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I work in both AWS and Azure and let me tell you, one thing I absolutely love about Azure is their portal. It’s like AWS 2.0 where all the cloud cruft is abstra

I work in both AWS and Azure and let me tell you, one thing I absolutely love about Azure is their portal. It’s like AWS 2.0 where all the cloud cruft is abstracted away and all that is left is the knobs you actually need to turn, and how they relate to one another. I love me some AWS, but my god every time I have to dive into an unfamiliar environment and try and reverse engineer how everything connects - I need a drink afterwards.

jahsome 2y ago
Genuine question: is your comment satire? If not, that's hilarious, I find myself on the completely opposite end of the spectrum. To each their own!
- tedivm 2y ago
  Seriously, I absolutely can't stand the azure ui. I don't think the AWS console is great, but it is definitely better than the Azure one to me.
  - Uvix 2y ago
    At least the Azure one lets you see all your resources, so you can verify you don't have something you're paying for unexpectedly.
    - remram 2y ago
      That would be good if I could acquire resources in the first place. Even Oracle Cloud makes more sense (if you've ever heard of it)
      - thegeekpirate 2y ago
        Oracle Cloud was (and possibly still is) deleting random accounts (it was all over their subreddit at the time). I wouldn't have believed it, but while testing out a server for a business, they deleted my account, and didn't reply when I emailed support about it.
        usr1106 2y ago
        Oracle did not even accept my credit card (the same I pay AWS and Scaleways with). So I missed that part of the experience.
    - thegeekpirate 2y ago
      That would have been nice, AWS kept sending me bills for $0.00, and after multiple tickets over a couple years, I finally deleted my entire account due to how pathetic their support was (they never figured out which service was active, and I couldn't find a way to figure it out using their UI).
  - YetAnotherNick 2y ago
    AWS is actually great once you spend few dozen hours in the service. If you are using the service for the first time GCP feels a lot smoother but then you begin to see corner cases and everything and GCP just breaks in those. Azure is bad the first time and gets worse over time.
- remram 2y ago
  My experience too, I could never find anything even if I know it's there, and I was told by my boss to use it. I stand there for a half hour, credit card in hand, then go to AWS where the equivalent can be located by mortals. It's like they don't want anyone's business.
whoknowsidont 2y ago
This comment reads like rage bait (I am not saying your opinion is "invalid" or you're lying). I've never meant anyone who likes the Azure portal lol, even people who live inside of the Azure ecosystem hour by hour.
- xmodem 2y ago
  The Azure portal has some nice ideas - in theory, being able to divide stuff into "resource groups" works a lot better than the AWS approach of "divide resources that should be isolated from each other into separate sub-accounts". In practise, even the good ideas are implemented poorly.
imperialdrive 2y ago
I know we're talking about AWS and Azure here, but had to add that fwiw, the M365 admin interface(s) are so bad it practically feels like a prank. In other words, it's as though someone is purposely making them as chaotic as possible to what end I can't even guess.
- usr1106 2y ago
  Can anybody name a Microsoft interface with good UX? (Yes, the grandparent liked the Azure homepage, but that was also disputed by several others)
  - esafak 2y ago
    Does Microsoft Mouse count?
    - usr1106 2y ago
      Not familiar with the product. The MS name alone would make me biased. Is it really good or even better in some way? Or did you just slightly ironically mean they did not manage to make it worse than competing products?
      - esafak 2y ago
        It was really good. I think Microsoft had numerous great mice, atypically for Microsoft: https://vswitchzero.com/2018/03/09/unboxing-a-22-year-old-microsoft-mouse/ https://vswitchzero.com/2018/03/09/unboxing-a-22-year-old-mi... A great thing about mice is that they are fungible and don't change without the user's consent, unlike software, so you can keep buying and using the same mouse forever. The average mouse of the time was blocky and uncomfortable.
  - verst 2y ago
    I like Microsoft Loop's UX
- gmassman 2y ago
VladVladikoff 2y ago
I’m having a really hard time believing you are serious. The one time I tried out azure for a few days the portal was absolutely painful. Every click would take 5-10 seconds for a response. Sometimes basic settings change actions would take 2+ minutes of watching an Ajax spinner. How can anyone enjoy working like that???
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  Sure, the UI is sluggish, but at least you don't have to move through three different "services" to find the routing table that your VM is using. AWS UIs are generally snappy and smartly designed individually, but they are horrendously organized at the general level. AWS is built as if you are exploring a relational DB containing your resources, instead of a deployment tree. Your VM doesn't have a NIC in AWS, it has a foreign key to your entire VPC's NIC table, which lives in the VPC service, not the EC2 service. And then your NIC doesn't have an associated subnet, it has a foreign key to the subnet. And then when you get to the subnet table, you look up the routing tables table, and finally in the routing tables table, you'll find the settings for the routing table. This all works through following links, but the constant context switching and tabs upon tabs that AWS UI requires are extremely unpleasant for me at least to use. I'll take Azure's sluggish UI that organizes all of this in one-two pages instead of four any day.
  - zamalek 2y ago
    AWS pages are built by different teams, and it shows. We're all supposed to use IAC though, right? In all seriousness, even in the face of IAC, the one thing Azure can do that AWS can't [at the time this happened to me], is have a global view of everything that's running right now and costing me money. It was years back, it was a $5 bill, but the principle of it had me livid. I did my best to tear down everything after my evaluation, yet something was squirreled away costing money. So yeah, absolutely, sluggish UI all the way (I also find the Amazon storefront profoundly ugly and disorganized).
    - antonvs 2y ago
      For a view of everything that’s costing you money, you can just look at your detailed billing data. That’s been available for at least 13 years.
gunsle 2y ago
Yeah I don’t get this thread at all. I’ve used both fairly extensively and while Azure’s dashboard is still a pain in the ass, it’s better than AWS by a mile usability wise. Not to mention, Microsoft clearly puts time and money into their documentation, while AWS docs have always sucked.
- tanseydavid 2y ago
  >> Microsoft clearly puts time and money into their documentation I am quite surprised to hear someone say this. MS documentation has a horrible reputation that is well-deserved and and in my direct experience the docs for Azure are much like any other MS docs (incomplete, out-of-date and poorly organized -- usually all three at once)
  - gunsle 2y ago
    Not my experience at all, of all the major tech companies MS consistently has the best docs, especially dev docs for c#, .net, angular/ts, etc
jwnin 2y ago
this has been consistent with my experience. the top down hierarchical approach in azure is unmatched in aws to this day. an aws accountnis a loose connection of resources across regions. if youre in an unfamilar account, youll spend some time really figuring out where everything lives first.

