBM—or any cloud provider—could try to make a strong case for its cloud versus someone else’s by promoting how well Kubernetes runs at scale on its cloud and works with the proprietary services to enrich those applications. But having Kubernetes at the core and in a form others know is still the most worthwhile draw.

By Serdar Yegulalp, source by InfoWorld

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The Optane DC P4800X SSD has 375GB of storage and is priced at $1,520

Intel’s first Optane storage modules came out in early January, but were only 32GB. Larger Optane drives with up to 1.5TB of storage capacity are on their way, and we now have a better understanding of how they’re going to perform.

The first large-capacity Optane SSD drive is the DC P4800X, which has 375GB of storage and started shipping on Sunday. The $1,520 SSD is targeted at servers. (Intel didn’t provide regional availability information.)

Intel says an enterprise Optane SSD with 750GB will ship in the second quarter, and that a 1.5TB SSD will ship in the second half of this year.

These SSDs will fit as add-in cards in the PCI-Express/NVMe and U.2 slots. That means they could work in some workstations and servers based on AMD’s 32-core Naples processors.

Optane will also ship in the form of DRAM modules next year. Intel did not share information on when it would ship consumer SSDs.

Optane has been hyped as a new class of superfast memory and storage that could replace today’s SSDs and DRAM. Intel has claimed Optane is up to 10 times faster than conventional SSDs.

The technology underpinning Optane is 3D Xpoint, a form of memory that stores data based on the resistance of cells. Intel developed 3D Xpoint with Micron, which later this year will release an Optane competitor called QuantX, aimed at enterprise SSDs.

For the first time, Intel has shared internal benchmarks on the large-capacity Optane drives compared to conventional flash SSDs. The Optane SSD DC P4800X was pitted against the three-year old SSD DC P3700 flash SSD, which is considered one of Intel’s fastest data-center SSDs in terms of random reads and writes.

The benchmarks indicate that the new Optane drive, in most real-world uses, won’t reach the levels of performance that Intel has been hyping up to now. On top of that, the benchmarks were conducted in complex environments that made the numbers hard to interpret.

In a nutshell, Intel said that if you run sequential tasks, it would be better to use conventional SSDs. Optane lights up when running random reads and writes, which are common in servers and high-end PCs. Optane’s random writes reach up to 10 times faster compared to conventional SSDs, but only when utilization is being pushed to extremes, while reads are around three times faster.

In a standard 4K data block, with 70 percent read and 30 percent write, the P4800X was five to eight times faster than the older P3700. The responsiveness of the drive increased with the data load.

Aside from the unusual benchmarking presentation by Intel, Optane has promise, and it could be the storage technology of the future. However, flash-based SSDs are well-established and Optane won’t unseat them overnight, according to analysts.

Optane is more expensive and still being developed, and joins the ranks of other technologies like MRAM (magnetoresistive RAM) and RRAM (resistive RAM) trying to unseat flash.

Intel took a long time to develop large-capacity Optane SSDs, and there is some concern about the drive’s durability. The P4800X has a five-year warranty, but it remains to be seen how long the drive will last.

Optane SSDs will speed up data movement among servers in data centers, said James Myers, director for NVM Solutions Architecture at Intel’s Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group.

Storage is a big bottleneck, and the Optane SSDs will reduce latency. That will improve the productivity of servers, and will help in applications like analytics, which deal with large data sets. Optane could be used for for caching or long-term or short-term storage.

Optane SSDs could also be used to expand memory capacity in servers by mimicking DRAM with the help of a hypervisor, Myers said. To make this happen, Intel will sell software called Memory Drive for Optane drives. This feature will only work on servers with Intel’s upcoming Xeon chips based on the Skylake architecture, and won’t work with AMD chips.

Applications that will benefit from Optane include MySQL and Memcached, which are popular with cloud providers. Data movement in servers run by companies like Facebook and Google is fast to ensure instant responses to social media or search requests.

Intel’s Myers also saw the storage fitting into hyperconverged environments, in which Optane is closer to the CPU, or in an array. Optane isn’t a particularly good fit for typical networked storage arrays like EMC’s EqualLogic, which are extremely popular, but Myers is pinning hopes on companies moving to hyperconverged infrastructures.

Intel estimated that two servers with P4800X drives could provide 10 times more MySQL transactions than with P3700 SSDs. It would also result in a 91 percent reduction in cost per transaction.

But there’s a heavy cost involved in changing the data-center infrastructure to fit the superfast Optane drives. In the long run, the Optane drives may be beneficial in speeding up database, cloud and machine-learning applications, but switching over to a hyperconverged environment could call for wholesale changes in server hardware, virtualization environment, and organization of storage in data centers.

