9 ms·

Sounds like a pretty expensive privilege. How is using cloudflare okay in this then? Cloudflare is also not Azure

by fs111 5y ago

rcarmo 5y ago
There are plenty of people using both, it's a good combination.
- dewey 5y ago
  The point is about Cloudflare not being from Microsoft / Azure which is the company he's evangelising for.
  - stavros 5y ago
    But you can't use CloudFlare instead of Azure, so it's within scope for him.
    - gwd 5y ago
      And moreover, from what it sounds like, you can't use Azure without Cloudflare either (unless you have a lot of cash you want to burn). Microsoft will get a lot more business from someone advertising their "Azure with Cloudflare" setup than they will from someone advertising their "Azure without Cloudflare" setup. (Edit: fix spelling)
  - rwmj 5y ago
    Presumably MSFT don't have a competing product. It's like asking why he's hosting it on Intel processors.
Hamuko 5y ago
>Sounds like a pretty expensive privilege. Well, it might also come with contacts in the billing department.
- jsiepkes 5y ago
  Apparantly you also get 13K a year in credits (mentioned in the article): > I'm going to miss the $13,000 USD (yes) a year in free azure credits. Just remember this amount of money when you are reading content about "how good azure is" and "what the latest and greatest is" from influencers and community leaders here on social media...
  - FpUser 5y ago
    The company I know got $200K in credits as their sweet initial deal. They were fully intent to stay inside that limit or close to it. Next thing I see them being slapped with $700K bill and managers running like headless chickens all over development floor and yelling to turn off every VM, hard drive, database / whatever either resources.
csours 5y ago
I don't think Azure offers a Cloudflare alternative, and I'm not sure they ever would - Cloudflare is too good and too cheap to compete against.
- audiometry 5y ago
  It's not that good. I'm constantly getting "Access Blocked" to various websites by Cloudflare trying to protect them....from me reading them.
  - yetihehe 5y ago
    I never do. Maybe you or something on your computer or network is the problem?
    - capableweb 5y ago
      Usually it's because they live in a different country than what people consider the "Western World" or something like that. When I'm in Europe, I don't see that page very often, unless in Eastern Europe. But if I'm in Asia, Africa or Central/South America, then I encounter that page all the time.
      - Godel_unicode 5y ago
        Fwiw, this is an option that many people configure for themselves in cloudflare. Some security people love recommending using IP geo-blocking as a good tactic for hardening systems.
    - raxxorrax 5y ago
      If you configured your client to hide enough information, Cloudflare tends to believe you are a threat. VPN users probably have that problem a lot more.
      - can16358p 5y ago
        You don't have to hide any information. I don't hide any information and still get blocked because of the country I reside in.
dachryn 5y ago
Azure is integrated with Cloudflare, if you chose to do so. They also offer Azure CDN, as a competing product. But I don't know if anybody takes it serious or not
- nunez 5y ago
  Azure CDN is fronted by Akamai; lots of retailers use it, but it's not as big as cloudfront afaik
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    There's also Verizon and Microsoft's own CDN. Personally, I use Verizon because Akamai doesn't support wildcard purge.
NicoJuicy 5y ago
Cloudflare is a partner of Azure ( or vice versa). = Azure has an integration to use cloudflare for the cdn. https://www.cloudflare.com/multi-cloud/azure/ https://www.cloudflare.com/multi-cloud/azure/
- ketanip 5y ago
  Cloudflare Bandwidth Alliance.
patrec 5y ago
> Sounds like a pretty expensive privilege. I'd be suprised if his Microsoft Regional Director and MVP status isn't worth much more than 4 figures to him. Those seeking to initiate engagements with Troy might care more about the fact that he pops up on HN and other high profile tech outlets frequently and the visibility of Have I Been Pwned, but the Regional Director status probably helps a lot with getting some of these engagements signed off. He probably also receives significant subsidies from Microsoft as well.
windexh8er 5y ago
The simple answer here is that Troy was using Cloudflare to offset costs he knew he would incur with Azure. He states verbatim: "Firstly, I always knew bandwidth on Azure was expensive and I should have been monitoring it better, particularly on the storage account serving the most data." ...and he didn't have simple monitors in place to alert him of uncommon billing spikes. I get your point, if he's not OK with using Hetzner how is Cloudflare any better? It's not. But the reality is Cloud operations are a fine dance of weaving services together to realize all of the heavily advertised savings. I'd argue that a lot of Troy's projects that use all of the cloud native functions could have also been implemented on much more standard stacks and, likely, been just as cost and performance effective. But that's not going to get him the advertising for Microsoft.
- b112 5y ago
  There are no savings with cloud, weaving or not. You want to waste money? Hire a car, with a driver, when you need it. Want to save money. Learn to drive. You always pay more for outsourcing stuff, a lot more, than doing it yourself. You can buy 1000x the processing power, by buying baremetal. You can get 100,000x more bandwith for cost, when not using the cloud. People think baremetal is hard. It isn't. It does take knowledge.
  - never_a-pickle 5y ago
    Re: Cloud. Not all cloud scenarios are the same. If the cost is amortized over a long time (theoretically infinite, well that's the plan) then the immediate convenience can outweigh the cost/opportunity cost. For example if you used Backblaze to backup one personal computer at the cost of $6/mo, if you have a lot of data that becomes a huge source of savings compared to managing the backups yourself. At that price the ROI versus other methods like building a trueNAS may not be within a decade, and I'd argue the storage enthusiasts have probably refreshed all their drives within that time and the ROI would never come even if Backblaze doubled their prices. What you do get is that self hosting becomes a hobby, and that's what I feel it is for most people. Hiring a personal car is more expensive because you are hiring a personal employee. That said, I still argue for personal autonomy alone learning to do the thing is better in general, but I don't think it's because it's cheaper in all scenarios. And to your point some or maybe even most cloud services are more expensive relative to their self hosted versions.

