{"id":282170,"date":"2014-01-01T00:00:05","date_gmt":"2014-01-01T08:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-group&#038;p=282170"},"modified":"2024-06-21T08:14:49","modified_gmt":"2024-06-21T15:14:49","slug":"azure-research-systems","status":"publish","type":"msr-group","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/group\/azure-research-systems\/","title":{"rendered":"Azure Research \u2013 Systems"},"content":{"rendered":"<section class=\"mb-3 moray-highlight\">\n\t<div class=\"card-img-overlay mx-lg-0\">\n\t\t<div class=\"card-background  has-background-catalina-blue card-background--full-bleed\">\n\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1400\" height=\"788\" src=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2022\/08\/T05_FutureOfTheCloud_1400x788.jpg\" class=\"attachment-full size-full\" alt=\"a blue-lit hallway of servers\" style=\"object-position: 51% 50%\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2022\/08\/T05_FutureOfTheCloud_1400x788.jpg 1400w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2022\/08\/T05_FutureOfTheCloud_1400x788-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2022\/08\/T05_FutureOfTheCloud_1400x788-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2022\/08\/T05_FutureOfTheCloud_1400x788-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2022\/08\/T05_FutureOfTheCloud_1400x788-1066x600.jpg 1066w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2022\/08\/T05_FutureOfTheCloud_1400x788-655x368.jpg 655w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2022\/08\/T05_FutureOfTheCloud_1400x788-343x193.jpg 343w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2022\/08\/T05_FutureOfTheCloud_1400x788-240x135.jpg 240w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2022\/08\/T05_FutureOfTheCloud_1400x788-640x360.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2022\/08\/T05_FutureOfTheCloud_1400x788-960x540.jpg 960w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2022\/08\/T05_FutureOfTheCloud_1400x788-1280x720.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1400px) 100vw, 1400px\" \/>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<!-- Foreground -->\n\t\t<div class=\"card-foreground d-flex mt-md-n5 my-lg-5 px-g px-lg-0\">\n\t\t\t<!-- Container -->\n\t\t\t<div class=\"container d-flex mt-md-n5 my-lg-5 align-self-center\">\n\t\t\t\t<!-- Card wrapper -->\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"w-100 w-lg-col-5\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<!-- Card -->\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"card material-md-card py-5 px-md-5\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"card-body \">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/group\/azure-research\/\" class=\"icon-link icon-link--reverse mb-2\" data-bi-cN=\"Azure Research\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"c-glyph glyph-chevron-left\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAzure Research\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading h2\" id=\"azure-research-systems\">Azure Research \u2013 Systems<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>Cloud systems innovation at the core of Azure<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"overview\">Overview<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left\">Azure Research \u2013 Systems is a research group in Azure Core that brings forward-looking, world-class systems research directly into Azure. The group was seeded from the Cloud Efficiency team, which migrated from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/group\/systems-research-group-redmond\/\">Systems Research Group<\/a> at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/research\/\">Microsoft Research<\/a>, for a closer integration with Azure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left\">Our group&#8217;s main mission is to improve the cost efficiency of Microsoft&#8217;s online services and datacenters. We pursue this mission by working closely with the company&#8217;s product groups to (1) propose and lead joint projects that improve efficiency, and (2) do research on potential future efficiency improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"impact-of-our-research\">Impact of our research<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"some-of-our-main-tech-transfers-and-corresponding-papers\">Some of our main tech transfers and corresponding papers<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>The server shutdown component of our power emergency management system (described in our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/flex-high-availability-datacenters-with-zero-reserved-power\/\">ISCA 2021 paper<\/a>) went into production in June 2023.  The system allows datacenters to allocate all of their reserve\/redundant power and host more servers.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Harvest VMs v2 for harvesting underutilized cores (described as Elastic VMs in our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/smartharvest-harvesting-idle-cpus-safely-and-efficiently-in-the-cloud\/\">EuroSys 2021 paper<\/a>) went into production in January 2023.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The server throttling component of our power emergency management system (also described in our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/flex-high-availability-datacenters-with-zero-reserved-power\/\">ISCA 2021 paper<\/a>) went into production in March 2021.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Our per-VM power capping software (described in our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/prediction-based-power-oversubscription-in-cloud-platforms\/\">ATC 2021 paper<\/a>) went into production in October 2020.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Our hybrid policy for managing cold starts in serverless platforms (described in our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/serverless-in-the-wild-characterizing-and-optimizing-the-serverless-workload-at-a-large-cloud-provider\/\">ATC 2020 paper<\/a>) went into production in Azure Functions in June 2020.