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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

#81

Post by berns »

nl wrote: post #52
sytelus wrote: post #47

I still don't know why people find these "low" prices exciting. A most minimum spec VM in cloud still costs $380 per year . Considering these providers have advantage of scale plus load balancing ability, the cost should be 1/10th of this. I was looking for new host for my site and after I looked at Azure/AWS, I was floored how expensive these things are. Cloud prices had been riding in clouds for quite sometime. It…

A most minimum spec VM in cloud still costs $380 per year. Not sure where you are getting that. On Azure, it is $16 12=$192/year[1]. If your "in cloud" means other large providers as well, Digital Ocean will do it for $5 12=$60/year[2]. If you are prepared to go with smaller providers, then a very quick look around finds providers at $5/year[3]. I've worked on pricing at a large (enterprise) hosting company and I can…

No low margins at all. Don't forget the bandwidth pricing. No low margins there at all. Digital Ocean includes up to 5 TB of free transfer. That would cost $614 per month at AWS. Not to mention dedicated server providers like OVH where you can get a modern Xeon and unmetered 300 Mbps bandwidth for $ 137 per month.

Edit: typo

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#82

Post by andrewvc »

iambateman wrote: post #10

I've used Azure's cloud hosting in production for a half dozen sites and I have to say it's driving me nuts. We tried to flip DNS to Azure and it wouldn't resolve. It took our senior developer two days of talking to Azure support to solve. Ended up being their fault. Today I ported some work using PHP's mail() function, which evidently Azure doesn't support? This is probably our own fault for switching environments b…

Ah, well, PHP's mail function is kind of terrible. https://phpbestpractices.org/ (look for the section on why)

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#83

Post by us0r »

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've had the same server up for months. Some of my workers roles on the other hand drop a bit.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#84

Post by marshray »

chetanahuja wrote: post #77
marshray wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"."

I get it ... you're not a fan of the branding.

What matters is the product.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#85

Post by tanzam75 »

nl wrote: post #60
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.

This isn't correct. Azure uses HyperV[1] as their virtualization technology. That isn't the same as Windows at all, although it is included in Windows Server. While I have had more reboots on Azure than on AWS, it isn't weekly by any means - more like every 3 months or so. It hasn't been often enough for it to be a problem (low usage environment though, so YMMV). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-V#Microsoft_Hyp…

Yes, Azure VMs run on top of Hyper-V. Which means that the physical machine must reboot after every Hyper-V update.

However, each physical machine also runs an Azure Host Agent, which runs on top of Windows Server Core. While the use of Server Core helps cut down on reboots, it doesn't eliminate them.

But then, why doesn't Hyper-V just stay up while it reboots the VM containing the Host Agent? Because the virtual disk drivers are implemented for Windows Server. (Hyper-V has the concept of a management OS, which has privileged access to the hardware.)

Source: http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2012/08/2...

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#86

Post by rbanffy »

camus2 wrote: post #79
afhsfsfdsss88 wrote: post #53

It would just feel so dirty running a *nix vm on a Windows Server host...DIRTY.

makes little sense,but they'll end up running unix themself one day,dont worry...

Many decades ago, Microsoft had Xenix. It was a very competent Unix-like OS at its time.

No. Not really. But it was what was possible to run on PCs at that dark age.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#87

Post by mason240 »

They really need to cut prices. I created a card-lookup site for a collectible card game (http://www.lotrlcg.com/).

Originally it was written in PHP and was on regular shared hosting through InMotion Hosting for about $5/month.

I rewrote it in ASP MCV and hosted it through Azure and they are charging about $20/month - a jump that I was not expecting. The convenience of being fully integrated into the MS stack is great, but I was planning on moving everything with project I start. Hopefully the price difference will be good enough to stay.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#88

Post by keithwarren »

incision wrote: post #72
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…

Strikes me that this is intentional, not some thing that they are structurally incapable of doing - it is not as if there is a massive engineering effort for example, to support such a thing.

Never the less, I am in the same boat as your friends in many cases. In my consulting practice I do lots of SQL Server tuning work and have found very few cases where I can tell a client that going to Azure would be a net benefit for the database. Even with the new dedicated SQL instances, on-premise will almost always get you more perf per dollar. (though the Azure stuff does come with less maintenance headaches in theory)

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#89

Post by encoderer »

allochthon wrote: post #31

I feel like this is one of the few times where I've seen capitalism work clearly and unambiguously along the lines that Adam Smith had in mind. I'm deriving something approaching mischievous glee.

I don't know, I see it every week a block from my house. Chevron drops the price of gas twenty cents and before the end of the day the citgo across the street has dropped theirs 21 cents.

Of course when one raises prices, the others follow right back up.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#90

Post by tszming »

city41 wrote: post #25
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

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.

It is also worth point out you can add up to 8 developer accounts (now seems to be 4?) under bizspark programme and the $150 credit is per developer, so the total saving for 3 yrs is up to $43200 (crazy?)

Also, you can enjoy additional discounted hourly rate for up to 33%, aws/google can't compete with that.

[1] http://spiffy.sg/startup/how-to-maximize-and-activate-your-b...

[2] http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/offers/ms-azr-0057p/

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