Microsoft Azure, now even more Open with Red Hat

Quick but significant one today.  Azure from now supports Red Hat Linux as Microsoft and Red Hat enter a new partnership.

Here are a few useful links to get the lowdown.

• Visit the Microsoft and Red Hat landing page here and view the announcement webcast by Microsoft’s Scot Guthrie and Red Hat’s Paul Cormier.
• Attend (or watch a recording) of a technical webinar on running Red Hat solutions on Microsoft Azure.
• Go here to learn more about our overall Microsoft open cloud approach and join our social blog.

If you don't feel like following links, here are the key points:

• Red Hat solutions available natively to Microsoft Azure customers. In the coming weeks, Microsoft Azure will become a Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider, enabling customers to run their Red Hat Enterprise Linux applications and workloads on Microsoft Azure. At this time, Red Hat Cloud Access subscribers will be able to bring their own virtual machine images to run in Microsoft Azure. Microsoft Azure customers can also take advantage of the full value of Red Hat's application platform, including Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform; Red Hat JBoss Web Server; Red Hat Gluster Storage; and OpenShift, Red Hat's Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering. Also, in the coming months, Microsoft Azure and Red Hat plan to provide Red Hat On-Demand— “pay-as-you-go” Red Hat Enterprise Linux images available in the Azure Marketplace, supported by Red Hat.

• Integrated enterprise-grade support spanning hybrid environments. Customers will be offered cross-platform, cross-company support spanning the Microsoft Azure and Red Hat offerings in an integrated way, unlike any previous partnership in the public cloud. By co-locating support teams the experience for customers will be simple and seamless.
• Unified workload management across hybrid cloud deployments. Red Hat CloudForms will integrate with Microsoft Azure and System Center Virtual Machine Manager, offering Red Hat CloudForms customers the ability to manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux on both Hyper-V and Microsoft Azure. Support for managing Azure workloads from Red Hat CloudForms is expected to be added next year, extending the existing System Center capabilities for managing Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
• Collaboration on .NET for a new generation of application development capabilities. Expanding on the preview of .NET on Linux announced by Microsoft in April, developers will have access to .NET technologies across Red Hat offerings, including OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, jointly backed by Microsoft and Red Hat. Red Hat Enterprise Linux will be the primary development and reference operating system for .NET Core on Linux.