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Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

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Re: Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

#31

Post by anonymfus »

softawre wrote: post #10

The localization one, with all of the languages, is that really a bad thing to do on an error page? Apple does the same thing in some of their UIs. If it's a brand new experience (like a user manual, or first logon), or you're in an error state - might you not know the locale of the user, or have failed to load the correct es-MX.json strings file or whatever it's called?

Also displaying error in multiple languages is clearly better than displaying only localized one because localized message can be ungoogleable and unbingable.

Re: Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

#32

Post by akerro »

AlfeG wrote: post #30

Most annoying thing - is that Azure unable to transfer account subscriptions region. I've relocated from one country to another, and only option I have - is to create new Microsoft account with different not seen by MS credit card.

Only credit cards? They accept debit cards, right?

Re: Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

#33

Post by helloworld »

With apologies to the anonymous wag(s) who long ago composed Windows desktop error messages in haiku format [1]:

  Windows Azure crashed.
  I am the Blue Screen of Death.
  No one hears your screams.
In fairness, I should note that I've personally had no problems with Microsoft cloud services.

[1] http://soler7.com/IFAQ/WindowsErrorHaiku.html

Re: Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

#34

Post by jamesgeck0 »

mrmondo wrote: post #4

In the month we trailed it we found there were so many internal networking and performance problems. I went with with a suspiciously optimistic attitude as I am experienced systems delivery engineer and I don't find windows especially in the server special at all reverent these years, but I tried to objectify Jude it as a platform. Ill tell you what - it's built to make money for the backers - it's not built out of p…

> I would estimate that approximately 90% of the outages we noticed (all platform / service related in the Asia/Pac regions) would never appear on their service status pages.

Sounds kinda par for the course. At my last job we joked that the AWS status page would only be updated when the datacenter was literally on fire.

Re: Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

#35

Post by manigandham »

Azure has some pretty neat tech but their UI and CLI tools are the worst of all cloud platforms (and I've used everything from AWS, GCP to DO and Softlayer). They're always slow, confusing and hard to use.

Considering this is how you interact with the platform, I'm always surprised why they don't devote more of their considerable resources to just fixing this. It can't take more than a few weeks to revamp the whole thing. Seems more like political and management problems on their end than any tech issues.

Re: Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

#36

Post by mattmanser »

MichaelGG wrote: post #27

I know multiple customers with significant free Azure credit that prefer to pay for Google Cloud or AWS over using Azure for anything critical. The management system is a mess - the new portal is nutty and slow. The old one lacks key features and operations are still slow. I can't understate how frustrating and time consuming this is. Maybe I'm using it wrong, but whatever. Using GCP is a blast of fresh air - light,…

I had an apparent MS employee reply to one of my comments complaining about azure's portal saying the engineers know the interface is awful but can't do anything about it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12773022

I'd assumed it was a design by programmer fail, especially because of the terrible modular design, but it doesn't look like it.

I was wondering, poor performance wise, a client of mine is consistently seeing a 3-5ms lag between the SQL boxes and the website on azure. This seems incredibly high to me, but my experience is generally with SQL server on the same box or on the local network. I've never had a problem like this before, but this site can generate hundreds of queries per request because of legacy code.

That basically adds 500ms to a request just going up and down to SQL.

Am I being crazy for thinking a 5ms latency on stuff that's supposed to be in the same data centre is incredibly bad?

We're also getting random "The wait operation timed out" on DB connections between azure SQL dbs and Azure websites, basically a complete DB hang that I've never seen on a dedicated server setup, the client upgraded to premium, they're getting them even more. That means random users are getting complete failures every now and again. Unbelievable.

I honestly can't understand why anyone would pay for azure, in my experience the performance is an order of magnitude worse than dedicated servers that are half the price. The only good thing about it is easy deployment, which is something that's a complete PITA on dedicated servers until you've spent a bunch of time setting it up.