Sounds like a pretty expensive privilege. How is using cloudflare okay in this then? Cloudflare is also not Azure

by fs111 5y ago

Sounds like a pretty expensive privilege. How is using cloudflare okay in this then? Cloudflare is also not Azure

rcarmo 5y ago

There are plenty of people using both, it's a good combination.

dewey 5y ago
The point is about Cloudflare not being from Microsoft / Azure which is the company he's evangelising for.
- stavros 5y ago
  But you can't use CloudFlare instead of Azure, so it's within scope for him.
  - gwd 5y ago
    And moreover, from what it sounds like, you can't use Azure without Cloudflare either (unless you have a lot of cash you want to burn). Microsoft will get a lot more business from someone advertising their "Azure with Cloudflare" setup than they will from someone advertising their "Azure without Cloudflare" setup. (Edit: fix spelling)
- rwmj 5y ago
  Presumably MSFT don't have a competing product. It's like asking why he's hosting it on Intel processors.

Hamuko 5y ago

>Sounds like a pretty expensive privilege. Well, it might also come with contacts in the billing department.

jsiepkes 5y ago
Apparantly you also get 13K a year in credits (mentioned in the article): > I'm going to miss the $13,000 USD (yes) a year in free azure credits. Just remember this amount of money when you are reading content about "how good azure is" and "what the latest and greatest is" from influencers and community leaders here on social media...
- FpUser 5y ago
  The company I know got $200K in credits as their sweet initial deal. They were fully intent to stay inside that limit or close to it. Next thing I see them being slapped with $700K bill and managers running like headless chickens all over development floor and yelling to turn off every VM, hard drive, database / whatever either resources.

csours 5y ago

I don't think Azure offers a Cloudflare alternative, and I'm not sure they ever would - Cloudflare is too good and too cheap to compete against.

