Is anyone really using Azure in production?
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I have gone on rants in this forum and other forums based on being nominated to look at cloud services as a possible solution. I found myself in a paradox. I couldn't price it because all usage estimates were really just guesses. I couldn't estimate accurately because the system wasn't built yet. I couldn't build the system because we needed hardware resources. We couldn't pick hardware resources because I couldn't price all of the options. I convinced them that the overage fees were too much of a risk to pursue Azure or Amazon's cloud. Most relevant rant: http://www.codeproject.com/Messages/3680828/How-I-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-Cloud.aspx[^] Earlier rant: http://www.codeproject.com/Messages/3676480/Re-Beyond-the-hype-SOLVED.aspx[^]
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I took another look at their pricing schedule and you'd have to be some kind of wizard to get any sense of what it would cost you ongoing if you offered a software solution to others via Azure. For example a small ISV makes a business app that they "rent" to customers, it would be a pretty risky prospect as you'd have to calculate pretty accurately the needs of your customers to ensure you didn't go over the allotment per month and incur the huge overage charges. You couldn't bill your end users the way Microsoft wants to bill the developer because they would throw their hands up in confusion. I'm a bit mystified who they are targeting with Azure, but surely it's very large corporate customers of some kind, the sort of people with a team of accountants to keep on top of the costs and plans; a small ISV would be taking a hell of a risk going to Azure.
There is no failure only feedback
John C wrote:
a small ISV would be taking a hell of a risk going to Azure.
Nope! On the contrary Azure and Cloud services reduce risks for small startup. I am developing an Azure app right now (expected to be in production in mid to late January). Why it makes sense for small startup? First of all, I need to host the application somewhere. Buying hardware and hosting and bandwidth, software licenses will be a big expense (running into $5000-10000). With Azure I get that at a reasonably low price. The minimum price is $60/mo (with on web role on a compact machine). With my Bizspark subscription, it becomes free. So I get something for free, see if the product is successful. If the product is successful, I can increase the resources (in matter of minutes) very easily without buying any hardware or software license. In other words, I can scale my product easily. If the product is not successful there is not much to lose either. Even in one year, I will not lose anything. Had I not used Bizspark I would lose just around $720 which is still quite less compared to 5-10, thousand dollars. That being said Azure pricing is a little confusing. But once you understand some concepts (like roles and instances), it becomes easy to understand. The only problem with Azure pricing is that you get billed not for the actual CPU usage but for the time your instances are running. It's like saying you will be billed as long as your machine is left on whether or not you are doing some work on the machine. This is different than the Google App-engine which bills for th actual CPU usage.
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John C wrote:
a small ISV would be taking a hell of a risk going to Azure.
Nope! On the contrary Azure and Cloud services reduce risks for small startup. I am developing an Azure app right now (expected to be in production in mid to late January). Why it makes sense for small startup? First of all, I need to host the application somewhere. Buying hardware and hosting and bandwidth, software licenses will be a big expense (running into $5000-10000). With Azure I get that at a reasonably low price. The minimum price is $60/mo (with on web role on a compact machine). With my Bizspark subscription, it becomes free. So I get something for free, see if the product is successful. If the product is successful, I can increase the resources (in matter of minutes) very easily without buying any hardware or software license. In other words, I can scale my product easily. If the product is not successful there is not much to lose either. Even in one year, I will not lose anything. Had I not used Bizspark I would lose just around $720 which is still quite less compared to 5-10, thousand dollars. That being said Azure pricing is a little confusing. But once you understand some concepts (like roles and instances), it becomes easy to understand. The only problem with Azure pricing is that you get billed not for the actual CPU usage but for the time your instances are running. It's like saying you will be billed as long as your machine is left on whether or not you are doing some work on the machine. This is different than the Google App-engine which bills for th actual CPU usage.
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John C wrote:
a small ISV would be taking a hell of a risk going to Azure.