Re: Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

#37

Post by jnsaff2 »

jsingleton wrote: post #21

There are a few issues, but to be fair I've encountered similar things in all the cloud and VPS hosting services I've used. However, I do remember that I was once trying to push Azure as a solution and they promptly had an outage. We went with AWS instead. It's not that AWS don't have outages, they do, just that the timing was really bad. Also, don't use the preview services in Azure apart from to try them out. They…

To illustrate the "don't use previews" point, they recently announced VNet peering where two VNets could be peered together without VPN gateways.

We started using them and at some point discovered that half of our instances in a VMSS could not talk to the other VNet and half could. We were tearing our hair out, there is absolutely no configuration difference between those hosts.

We did contact their support and after a few days they came back with this: "there is a small bug with the peering that we are aware of, only hosts which were launched before peering was set up can communicate with the other VNet, for new hosts to communicate you need to delete the VNets, just recreating the peering is not enough"

They did offer to add our hosts in by hand, but we were running back to VPN Gateways ..

... which also have a peculiar problem, the Standard level GW's are capped to 100Mbps but burst to 200Mbps and then get throttled to 0 for about 20 seconds or so. This was also confirmed by Support.

Our experience with Azure has been very painful, things look good on paper but it's pretty much lies or illusions.

Re: Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

#38

Post by UK-AL »

mattmanser wrote: post #36
MichaelGG wrote: post #27

I know multiple customers with significant free Azure credit that prefer to pay for Google Cloud or AWS over using Azure for anything critical. The management system is a mess - the new portal is nutty and slow. The old one lacks key features and operations are still slow. I can't understate how frustrating and time consuming this is. Maybe I'm using it wrong, but whatever. Using GCP is a blast of fresh air - light,…

I had an apparent MS employee reply to one of my comments complaining about azure's portal saying the engineers know the interface is awful but can't do anything about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12773022 I'd assumed it was a design by programmer fail, especially because of the terrible modular design, but it doesn't look like it. I was wondering, poor performance wise, a client of mine is consistently s…

I can understand the comment "UI by designers", it looks pretty when you first logon, but then you try and use it then it feels slow, and quite an effort to get around.

Re: Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

#39

Post by hudo »

Ono-Sendai wrote: post #14

I agree (with Azure not being ready for primetime). Their subscription page is incredibly slow: I timed it taking 17 seconds to load! http://forwardscattering.org/post/41 After using some Azure VMs, I found there was still some storage devices or something on my account, several hundred of them. I tried to delete them through the Azure website, but you can only do it one at a time, and each deletion requires several…

Oh yes, loading Account page to check the latest invoice takes ages! Good thing i have to do just once per month.

Portal is getting better tough, I can see changes every time i login. But still I'm getting Guids as error messages, thats still there

Re: Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

#40

Post by RyanZAG »

UK-AL wrote: post #38
mattmanser wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an apparent MS employee reply to one of my comments complaining about azure's portal saying the engineers know the interface is awful but can't do anything about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12773022 I'd assumed it was a design by programmer fail, especially because of the terrible modular design, but it doesn't look like it. I was wondering, poor performance wise, a client of mine is consistently s…

I can understand the comment "UI by designers", it looks pretty when you first logon, but then you try and use it then it feels slow, and quite an effort to get around.

I think there are actually three types of UI designs.

1) "UI by programmers". Very low use of graphics and animations. Everything looks very standardized. Usually has advanced options panels that let you tweak small parts of the algorithm. Gives a high level of control as there is little abstraction between the functional and presentation layers.

2) "UI by designers". Use of graphics and animations where necessary to make the UI more understandable, such as animations to show the result of user actions. Code is usually abstracted away and the interface is set up with the user in mind. Steps to perform common actions are very quick with the minimal amount of user input.

3) "UI by artists". Excessive use of graphics and animations. Animations that serve no functional purpose. High use of art with large images used for theme rather than function. Often no real link between what you expect buttons to do and what they really do. Steps to perform common actions are usually convoluted with multiple menus. Some even use hidden menus that must be invoked through arcane gestures in an effort to make screenshots look more appealing.

I think the UI being described here is actually the "UI by artists" rather than a well designed UI by a designer and not an artist.

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