Technical Lead at FD
MSP
Top 5
Frequently updated enhancements, easy to use, and reliable
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features of the solution are ease of use and the enhancements are continually being updated."
  • "There could be more documentation and video tutorials to incorporate each and every feature. This way one can easily get the knowledge and implement it."

What is our primary use case?

We are using this solution for multiple purposes. For example, for a chatbot and for multiple authentications for service technologies we are developing.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of the solution are ease of use and the enhancements are continually being updated.

What needs improvement?

There could be more documentation and video tutorials to incorporate each and every feature. This way one can easily get the knowledge and implement it.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for approximately three years.

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April 2024
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is scalable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have approximately 40 developers using the solution in my organization.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is good. 

How was the initial setup?

The installation is straightforward.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

There is a license for the solution.

What other advice do I have?

We plan to continue using the solution in the future and I recommend it to others.

I rate Microsoft Azure an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Junior Mobile Network Engineer at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Real User
A user-friendly cloud computing service that's highly scalable
Pros and Cons
  • "It's easy to use, and it's scalable. If we want to grow our product more, we can do it."
  • "Security could be better. Once there was an attack, and we couldn't get to the cloud to see the reports for about five hours."

What is our primary use case?

We have a project with a company that needs support for their IoT devices. We're setting up some databases for them. That's all I can say about it because it's confidential. But we're using the HSM and the Key Vault for security purposes. A wider area or a wider group can connect to this public cloud for security and storage. We also have our own application implemented on that cloud.

What is most valuable?

It's easy to use, and it's scalable. If we want to grow our product more, we can do it. Because of the availability of different geographic zones, we can also have many places and regions.

What needs improvement?

Security could be better. Once there was an attack, and we couldn't get to the cloud to see the reports for about five hours. If we want to back up the application in storage, we can't have a firewall. For now, it's secure. I think the main problem was the configuration.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Microsoft Azure for three or four months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Access to the virtual machine on Azure wasn't always available, but the application was always up and running.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The product is super scalable.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing is better than AWS.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this cloud computing solution. When configured and planned well, I think it's a very good product. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Microsoft Azure an eight.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Information Technology Consultant at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Consultant
Extremely scalable with the capability to build an environment in minutes and offers good automation
Pros and Cons
  • "The product scales extremely well."
  • "They need to make storage easy and offer more interconnectivity between solutions."

What is our primary use case?

I primarily used the solution for hypothetical cases. I used the solution to look at the 2019 active directory environment, some remote SQL storage, and storage access from on-premises to the cloud.

What is most valuable?

There's a feature for automated tasks. As an administrator, handling administrative-type tasks, it's quite useful. For example, I was spending lots of money when I would spin things up. I'd spin up a SQL server. I'd spin up different types of things. They cost a lot of money. I would get distracted, walk away, and go to bed. I'd get up in the morning, and I'd see I'd have a bill. Therefore, I spun up an automated task and wrote a PowerShell script, put it in an automated task, and it would run at seven o'clock every night, and delete all my resources. It saved me money.

You can build an environment in minutes. It's very good in terms of being an infrastructure as a service, and I found that really fascinating.

All the devices they have up there that replace existing devices in the real world like load balancers or F5 are helpful. I'm not sure how they relate or how they form compared to F5, or the firewalls compare to the ones that are in data centers, however, they looked all right to me.

The solution is mostly stable.

The product scales extremely well.

What needs improvement?

It's a bit of a mystery how the storage is going to perform. For example, when you've got a storage device like Hitachi or NetApp, you can run reports on that storage and you can do all this good stuff. I'm not sure if that's the case with Azure. A lot of the stuff is kind of proprietary, at the moment.

The cost is quite high.

You can't control the data as much as you would like to. When it's theirs, it's theirs. With Hitachi, Hitachi has its own policies. You can move data around based on how much it's used into lower-cost discs and whatnot. You might be able to do that with Azure. However, I can't verify that.

The initial setup is complex.

