Microsoft Azure Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

Cloud/System Administrator at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jul 31, 2017

Saves a lot of time for our developers as it enables moving from the virtual machines to the Web Application-side

What is most valuable?

Virtual machines, Azure Web Applications, MS SQL DB, DNS, Azure Active Directory, etc. are some of the most valuable features.

It is quite easy to learn to start working with them and they are composite enough to use them in many different scenarios.

For example, you can create a web app with a few clicks from Visual Studio and publish it to Azure Web Apps. You also can integrate that Web App to CI/CD pipeline (https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/build/get-started/aspnet-4-ci-cd-azure-automatic), assign custom SSL certificates to it (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service-web/app-service-web-tutorial-custom-SSL), configure auto-scale (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/app-service-environment-auto-scale), implement Azure AD authentication (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service-mobile/app-service-mobile-how-to-configure-active-directory-authentication?toc=%2fazure%2fapp-service%2ftoc.json), etc.

How has it helped my organization?

It enabled moving from the virtual machines to the Web Application-side, which in turn saved a lot of time for our developers.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used this solution for about two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There were some stability issues. Some of them were user-specific (some applications were buggy), while some were global https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/status/history/.

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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There were no scalability issues. My work duties are not connected to this feature.

How are customer service and support?

On a scale from 1-10 (1=worst, 10=best). I would rate the technical support a seven out of 10. First level support is awful (it works only if you have a generic issue). But if you are lucky enough, you could get a real technical person, who could help you.

How was the initial setup?

The setup/installation depends from which service you start (for example, start to use DNS which is much easier vs the web applications).

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

If your company is big enough and oriented to the cloud, then go for the Enterprise Agreement. If you want just to try it first, then use the trial version.

What other advice do I have?

Learn the fundamentals using the official documentation; for example, you have the Developer Guide and courses.

Start using new services based on the scenarios described in the official documentation.

Use communities for consulting, such as Stack Overflow, Reddit, and Slack. However, personally, I prefer the channel azured.slack.com.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user8577

Director of Infrastructure at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

Aug 13, 2013

When to use different Azure IaaS storage types…

I’m been using Azure IaaS in a lot of enterprise deployments lately and I’ve noticed that there is some confusion regarding the different storage types available and provisioned for the virtual machines. In many ways the capabilities associated with Azure storage is its greatest strength, but unless you configure it properly, you might be in for a surprise regarding your results. The key message to understand is the difference between the operating system disk, the temporary disk, and data disks as they have different performance characteristics and will impact your systems in different ways when used correctly or incorrectly.

The operating system disk:

This disk is used for the operating system install and it will exhibit great read performance. It is not however scalable for write performance, so you shouldn’t use it for any write-centric or data-centric use. It would NOT be the place where you would put your Microsoft SQL data, or your file server.

The cache / temporary disk

The cache disk is used for temporary data that you don’t want to keep. It might seem like it is retained, but eventually you will find this disk refreshed when the system is booted back up, or undergoes a “repair”. The cache disk is really only appropriate for storage of data you don’t want to keep.

The data disk

The data disk is where you should put any of your important information, especially databases and file stores. The data here can be effectively scaled out through striping several data disks together. A rule of thumb to use is that each data disk is worth approximately 500 IOPS. If you stripe several together you’ll see that number increase. At this point you might find it helpful to run some tests against the disks you’ve allocated to ensure you’ve added the appropriate IOPS for your capacity requirement. I’ll note that the disk IOPS will increase as it is used, which is a component of the caching engine of the data disk type. The cool thing about the data disk is that they are easy to provision and you can create stripes of a lot of disks (16) which will provide excellent scalability to your application.

The key point? Use the right disks for the right things. If you don’t, then you’ll get a different performance experience than you’re expecting. Now move some workloads to Azure and take advantage of the scalability!

Want to learn more? Check out the Azure internals session from TechEd!

Azure Internals

Also, check out Azure Storage Testing, which checked a standard Azure hard disk against a local SSD and a small server. This performance can be improved by striping multiple Azure disks together.

