We use this solution for IaaS, SaaS, PaaS security, identity, and Kubernetes.
IT Infrastructure Architect at a non-tech company with 10,001+ employees
Secure cloud platform that is stable and scalable, and they have good support
Pros and Cons
- "There are many different components such as SaaS, PaaS, and API so every month they are releasing a few hundred new features."
- "It is constantly updating. There are weekly releases, sometimes daily releases, and there should be fewer that are consolidated into one."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
I like everything, overall.
It's a cloud platform so it's alive.
There are many different components such as SaaS, PaaS, and API, so every month they are releasing a few hundred new features.
What needs improvement?
It is constantly updating. There are weekly releases, sometimes daily releases, and there should be fewer that are consolidated into one.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Microsoft Azure for six years.
We are using the latest version.
Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Azure
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Azure. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is very good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's a very scalable solution. It is not really the number of users we have, but rather, it is more a case of service PCs. We have 70,000 or more.
How are customer service and support?
My experience with technical support has been good. They are very supportive.
How was the initial setup?
It's as complex as it wants to be. There's nothing initial about it.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It's an OPEX model, you pay as you go, or you can reserve funds.
Pricing can always be better.
What other advice do I have?
It's a good product and I recommend it to others.
I would rate it a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
President at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
Very flexible with good stability but needs better technical support
Pros and Cons
- "The product has been very stable for us so far."
- "Technical support could be better. They need to be more responsive."
What is our primary use case?
The solution is mainly used for setting up a big data platform on Azure and using some Azure items to navigate the data links and Data Factory.
What is most valuable?
The solution is quite flexible.
The product has been very stable for us so far.
You can scale the solution if you need to.
What needs improvement?
The solution needs to be easier to configure in the future. Right now, it's a bit difficult to accomplish.
Technical support could be better. They need to be more responsive.
The documentation should be more accessible. It's hard to find what we need right now.
It would be helpful if there was more data science or AI implemented in future versions.
The product needs to implement more API capabilities.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've had about two years of experience using this solution.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We've found the stability to be quite good. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We can scale the solution well. If a company wants to scale the solution, they can do so pretty easily.
We have about 20-50 people on the solution currently. We do plan to continue to use it in the future.
How are customer service and technical support?
I've been in touch with technical support and I haven't found them to be overly helpful. They need to improve their support services. The answers take too long to get. We shouldn't have to wait for as long as we do. I'd say, at this point, we aren't exactly satisfied with the level of service they provide to their clients.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We previously used AWS. We simply used it for benchmarking.
How was the initial setup?
I can't speak to the initial setup as I didn't have any experience with it. I wasn't part of the implementation process.
I did mage the Azure DevOps deployment.
What other advice do I have?
We're just a customer and an end-user. We don't have a business relationship with Microsoft.
I'd recommend the solution for larger clients, especially if they are based in Europe or America.
In general, on a scale from one to ten, I'd rate this product at a seven. It's been mostly good for us. However, it could use much better technical support and documentation to make things easier.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Azure
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Azure. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Manager at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Flexible, easy to manage, has a nice interface, and the technical support is good
Pros and Cons
- "Azure is very flexible and easy to manage."
- "Talking from a networking perspective, when you create a file or a rule in Azure and you want to view this IP group, sometimes the way it is displayed on the GUI, you don't see the name of the group."
What is our primary use case?
Our primary use case is Infrastructure as a Service. We use it for SaaS applications, as well.
What is most valuable?
Azure is very flexible and easy to manage.
The interface and usage are nice.
Previously, there was no IP group, but they have since implemented that and it has become better.
What needs improvement?
For some use cases, Microsoft Azure is okay and working, but it is lacking features and we cannot implement it fully.
Talking from a networking perspective, when you create a file or a rule in Azure and you want to view this IP group, sometimes the way it is displayed on the GUI, you don't see the name of the group. At a minimum, I should be able to see the name of the group. They need to improve the GUI with respect to creating files or files. In summary, on that GUI view for firewall rules creation, the IP groups that are chosen in the firewall are not easily seen.
If I want to track, for example, a soft IP group, and mistakingly I click the wrong thing, then it's a problem. They need to improve it so that you can just view it, read-only, and then edit it later if needed.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Microsoft Azure for approximately three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would rate the stability an eight out of ten, as they are still developing.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have approximately 500 users.
How are customer service and technical support?
The technical support is very good.