They need to make storage easy and offer more interconnectivity between solutions.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for about a year or so. Maybe a year and a half at most. It hasn't been that long.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

In terms of stability, I've seen it go down twice now. They've had two problems with the active directory. That said, I would describe it as stable. They have different sites, regions, and whatnot, where you can move your data around in case you lose a data center or you lose a region. However, if you lose the active directory, that can take everything down.

It's not any more stable than an enterprise environment, to be honest. Maybe a little bit, however, if you lose a network connection to it, that's not stable.

I worked in a bank, a huge 50,000 employee enterprise. I saw their infrastructure go up and down about the same, once or twice a year. That's about the same as Azure, therefore, it's not anything different than an enterprise. You can make an enterprise resilient if you have lots of domain controllers and you do lots of redundant paths. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is very scalable. It's one of its great selling points. If a company needs to scale, it can do so with ease.

How are customer service and technical support?

I've never been in touch with technical support. I can't speak to how helpful or responsive they are.

How was the initial setup?

For a layperson or someone who is not trained, it wasn't an easy initial setup. It had some complexities.

I've personally gotten used to the process. The deployment, for example, wouldn't take that long now. While in the beginning, a deployment might take a month, now that I am more comfortable with the solution and more familiar, I can likely do it in a few days. 

That said, it depends on a company's plans and its own unique environment and complexities. It can vary. Most people seem to struggle with all of the connections they had before.

The number of people you need to deploy or maintain the solution really depends on the size of the environment. After implementation, you could probably scale back your employees from 10% to 50% with Azure.

What about the implementation team?

I can handle an implementation myself. I'm getting better and faster at it.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I've found the cost to be a bit high. You also get dinged for extra things along the way.

The charges are also unpredictable. Even if you think something is a relatively static item, they'll charge you for it and it will change your expectation of the cost.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I've looked at other solutions, such as Hitachi and Netapp.

The biggest struggle a person would have these days, as an architect, is to determine what the cost-benefit of going to Azure would be rather than going to a storage device such as a Hitachi or a NetApp. Which has better value? What's going to be better in the next couple of years? You can really get screwed if you're going to be pulling data down from the cloud. If you pull a lot of data from the cloud, it's going to cost you. You don't get charged for putting it up. You get charged for pulling it down.

What other advice do I have?

I basically used the solution to study.

I used a few different deployment models. I made an on-prem environment, Hyper-V environment, on my laptop and I connected it to the cloud.

I'd advise those considering the solution to not put all of their eggs in one basket. By that, I mean, it's a good idea to go hybrid and not full cloud. Going hybrid covers that network loss that you could suffer if you lose the network. If you lost a data center or a region, you could still have your on-prem server running an image of the cloud onsite.

I'd give the solution an eight out of ten. I haven't had a chance to study AWS or Google, however, I like this solution very much.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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great, an amazing organization to work with. You did a great job!

President at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
Real User
Very flexible with good stability but needs better technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "The product has been very stable for us so far."
  • "Technical support could be better. They need to be more responsive."

What is our primary use case?

The solution is mainly used for setting up a big data platform on Azure and using some Azure items to navigate the data links and Data Factory.

What is most valuable?

The solution is quite flexible.

The product has been very stable for us so far.

You can scale the solution if you need to.

What needs improvement?

The solution needs to be easier to configure in the future. Right now, it's a bit difficult to accomplish.

Technical support could be better. They need to be more responsive.

The documentation should be more accessible. It's hard to find what we need right now.

It would be helpful if there was more data science or AI implemented in future versions.

The product needs to implement more API capabilities.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've had about two years of experience using this solution.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We've found the stability to be quite good. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We can scale the solution well. If a company wants to scale the solution, they can do so pretty easily.

We have about 20-50 people on the solution currently. We do plan to continue to use it in the future.

How are customer service and technical support?

I've been in touch with technical support and I haven't found them to be overly helpful. They need to improve their support services. The answers take too long to get. We shouldn't have to wait for as long as we do. I'd say, at this point, we aren't exactly satisfied with the level of service they provide to their clients.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used AWS. We simply used it for benchmarking.