jahsome 2y ago

Genuine question: is your comment satire? If not, that's hilarious, I find myself on the completely opposite end of the spectrum. To each their own!

tedivm 2y ago
Seriously, I absolutely can't stand the azure ui. I don't think the AWS console is great, but it is definitely better than the Azure one to me.
- Uvix 2y ago
  At least the Azure one lets you see all your resources, so you can verify you don't have something you're paying for unexpectedly.
  - remram 2y ago
    That would be good if I could acquire resources in the first place. Even Oracle Cloud makes more sense (if you've ever heard of it)
    - thegeekpirate 2y ago
      Oracle Cloud was (and possibly still is) deleting random accounts (it was all over their subreddit at the time). I wouldn't have believed it, but while testing out a server for a business, they deleted my account, and didn't reply when I emailed support about it.
      - usr1106 2y ago
        Oracle did not even accept my credit card (the same I pay AWS and Scaleways with). So I missed that part of the experience.
  - thegeekpirate 2y ago
    That would have been nice, AWS kept sending me bills for $0.00, and after multiple tickets over a couple years, I finally deleted my entire account due to how pathetic their support was (they never figured out which service was active, and I couldn't find a way to figure it out using their UI).
- YetAnotherNick 2y ago
  AWS is actually great once you spend few dozen hours in the service. If you are using the service for the first time GCP feels a lot smoother but then you begin to see corner cases and everything and GCP just breaks in those. Azure is bad the first time and gets worse over time.
remram 2y ago
My experience too, I could never find anything even if I know it's there, and I was told by my boss to use it. I stand there for a half hour, credit card in hand, then go to AWS where the equivalent can be located by mortals. It's like they don't want anyone's business.

whoknowsidont 2y ago

This comment reads like rage bait (I am not saying your opinion is "invalid" or you're lying). I've never meant anyone who likes the Azure portal lol, even people who live inside of the Azure ecosystem hour by hour.