In my own workstream, I've not had cause to work with Microsoft support. However, my teammates from the department have been in contact with them.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward. I can say that because my use case was greenfield, starting out fresh. It was a whole new installation and everything was straightforward.
It took between a month and two to deploy. The installation is not a big deal once you have the necessary license, and then you can begin testing.
What other advice do I have?
This is a product that is fast-growing and they are gaining popularity. We have invested in it, and plan to keep using it for the next five or ten years.
In my opinion, it is an awesome product. Microsoft is everywhere and it predates the cloud. Everything that they have is easy to use.
I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
AVP (Enterprise Architecture) at National Stock Exchange of India Limited
Will enable us to move on-premise servers into the cloud to hold data
Pros and Cons
- "We are going to use Microsoft Azure to move some on-premise servers into the cloud so that our data can be held there."
- "Microsoft Azure can be pretty advanced and difficult to understand. I would like it to be simplified. The licensing especially needs to be simplified."
What is our primary use case?
We are going to use Microsoft Azure to move some on-premise servers into the cloud so that our data can be held there.
What is most valuable?
We are now trying to decide exactly this. Where can it improve our daily business?
What needs improvement?
Microsoft Azure can be pretty advanced and difficult to understand. I would like it to be simplified. The licensing especially needs to be simplified.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have not been using Microsoft Azure for very long, about three months. My company has asked me to look for a better solution in terms of security perspective. They have asked me to technically go through to see if there is a real need to change or not, and what the new features are.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability of Microsoft Azure has been very good from what we have seen.
How was the initial setup?
I have not actually gone through the initial setup yet. So I am trying to figure that out. They want me to go through the training so I can understand the setup.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
So far we are satisfied with the pricing of Microsoft Azure.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We are also looking into other platforms. Perhaps an open-source platform.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate Microsoft Azure at an eight out of a scale of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Web Developer at Indiana
This solution has the best website amongst all cloud computing platforms. It is simple to utilize, and one can release nearly anything, from app services to host sites
Pros and Cons
- "Azure has the best website amongst all cloud computing platforms. It is simple to utilize, and one can release nearly anything, from app services to host sites."
- "Establishing the account in the beginning was very difficult."
What is our primary use case?
We host various sites and utilize this solution for purchasing domains as well. It's simple to host small sites and back-end software applications on Azure instead of on regional servers
How has it helped my organization?
It has great deals of APIs for automation that we can utilize for managing our services. We implemented some custom tools that were developed in house and are extremely happy with the time that we now spend monitoring the websites.
What is most valuable?
Azure has the best website amongst all cloud computing platforms. It is simple to utilize, and one can release nearly anything, from app services to host sites.
What needs improvement?
Being a big item, it has it's own share of bugs. I had a great deal of difficulty establishing the account at first.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
No
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No
What was our ROI?
We are at 150% at this time, not considering the time that we concentrated on something else.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Yes, we searched Google and Amazon.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Some of the valuable features include monitoring, management, and data analytics.
Pros and Cons
- "Compute (App service, and virtual machine scale sets): The ability to manage Windows and Linus virtual machines."
- "Specifically, I would like to see better Azure Data Analytics and monitoring RF."
How has it helped my organization?
By migrating our infrastructure to Azure, we have been more agile on several fronts as an organization, from been able to create proof of concepts on the fly, to being able to make changes quickly and repeatedly.
What is most valuable?
- Compute (App service, and virtual machine scale sets): The ability to manage Windows and Linus virtual machines.
- Monitoring and Management: Ability to use log analytics to search, collect and visualize machine data from on-premises and cloud.
- Data Analytics: Security and Identity (Azure Active Directory): This feature adds multi-factor authentication, self-service password reset and group-based application access.
- Storage (Azure files): Still in preview at this stage, its allows the creating of SMB 2.1 shared folders on Azure storage service.
- Azure Site Recovery: Allows the replication and recovery of VMs hosted on Azure, thereby extending business values of almost any size.
- Networking (Azure ExpressRoute): This feature allows the connection of data center with Azure via private link that does not travel over the internet. Advantages include security, lower latency and higher reliability.
What needs improvement?
Every area of the product still needs to improve as it can always get better. Windows wasn't where it is today decades ago. There was a continuous improvement and evolutionary changes. Same is expected of Microsoft Azure.
Specifically, I would like to see better Azure Data Analytics and monitoring RF.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Azure is very stable with no issues at all.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The ability to scale easily is one of Microsoft Azure strength, one can start and scale up as traffic increase or as the business growth is required. So we didn't have issues with scalability.
How are customer service and technical support?