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Harvest VMs v1 for harvesting unallocated cores and Harvest Hadoop, our modification of YARN and HDFS to benefit from Harvest VMs, (described in our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/providing-slos-for-resource-harvesting-vms-in-cloud-platforms\/\">OSDI 2020 paper<\/a>) went into production in November 2019.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Our power capping and oversubscription software went into production in July 2018.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Our tail latency mitigation techniques for HDFS (described in our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/managing-tail-latency-in-datacenter-scale-file-systems-under-production-constraints\/\">EuroSys 2019 paper<\/a>) went into production in June 2018.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Resource Central, our ML and prediction-serving system for cloud platforms (described in our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/resource-central-understanding-predicting-workloads-improved-resource-management-large-cloud-platforms\/\">SOSP 2017 paper<\/a>), went into production in March 2018.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Router-Based HDFS Federation, our system for transparently scaling HDFS to datacenter sizes (described in our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/scaling-distributed-file-systems-resource-harvesting-datacenters\/\">ATC 2017 paper<\/a>), went into production in June 2017.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>CPU blind isolation for harvesting spare CPU cycles (described in our <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/www.usenix.org\/conference\/atc18\/presentation\/iorgulescu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ATC 2018 paper<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> with the DMX group at MSR) went into production in August 2016.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Perflite, a tool for VM utilization analysis and optimization built from our Floodlight tool, went into production in February 2016.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Our resource-harvesting YARN\/HDFS stack and HDFS data placement algorithm for harvesting spare storage (described in our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/harvesting-spare-cycles-and-storage-in-large-scale-datacenters\/\">OSDI 2016 paper<\/a>) went into production in January 2016.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Our analysis of disk reliability (described in our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/environmental-conditions-and-disk-reliability-in-free-cooled-datacenters\/\">FAST 2016 award paper<\/a>) prompted the adoption of a new ambient control policy for Microsoft&#8217;s free-cooling datacenters starting in 2015.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>None of these successes would not have been possible without our close partnership with teams in Azure, Bing, CO+I, AHSI, and Windows\/Hyper-V.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"some-of-our-recent-best-paper-awards\">Some of our recent best paper awards<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/pond-cxl-based-memory-pooling-systems-for-cloud-platforms\/\"><strong>Pond: CXL-Based Memory Pooling Systems for Cloud Platforms<\/strong><\/a>. <strong>ASPLOS 2023<\/strong>. Huaicheng Li, Daniel S. Berger, Stanko Novakovic, Lisa Hsu, Dan Ernst, Pantea Zardoshti, Monish Shah, Samir Rajadnya, Scott Lee, Ishwar Agarwal, Mark D. Hill, Marcus Fontoura, Ricardo Bianchini. \ud83c\udfc5<em>Distinguished Paper Award<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/enso-a-streaming-interface-for-nic-application-communication\/\"><strong>Ens\u014d: A Streaming Interface for NIC-Application Communication<\/strong>.<\/a> <strong>OSDI 2023. <\/strong>Hugo Sadok, Nirav Atre, Zhipeng Zhao, Daniel S. Berger, James C. Hoe, Aurojit Panda, Justine Sherry, Ren Wang. \ud83c\udfc5<em>Best Paper Award.<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/overclocking-in-immersion-cooled-datacenters\/\"><strong>Overclocking in Immersion-Cooled Datacenters<\/strong><\/a>. \ud83c\udfc5<strong>IEEE Micro Top Picks from the 2021 Computer Architecture Conferences<\/strong>. Pulkit Misra, Ioannis Manousakis, Esha Choukse, Majid Jalili, \u00cd\u00f1igo Goiri, Ashish Raniwala, Brijesh Warrier, Husam Alissa, Bharath Ramakrishnan, Phillip Tuma, Christian Belady, Marcus Fontoura, Ricardo Bianchini.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Complete list of publications <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/group\/azure-systems-research\/publications\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cloud systems innovation at the core of Azure Azure Research \u2013 Systems is a research group in Azure Core that brings forward-looking, world-class systems research directly into Azure. The group was seeded from the Cloud Efficiency team, which migrated from the Systems Research Group at Microsoft Research, for a closer integration with Azure. Our group&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":871668,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"msr_group_start":"","footnotes":""},"research-area":[13547],"msr-group-type":[243694],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr_group_start":"","msr_detailed_description":"","msr_further_details":"","msr_hero_images":[],"msr_research_lab":[],"related-researchers":[{"type":"user_nicename","display_name":"Ricardo Bianchini","user_id":33393,"people_section":"Group 1","alias":"ricardob"},{"type":"user_nicename","display_name":"Rodrigo Fonseca","user_id":40429,"people_section":"Group 1","alias":"rofons"},{"type":"user_nicename","display_name":"Kapil Arya","user_id":37824,"people_section":"Group 1","alias":"kaarya"},{"type":"user_nicename","display_name":"Daniel S. 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