Microsoft Azure

Every Windows backup solution uses VSS to my knowledge. DPM specifically is just awkward for lots of reasons (The way it handles reverse incrementals is similar to Dell Appassure - not very well). It's thrown in as part of the System Centre suite but I can't think of a reason one would want to use it over dedicated solutions like Veeam, Commvault or any reasonably good B&R software.

If you're a Microsoft shop (Which it doesn't sound like) and have the expertise already (Which it also doesn't sound like) then there is a significant overlap in their on-premise and cloud offerings (Server 2016 will achieve an almost complete parity at launch). I wouldn't even bother trying to shoehorn *nix systems into Azure, even though it does work relatively well for the OS' it does support, because the tooling on AWS is just better for anything non-MS.

Biz.Kid09 said:

Thanks Firebar, interesting stuff. Will start looking at AWS, I had exclusively been looking at Azure although I am of course at the very beginning at looking at all of this new 'tech'

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Actually, I'm going to weigh in on the side of Azure here. I am a light user of both and have been involved in large deployments using AWS. Whilst there are more tools around AWS and it's the most popular service, I have found Azure easier to work with and more to my liking in almost every way.

It's also much superior in terms of integration with development tools. Visual Studio integration is slick and easy to work with.

YMMV.

It's superior at integrating with Visual Studio, what a surprise

The Azure offering seems to be more geared towards outsourcing enterprise IT functions, AWS is the replacement for a startup's garage full of servers. That's a very broad overview, but AWS is doing a bit more to support automation of code pushes than Azure is currently. Also they put on free events in London and I've yet to see an Azure one.

Just thought I would update this, unfortunately my university's dreamspark account doesn't cover Azure so I don't get the free credits every month too keep playing round with it.

Got me thinking about these MicroServers and getting one whilst they are on cashback and installing Server 2012 (I can get free) and carrying on with my learning and playing around on there. I don't think I am going to lose out on anything doing it this way am I?

Install Helion Eucalyptus into a VM or onto a MicroServer and familiarise yourself with the AWS way of working. You could also look at the free tier in AWS.

FirebarUK said:

Install Helion Eucalyptus into a VM or onto a MicroServer and familiarise yourself with the AWS way of working. You could also look at the free tier in AWS.

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I will have to look into Helion, I haven't heard of it.

Thanks for the suggestion of AWS, I have just signed up and spun a OpenVPN instance, going to have to wait till I get home to try and set it up properly so just going to have to give it a go and see what happens.

So,

Still rocking my AWS and Azure thingies, been doing plenty of reading and so forth but I am just wondering if anyone can suggest any practical 'challenges' I could do in either AWS or Azure to keep learning and practicing.

I think I want to focus my career on the 'cloud' so any other advice or things I should be doing would be greatly be appreciated!

Build a really basic WordPress site that uses RDS for the database, S3 for static content. Put a load balancer in front of the EC2 instance that is serving the web pages.

Now configure auto scaling and force a certain number of EC2 instances to deploy with your website ready to go. Check that each instance is serving the correct stuff. Now randomly kill some EC2 instances.

Should keep you busy for a bit.

Thanks very much Caged, will crack on and update with my progress!

Ah, run into an issue. I have my OpenVPN running at the moment and with the "Free Tier" you can only run one at a time!

Also: https://qwiklabs.com