Tag: cloud computing

Office 365 Lync Online SRV DNS records on Amazon Route 53

One of the very few things we still rely on from Microsoft at work is Office 365.  Not because it is so great, but because I simply didn’t have the time to move away yet (quiet Christmas season is coming soon).  Most people don’t get exposed much to it anyway, using Evolution or Thunderbird email clients, or forwarding everything to Gmail altogether.  But as an administrator of the service I get constantly annoyed by the “there are problems with your domain” notification.  After ignoring it for about a year, I decided to finally fix it.  All that was needed is a couple of records in the DNS zone.

Unfortunately, the instructions Microsoft provides don’t quite well apply to Amazon Route 53 user interface.  It took me a few tries and some searching to find the right ones.  Here they are, thanks to a comment on this page:

First record:

1. Log into Route 53.
2. in the hosted zones window, check the box next to YOURDOMAIN.com
3. click  [ > Go to Record Sets]
4. Click  [Create Record Set]
5. Enter  _sipfederationtls._tcp , in the Name field
6. Switch type to SRV – Service locator
7. In the Value window Enter: 100 1 5061 sipfed.online.lync.com
8. Click [Create]

Second record:

9. Click  [Create Record Set]
10. Enter: _sip._tls , in the name field
11. Switch type to SRV – Service locator
12. In the Value window Enter: 100 1 443 sipdir.online.lync.com
13. Click [Create]

Microsoft has developed its own Linux

The rumor of Microsoft working on its own Linux distribution has been going around for a while.  Now it’s confirmed by Microsoft themselves:

The Azure Cloud Switch (ACS) is our foray into building our own software for running network devices like switches. It is a cross-platform modular operating system for data center networking built on Linux. ACS allows us to debug, fix, and test software bugs much faster. It also allows us the flexibility to scale down the software and develop features that are required for our datacenter and our networking needs.

The distribution is not for sale or download, but purely for use in their Azure cloud infrastructure.  The Register looks at this in detail.

I guess, Mahatma Gandhi was right:

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

Inside Amazon’s Cloud Computing Infrastructure

aws regions

Here’s a little insight into the Amazon’s cloud computing infrastructure:

Amazon operates at least 30 data centers in its global network, with another 10 to 15 on the drawing board.

How big is a data center?

A key decision in planning and deploying cloud capacity is how large a data center to build. Amazon’s huge scale offers advantages in both cost and operations. Hamilton said most Amazon data centers house between 50,000 and 80,000 servers, with a power capacity of between 25 and 30 megawatts.

So, how many servers does the Amazon AWS run?

So how many servers does Amazon Web Services run? The descriptions by Hamilton and Vogels suggest the number is at least 1.5 million. Figuring out the upper end of the range is more difficult, but could range as high as 5.6 million, according to calculations by Timothy Prickett Morgan at the Platform.