Microsoft Azure

Biz.Kid09

Biz.Kid09

Biz.Kid09

Soldato
Joined
14 Oct 2009
Posts
9,657
Location
UK
Couldn't see a thread for Azure specifically.

Just wondering how many on here use it or maybe any of the alternatives eg Amazon S3.

I myself have just started using Azure as a place for me to tinker with various VM's and so forth. I want to move into this sector in the future so starting early and hopefully in a few years be an Azure master.

Anyone else use it for personal or business use?

I myself loaded a Linux VM last night and setup OpenVPN. Working like a dream, got a stable and quick VPN on my laptop within the hour.
 
I use it to have domain controllers at a secondary site without having to own a multinational company or have hardware co-lo'd and depreciating in value.

There's not really a great deal of difference between Azure and AWS, use whatever you are familiar with and whatever your automation tools support.

For your usage (essentially tinkering without having to spin up your own VMware box) you might be better suited to something like DigitalOcean though.
 
Well the reason I am using Azure is because of the free credit I get as MSDN subscriber (Computer Science student, so get Dreamspark).

Will check out DigitalOcean though, cheers :)
 
I tinker with it occasionally (free credit through MSDN). I keep meaning to make more use of it though.
 
I use Azure and AWS a lot at the moment in my current role. I dont mind it, its okay, its nothing that I shout and scream about.

Stelly
 
The best thing about Azure is the Azure Web Pack functionality with System Centre. Hybrid platform (on prem and cloud) is lovely for larger orgs. I'm still on the fence about it's usefulness for smaller shops (Pricing mostly).

As Stelly says, what the platform delivers is much of a muchness compared to AWS.
 
Stelly said:
I'm a technical architect/systems developer.

As in it does what it says on the tin... just the norm in hosted services.

Thanks,

Stelly
Click to expand...
Ah interesting, would you mind if I sent you an email asking a few questions?

I see, :)
Yamahahahahaha said:
The best thing about Azure is the Azure Web Pack functionality with System Centre. Hybrid platform (on prem and cloud) is lovely for larger orgs. I'm still on the fence about it's usefulness for smaller shops (Pricing mostly).

As Stelly says, what the platform delivers is much of a muchness compared to AWS.
Click to expand...
I see what you mean, yeah for many its not a feasible option but definitely for larger orgs it is a good platform.

Yeah I agree, as I say I have only looked at Azure because I can use it for free and it was recommended to me.
 
Biz.Kid09 said:
Ah interesting, would you mind if I sent you an email asking a few questions?

I see, :)

I see what you mean, yeah for many its not a feasible option but definitely for larger orgs it is a good platform.

Yeah I agree, as I say I have only looked at Azure because I can use it for free and it was recommended to me.
Click to expand...

Hey mate,

Sure no problems, go for it :)

Stelly
 
I'm about to migrate 2500 users to Azure and Office365 - or rather an outsourcer is going to do it for me :)
It's going to end up being an on-prem/off-prem hybrid solution so the winner for me is the integration between on-prem Windows Server AD and Azure AD.
 
Stelly said:
I'm a technical architect/systems developer.

As in it does what it says on the tin... just the norm in hosted services.

Thanks,

Stelly
Click to expand...

It sounds like you aren't really using it any differently to how you'd use a on-prem server running VMware.
 
Biz.Kid09 said:
In what ways is AWS superior to Azure, not trolling I am genuinely interested!
Click to expand...

Despite Azure being newer in some ways, it's still not as easy to use as AWS (conceptually and practically) and does not have the portfolio breadth for services and depth of features in each of these. There is also a considerably larger ecosystem (think tools, marketplace etc.) around AWS at the moment and its more friendly to those working against the API with good language/library coverage (excellent libraries like boto). AWS also excels around security controls with IAM, KSM, DDoS, compliance etc.

http://www.networkworld.com/article...n-amazon-web-services-vs-microsoft-azure.html

Still, not unexpected since they are playing catch-up. They really need to focus on ease of use though, I'm not seeing much progress here.

Ultimately these sorts of providers are miles apart from "traditional hosting" due to their focus on application workloads and services which can be used as building blocks for part of said application services. Look at AWS Lambda as an example, a completely server-less service and a peek into the future, for sure. The REAL value in these platforms are these very service offerings, e.g:

"I want to build a highly scalable gaming platform."

Great, then instead of spinning up a load of VM's then writing and managing a load of components yourself you'd say:

"Ok, I'll use cloudfront to serve static content in a localised manner, I'll use EC2 with autoscaling and load balancing together with CloudWatch metrics to provide scalable and compute layers, I'll use VPC for secure network topologies for tiers, I'll use DynamoDB for OLTP, I'll take EMR and use that with Data Pipeline and RedShift for ETL and analytics. Furthermore, I'll orchestrate and manage all of this through CloudFormation and then use CloudWatch, Config and CloudTrail to help me manage and monitor."

or

"Lambda it." ;)

Anyhow, the idea is that when building an application you use these services to decrease time to market and thus time to value with something that ultimately makes you money.
 
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'
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom