5 ms·

Hate on Microsoft all you want but this is a great thing. If Microsoft feels they want to play in the infrastructure as a service game they need to earn the cus

by jtchang 13y ago

Hate on Microsoft all you want but this is a great thing. If Microsoft feels they want to play in the infrastructure as a service game they need to earn the customer's trust. Price matching is certainly one way to do it. Azure does run linux by the way (a lot of people don't know that). One thing I've been going back and forth about is whether I "trust" Google App Engine or Microsoft Azure more. Both are juggernauts but Microsoft seems very intent on staying and competing in this space. For what it's worth I've used Azure before and don't find the interface too bad. Also for spinning up the latest and greatest Windows Server instance you can't really beat Azure.

yulaow 13y ago
Also with Bizspark you can have, if I remember well, like 150E/month to spend on azure for 3 years. Considering that almost any IT startup can access to bizspark, it is a nice thing to at least try it. Also I love the fact they are distributing their sdks for other os (linux and osx) and that they are all opensource on github
- bignaj 13y ago
  You can also get free access to Azure with a MSDN subscription which is nice for those who have one :)
  - sixothree 13y ago
    Ours gets us $100 / month credit. Which previously was not quite enough for one medium vm.
- city41 13y ago
  It's also worth pointing out that BizSpark imposes no requirements or obligations on the startup. You are free to join BizSpark and never use any of its services and you don't owe MS anything at all.
  - sachinag 13y ago
    They got rid of the $100 thing?
    - martydill 13y ago
      Yup, graduation is now completely free.
  - tszming 13y ago
    It is also worth point out you can add up to 8 developer accounts (now seems to be 4?) under bizspark programme and the $150 credit is per developer, so the total saving for 3 yrs is up to $43200 (crazy?) Also, you can enjoy additional discounted hourly rate for up to 33%, aws/google can't compete with that. [1] http://spiffy.sg/startup/how-to-maximize-and-activate-your-bizspark-msdn-benefits-for-windows-azure/ http://spiffy.sg/startup/how-to-maximize-and-activate-your-b... [2] http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/offers/ms-azr-0057p/ http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/offers/ms-azr-0057p/
- ritwikt 13y ago
  +1 to that Bizspark is an awesome program for startups. We are running linux on it w/o any issues [~3 servers come free] Best part - there are no restrictions on what s/w stack you run..
- neotek 13y ago
  It gets even better than that if you're in an approved accelerator / incubator: you get $60,000 USD in hosting credits, at a rate of $5,000 a month. We're entirely hosted on Azure using their Linux VMs and have had a great experience with them so far.
  - topbanana 13y ago
    Hmm, that doesn't really seem fair on those of us not going down that route
    - Styn 13y ago
      I think the reasoning is that if you convince an accelerator/incubator to accept you your product has a higher chance of succeeding. This will mean that the chance of you still existing (and starting to pay) after 3 years should be significantly higher.
      - michaelt 13y ago
        Many companies have discounts that they can afford to give, but they make it a bit of a hassle to get them, so the bulk of customers keep paying full price but they can also retain the miserly customers at a reduced profit margin. For example, some food retailers publish discount coupons in newspapers, so the discount is only available to people willing to go through the hassle.
- NicoJuicy 13y ago
  It's 115 € / month, but 150 $ / month and indeed, it's for 3 years. (i'm Bizspark myselve) And also, the support was awesome! (needed help transfering everything to another account)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
stusmall 13y ago
How good is the support? I ask because last time I tried HyperV I had lots of really lame issues. Like breaking the CD-ROM drive access and their workaround was to copy over an ISO and mount that locally or something like that. It felt like Linux was an unfinished offering. Yeah, I mean it ran... but not well. I figure some of what I ran into was user error since its a new tech to me but I've talked to a few people who have had serious HyperV issues so I'm not going to take all the blame. I bring this up because I'd imagine those Linux VMs are sitting on top HyperV. I'll be very happy to hear that my fears are unfounded and they run great though.
- Linell 13y ago
  While I've never used a Linux VM on Azure, I can say that every question I've had was answered quickly and extremely thoroughly. I've never ran into anything that support was unable to help with.
  - stusmall 13y ago
    Oh, I meant support as in how well does it actually work not can I get someone on the phone to help me out. Sorry about the unclear wording.
- okaram 13y ago
  I'm a Linux guy (well, I was a year ago :), but I'm working for Microsoft now, and get $150/mo free on Azure ; although I haven't used many of the advanced features, I'm running a few tiny instance, both Windows and Linux; it works great and has been pretty reliable (and the UI is nicer than AWS :)
- GFischer 13y ago
  The company I work for tried hard to make HyperV work, but they ended up ditching it as an inferior product. It definitely wasn't up to the enterprise standards they were expecting. I don't know what were the specific issues they ran into, though (I'm on the development side currently).
incision 13y ago
>"Hate on Microsoft all you want but this is a great thing. If Microsoft feels they want to play in the infrastructure as a service game they need to earn the customer's trust." Interestingly, the folks I deal with some folks who run some large-scale Microsoft services for a living want nothing to do with Azure in its current state and use AWS instead. Apparently, Azure lacks some pretty basic functionality like the ability to bind multiple addresses to an instance [0] and makes running legacy versions of Windows a pain - deal breakers for production and test purposes. 0: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsazure/en-US/dba5a25a-0b12-4620-8f3a-a71c3e5b3555/adding-a-second-ip-address?forum=WAVirtualMachinesforWindows http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsazure/en-US/d... "At this time we have nothing we can disclose regarding the timeframe to support multiple IPs on Azure VMs."
- keithwarren 13y ago
  Strikes me that this is intentional, not some thing that they are structurally incapable of doing - it is not as if there is a massive engineering effort for example, to support such a thing. Never the less, I am in the same boat as your friends in many cases. In my consulting practice I do lots of SQL Server tuning work and have found very few cases where I can tell a client that going to Azure would be a net benefit for the database. Even with the new dedicated SQL instances, on-premise will almost always get you more perf per dollar. (though the Azure stuff does come with less maintenance headaches in theory)
  - outside1234 13y ago
    cloud is not about performance -- it is about agility.
- letstryagain 13y ago
  On the other hand Azure has some awesome features not available in AWS. For example you can upgrade an Azure instance to a bigger size with zero downtime.
- deathanatos 13y ago
  Out of curiosity, why would you need to bind an arbitrary IP to a VM? What's wrong with the one it's presumably got? I know some places can move IPs around at will, but it seems like the wrong layer in the stack to do it. Aren't IPs something you want to assign based on your network topology? If you need an arbitrary identifier that can move between machines, what's wrong with DNS? (And how are you not re-inventing DNS?) (and the names are more memorable) If you do have the capability to do this, does it not tie you to that provider? Presumably the IPs would be allocated to the provider, so switching to a new provider would necessitate a new IP, whereas DNS addresses can point anywhere. Unless I'm completely misunderstanding (I've never tried these shenanigans with IPs), so please correct me if I am.
profquail 13y ago
In addition to Linux, Azure also runs FreeBSD 10 now that Microsoft contributed Hyper-V drivers to FreeBSD. Just in case you want to build the next WhatsApp ;)
pekk 13y ago
Azure to App Engine isn't apples to apples. For example, you could write an app to run on Azure and be able to change platforms to chase better prices or capabilities later, rather than having to use App Engine at inflated prices forever after.

