4 ms·

I have used all the platforms personally and professionally. GCP, AWS, Azure, Oracle Cloud. I will just say that Azure seems to want to do shit different for

by jml78 2y ago

I have used all the platforms personally and professionally. GCP, AWS, Azure, Oracle Cloud. I will just say that Azure seems to want to do shit different for the sake of being different. It is really annoying to write infrastructure as code for aws/gcp then go to do the same for azure and realize how dumb some of their stuff is. Just my personal experience.

gdiamos 2y ago
That’s how clouds try to lock you in, by making you use a custom tool that is different for the sake of being different. If you use standard tools you don’t have this problem. Containers running on VMs is standard. A mesh of microservices that depend on cloud queues and managed services is not. One argument against standard containers is saving dev time. You can still save dev time by using standard open source software. How many different ways are there to implement a queue or a load balancer? If you really need access to some proprietary technology then by all means use the cloud that offers it. Eg if your customer demands GPT4.5, then go with Azure. But if you need something standard, don’t get caught in the trap.
- jml78 2y ago
  I am an older guy that was building kubernetes clusters before eks, aks, gke. So I used terraform to build shit out to make it happen. Azure was 5x the code just to be different. You can try to blame terraform but if you used MS custom tooling it was no different.
- rconti 2y ago
  What about the way Terraform is a 3rd class citizen on Azure? And there are multiple ever-changing ways of doing everything, major parameters aren't supported, etc. It just makes it more difficult to deal with. Also, Azure APIs are incredibly slow.
  - re-thc 2y ago
    It’s Bicep
    - rconti 2y ago
      I'd rather avoid the trap. I use the 3 major CSPs, so I would prefer to use cross-platform tooling. Per the parent: >That’s how clouds try to lock you in, by making you use a custom tool that is different for the sake of being different. > If you use standard tools you don’t have this problem.
jiggawatts 2y ago
Conversely, doing things "the same way" as AWS would mean copying their first-generation public cloud design flaws. The overall UX of AWS is absolutely crazy. It's easy to "lose" a resource... in there... somewhere... in one of the many portals, in some region, costing you money! Meanwhile, Azure shows you a single pane of glass across all resource types in all regions. It's also fairly trivial to query across all subscriptions (equivalent to AWS accounts). Similarly, AWS insists on peppering their UI with random-looking internal identifiers. These are meaningless and not sortable in any useful way. Azure in comparison allows users to specify grouping by "english" resource group names and then resources within them also have user-specified names. The only random identifiers are the Subscription GUIDs, but even those have user-assignable display name aliases. The unified Portal and scripting experience of Azure Resource Manager is a true "second generation" public cloud, and is much closer to the experience of using Kubernetes, which is also a "second gen" system developed out of Borg. E.g.: In K8s you also get a single-pane-of glass, human-named namespaces (=resource groups), human-named workloads, etc...
- smackeyacky 2y ago
  A single pane of glass that shows all your resources that are currently choking due to hidden limitations is no flex over AWS. It is my hope I never have to use Azure ever again professionally or otherwise
iamtheworstdev 2y ago
this killed me. i dont think AWS does everything well... but Azure went hard on being different just to be different.. like region names...
stego-tech 2y ago
> I will just say that Azure seems to want to do shit different for the sake of being different. That's Microsoft's MO in a nutshell in my experience, and I say this as a recent(~5yrs ago) convert to Linux who built a career on Windows endpoints, servers, ADDS, Exchange, SCCM, you name it. It's how they achieve lock-in to their ecosystem, and it's incredibly frustrating to see how they've just layered that method of operation over and over again, decade after decade, rather than fix anything.
- Henchman21 2y ago
  Fixing things is hard. Papering thing over with free Azure credits and marketing? This is the way.

by jml78 2y ago

gdiamos 2y ago

That’s how clouds try to lock you in, by making you use a custom tool that is different for the sake of being different. If you use standard tools you don’t have this problem. Containers running on VMs is standard. A mesh of microservices that depend on cloud queues and managed services is not. One argument against standard containers is saving dev time. You can still save dev time by using standard open source software. How many different ways are there to implement a queue or a load balancer? If you really need access to some proprietary technology then by all means use the cloud that offers it. Eg if your customer demands GPT4.5, then go with Azure. But if you need something standard, don’t get caught in the trap.

jml78 2y ago
I am an older guy that was building kubernetes clusters before eks, aks, gke. So I used terraform to build shit out to make it happen. Azure was 5x the code just to be different. You can try to blame terraform but if you used MS custom tooling it was no different.
rconti 2y ago
What about the way Terraform is a 3rd class citizen on Azure? And there are multiple ever-changing ways of doing everything, major parameters aren't supported, etc. It just makes it more difficult to deal with. Also, Azure APIs are incredibly slow.
- re-thc 2y ago
  It’s Bicep
  - rconti 2y ago
    I'd rather avoid the trap. I use the 3 major CSPs, so I would prefer to use cross-platform tooling. Per the parent: >That’s how clouds try to lock you in, by making you use a custom tool that is different for the sake of being different. > If you use standard tools you don’t have this problem.

jiggawatts 2y ago

Conversely, doing things "the same way" as AWS would mean copying their first-generation public cloud design flaws. The overall UX of AWS is absolutely crazy. It's easy to "lose" a resource... in there... somewhere... in one of the many portals, in some region, costing you money! Meanwhile, Azure shows you a single pane of glass across all resource types in all regions. It's also fairly trivial to query across all subscriptions (equivalent to AWS accounts). Similarly, AWS insists on peppering their UI with random-looking internal identifiers. These are meaningless and not sortable in any useful way. Azure in comparison allows users to specify grouping by "english" resource group names and then resources within them also have user-specified names. The only random identifiers are the Subscription GUIDs, but even those have user-assignable display name aliases. The unified Portal and scripting experience of Azure Resource Manager is a true "second generation" public cloud, and is much closer to the experience of using Kubernetes, which is also a "second gen" system developed out of Borg. E.g.: In K8s you also get a single-pane-of glass, human-named namespaces (=resource groups), human-named workloads, etc...

smackeyacky 2y ago
A single pane of glass that shows all your resources that are currently choking due to hidden limitations is no flex over AWS. It is my hope I never have to use Azure ever again professionally or otherwise

iamtheworstdev 2y ago

this killed me. i dont think AWS does everything well... but Azure went hard on being different just to be different.. like region names...

stego-tech 2y ago

> I will just say that Azure seems to want to do shit different for the sake of being different. That's Microsoft's MO in a nutshell in my experience, and I say this as a recent(~5yrs ago) convert to Linux who built a career on Windows endpoints, servers, ADDS, Exchange, SCCM, you name it. It's how they achieve lock-in to their ecosystem, and it's incredibly frustrating to see how they've just layered that method of operation over and over again, decade after decade, rather than fix anything.

Henchman21 2y ago
Fixing things is hard. Papering thing over with free Azure credits and marketing? This is the way.