Yahoo! News - Microsoft Is Using Linux To Protect Its Own Web Site
Microsoft has made a big deal out of asserting that Linux is not fit for the enterprise. But Microsoft itself is using Linux to help protect its servers against denial-of-service attacks.
According to a post on the Netcraft Web site, Microsoft changed its DNS settings on Friday so that requests for www.microsoft.com no longer resolve to machines on Microsoft's own network, but instead are handled by the Akamai caching system, which runs Linux.
As of this writing, Netcraft reports that www.microsoft.com is still running on Linux, although microsoft.com is reported as running on Windows Server 2003.
A Microsoft spokeswoman said the company "respects the fact that [its partners and vendors] may have diversified business models and operate in mixed IT environments. Microsoft's main concern is doing whatever it takes to help ensure customers can get to the Blaster worm patch to protect their computers.... Microsoft is using Akamai's extensive worldwide network to distrubte the massive traffic that is illegally being directed at Microsoft by hackers."