xmodem 2y ago
The Azure portal has some nice ideas - in theory, being able to divide stuff into "resource groups" works a lot better than the AWS approach of "divide resources that should be isolated from each other into separate sub-accounts". In practise, even the good ideas are implemented poorly.

imperialdrive 2y ago

I know we're talking about AWS and Azure here, but had to add that fwiw, the M365 admin interface(s) are so bad it practically feels like a prank. In other words, it's as though someone is purposely making them as chaotic as possible to what end I can't even guess.

usr1106 2y ago
Can anybody name a Microsoft interface with good UX? (Yes, the grandparent liked the Azure homepage, but that was also disputed by several others)
- esafak 2y ago
  Does Microsoft Mouse count?
  - usr1106 2y ago
    Not familiar with the product. The MS name alone would make me biased. Is it really good or even better in some way? Or did you just slightly ironically mean they did not manage to make it worse than competing products?
    - esafak 2y ago
      It was really good. I think Microsoft had numerous great mice, atypically for Microsoft: https://vswitchzero.com/2018/03/09/unboxing-a-22-year-old-microsoft-mouse/ https://vswitchzero.com/2018/03/09/unboxing-a-22-year-old-mi... A great thing about mice is that they are fungible and don't change without the user's consent, unlike software, so you can keep buying and using the same mouse forever. The average mouse of the time was blocky and uncomfortable.
- verst 2y ago
  I like Microsoft Loop's UX
gmassman 2y ago

VladVladikoff 2y ago

I’m having a really hard time believing you are serious. The one time I tried out azure for a few days the portal was absolutely painful. Every click would take 5-10 seconds for a response. Sometimes basic settings change actions would take 2+ minutes of watching an Ajax spinner. How can anyone enjoy working like that???

tsimionescu 2y ago
Sure, the UI is sluggish, but at least you don't have to move through three different "services" to find the routing table that your VM is using. AWS UIs are generally snappy and smartly designed individually, but they are horrendously organized at the general level. AWS is built as if you are exploring a relational DB containing your resources, instead of a deployment tree. Your VM doesn't have a NIC in AWS, it has a foreign key to your entire VPC's NIC table, which lives in the VPC service, not the EC2 service. And then your NIC doesn't have an associated subnet, it has a foreign key to the subnet. And then when you get to the subnet table, you look up the routing tables table, and finally in the routing tables table, you'll find the settings for the routing table. This all works through following links, but the constant context switching and tabs upon tabs that AWS UI requires are extremely unpleasant for me at least to use. I'll take Azure's sluggish UI that organizes all of this in one-two pages instead of four any day.
- zamalek 2y ago
  AWS pages are built by different teams, and it shows. We're all supposed to use IAC though, right? In all seriousness, even in the face of IAC, the one thing Azure can do that AWS can't [at the time this happened to me], is have a global view of everything that's running right now and costing me money. It was years back, it was a $5 bill, but the principle of it had me livid. I did my best to tear down everything after my evaluation, yet something was squirreled away costing money. So yeah, absolutely, sluggish UI all the way (I also find the Amazon storefront profoundly ugly and disorganized).
  - antonvs 2y ago
    For a view of everything that’s costing you money, you can just look at your detailed billing data. That’s been available for at least 13 years.

gunsle 2y ago

Yeah I don’t get this thread at all. I’ve used both fairly extensively and while Azure’s dashboard is still a pain in the ass, it’s better than AWS by a mile usability wise. Not to mention, Microsoft clearly puts time and money into their documentation, while AWS docs have always sucked.

tanseydavid 2y ago
>> Microsoft clearly puts time and money into their documentation I am quite surprised to hear someone say this. MS documentation has a horrible reputation that is well-deserved and and in my direct experience the docs for Azure are much like any other MS docs (incomplete, out-of-date and poorly organized -- usually all three at once)
- gunsle 2y ago
  Not my experience at all, of all the major tech companies MS consistently has the best docs, especially dev docs for c#, .net, angular/ts, etc

jwnin 2y ago

this has been consistent with my experience. the top down hierarchical approach in azure is unmatched in aws to this day. an aws accountnis a loose connection of resources across regions. if youre in an unfamilar account, youll spend some time really figuring out where everything lives first.