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Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

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Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#61

Post by stusmall »

jtchang wrote: post #11

Hate on Microsoft all you want but this is a great thing. If Microsoft feels they want to play in the infrastructure as a service game they need to earn the customer's trust. Price matching is certainly one way to do it. Azure does run linux by the way (a lot of people don't know that). One thing I've been going back and forth about is whether I "trust" Google App Engine or Microsoft Azure more. Both are juggernauts…

How good is the support? I ask because last time I tried HyperV I had lots of really lame issues. Like breaking the CD-ROM drive access and their workaround was to copy over an ISO and mount that locally or something like that. It felt like Linux was an unfinished offering. Yeah, I mean it ran... but not well. I figure some of what I ran into was user error since its a new tech to me but I've talked to a few people who have had serious HyperV issues so I'm not going to take all the blame.

I bring this up because I'd imagine those Linux VMs are sitting on top HyperV. I'll be very happy to hear that my fears are unfounded and they run great though.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#62

Post by MichaelGG »

leddt wrote: post #49
davidbanham wrote: post #45

FYI, Azure runs Linux but does so on a Windows host. Whenever Windows needs a security update, it has to be rebooted. This means you need to plan for your Linux VM to go down weekly.

In my experience (running a Windows vm) the forced reboot is more like every two months. Also they have a feature called availability sets where you can load balance two VMs and they guarantee that one of them will always be up. Edit: Looking back at my email history, it's much less often than that. The interval between the previous two reboots was 6 months. They also gave about two weeks notice when it happened.

But in order to use Availability Sets, you MUST use their load-balancer thingy and share a single IP address. Meaning if you want to individually address each server, you've gotta get creative with port mapping. It's very annoying.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#64

Post by neotek »

yulaow wrote: post #17
jtchang wrote: post #11

Hate on Microsoft all you want but this is a great thing. If Microsoft feels they want to play in the infrastructure as a service game they need to earn the customer's trust. Price matching is certainly one way to do it. Azure does run linux by the way (a lot of people don't know that). One thing I've been going back and forth about is whether I "trust" Google App Engine or Microsoft Azure more. Both are juggernauts…

Also with Bizspark you can have, if I remember well, like 150E/month to spend on azure for 3 years. Considering that almost any IT startup can access to bizspark, it is a nice thing to at least try it. Also I love the fact they are distributing their sdks for other os (linux and osx) and that they are all opensource on github

It gets even better than that if you're in an approved accelerator / incubator: you get $60,000 USD in hosting credits, at a rate of $5,000 a month. We're entirely hosted on Azure using their Linux VMs and have had a great experience with them so far.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#65

Post by dantiberian »

outside1234 wrote: post #50
dantiberian wrote: post #21

Steve Martin comes off as oddly defensive when announcing these changes I’ve yet to meet a developer who travels just to hear about pricing updates, so you won’t see us take the stage at Build and use the opening moment to announce a price cut. This isn’t retail; innovation matters. I’ll cover pricing right here, right now. I'm not sure what purpose it serves except for making a stab at Amazon and Google.

I think he makes a valid point, why waste keynote time on prices? I'd much rather hear about the innovation.

It's a valid point but phrased oddly. He could have said something like:

"We have so much amazing stuff to tell you at Build that we won't have time to cover price drops on Azure. Effective May 1 ..."

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#66

Post by asharpe »

dantiberian wrote: post #21

Steve Martin comes off as oddly defensive when announcing these changes I’ve yet to meet a developer who travels just to hear about pricing updates, so you won’t see us take the stage at Build and use the opening moment to announce a price cut. This isn’t retail; innovation matters. I’ll cover pricing right here, right now. I'm not sure what purpose it serves except for making a stab at Amazon and Google.

That's a very cynical position to take. For once, here is a large market player focussing on providing delivering value via the product and not wasting time on pricing. In many cases, even with these price reductions (and their claim to match AWS/GCE), pricing is not the driver for hosting adoption - rather features, ease of use, performance etc. It is refreshing to see one of the big boys elevate this.

It does set a high benchmark for what they are presenting: saying they have big innovation to announce ... and then not deliver ...

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#67

Post by martydill »

sachinag wrote: post #39
city41 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also worth pointing out that BizSpark imposes no requirements or obligations on the startup. You are free to join BizSpark and never use any of its services and you don't owe MS anything at all.

They got rid of the $100 thing?

Yup, graduation is now completely free.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#68

Post by waps »

davidbanham wrote: post #45

FYI, Azure runs Linux but does so on a Windows host. Whenever Windows needs a security update, it has to be rebooted. This means you need to plan for your Linux VM to go down weekly.

Really ? http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831435.aspx

Virtual PC supports live migration. Seems like an easy way to do maintenance on the hosts. Does azure use live migration ?

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#69

Post by marshray »

sadfaceunread wrote: post #63

Microsoft has always been terrible at branding. Is it 'Microsoft Azure' or 'Windows Azure' it is both ways multiple places on their site.

The change to 'Microsoft Azure' was announced 6 days ago http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2014/03/25/upco... beginning 3 days from now.

So, yeah, it's in transition.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#70

Post by Shebanator »

dantiberian wrote: post #21

Steve Martin comes off as oddly defensive when announcing these changes I’ve yet to meet a developer who travels just to hear about pricing updates, so you won’t see us take the stage at Build and use the opening moment to announce a price cut. This isn’t retail; innovation matters. I’ll cover pricing right here, right now. I'm not sure what purpose it serves except for making a stab at Amazon and Google.

What he means is: "we weren't expecting the Google and Amazon price cuts, so we aren't going to change our carefully planned keynote to announce this."
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