Nope! On the contrary Azure and Cloud services reduce risks for small startup. I am developing an Azure app right now (expected to be in production in mid to late January). Why it makes sense for small startup? First of all, I need to host the application somewhere. Buying hardware and hosting and bandwidth, software licenses will be a big expense (running into $5000-10000). With Azure I get that at a reasonably low price. The minimum price is $60/mo (with on web role on a compact machine). With my Bizspark subscription, it becomes free. So I get something for free, see if the product is successful. If the product is successful, I can increase the resources (in matter of minutes) very easily without buying any hardware or software license. In other words, I can scale my product easily. If the product is not successful there is not much to lose either. Even in one year, I will not lose anything. Had I not used Bizspark I would lose just around $720 which is still quite less compared to 5-10, thousand dollars. That being said Azure pricing is a little confusing. But once you understand some concepts (like roles and instances), it becomes easy to understand. The only problem with Azure pricing is that you get billed not for the actual CPU usage but for the time your instances are running. It's like saying you will be billed as long as your machine is left on whether or not you are doing some work on the machine. This is different than the Google App-engine which bills for th actual CPU usage.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
With Azure I get that at a reasonably low price. The minimum price is $60/mo (with on web role on a compact machine)
:wtf: You think 60 dollars a month is reasonable? We pay less for our self managed Windows 2008 server with Pier1 / Serverbeach. And if we suddenly get deluged with users our server gets slow, we don't get dinged with a potentially unlimited number of dollars of overage costs. We can rent a second server or even make our own cloud for a fraction of what an overage charge on Azure would be.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
With my Bizspark subscription, it becomes free
Good for you, as a long time customer of Microsoft having faithfully paid for MSDN for over a decade I'm less than impressed that my reward for being a loyal Microsoft customer is that you get something for free that I can't get. To that I say in all honestly: fuck you Microsoft!
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
That being said Azure pricing is a little confusing.
A little confusing like world war two was a bit of a kerfuffle? :) I recognize your zealotry, you've got a lot invested emotionally in the platform, however as an experienced business owner I can't afford to make my decisions emotionally. It may be a good deal for you now but I'd love a follow up post in a year or two to see how you feel then. And in other words the answer is still "no", no one here so far is actually using Azure in production.
There is no failure only feedback
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Since you appear to be the only person who thinks they've figured out how the pricing works, would you be willing to write up something on how to estimate costs for an app using it for the rest of us?
3x12=36 2x12=24 1x12=12 0x12=18
Dan Neely wrote:
would you be willing to write up something on how to estimate costs for an app using it for the rest of us?
Yes. It did involve effort but I think I figured out how the pricing works now. I still think Google App-engine pricing is better but that's another topic for another day.
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
With Azure I get that at a reasonably low price. The minimum price is $60/mo (with on web role on a compact machine)
:wtf: You think 60 dollars a month is reasonable? We pay less for our self managed Windows 2008 server with Pier1 / Serverbeach. And if we suddenly get deluged with users our server gets slow, we don't get dinged with a potentially unlimited number of dollars of overage costs. We can rent a second server or even make our own cloud for a fraction of what an overage charge on Azure would be.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
With my Bizspark subscription, it becomes free
Good for you, as a long time customer of Microsoft having faithfully paid for MSDN for over a decade I'm less than impressed that my reward for being a loyal Microsoft customer is that you get something for free that I can't get. To that I say in all honestly: fuck you Microsoft!
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
That being said Azure pricing is a little confusing.
A little confusing like world war two was a bit of a kerfuffle? :) I recognize your zealotry, you've got a lot invested emotionally in the platform, however as an experienced business owner I can't afford to make my decisions emotionally. It may be a good deal for you now but I'd love a follow up post in a year or two to see how you feel then. And in other words the answer is still "no", no one here so far is actually using Azure in production.
There is no failure only feedback
John C wrote:
We pay less for our self managed Windows 2008 server with Pier1 / Serverbeach.
Really! How much does it cost you? How much does the machine itself costs?
John C wrote:
you've got a lot invested emotionally in the platform
LOL! No! The difference between you and me is that I do investigate and research before making an opinion.
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
With Azure I get that at a reasonably low price. The minimum price is $60/mo (with on web role on a compact machine)
:wtf: You think 60 dollars a month is reasonable? We pay less for our self managed Windows 2008 server with Pier1 / Serverbeach. And if we suddenly get deluged with users our server gets slow, we don't get dinged with a potentially unlimited number of dollars of overage costs. We can rent a second server or even make our own cloud for a fraction of what an overage charge on Azure would be.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
With my Bizspark subscription, it becomes free
Good for you, as a long time customer of Microsoft having faithfully paid for MSDN for over a decade I'm less than impressed that my reward for being a loyal Microsoft customer is that you get something for free that I can't get. To that I say in all honestly: fuck you Microsoft!
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
That being said Azure pricing is a little confusing.
