Microsoft provides Linux images in the Open Technologies VM Depot
Image Game
Microsoft has an entire portfolio of pre-built virtual machines, all of them Linux systems, designed to run on the Windows Azure cloud service.
Microsoft Linux? Completely normal, say the Redmond marketing people. In the VM Depot [1], which is part of the Microsoft Open Technologies site, administrators will now find a huge selection of ready-made Linux virtual machines that can be run in Microsoft's cloud. Most images are based on known distributions, notably Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, and openSUSE (Figure 1).
Figure 1: With five ratings and three comments, the Debian virtual machine is one of just a few that users have rated.
List of Defects
Anyone who registers at the VM Depot can create and upload their own virtual machines. When this issue went to press, the vast majority of images came courtesy of the BitNami project, which operates an "App Store for Server Software" [2] on its own site. In the store, you will not just find many virtual machines for different applications and cloud platforms, but also popular server software, such as the WordPress blogger tools, all preconfigured.
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