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Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

blogs.msdn.com

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Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#71

Post by Linell »

stusmall wrote: post #61
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 w…

While I've never used a Linux VM on Azure, I can say that every question I've had was answered quickly and extremely thoroughly. I've never ran into anything that support was unable to help with.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#72

Post by incision »

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…

>"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."

Interestingly, the folks I deal with some folks who run some large-scale Microsoft services for a living want nothing to do with Azure in its current state and use AWS instead.

Apparently, Azure lacks some pretty basic functionality like the ability to bind multiple addresses to an instance [0] and makes running legacy versions of Windows a pain - deal breakers for production and test purposes.

0: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsazure/en-US/d... "At this time we have nothing we can disclose regarding the timeframe to support multiple IPs on Azure VMs."

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#73

Post by dewiz »

nlh wrote: post #13

Yet another example of competition working out well for the consumer. Innovation, price drops, etc. Can you imagine a world where consumer broadband had the same level of competition? Sigh...a nerd can dream...

Out of curiosity, which country/part of the world ? What is the average price and speed there ?

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#74

Post by stusmall »

Linell wrote: post #71
stusmall wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

While I've never used a Linux VM on Azure, I can say that every question I've had was answered quickly and extremely thoroughly. I've never ran into anything that support was unable to help with.

Oh, I meant support as in how well does it actually work not can I get someone on the phone to help me out. Sorry about the unclear wording.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#75

Post by dewiz »

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.

I'm not sure what you are saying is completely correct. However in the cloud you should design for that, everything will eventually fail and your service should manage. ie. avoid stateful VMs, provide sufficient redundancy etc. Design for failure. This is not just about Azure, it's a common cloud design practice.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#76

Post by chetanahuja »

Seems like someone at Microsoft is reading this thread. In that case, an incubator I'm involved with (Tandem Entrepreneurs in the bay area) would like to get that sweet incubator deal if it's still on. We're already on a similar deal with AWS.

And ahem, Google cloud folks if you're reading this... you know what to do.

You can email me at my username at gmail

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#77

Post by chetanahuja »

marshray wrote: post #69
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.

I'll just shamelessly copy my own tweet about the branding problems of Azure

"It took them too long to understand that the Windows brand is tarnished forever. I propose ditch "Microsoft" too. Just "Azure"."

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#78

Post by sixothree »

bignaj wrote: post #20
yulaow wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can also get free access to Azure with a MSDN subscription which is nice for those who have one :)

Ours gets us $100 / month credit. Which previously was not quite enough for one medium vm.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#80

Post by rbanffy »

maaaats wrote: post #14
JeremyMorgan wrote: post #2

Very nice! I think Azure's biggest hurdle so far is the association with Microsoft and people assuming "well it must be expensive" only to be proven right when they sign up. That being said, some parts of Azure are pretty cheap and for small site it's affordable as it is now. You can get 10 free websites and a couple decent sized databases for around $40 a month which gives you better service and scalability than you…

Azure's pricing is great for side projects and small startups. Everything I have done so far has been free.

Do they have a free tier like Amazon?
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