A little confusing like world war two was a bit of a kerfuffle? :) I recognize your zealotry, you've got a lot invested emotionally in the platform, however as an experienced business owner I can't afford to make my decisions emotionally. It may be a good deal for you now but I'd love a follow up post in a year or two to see how you feel then. And in other words the answer is still "no", no one here so far is actually using Azure in production.
There is no failure only feedback
John C wrote:
We pay less for our self managed Windows 2008 server with Pier1 / Serverbeach.
Atleast according to server beach website the minimum cost is $75. You might have got some special deal.
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John C wrote:
We pay less for our self managed Windows 2008 server with Pier1 / Serverbeach.
Really! How much does it cost you? How much does the machine itself costs?
John C wrote:
you've got a lot invested emotionally in the platform
LOL! No! The difference between you and me is that I do investigate and research before making an opinion.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
The difference between you and me is that I do investigate and research before making an opinion
Ouch! When I hear someone post exclusively about how great something is completely contrary to the posts of many others who live in the trenches like I do I tend to think there's a bit of emotionality taking over from logic. I still think it's way too soon for you to be so glowing about it but whatever floats your boat, good luck with it. :)
There is no failure only feedback
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
The difference between you and me is that I do investigate and research before making an opinion
Ouch! When I hear someone post exclusively about how great something is completely contrary to the posts of many others who live in the trenches like I do I tend to think there's a bit of emotionality taking over from logic. I still think it's way too soon for you to be so glowing about it but whatever floats your boat, good luck with it. :)
There is no failure only feedback
John C wrote:
When I hear someone post exclusively about how great something is completely contrary to the posts of many others who live in the trenches like I do I tend to think there's a bit of emotionality taking over from logic.
When I hear people complaining about a concept without knowing anything about it, I feel sad for the rest of the peopl who want to know the truth but are misguided by such posts. I have not seen a single post by someone who truly understnds Azure/Cloud and has made comments here. How many people who complain about Azure here have really worked with Azure? How many people who compalin about Azure understand the concepts of roles and instances? How many people who complain here have got a monthly bill from Azure? I am afraid to say no post here seem to convey that. So it does not matter whether my post is contradictory to rest of them who have not tried anything and are bitching about it. I just want the people who are genuinely interested to know the concept before listening to some random uninfomed person's post on a newsgroup to form an opinion.
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John C wrote:
When I hear someone post exclusively about how great something is completely contrary to the posts of many others who live in the trenches like I do I tend to think there's a bit of emotionality taking over from logic.
When I hear people complaining about a concept without knowing anything about it, I feel sad for the rest of the peopl who want to know the truth but are misguided by such posts. I have not seen a single post by someone who truly understnds Azure/Cloud and has made comments here. How many people who complain about Azure here have really worked with Azure? How many people who compalin about Azure understand the concepts of roles and instances? How many people who complain here have got a monthly bill from Azure? I am afraid to say no post here seem to convey that. So it does not matter whether my post is contradictory to rest of them who have not tried anything and are bitching about it. I just want the people who are genuinely interested to know the concept before listening to some random uninfomed person's post on a newsgroup to form an opinion.
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John C wrote:
a small ISV would be taking a hell of a risk going to Azure.
Nope! On the contrary Azure and Cloud services reduce risks for small startup. I am developing an Azure app right now (expected to be in production in mid to late January). Why it makes sense for small startup? First of all, I need to host the application somewhere. Buying hardware and hosting and bandwidth, software licenses will be a big expense (running into $5000-10000). With Azure I get that at a reasonably low price. The minimum price is $60/mo (with on web role on a compact machine). With my Bizspark subscription, it becomes free. So I get something for free, see if the product is successful. If the product is successful, I can increase the resources (in matter of minutes) very easily without buying any hardware or software license. In other words, I can scale my product easily. If the product is not successful there is not much to lose either. Even in one year, I will not lose anything. Had I not used Bizspark I would lose just around $720 which is still quite less compared to 5-10, thousand dollars. That being said Azure pricing is a little confusing. But once you understand some concepts (like roles and instances), it becomes easy to understand. The only problem with Azure pricing is that you get billed not for the actual CPU usage but for the time your instances are running. It's like saying you will be billed as long as your machine is left on whether or not you are doing some work on the machine. This is different than the Google App-engine which bills for th actual CPU usage.
