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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

#111

Post by davidbanham »

shuffle2 wrote: post #57
leddt wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just had this happen recently and there was no warning. Perhaps it depends on the "level" of services you are using. My instance was just an "extra small" vm.

Back when we were using Azure heavily, the answer from the Azure team members I was talking to was that they had no mechanism to warn me when the machine was going to go down.

The primary workload we were running was video game servers. The server stores all state ephemerally in RAM tied to the process. When it goes down, that play session is over and all players are booted. This was just a constraint of the software that we had to live with.

What I was looking for was some kind of heads up so that I could at least try and take down the process gracefully, but that wasn't possible.

As said, this was a while ago. Hopefully the situation is now different.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#112

Post by hhandoko »

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 think it's more to do about branding consistency. Azure is far more than just 'Windows' now, you have: Media Services, CDN, Mobile Services, Cache, etc.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#113

Post by bananas »

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…

We spend about £1500 on Azure a month. It's considerably cheaper than a quarter rack with a ton of bandwidth and all the associated license management. It's cheap but not budget.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#114

Post by bananas »

mason240 wrote: post #87

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 gr…

$5 to $20 doesn't even raise itself above the noise for most people. The net gain for deployment with web deploy is enough on its own.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#115

Post by NicoJuicy »

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's 115 € / month, but 150 $ / month and indeed, it's for 3 years. (i'm Bizspark myselve)

And also, the support was awesome! (needed help transfering everything to another account)

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#116

Post by sandstrom »

hueving wrote: post #27
pjmlp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you imagine a world where consumer broadband had the same level of competition? Sigh...a nerd can dream... Yes, in most European countries. :)

Well that's disappointing then. I wasn't particularly impressed with the service I got at my various hosts' homes in the UK. Is it really the case that the last mile physical infrastructure is considered common there so any provider can use it?

I've got 100 mbit (upstream and downstream) for $38 / month. It's a single data point of course.

I've seen broadband price comparisons across countries, but could not find one now. This one is for mobile broadband, so a bit of an apples to oranges comparison, but still: http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/10/daily-c...

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#117

Post by duncans »

bananas wrote: post #108
hueving wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's disappointing then. I wasn't particularly impressed with the service I got at my various hosts' homes in the UK. Is it really the case that the last mile physical infrastructure is considered common there so any provider can use it?

It's pretty good and yes that is how it works I'm a cheapskate and I get 12Mbit down and 1.5Mbits up with no traffic management and no limits and free phone services for £8/month.

Who's that with?

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#118

Post by [deleted] »

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

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#119

Post by bananas »

duncans wrote: post #117
bananas wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty good and yes that is how it works I'm a cheapskate and I get 12Mbit down and 1.5Mbits up with no traffic management and no limits and free phone services for £8/month.

Who's that with?

Sky. If you argue with them you'll get a good deal. I don't have Sky TV either.

Edit: you need a provider that can afford to make a loss for the sake of customer retention. Sky is a primary example as their broadband is a tiny portion of their business.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#120

Post by topbanana »

neotek wrote: post #64
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 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.

Hmm, that doesn't really seem fair on those of us not going down that route
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