audiometry 5y ago
It's not that good. I'm constantly getting "Access Blocked" to various websites by Cloudflare trying to protect them....from me reading them.
- yetihehe 5y ago
  I never do. Maybe you or something on your computer or network is the problem?
  - capableweb 5y ago
    Usually it's because they live in a different country than what people consider the "Western World" or something like that. When I'm in Europe, I don't see that page very often, unless in Eastern Europe. But if I'm in Asia, Africa or Central/South America, then I encounter that page all the time.
    - Godel_unicode 5y ago
      Fwiw, this is an option that many people configure for themselves in cloudflare. Some security people love recommending using IP geo-blocking as a good tactic for hardening systems.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    If you configured your client to hide enough information, Cloudflare tends to believe you are a threat. VPN users probably have that problem a lot more.
    - can16358p 5y ago
      You don't have to hide any information. I don't hide any information and still get blocked because of the country I reside in.

dachryn 5y ago

Azure is integrated with Cloudflare, if you chose to do so. They also offer Azure CDN, as a competing product. But I don't know if anybody takes it serious or not

nunez 5y ago
Azure CDN is fronted by Akamai; lots of retailers use it, but it's not as big as cloudfront afaik
- jaywalk 5y ago
  There's also Verizon and Microsoft's own CDN. Personally, I use Verizon because Akamai doesn't support wildcard purge.

NicoJuicy 5y ago

Cloudflare is a partner of Azure ( or vice versa). = Azure has an integration to use cloudflare for the cdn. https://www.cloudflare.com/multi-cloud/azure/ https://www.cloudflare.com/multi-cloud/azure/

ketanip 5y ago
Cloudflare Bandwidth Alliance.

patrec 5y ago

> Sounds like a pretty expensive privilege. I'd be suprised if his Microsoft Regional Director and MVP status isn't worth much more than 4 figures to him. Those seeking to initiate engagements with Troy might care more about the fact that he pops up on HN and other high profile tech outlets frequently and the visibility of Have I Been Pwned, but the Regional Director status probably helps a lot with getting some of these engagements signed off. He probably also receives significant subsidies from Microsoft as well.

windexh8er 5y ago

The simple answer here is that Troy was using Cloudflare to offset costs he knew he would incur with Azure. He states verbatim: "Firstly, I always knew bandwidth on Azure was expensive and I should have been monitoring it better, particularly on the storage account serving the most data." ...and he didn't have simple monitors in place to alert him of uncommon billing spikes. I get your point, if he's not OK with using Hetzner how is Cloudflare any better? It's not. But the reality is Cloud operations are a fine dance of weaving services together to realize all of the heavily advertised savings. I'd argue that a lot of Troy's projects that use all of the cloud native functions could have also been implemented on much more standard stacks and, likely, been just as cost and performance effective. But that's not going to get him the advertising for Microsoft.

b112 5y ago
There are no savings with cloud, weaving or not. You want to waste money? Hire a car, with a driver, when you need it. Want to save money. Learn to drive. You always pay more for outsourcing stuff, a lot more, than doing it yourself. You can buy 1000x the processing power, by buying baremetal. You can get 100,000x more bandwith for cost, when not using the cloud. People think baremetal is hard. It isn't. It does take knowledge.
- never_a-pickle 5y ago
  Re: Cloud. Not all cloud scenarios are the same. If the cost is amortized over a long time (theoretically infinite, well that's the plan) then the immediate convenience can outweigh the cost/opportunity cost. For example if you used Backblaze to backup one personal computer at the cost of $6/mo, if you have a lot of data that becomes a huge source of savings compared to managing the backups yourself. At that price the ROI versus other methods like building a trueNAS may not be within a decade, and I'd argue the storage enthusiasts have probably refreshed all their drives within that time and the ROI would never come even if Backblaze doubled their prices. What you do get is that self hosting becomes a hobby, and that's what I feel it is for most people. Hiring a personal car is more expensive because you are hiring a personal employee. That said, I still argue for personal autonomy alone learning to do the thing is better in general, but I don't think it's because it's cheaper in all scenarios. And to your point some or maybe even most cloud services are more expensive relative to their self hosted versions.