The thing that worries me about the Azure pricing is the possible financial impact of simply using more resources that you thought you were going to. I haven't investigated fully - but I can't predict what users may do. when I compared the approximate price for the App I am developing (post Bizspark) it looked to me that Azure was about comparable to paying for hosting, but with the advantage of easy scalability. I just wish they had a simpler pricing model with a 'once you hit this limit the site will redirect and you will get an email' option to keep my bank manager happy!
___________________________________________ .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
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The thing that worries me about the Azure pricing is the possible financial impact of simply using more resources that you thought you were going to. I haven't investigated fully - but I can't predict what users may do. when I compared the approximate price for the App I am developing (post Bizspark) it looked to me that Azure was about comparable to paying for hosting, but with the advantage of easy scalability. I just wish they had a simpler pricing model with a 'once you hit this limit the site will redirect and you will get an email' option to keep my bank manager happy!
___________________________________________ .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
_Maxxx_ wrote:
I haven't investigated fully - but I can't predict what users may do.
Well, that is correct but increasing the resources is in your hand. The way it works is that you manually go ahead an increase the number of instances for your roles. As far as Bandwidth is concerned the prices are very low any ways so you will not observe any drastic changes.
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I took another look at their pricing schedule and you'd have to be some kind of wizard to get any sense of what it would cost you ongoing if you offered a software solution to others via Azure. For example a small ISV makes a business app that they "rent" to customers, it would be a pretty risky prospect as you'd have to calculate pretty accurately the needs of your customers to ensure you didn't go over the allotment per month and incur the huge overage charges. You couldn't bill your end users the way Microsoft wants to bill the developer because they would throw their hands up in confusion. I'm a bit mystified who they are targeting with Azure, but surely it's very large corporate customers of some kind, the sort of people with a team of accountants to keep on top of the costs and plans; a small ISV would be taking a hell of a risk going to Azure.
There is no failure only feedback
We are a mISV (we're just two developers) and we run Amanuens[^] on Windows Azure and we're quite happy with it. For is it would be impossible to purchase and manage multiple servers, with Azure we abstracted all of that away and we simply focus on the core development. Sure, you have to figure a lot of new stuff, but that takes only a few months and three or four burns. :D Pricing might seem a bit complicated but you'll figure that you just need a part of the features, so estimating costs gets easier. Besides, if you offer a SaaS, the cloud is THE way to go. There's no reason not to do it (suffice it to say that if you don't go to the cloud, your competitors will and then will probably eat you with lower prices).
If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe, but not a personality. [Charlie Brooker] ScrewTurn Wiki, Continuous Localization and My Startup
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The thing that worries me about the Azure pricing is the possible financial impact of simply using more resources that you thought you were going to. I haven't investigated fully - but I can't predict what users may do. when I compared the approximate price for the App I am developing (post Bizspark) it looked to me that Azure was about comparable to paying for hosting, but with the advantage of easy scalability. I just wish they had a simpler pricing model with a 'once you hit this limit the site will redirect and you will get an email' option to keep my bank manager happy!
___________________________________________ .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
Good point. Anyone know there is any insurance/protection against something like a denial of service attack ? What if you're Azure hosted app/service gets targeted by some botnet or similar and your usage goes through the roof for no valid reason, and certainly not one you can charge anyone for ?
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
The difference between you and me is that I do investigate and research before making an opinion
Ouch! When I hear someone post exclusively about how great something is completely contrary to the posts of many others who live in the trenches like I do I tend to think there's a bit of emotionality taking over from logic. I still think it's way too soon for you to be so glowing about it but whatever floats your boat, good luck with it. :)
There is no failure only feedback
Hey all, following this thread a bit. I can assure you that Azure is being used in production by thousands of small ISVs as well as many large ones. That being said your points are valid - pricing is still way too difficult to understand. There is a profitability modeler available on the Azure site. What I would recmmend you do is download and use that to determine if azure is the right platform for your app and business model. The tool asks for a lot of parameters, like how many compute instances do you need? To get a better understanding of this as well as web roles, worker roles, etc - I would recommend setting up a POC environment. I assume as an ISV that you understand how your product is used and can recreate a typical customer environment to get a sense of the performance and utilization. Then you can return to the Azure Profitability tool and get a sense of cost & profit. Your POC environment should be free to set up and configure using any of the AZURE free offers available including your MSDN subscription, Bizspark (for startups), Cloud Essentials for Microsoft Partners (www.microsoftcloudpartner.com) - there is a significant amout of free monthly usage as part of all 3 offers and the last 2 do not require any fees to get started. MSDN of course has a fee. Chris