by jtchang 13y ago

yulaow 13y ago

Also with Bizspark you can have, if I remember well, like 150E/month to spend on azure for 3 years. Considering that almost any IT startup can access to bizspark, it is a nice thing to at least try it. Also I love the fact they are distributing their sdks for other os (linux and osx) and that they are all opensource on github

bignaj 13y ago
You can also get free access to Azure with a MSDN subscription which is nice for those who have one :)
- sixothree 13y ago
  Ours gets us $100 / month credit. Which previously was not quite enough for one medium vm.
city41 13y ago
It's also worth pointing out that BizSpark imposes no requirements or obligations on the startup. You are free to join BizSpark and never use any of its services and you don't owe MS anything at all.
- sachinag 13y ago
  They got rid of the $100 thing?
  - martydill 13y ago
    Yup, graduation is now completely free.
- tszming 13y ago
  It is also worth point out you can add up to 8 developer accounts (now seems to be 4?) under bizspark programme and the $150 credit is per developer, so the total saving for 3 yrs is up to $43200 (crazy?) Also, you can enjoy additional discounted hourly rate for up to 33%, aws/google can't compete with that. [1] http://spiffy.sg/startup/how-to-maximize-and-activate-your-bizspark-msdn-benefits-for-windows-azure/ http://spiffy.sg/startup/how-to-maximize-and-activate-your-b... [2] http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/offers/ms-azr-0057p/ http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/offers/ms-azr-0057p/
ritwikt 13y ago
+1 to that Bizspark is an awesome program for startups. We are running linux on it w/o any issues [~3 servers come free] Best part - there are no restrictions on what s/w stack you run..
neotek 13y ago
It gets even better than that if you're in an approved accelerator / incubator: you get $60,000 USD in hosting credits, at a rate of $5,000 a month. We're entirely hosted on Azure using their Linux VMs and have had a great experience with them so far.
- topbanana 13y ago
  Hmm, that doesn't really seem fair on those of us not going down that route
  - Styn 13y ago
    I think the reasoning is that if you convince an accelerator/incubator to accept you your product has a higher chance of succeeding. This will mean that the chance of you still existing (and starting to pay) after 3 years should be significantly higher.
    - michaelt 13y ago
      Many companies have discounts that they can afford to give, but they make it a bit of a hassle to get them, so the bulk of customers keep paying full price but they can also retain the miserly customers at a reduced profit margin. For example, some food retailers publish discount coupons in newspapers, so the discount is only available to people willing to go through the hassle.
NicoJuicy 13y ago
It's 115 € / month, but 150 $ / month and indeed, it's for 3 years. (i'm Bizspark myselve) And also, the support was awesome! (needed help transfering everything to another account)
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

