AWS/Azure questions

AHarvey · 17 Mar 2018 at 11:29

Noob questions.

Hi,

Just looking at both of these products and their 'free' tiers for tinkering around and experimenting.

It appears they like to confuse things with their always free, 12 months free options, Azure more so. Does the free tier end after the 12 months is up or can it still be used for free if you're only using the always free products?

But, for instance, if I wanted a light weight database on AWS, probably a few thousand rows at the most, would that always be free? It looks like it would be.

I take it that it would be possible to knock up a AWS dbase and then create software that connects to that instead of a local dbase?

thanks

EDIT: I suppose the Google Cloud Platform should sit within this query too.

Randomface74 · 17 Mar 2018 at 11:48

/following
I had an azure free account a while ago, it expired after 3 months, and I couldn't use my own domain name with it. Wondering if it's changed.

jakspyder · 17 Mar 2018 at 15:19

GCP gives a massive $300 of credit to use. If your instance isnt turned on it wont use credit up. I have a whole cluster i use for testing/learning with about 10 machine but i power them down the second im not using them and ive so far spent £0

Same goes for AWS pretty much, azure i've not used.

memyselfandi · 17 Mar 2018 at 16:50

AWS's 12 months free tier is pretty reasonable to use (and when it runs out just create another account if you are just using it for testing). I was under the impression that Azure didn't offer a 12 month free tier and their offering was a lot shorter (I have MSDN so get a certain amount free credit per month anyway)? Does Google Cloud even offer a personal tier in Europe that you can try things out on at all as last time I looked it was business only in Europe?

Personally I much prefer AWS over Azure. It's just easier to use in my experience.

GravyMonster · 20 Mar 2018 at 09:09

I use Azure on a daily basis, but would advise against any of their 'Free' tier options. They are slow at best. For learning this may be fine, but will grate after a while. I've not tried AWS or GCP but for small-scale apps I'd try them first.

jakspyder · 21 Mar 2018 at 17:30

memyselfandi said:
AWS's 12 months free tier is pretty reasonable to use (and when it runs out just create another account if you are just using it for testing). I was under the impression that Azure didn't offer a 12 month free tier and their offering was a lot shorter (I have MSDN so get a certain amount free credit per month anyway)? Does Google Cloud even offer a personal tier in Europe that you can try things out on at all as last time I looked it was business only in Europe?

Personally I much prefer AWS over Azure. It's just easier to use in my experience.

GCP is now available for personal use in the EU on a trial. And is personally my favourite in terms of UI and usability, i'd say its the more approachable for learning and playing with, plus more credit. With that said, the functionality AWS offer is similar and i'd imagine if you can replicate your work across both you should get a good understanding.

ultralaser · 21 Mar 2018 at 18:37

If you're looking for low use personal cloud resource I'd recommend https://www.heroku.com/ . I think they use AWS anyhow on the backend

Cromulent · 24 Mar 2018 at 13:28

If I need to use a cloud platform for my current project it would certainly be GCP. The Python API documentation is really good and they offer just about all of the services that I need. Although I'd host my own database server so I could have the latest version of PostgreSQL.

melvis · 30 Mar 2018 at 05:00

Cromulent said:
If I need to use a cloud platform for my current project it would certainly be GCP. The Python API documentation is really good and they offer just about all of the services that I need. Although I'd host my own database server so I could have the latest version of PostgreSQL.

id have to disagree, the Boto2/3 libraries and documentation are better than the GCP implementation, saying that though, both are MUCH better than the terrible documentation surrounding Azure and at least for now the irritating 'Azure Classic/ARM' hybrid dance you have to do there

Cromulent · 30 Mar 2018 at 14:23

melvis said:
id have to disagree, the Boto2/3 libraries and documentation are better than the GCP implementation, saying that though, both are MUCH better than the terrible documentation surrounding Azure and at least for now the irritating 'Azure Classic/ARM' hybrid dance you have to do there

Another advantage of GCP for me is that it is supported directly by Gitlab so I can run CI and CD automatically and have it in GCP in no time. Plus I have $300 of free credit to use in a year.

I've used AWS in the past, but the GCP UI is so much easier to use. I won't deny that AWS has some excellent services though. In fact, I have a couple of courses on Udemy that I need to watch about AWS to get a better grip on things.

I've been holding back on the whole cloud platform thing because I'm a bit scared I'll run up a massive bill, so I've just played around here and there rather than pushed anything into production full time. I still use Linode for that.

jakspyder · 5 Apr 2018 at 18:23

just bring down any nodes you have. watch for static IP addresses and load balancers though as they'll cost you over time. I have a bash script that builds all my image templates, groups and the load balancers etc. and one that deletes them all too. i just provision what i need to play with then destroy it after for safety.