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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

#91

Post by letstryagain »

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…

On the other hand Azure has some awesome features not available in AWS. For example you can upgrade an Azure instance to a bigger size with zero downtime.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#92

Post by nl »

tanzam75 wrote: post #85
nl wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dis…

Interesting.

That's a pretty serious disadvantage over VMWare.

But I guess the limited attack area of Windows Server Core means many people can avoid applying patches much of the time.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#93

Post by opendomain »

ripberge wrote: post #34
opendomain wrote: post #16

I am a Microsoft fan, but they are doing the cloud all wrong. To setup Azure, you have to use silverlight. To access the servers, you use remote desktop. Microsoft office 365 is $100 PER YEAR - much more than I would pay for the full suite (over 4years of average use) If you want to use SQL server, expect to pay $$$ - and integration or reporting services are not included. There is another feature that is actually ni…

This comment is all wrong actually.

Can you be more specific? I was trying to be helpful and my comment got down voted to oblivion.

I was using Azure today and they still use Silverlight for admin - which mean i can not use it on my Mac.

Remote Desktop is the DEFAULT access - they DO support SSH, but the service is not on out of the box.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#94

Post by amaks »

waps wrote: post #68
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 ?

I don't think Azure has a live migration. In fact, out of Google Cloud Platform, AWS and Azure only GCP has live migration of the running VMs.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#95

Post by amaks »

TomGullen wrote: post #42

Why are all the cloud services suddenly dropping so dramatically? Is this a dramatic shift in strategy/tactics from the sector, or is it a cartel popping?

AWS and Azure are getting defensive against Google's price drop: http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/25/googles-cloud-platform-goes....

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#96

Post by nl »

berns wrote: post #81
nl wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Bandwidth pricing is a very murky field.

I've worked on CDN pricing, too, although mostly outside the US market.

Depending on who you are, in some circumstances you can actually make money from cross connect charges. This is typically the case if you are a telco, but it depends on your place in the market.

You can see some hints of this in the differing ingress and egress pricing on AWS.

Anyway: Yes, AWS bandwidth is expensive and most people would be better off going elsewhere if you are using a lot. But don't be too quick to judge the margins because we have no way of knowing what Amazon pays under what circumstances.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#97

Post by JTenerife »

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.

Do you know that (have experienced, been told by a trustworthy source) or do you just assume?

So far, I had no issues regarding downtime at Azure at all. All downtimes were as stated in their policy.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#98

Post by jroseattle »

This is a good thing, but I wonder how this will affect people like Digital Ocean, Rackspace, etc.

Still, this is a really great thing. Competing on price and/or features will only improve the environment for everyone. Probably not quite a race to the bottom, but there are deep pockets involved in the AMZN/GOOG/MSFT collective.

I expect all the management tools to start to get a lot better.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#99

Post by outside1234 »

keithwarren wrote: post #88
incision wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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 benefi…

cloud is not about performance -- it is about agility.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#100

Post by okaram »

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…

I'm a Linux guy (well, I was a year ago :), but I'm working for Microsoft now, and get $150/mo free on Azure ; although I haven't used many of the advanced features, I'm running a few tiny instance, both Windows and Linux; it works great and has been pretty reliable (and the UI is nicer than AWS :)
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