How was the initial setup?

I can't speak to the initial setup as I didn't have any experience with it. I wasn't part of the implementation process.

I did mage the Azure DevOps deployment.

What other advice do I have?

We're just a customer and an end-user. We don't have a business relationship with Microsoft.

I'd recommend the solution for larger clients, especially if they are based in Europe or America.

In general, on a scale from one to ten, I'd rate this product at a seven. It's been mostly good for us. However, it could use much better technical support and documentation to make things easier.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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AVP (Enterprise Architecture) at National Stock Exchange of India Limited
Real User
Will enable us to move on-premise servers into the cloud to hold data
Pros and Cons
  • "We are going to use Microsoft Azure to move some on-premise servers into the cloud so that our data can be held there."
  • "Microsoft Azure can be pretty advanced and difficult to understand. I would like it to be simplified. The licensing especially needs to be simplified."

What is our primary use case?

We are going to use Microsoft Azure to move some on-premise servers into the cloud so that our data can be held there.

What is most valuable?

We are now trying to decide exactly this. Where can it improve our daily business?

What needs improvement?

Microsoft Azure can be pretty advanced and difficult to understand. I would like it to be simplified. The licensing especially needs to be simplified.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have not been using Microsoft Azure for very long, about three months. My company has asked me to look for a better solution in terms of security perspective. They have asked me to technically go through to see if there is a real need to change or not, and what the new features are.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of Microsoft Azure has been very good from what we have seen.

How was the initial setup?

I have not actually gone through the initial setup yet. So I am trying to figure that out. They want me to go through the training so I can understand the setup.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

So far we are satisfied with the pricing of Microsoft Azure.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We are also looking into other platforms. Perhaps an open-source platform.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Microsoft Azure at an eight out of a scale of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Web Developer at Indiana
Real User
This solution has the best website amongst all cloud computing platforms. It is simple to utilize, and one can release nearly anything, from app services to host sites
Pros and Cons
  • "Azure has the best website amongst all cloud computing platforms. It is simple to utilize, and one can release nearly anything, from app services to host sites."
  • "Establishing the account in the beginning was very difficult."

What is our primary use case?

We host various sites and utilize this solution for purchasing domains as well. It's simple to host small sites and back-end software applications on Azure instead of on regional servers

How has it helped my organization?

It has great deals of APIs for automation that we can utilize for managing our services. We implemented some custom tools that were developed in house and are extremely happy with the time that we now spend monitoring the websites.

What is most valuable?

Azure has the best website amongst all cloud computing platforms. It is simple to utilize, and one can release nearly anything, from app services to host sites.

What needs improvement?

Being a big item, it has it's own share of bugs. I had a great deal of difficulty establishing the account at first.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No

What was our ROI?

We are at 150% at this time, not considering the time that we concentrated on something else.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Yes, we searched Google and Amazon.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Some of the valuable features include monitoring, management, and data analytics.
Pros and Cons
  • "Compute (App service, and virtual machine scale sets): The ability to manage Windows and Linus virtual machines."
  • "Specifically, I would like to see better Azure Data Analytics and monitoring RF."

How has it helped my organization?

By migrating our infrastructure to Azure, we have been more agile on several fronts as an organization, from been able to create proof of concepts on the fly, to being able to make changes quickly and repeatedly.

What is most valuable?

  • Compute (App service, and virtual machine scale sets): The ability to manage Windows and Linus virtual machines.
  • Monitoring and Management: Ability to use log analytics to search, collect and visualize machine data from on-premises and cloud.
  • Data Analytics: Security and Identity (Azure Active Directory): This feature adds multi-factor authentication, self-service password reset and group-based application access.
  • Storage (Azure files): Still in preview at this stage, its allows the creating of SMB 2.1 shared folders on Azure storage service.
  • Azure Site Recovery: Allows the replication and recovery of VMs hosted on Azure, thereby extending business values of almost any size.
  • Networking (Azure ExpressRoute): This feature allows the connection of data center with Azure via private link that does not travel over the internet. Advantages include security, lower latency and higher reliability.

