Mark Russinovich, Technical Fellow of Microsoft Azure, just demo’d at #ChefConf 2014 direct integration of Chef inside a Canonical Ubuntu Virtual Machine using Azure extension technology. We talked about this technology at //build a couple weeks ago and showed off Puppet running inside Windows onstage during the keynote. Up until now, this was a Windows-only solution.

Today, on the one year anniversary of Virtual Machines hitting General Availability, Mark showed the first Azure extension built for Linux! He showed a demo, directly using the Azure portal, of a simple checkbox to deploy the latest Chef client directly into the VM upon startup, with the RB and PEM files to run it. This means, you don’t need to log-in, SSH on, or do ANYTHING with the virtual machine besides boot it on Azure and connect it to your Chef Server. This also means, you have the same experience on Windows and Linux, all through the Azure portal.

We built extensions in Azure to make it easy to use the solutions you love!! They offer additive value and can be updated over the life-cycle of the VM. This VM agent with extensions, already available on Windows and just announced on Linux (available soon), brings PaaS-like power onto the IaaS Virtual Machine, on your terms and at your pace, across your OS of choice.

With Chef, Linux, and Azure, we have a delightful option…nay, a freakin’ delightful option, as Mark so eloquently explained (although he didn’t say “freakin’”).

Want to see him do it? You can watch Mark in this video from the #ChefConf 2014 keynote.

See ya around,

Corey