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Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

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Re: Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

#41

Post by boulos »

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…

You aren't crazy. I'd recommend testing from your app with a simple speed-of-light test (e.g., SELECT 1;) just in case your queries are slow.

Perhaps Azure SQL did the same thing we sadly did with the first version of Cloud SQL: run it in a totally different environment that requires you to go through several hops to reach the actual (MySQL in our case) server. But even then Cloud SQL First Generation was "only" 1ms away. Second Generation which runs in a VM but managed by Google (like RDS at AWS) is basically equivalent to running it on your own VM, and is thus about 100 microseconds away.

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.

PS. We recently launched SQL server images on GCE (https://cloud.google.com/sql-server/) though it's not a managed service (yet?).

Re: Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

#42

Post by filereaper »

We're looking into making a migration to Azure.

I was hoping to get insights from HN on the following:

- Using Azure CLI instead of Portal UI for standing up infrastructure.

- General DevOps tooling support on Azure (Terraform, SaltStack etc...)

- Reliability of Azure in general.

Azure seems to be moving fast to catch up to GCP and AWS so we're optimistic about it in the upcoming years.

Re: Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

#43

Post by mattmanser »

boulos wrote: post #41
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…

You aren't crazy. I'd recommend testing from your app with a simple speed-of-light test (e.g., SELECT 1;) just in case your queries are slow. Perhaps Azure SQL did the same thing we sadly did with the first version of Cloud SQL: run it in a totally different environment that requires you to go through several hops to reach the actual (MySQL in our case) server. But even then Cloud SQL First Generation was "only" 1ms…

Yeah, that's how I figured out the cause of the problem. Had fixed a load of performance problems on a page, but couldn't get rid of 500ms compared to my laptop and realised it must be query latency and was surprised to see 100 "SELECT 1"s using the same connection consistently took 300-600ms (and it jumps around all the time in that range). The ridiculous thing is that the test server running on S1 has better performance (but still has a 200ms query lag for those 100).

And that's leaving aside that heavier queries take 6 times as long on a so called "Premium" instance compared to my 2 year old laptop. Part of me suspects one of my cheap VMs running SQL Express could do better than azure's "premium" db performance.

I also know it's not because of DTUs (MS's database usage metric), my client's site is seasonal and is just ramping up to prime-time, it had the same crappy latency in July when it was handling 1/10th the traffic as it has now.

Re: Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

#44

Post by mattmanser »

RyanZAG wrote: post #40
UK-AL wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree, although on first glance the UI of azure's portal seems to be a 1 type UI.

Re: Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

#45

Post by reacharavindh »

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,…

If one has free credit for cloud resources, why can't they use the free money to just spin up some resources for non-critical work? Say log processing, run public tests etc.... I know I would if I were running a company and MS comes up to me with this.

Re: Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

#46

Post by sqeaky »

reacharavindh wrote: post #45
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,…

If one has free credit for cloud resources, why can't they use the free money to just spin up some resources for non-critical work? Say log processing, run public tests etc.... I know I would if I were running a company and MS comes up to me with this.

What if the hassle simply does not outweigh the cost of the flaky VMs?

There are several reasons the hassles might not be worthwhile even if the free VM is 100% reliable. Most other VM hosts offer mostly Linux solutions and Linux skill is not always transferable to windows. If your organization has those skills then the wasted time cost might than a familiar VM would have cost.

Re: Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

#47

Post by iamleppert »

I tried to use Azure and found it to be a complete non-starter.

Stay away from this mess if you value both your sanity and productivity. Microsoft is still raking in the money from big companies who have people working for them who LOVE to work on these kinds of things. It distracts them from actually getting any real work done.

You know, the kinds of people who love to say "I'm blocked" at their standups.

Re: Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

#48

Post by UK-AL »

mattmanser wrote: post #44
RyanZAG wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree, although on first glance the UI of azure's portal seems to be a 1 type UI.

I think a programmer UI would be fast, with a lot shortcuts and easy get around ONCE you know it. But awful for non technical people.

Re: Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

#49

Post by __derek__ »

reacharavindh wrote: post #45
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,…

If one has free credit for cloud resources, why can't they use the free money to just spin up some resources for non-critical work? Say log processing, run public tests etc.... I know I would if I were running a company and MS comes up to me with this.

I've chatted with people who've gone through Microsoft Accelerator, and that's exactly what they're doing.

Re: Errors from Microsoft's Cloud

#50

Post by barake »

jamesgeck0 wrote: post #34
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.

Red on the AWS status board means there has been an extinction level event, right?

Maybe that would still be a yellow - intelligent life could evolve again and resolve the outage.

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