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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

#131

Post by kolektiv »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #128
pjc50 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK isn't really a "European" country in this regard; it still prefers inefficient private quasi-monopolies to properly functioning state services. The UK "last mile" infrastructure is unbundled so you can get your DSL service through a wide variety of providers - but actual line speed upgrades and faults are still at the mercy of BT incompetence, and everyone has to pay them £15/month for "line rental" even if yo…

"properly functioning state services" You obviously aren't old enough to remember when BT was part of the state owned post office. It wasn't great.

I'm old enough. I think that's why the parent qualified with "properly functioning"!

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#132

Post by venomsnake »

higherpurpose wrote: post #129
venomsnake wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is called Eastern Europe - 100Mb/s for 20 euro a month with static IP and no traffic limits. Also we have right now large fiber to the home deployments.

100 Mbps? Try 1 Gbit/s for 15 euro.

The problem I have not jumped to Gbit is that there is nothing to download ...

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#133

Post by ravibhatt »

dewiz wrote: post #75
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.

Well, the world does not move on ideal conditions. I have used AWS and Azure extensively. My use case has been mainly around hadoop ecosystem. Here is what happens on azure(HDInsights Specifically):

You have a cluster running, that does some work at certain times in a day. Out of the blue, Several machine would be "re-imaged" and that means it would delete all the logs, working directories etc.Its like a snapshot restore. So when this happens, you have lost any custom changes you had done on the cluster. You lose any 3rd party jars you had placed.

Those machines, join back your cluster and your jobs would no longer run because of missing jars Unless you program to download all files on every reboot.

Most important thing though is lack of prior notifications. I have had cases when a "re-image" happend when my CPU was 100% utilised and my RAM was used 90%. So my box was working on something and azure decided to apply a patch!!

As per frequency, its once every two weeks, sometimes more.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#134

Post by profquail »

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…

In addition to Linux, Azure also runs FreeBSD 10 now that Microsoft contributed Hyper-V drivers to FreeBSD.

Just in case you want to build the next WhatsApp ;)

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#135

Post by ravibhatt »

marshray wrote: post #59
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…

If you (or anyone in the this thread) would be so kind as to write up a description of some specific functionality or interactions that we can improve and email them to me (m/a/r/a/y at microsoft dotcom) I would appreciate it. I can't promise instant gratification results, but I will do my best to get your feedback to the right person. Thanks :-)

I can give some point here: (A cluster below is hadoop cluster)

- Machines reboot without any notifications. - Blob storage gets throttled ( i was told by a support staff) and at times become unreachable. - Some clusters i create, go into "Operational Mode" in that beautiful UI. and there is no way to delete that cluster! - At one instance, a cluster failed because, i was told, some internal azure tables got deleted! - Start up time (for PasS) for a cluster is 13+ mins regardless of how many machines you have in it.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#136

Post by vertex-four »

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…

Most other cloud hosting platforms don't support mail() either. You're supposed to sign up for something like Sendgrid or Amazon SES and use that.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#137

Post by GFischer »

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…

The company I work for tried hard to make HyperV work, but they ended up ditching it as an inferior product.

It definitely wasn't up to the enterprise standards they were expecting. I don't know what were the specific issues they ran into, though (I'm on the development side currently).

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#138

Post by justincormack »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #35
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?

Yes - the UK telephone network is regulated, and any provider can supply services over the formerly-public BT network. ADSL2+ is available up to ~20Mbps; there's also BT's Infinity, which I think is FTTC with VDSL - that's up to about 70Mbps. Virgin Media has a private cable network, which is great if you're not in an oversubscribed area - bandwidth up to 152Mbps is available for low cost. In general the situation is…

Last mile fiber is not a free for all yet.

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#139

Post by CarlHoerberg »

Andys wrote: post #106
deathanatos wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, why would you need to bind an arbitrary IP to a VM? What's wrong with the one it's presumably got? I know some places can move IPs around at will, but it seems like the wrong layer in the stack to do it. Aren't IPs something you want to assign based on your network topology? If you need an arbitrary identifier that can move between machines, what's wrong with DNS? (And how are you not re-inventing D…

Some DNS clients ignore the TTL, or have their own minimums. One of the worst offenders, ironically, is Microsoft's own Windows XP which is notorious for having a minimum TTL of 10 minutes, forcing people away from DNS as a means of failover.

Do you have a reference backing that? I've only found information contradicting that, eg: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/318803

Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage

#140

Post by pekk »

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…

Azure to App Engine isn't apples to apples. For example, you could write an app to run on Azure and be able to change platforms to chase better prices or capabilities later, rather than having to use App Engine at inflated prices forever after.
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