What needs improvement?

Every area of the product still needs to improve as it can always get better. Windows wasn't where it is today decades ago. There was a continuous improvement and evolutionary changes. Same is expected of Microsoft Azure.

Specifically, I would like to see better Azure Data Analytics and monitoring RF.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Azure is very stable with no issues at all.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The ability to scale easily is one of Microsoft Azure strength, one can start and scale up as traffic increase or as the business growth is required. So we didn't have issues with scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support is great.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We never used a different solution. We had a PoC with every vendor in the same competitive space and decided to go with the best.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was very straightforward, as we knew what is required from the technical perspective and as a business. Which we specified in an architectural design before hand.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Make use of Azure pricing calculator and you will find out that Azure Is still more reasonable that the competition and do your research, when unclear speak with your MS support.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated some other competitive products and decided to go with Azure as its suit and meet our business requirement.

What other advice do I have?

You need to have a clear vision of your business expectation from the product. Define your business requirements, objectives and ensure that your cloud provider can support those requirements.

Consider the cost, location, licensing, and technical capability to support and guide your organization.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user8502 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of IT with 51-200 employees
Vendor
(Some) Best Practices for Building Windows Azure Cloud Applications

In this blog post, I will talk about some of the best practices for building cloud applications. I started working on it as a presentation for a conference however that didn’t work out thus this blog post. Please note that these are some of the best practices I think one can follow while building cloud applications running in Windows Azure. There’re many-many more available out there. This blog post will be focused on building Stateless PaaS Cloud Services (you know that Web/Worker role thingie :) utilizing Windows Azure Storage (Blobs/Queues/Tables) and Windows Azure SQL Databases (SQL Azure).

So let’s start!

Things To Consider

Before jumping into building cloud applications, there’re certain things one must take into consideration:

  • Cloud infrastructure is shared.
  • Cloud infrastructure is built on commodity hardware to achieve best bang-for-buck and it is generally assumed that eventually it will fail.
  • A typical cloud application consist of many sub-systemswhere:
    • Each sub-system is a shared system on its own e.g. Windows Azure Storage.
    • Each sub-system has its limits and thresholds.
  • Sometimes individual nodes fail in a datacenter and though very rarely, but sometimes entire datacenter fails.
  • You don’t get physical access to the datacenter.
  • Understanding latency is very important.

With these things in mind, let’s talk about some of the best practices.

Best Practices – Protection Against Hardware Issues

These are some of the best practices to protect your application against hardware issues:

  • Deploy multiple instances of your application.
  • Scale out instead of scale up or in other words favor horizontal scaling over vertical scaling. It is generally recommended that you go with more smaller sized Virtual Machines (VM) instead of few larger sized VMs unless you have a specific need for larger sized VMs.
  • Don’t rely on VM’s local storage as it is transient and not fail-safe. Use persistent storage like Windows Azure Blob Storage instead.
  • Build decoupled applications to safeguard your application against hardware failures.

Best Practices – Cloud Services Development

Now let’s talk about some of the best practices for building cloud services:

  • It is important to understand what web role and worker role are and what benefit they offer. Choose wisely to distribute functionality between a web role and worker role.
  • Decouple your application logic between web role and worker role.
  • Build stateless applications. For state management, it is recommended that you make use of distributed cache.
  • Identify static assets in your application (e.g. images, CSS, and JavaScript files) and use blob storage for that instead of including them with your application package file.
  • Make proper use of service configuration / app.config / web.config files. While you can dynamically change the values in a service configuration file without redeploying, the same is not true with app.config or web.config file.
  • To achieve best value for money, ensure that your application is making proper use of all VM instances in which it is deployed.

Best Practices – Windows Azure Storage/SQL Database

Now let’s talk about some of the best practices for using Windows Azure Storage (Blobs, Tables and Queues) and SQL Database.