stusmall 13y ago

How good is the support? I ask because last time I tried HyperV I had lots of really lame issues. Like breaking the CD-ROM drive access and their workaround was to copy over an ISO and mount that locally or something like that. It felt like Linux was an unfinished offering. Yeah, I mean it ran... but not well. I figure some of what I ran into was user error since its a new tech to me but I've talked to a few people who have had serious HyperV issues so I'm not going to take all the blame. I bring this up because I'd imagine those Linux VMs are sitting on top HyperV. I'll be very happy to hear that my fears are unfounded and they run great though.

Linell 13y ago
While I've never used a Linux VM on Azure, I can say that every question I've had was answered quickly and extremely thoroughly. I've never ran into anything that support was unable to help with.
- stusmall 13y ago
  Oh, I meant support as in how well does it actually work not can I get someone on the phone to help me out. Sorry about the unclear wording.
okaram 13y ago
I'm a Linux guy (well, I was a year ago :), but I'm working for Microsoft now, and get $150/mo free on Azure ; although I haven't used many of the advanced features, I'm running a few tiny instance, both Windows and Linux; it works great and has been pretty reliable (and the UI is nicer than AWS :)
GFischer 13y ago
The company I work for tried hard to make HyperV work, but they ended up ditching it as an inferior product. It definitely wasn't up to the enterprise standards they were expecting. I don't know what were the specific issues they ran into, though (I'm on the development side currently).

incision 13y ago

>"Hate on Microsoft all you want but this is a great thing. If Microsoft feels they want to play in the infrastructure as a service game they need to earn the customer's trust." Interestingly, the folks I deal with some folks who run some large-scale Microsoft services for a living want nothing to do with Azure in its current state and use AWS instead. Apparently, Azure lacks some pretty basic functionality like the ability to bind multiple addresses to an instance [0] and makes running legacy versions of Windows a pain - deal breakers for production and test purposes. 0: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsazure/en-US/dba5a25a-0b12-4620-8f3a-a71c3e5b3555/adding-a-second-ip-address?forum=WAVirtualMachinesforWindows http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsazure/en-US/d... "At this time we have nothing we can disclose regarding the timeframe to support multiple IPs on Azure VMs."

keithwarren 13y ago
Strikes me that this is intentional, not some thing that they are structurally incapable of doing - it is not as if there is a massive engineering effort for example, to support such a thing. Never the less, I am in the same boat as your friends in many cases. In my consulting practice I do lots of SQL Server tuning work and have found very few cases where I can tell a client that going to Azure would be a net benefit for the database. Even with the new dedicated SQL instances, on-premise will almost always get you more perf per dollar. (though the Azure stuff does come with less maintenance headaches in theory)
- outside1234 13y ago
  cloud is not about performance -- it is about agility.
letstryagain 13y ago
On the other hand Azure has some awesome features not available in AWS. For example you can upgrade an Azure instance to a bigger size with zero downtime.
deathanatos 13y ago
Out of curiosity, why would you need to bind an arbitrary IP to a VM? What's wrong with the one it's presumably got? I know some places can move IPs around at will, but it seems like the wrong layer in the stack to do it. Aren't IPs something you want to assign based on your network topology? If you need an arbitrary identifier that can move between machines, what's wrong with DNS? (And how are you not re-inventing DNS?) (and the names are more memorable) If you do have the capability to do this, does it not tie you to that provider? Presumably the IPs would be allocated to the provider, so switching to a new provider would necessitate a new IP, whereas DNS addresses can point anywhere. Unless I'm completely misunderstanding (I've never tried these shenanigans with IPs), so please correct me if I am.

profquail 13y ago

In addition to Linux, Azure also runs FreeBSD 10 now that Microsoft contributed Hyper-V drivers to FreeBSD. Just in case you want to build the next WhatsApp ;)

pekk 13y ago

Azure to App Engine isn't apples to apples. For example, you could write an app to run on Azure and be able to change platforms to chase better prices or capabilities later, rather than having to use App Engine at inflated prices forever after.