Disclosure: The company I work for is a Microsoft Partner

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

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it_user8502

Head of IT with 51-200 employees

Aug 10, 2013

Simple Calculator for Comparing Windows Azure Blob Storage and Amazon S3 Pricing

UPDATE – 06-DECEMBER-2012

I originally wrote this post in September 2012. Recently at their re:Invent event, Amazon announced reduction in their storage prices by 24-28% (http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2012/11/amazon-s3-price-reduction-december-1-2012.html). Yesterday Microsoft announced similar price reduction (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2012/12/05/announcing-reduced-pricing-for-windows-azure-storage.aspx). I have updated this blog post taking these price reductions into consideration and including them in my calculator below. Please note that both Amazon and Windows Azure have reduced only the storage charges. They have not changed the transaction charges or the bandwidth (Egress) charges. The new prices for Amazon became effective as of 01-December-2012 while that for Windows Azure will become effective on 12-December-2012.

Few months back, I wrote a few blog posts comparing Windows Azure Blob Storage and Amazon S3 services. You can read those blog posts here:

http://gauravmantri.com/2012/05/09/comparing-windows-azure-blob-storage-and-amazon-simple-storage-service-s3part-i/

http://gauravmantri.com/2012/05/11/comparing-windows-azure-blob-storage-and-amazon-simple-storage-service-s3part-ii/

http://gauravmantri.com/2012/05/13/comparing-windows-azure-blob-storage-and-amazon-simple-storage-service-s3summary/

Since pricing for both of these services are changing quite frequently and depended upon a number of factors, it was not possible for me to pinpoint exactly which service is cheaper. I created a simple calculator where you can input appropriate values and compare the cost of both of these services to you.

As mentioned in my other blog posts, the pricing depends on 3 factors in both services:

Transaction costs i.e. cost incurred based on number of transactions performed against each service. These include various REST based operations performed against the two services.
Storage costs i.e. cost incurred based on the amount of data stored in each service. These are usually calculated based on Giga bytes of data stored per month.
Bandwidth costs i.e. cost incurred based on the data sent out of the data center in each service. Please note that at the time of writing of this blog, all incoming traffic is free in both service as well as the data transferred between an application and storage service in same data center is also free.

In this simple calculator, I took only first two factors into consideration. Again when it comes to storage costs, both services offered a tiered pricing scheme, which I have not considered.

A few comments:

At the time of writing this blog post, the pricing is taken from respective services pages (https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/details/ and http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/). I will try an keep this post updated with the default pricing however I would strongly recommend that you check the pricing page for respective services to get most current pricing.
While pricing is an important criteria, it should not be the sole criteria for deciding which service to choose. One must also consider the features offered by each service. You can check http://gauravmantri.com/2012/05/13/comparing-windows-azure-blob-storage-and-amazon-simple-storage-service-s3summary/ for a feature by feature comparison as of 11th of May 2012. Since then both services have offered some new features (e.g. Asynchronous copy blob support in Windows Azure and CORS support in Amazon S3 etc.) which should also be taken into consideration.
For storage costs, I have taken very simple scenario though both services offer tiered pricing as well. One should take that into consideration as well.
Lastly, I must emphasize that it is a very simple calculator with no in-built error checking or data validation. If you find any issues with this calculator (especially around incorrect calculations), please let me know ASAP and I will fix them.

http://gauravmantri.com/2012/09/03/simple-calculator-for-comparing-windows-azure-blob-storage-and-amazon-s3-pricing/

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user8124

CEO at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Jul 28, 2013

Top Reasons Developers Should Use Windows Azure Mobile Services

With the recent release of Social Cloud, I asked the RedBit teamwhat are the top reasons for using Windows Azure Mobile Services and here is what we have.

Easy Third Party Authentication

Using the Identity feature of Azure Mobile Services allows developers to quick implement OAuth based authentication without having to worry about a lot of the plumbing code that is required when writing everything from scratch.

You can easily incorporate authentication with

Microsoft Account
Facebook
Twitter
Google

As a developer all you would have to do is

Specify the keys in the portal
Use the mobile SDK for iOS, Android, Windows 8, Windows Phone with application
Authenticate via the SDK calling MobileServiceClient.LoginAsync()

Here is what it would look like from the dashboard to setup keys identity

To learn more about this feature see Get Started With Authentication with Mobile Services

Data Storage

Most mobile apps written today need some form of data storage and usually the process is

Figure out where to host it
Figure out what type of database to use
Write some REST APIs to access the data
Make sure the APIs are secured

Using the data feature of Azure Mobile Services developers can quickly create data tables, secure the data tables for read/write operations and also write custom scripts to run when an insert, update, delete or read operation is performed on the data.

From the client side, using the SDK, you call the MobileServiceClient.GetTable<>() method and data will be retrieved. If the data is secured via the portal settings, you will need to login using the client SDK before attempting to retrieve the data.