Also, Optane SSDs don’t play well in in-memory applications like SAP HANA. In theory, the Memory Drive feature could be used so the Optane SSDs mimic DRAM, which can ultimately be used by in-memory applications. Intel is in talks with major in-memory application providers to build usage of Optane SSDs, Myers said.

Companies are increasingly backing Optane, Myers said. Facebook has been trying out Optane for more than a year, but hasn’t reported results. IBM has incorporated Optane storage in its Bluemix cloud service, but hasn’t talked about benchmarks.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is going to offer Optane SSDs as a media option in 3PAR arrays. The current latency for all-flash arrays is about 400 microseconds to 1 millisecond, and with 3D Xpoint/Optane it will come down to 200 microseconds, said HPE’s Eduardo Duarte, 3Par product manager, in a video at the Discover trade show in London in December.

Optane compatibility will also be validated for VMware’s vSAN virtualized storage environments. Alibaba also has committed to using Optane in its database and machine-learning infrastructure, Myers said. Intel is also talking with Microsoft to validate Optane for Windows Server storage environments.

In addition, a range of companies including Lenovo, Nutanix and Dell Technologies have confirmed that they will come out with hardware based on Optane.

By Agam Shah, source by ComputerWorld

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Microsoft is about to release a major update to Windows 10. We have a preview of what you can expect.

Sometime this spring, probably in April, Microsoft will release the Creators Update, one of the two major updates to Microsoft Windows 10 that will roll out this year.

What can you expect to see? For a start, ignore the name “Creators Update,” because the release has very little to do with creating things — with the exception of some virtual reality features and a minor app for creating 3D content.

However, there will be some real changes to the operating system. You’ll get more control over Windows updates, some improvements to the Edge browser, some nice interface tweaks — including to the Start menu — and more.

Microsoft has been releasing preview builds of the Creators Update since August; they’ve become less buggy and more feature-rich as the operating system gets closer to the final release date. Here’s a preview of what to expect, based on the latest builds and information made public by Microsoft.

More control over Windows updates

To begin with, when the Creators Update hits, you’ll no longer be unexpectedly interrupted when Windows decides to do an update.

When an update is available, a notification will appear, and you’ll be given the option of whether to install it immediately, schedule it for a specific time, or put it off by clicking “Snooze.” Snooze means the update won’t install for three days. After that, you’ll get another notification about the update, and you can click the Snooze button again. In this way, you’ll be able to indefinitely put off the update.

IDG / Preston Gralla

This feature isn’t yet included in any of the public preview updates, but is described by Microsoft in its blog.

Users with Windows Pro, Windows Enterprise or Windows Education editions get even more options. In those editions, cumulative monthly updates can be automatically delayed for up to 30 days. And “feature” updates, which add new features to Windows, can be delayed by up to 365 days. (Currently, for Windows Pro, Windows Enterprise or Windows Education users, these updates can be deferred for 180 days.)

Start Menu improvements and interface changes

The Creators Update will make some useful changes to the overall Windows interface, including to the Start menu. Don’t expect anything drastic. In fact, in the normal course of your day, you may never notice the difference.

People who use the Start menu a good deal will welcome one of the changes, which lets you place tiles for multiple apps into folders. Those folders also look like tiles and show small icons of every tile inside them. Click any folder to open it, with all the apps appearing as individual tiles. Click the folder again, and all the tiles slide back into it. It’s a great way to clean up your Start menu.

IDG / Preston Gralla

Other interface changes are more minor, such as a change to how the Apps category appears in Settings. In the current version of Windows 10, you get to the Apps settings via Settings > System > Apps & Features. In the Creators Update, Apps will get its own top-level setting. The new Apps setting also consolidates apps-related settings that were scattered in other locations, such as Default apps, Offline maps and Apps for websites.

IDG / Preston Gralla

Changes to Edge

Some of the most important changes in the Creators Update are to the Edge browser, as Microsoft struggles to build a browser that can compete with Chrome.

Those who hate Flash will get a nice present from the Creators Update: Flash content will be disabled in Edge by default — you will have the option of whether you want to run it or not. (In the current version of Edge, only non-essential Flash content, like ads, is blocked.) That should improve security and performance, as well as extend battery life. In instances where a website also uses HTML5 to deliver multimedia content, Edge will use HTML5 rather than Flash. In addition, you can tell Edge to remember your Flash preferences for individual sites.