Some General Recommendations

Here’re some recommendations I could think of:

  • Blob/Table/SQL Database – Understand what they can do for you. For example, one might be tempted to save images in a SQL database whereas blob storage is the most ideal place for it. Likewise one could consider Table storage over SQL database if transaction/relational features are not required.
  • It is important to understand that these are shared resources with limits and thresholds which are not in your control i.e. you don’t get to set these limits and thresholds.
  • It is important to understand the scalability targets of each of the storage component and design your application to stay within those scalability targets.
  • Be prepared that you’ll encounter “transient errors” and have your application handle (and recover from) these transient errors.
    • It is recommended that your application uses retry logic to recover from these transient errors.
    • You can use TOPAZ or Storage Client Library’s built-in retry mechanism to handle transient errors. If you don’t know, TOPAZ is Microsoft’s Transient Fault Handling Application Block which is part of Enterprise Library 5.0 for Windows Azure. You can read more about TOPAZ here: http://entlib.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=EntLib5Azure.
  • For best performance, co-locate your application and storage. With storage accounts, the cloud service should be in the same affinity group while with WASD, the cloud service should be in the same datacenter for best performance.
  • From disaster recovery point of view, please enable geo-replication on your storage accounts.

Best Practices – Windows Azure SQL Database (WASD)

Here’re some recommendations I could think of as far as working with WASD:

  • It is important to understand (and mentioned above and will be mentioned many more times in this post :)) that it’s a shared resource. So expect your requests to get throttled or timed out.
  • It is important to understand that WASD != On Premise SQL Server. You may have to make some changes in your data access layer.
  • It is important to understand that you don’t get access to data/log files. You will have to rely on alternate mechanisms like “Copy Database” or “BACPAC” functionality for backup purposes.
  • Prepare your application to handle transient errors with WASD. Use TOPAZ for implementing retry logic in your application.
  • Co-locate your application and SQL Database in same data center for best performance.

Best Practices – Windows Azure Storage (Blobs, Tables & Queues)

Here’re some recommendations I could think of as far as working with Windows Azure Storage:

  • (Again :)) It is important to understand that it’s a shared resource. So expect your requests to get throttled or timed out.
  • Understand the scalability targets of Storage components and design your applications accordingly.
  • Prepare your application to handle transient errors with WASD. Use TOPAZ or Storage Client library’s Retry Policies for implementing retry logic in your application.
  • Co-locate your application and storage account in same affinity group (best option) or same data center (next best option) for best performance.
  • Table Storage does not support relationships so you may need to de-normalize the data.
  • Table Storage does not support secondary indexes so pay special attention to querying data as it may result in full table scan. Always ensure that you’re using PartitionKey or PartitionKey/RowKey in your query for best performance.
  • Table Storage has limited transaction support. For full transaction support, consider using Windows Azure SQL Database.
  • With Table Storage, pay very special attention to “PartitionKey” as this is how data in a table is organized and managed.

Best Practices – Managing Latency

Here’re some recommendations I could think of as far as managing latency is concerned:

  • Co-locate your application and data stores. For best performance, co-locate your cloud services and storage accounts in the same affinity group and co-locate your cloud services and SQL database in the same data center.
  • Make appropriate use of Windows Azure CDN.
  • Load balance your application using Windows Azure Traffic Manager when deploying a single application in different data centers.

Some Recommended Reading

Though you’ll find a lot of material online, a few books/blogs/sites I can recommend are:

Cloud Architecture Patterns – Bill Wilder: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023777.do

CALM (Cloud ALM) – Simon Munro: https://github.com/projectcalm/Azure-EN

Windows Azure Storage Team Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazurestorage/

Patterns & Practices Windows Azure Guidance: http://wag.codeplex.com/

Summary

What I presented above are only a few of the best practices one could follow while building cloud services. On purpose I kept this blog post rather short. In fact one could write a blog post for each item. I hope you’ve found this information useful. I’m pretty sure that there’re more. Please do share them by providing comments. If I have made some mistakes in this post, please let me know and I will fix them ASAP. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them by providing comments.

http://gauravmantri.com/2013/01/11/some-best-practices-for-building-windows-azure-cloud-applications/
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Microsoft Azure Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: April 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Microsoft Azure Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.