For more information see Get Started with Data in Mobile Services.

Client Libraries

Azure Mobile Services comes with clients libraries for the main mobile platforms available in the market today which are

Leveraging this library and Azure Mobile Services on the back end, developers can focus on writing their app and not all the extra plumbing required for things such as authentication.

Custom APIs

The API feature is relatively new (as of Jun 24 2013) to Azure Mobile Services but allows developers to quick build APIs to the systems to be accessed by various client applications. You can quickly build out the APIs required by your app and just as quickly secure the APIs making sure only authenticated users have access to the APIs. Definitely something to use more often in the future!

Push Notifications

I’m a big fan of push notifications for mobile apps because it allows users to stay connected and engaged with their users. It’s also a great way to entice users to open your apps and this is especially useful if you are monetizing your apps with in app advertising.

Using Azure mobile Services, developers can quickly get this up and running on the various platforms such as iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 and it’s as easy as setting a few keys in your Azure Mobile Services Dashboard

push

Definitely something every developer should look at to keep their users engaged with their app.

For more information on how to get this running, see Get Started with Push Notifications in Mobile Services.

Overall, I think Windows Azure Mobile services really helps accelerate the development cycle and get your product to market faster. It allows you to focus on building out your product on not have to worry about server infrastructure or plumbing code required for things like authentication. When you need to scale, it’s just a few clicks and you are ready to handle your extra load from your users.

So those are our top reasons for using Windows Azure Mobile Services. If you have used it, what are your top reasons? Ping me or the RedBit team on Twitter or leave a comment here.

https://www.redbitdev.com/top-reasons-developers-should-use-windows-azure-mobile-services/

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Carlos Mardinotto Junior

BI Expert at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

May 8, 2023

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Reliable, high performance, and stable

Pros and Cons

"I have not had a problem with the stability. It is reliable."

"I have found Microsoft Azure has many components to use and it's very difficult to understand every component."

What is our primary use case?

I only use Microsoft Azure for queries, creating databases, and applying rules. The data lakes are very simple to connect.

What is most valuable?

Microsoft Azure is a very fast and high-performance solution. It is the best product today.

What needs improvement?

I have found Microsoft Azure has many components to use and it's very difficult to understand every component.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Microsoft Azure within the past 12 months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not had a problem with the stability. It is reliable.

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

I have used Amazon AWS, Oracle SQL, and NoSQL databases.

How was the initial setup?

The configuration of Microsoft Azure can be difficult because of the mapping.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Microsoft Azure an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

reviewer1248522

Team Lead Information Security Control at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Jan 12, 2022

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Easy to manage on private cloud

Pros and Cons

"The ability to create the actual resource on the private cloud is easy to manage with Microsoft Azure."

"The response time and stability of Microsoft Azure need to be improved."

What is our primary use case?

I am a Team Lead of Information Security Control. We currently have 200 users working with Azure in our organization.

How has it helped my organization?

Capacity planning has played an important part in working with Azure because it estimates all of the business goals and translates messages into the technology that is required to support.

What is most valuable?

The ability to create the actual resource on the private cloud is easy to manage with Microsoft Azure.

What needs improvement?

The response time and stability of Microsoft Azure need to be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Microsoft Azure for four years.

How are customer service and support?

The maintenance of this solution is done through Microsoft's partner, I would consider the service acceptable.

What about the implementation team?

The initial deployment was done by Microsoft. The integration experience was good. The deployment and configuration was easy.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend working with Azure as this is a easy tool to use. I would rate this solution an 8 out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private 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.

Veerender Kumar

Product Owner at Software Technology

Nov 12, 2021

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Easy to use, stable, and scalable

Pros and Cons

"The solution is similar to a plug-and-play system, it is easy to use."

What is our primary use case?

We use Microsoft Azure for our internal systems during elections. We monitored the election party and we had a database of 20 million users.

What is most valuable?

The solution is similar to a plug-and-play system, it is easy to use.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Microsoft Azure for approximately two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Microsoft Azure has been stable

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support of Microsoft is okay. However, there were times we had to speak to them in the US time zone which was not convenient. There are times we have to wait because of the time zone issue.

What about the implementation team?

The solution takes two to five people to implement and for maintenance; if the environment is larger it still only takes two to five people.

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

The subscription models can be confusing and it would be beneficial for them to simplify them. We are on an annual subscription.

What other advice do I have?

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.