IDG / Preston Galla

Another new feature: Edge will let you read content in ePub and PDF formats. It will have the ability to read text aloud. And Microsoft has given the browser a whole host of under-the-hood security improvements.

Edge will also introduce some very nice tab-handling features. Click a down arrow to the right of the add tab button at the top of the screen, and you’ll see thumbnails of every open tab. Click the thumbnail of the tab you want to switch to and you’re sent there. If you no longer want to use the open tabs, but want to revisit them later, click a button to their right and put them aside as a group. When you want to open the group up again, click a button to the left of that one, and they all open.

IDG / Preston Gralla

It’s not clear whether one of Edge’s biggest drawbacks — a serious lack of extensions — will be fixed by the Creators Update. As I write this, there are fewer than two dozen extensions available. A Microsoft blog post claims that the company has released more extension APIs for developers and that the company is working to get more extensions built. But given how few extensions there are currently, it’s not likely there will be a boatload of new extensions available by the time the Creators Update arrives.

A new, more comprehensive Windows Defender interface

Windows Defender, Windows’ anti-malware protection, has always seemed an afterthought, a set-and-forget piece of software you simply let do its job. In the Windows 10 Creators Update, that will change.

Windows Defender and related security applications will get a new all-in-one security dashboard called Windows Defender Security Center, available from Settings > Update & Security > Windows Defender > Open Windows Center Security Center.

IDG / Preston Gralla

It’s more than just a dashboard for Windows Defender; it’s command central for your device’s security and overall health. It lets you see at a glance any potential issues, and lets you delve into customizable settings. A check next to any icon on the dashboard means everything is safe and secure. A red circle with a white X in it means you need to take action to protect yourself.

The dashboard has five sections:

• Virus & threat protection. This shows the state of your anti-malware. It works not just with Windows Defender but with third-party anti-malware programs as well. If you use Windows Defender, you can click the icon to see the results of scans and to customize your anti-malware protection. If you use a different anti-malware package, clicking the icon will launch the application.
• Device performance & health. Click it to see the latest Windows updates, and whether you have problems with your storage, device drivers or battery.
• Firewall & network protection. This shows your firewall settings and lets you change them. It also gives information about your network connections and a link to a network troubleshooter.
• App & browser control. This controls the SmartScreen Filter, which blocks against potentially dangerous apps and files on the web, and against malicious websites when using the Microsoft Edge browser.
• Family options. This links you to parental controls.

3D and gaming features

The Creators Update will offer new 3D and gaming features. Xbox users will be able to stream gaming sessions live to their console. There will also be a Game Mode that maximizes system performance for when you play games. In addition, there’s a Game bar that lets you record your gameplay and take screenshots of it. And there will be an entire section devoted to gaming in Settings that lets you do things such as control the Game bar and Game Mode, and stream your games.

As for 3D, there will be a Paint 3D app for creating 3D content. There will also be support for virtual reality and augmented reality apps. At launch, expect hardware makers to release Windows 10 virtual reality headsets.

A few Cortana updates

Expect some modest Cortana additions. You’ll be able to schedule monthly reminders. Cortana will integrate with Windows 10 setup, so you can ask the digital assistant for help setting up devices. Cortana is expected to recognize new voice commands, including restarting your PC, turning it off, and raising or lowering the system volume. You’ll also be able to use it in full-screen mode.

Other additions

There are plenty of other minor changes as well.

If you’ve ever been confused about where to find the screens for adding new devices to Windows — whether they be Bluetooth, wireless or wired — you’ll be pleased to know that there’s now a Devices heading in the Settings app that provides a unified interface for adding any device. (Choose Settings > Device > Add a device.)

IDG / Preston Gralla

Also new is a “Night Light” feature, which removes blue light from your computer’s display. There’s some evidence that blue light can disrupt the normal sleep cycle, so this feature might help night owls who like to compute at night, but still want to sleep when they’re done.

You’ll also be able to block the installation of desktop applications, only allowing Windows apps (the touch-friendly apps that are installed from the Microsoft Store). At first glance, this seems an odd feature — why ban an entire category of applications? But it could be useful if you don’t want bloatware to be installed on your machine, because those programs are typically written as desktop apps.

In addition, during the installation of the Creators Update, you’ll be prompted to select various privacy settings, including whether Microsoft should collect content so it can display relevant ads to you, whether the Location setting should be turned on, and similar options. You can always change these later in the Privacy section of Settings.

The upshot of all this? Creators Update will be a comparatively modest update with modest changes, many of which are worthwhile. Don’t expect anything revolutionary — largely, for Microsoft, it looks like it will be steady as she goes.

By Preston Gralla, source by ComputerWorld

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