Microsoft just stress-tested its most powerful Azure node in a pretty fun way
Azure’s CTO has been playing Tetris
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Microsofthas been stress-testing its most powerfulAzurenode using a rather unusual method – by playing Tetris on it. Microsoft Azure’s CTO Mark Russinovich revealed the fun test via Twitter, alongside a short GIF.
“Achievement unlocked: playing Tetris on Task Manager on the Azure 24TB Mega Godzilla Beast VM,” Russinovichtweeted.
Of course, a normal game of Tetris is not nearly resource-intensive enough to be much use when stress-testing an Azure node. This particular game involved playing the activity level of 420 virtual Xeon processors in the Task Manager with each block representing a particular task being sent to one of the processors.
An expensive game
This is not the first time that Task Manager has been utilized in an unusual way. Earlier this year, reports emerged that a similar visualization of CPU cores had been used to recreate the classic first-person shooter Doom on Windows Task Manager. However, subsequent reports have claimed that the game is a fake.
Going back to the Tetris video, assuming that it is genuine, it demonstrates that there are certainly some creative individuals working at Azure – or those with too much time on their hands. Either way, carrying out regular stress-tests is important, particularly given that unexpected outages can cause significant financial damage.
Given that this recreated version of Tetris probably cost a significant sum – it was effectively running on a supercomputer, after all – you are probably better off hunting down an old Game Boy if you want to get your classic video game fix. Still, the display was a pretty ingenious way of testing the latest Azure node, and given that there haven’t been any reports of disruption, it looks like it has passed.
ViaMSPoweruser
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Barclay has been writing about technology for a decade, starting out as a freelancer with ITProPortal covering everything from London’s start-up scene to comparisons of the best cloud storage services. After that, he spent some time as the managing editor of an online outlet focusing on cloud computing, furthering his interest in virtualization, Big Data, and the Internet of Things.
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