The technical support is great.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We never used a different solution. We had a PoC with every vendor in the same competitive space and decided to go with the best.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was very straightforward, as we knew what is required from the technical perspective and as a business. Which we specified in an architectural design before hand.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Make use of Azure pricing calculator and you will find out that Azure Is still more reasonable that the competition and do your research, when unclear speak with your MS support.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated some other competitive products and decided to go with Azure as its suit and meet our business requirement.
What other advice do I have?
You need to have a clear vision of your business expectation from the product. Define your business requirements, objectives and ensure that your cloud provider can support those requirements.
Consider the cost, location, licensing, and technical capability to support and guide your organization.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Head of IT with 51-200 employees
(Some) Best Practices for Building Windows Azure Cloud Applications
In this blog post, I will talk about some of the best practices for building cloud applications. I started working on it as a presentation for a conference however that didn’t work out thus this blog post. Please note that these are some of the best practices I think one can follow while building cloud applications running in Windows Azure. There’re many-many more available out there. This blog post will be focused on building Stateless PaaS Cloud Services (you know that Web/Worker role thingie :) utilizing Windows Azure Storage (Blobs/Queues/Tables) and Windows Azure SQL Databases (SQL Azure).
So let’s start!
Things To Consider
Before jumping into building cloud applications, there’re certain things one must take into consideration:
- Cloud infrastructure is shared.
- Cloud infrastructure is built on commodity hardware to achieve best bang-for-buck and it is generally assumed that eventually it will fail.
- A typical cloud application consist of many sub-systemswhere:
- Each sub-system is a shared system on its own e.g. Windows Azure Storage.
- Each sub-system has its limits and thresholds.
- Sometimes individual nodes fail in a datacenter and though very rarely, but sometimes entire datacenter fails.
- You don’t get physical access to the datacenter.
- Understanding latency is very important.
With these things in mind, let’s talk about some of the best practices.
Best Practices – Protection Against Hardware Issues
These are some of the best practices to protect your application against hardware issues:
- Deploy multiple instances of your application.
- Scale out instead of scale up or in other words favor horizontal scaling over vertical scaling. It is generally recommended that you go with more smaller sized Virtual Machines (VM) instead of few larger sized VMs unless you have a specific need for larger sized VMs.
- Don’t rely on VM’s local storage as it is transient and not fail-safe. Use persistent storage like Windows Azure Blob Storage instead.
- Build decoupled applications to safeguard your application against hardware failures.
Best Practices – Cloud Services Development
Now let’s talk about some of the best practices for building cloud services:
- It is important to understand what web role and worker role are and what benefit they offer. Choose wisely to distribute functionality between a web role and worker role.
- Decouple your application logic between web role and worker role.
- Build stateless applications. For state management, it is recommended that you make use of distributed cache.
- Identify static assets in your application (e.g. images, CSS, and JavaScript files) and use blob storage for that instead of including them with your application package file.
- Make proper use of service configuration / app.config / web.config files. While you can dynamically change the values in a service configuration file without redeploying, the same is not true with app.config or web.config file.
- To achieve best value for money, ensure that your application is making proper use of all VM instances in which it is deployed.
Best Practices – Windows Azure Storage/SQL Database
Now let’s talk about some of the best practices for using Windows Azure Storage (Blobs, Tables and Queues) and SQL Database.
Some General Recommendations
Here’re some recommendations I could think of:
- Blob/Table/SQL Database – Understand what they can do for you. For example, one might be tempted to save images in a SQL database whereas blob storage is the most ideal place for it. Likewise one could consider Table storage over SQL database if transaction/relational features are not required.
- It is important to understand that these are shared resources with limits and thresholds which are not in your control i.e. you don’t get to set these limits and thresholds.
- It is important to understand the scalability targets of each of the storage component and design your application to stay within those scalability targets.
- Be prepared that you’ll encounter “transient errors” and have your application handle (and recover from) these transient errors.
- It is recommended that your application uses retry logic to recover from these transient errors.
- You can use TOPAZ or Storage Client Library’s built-in retry mechanism to handle transient errors. If you don’t know, TOPAZ is Microsoft’s Transient Fault Handling Application Block which is part of Enterprise Library 5.0 for Windows Azure. You can read more about TOPAZ here: http://entlib.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=EntLib5Azure.
- For best performance, co-locate your application and storage. With storage accounts, the cloud service should be in the same affinity group while with WASD, the cloud service should be in the same datacenter for best performance.
- From disaster recovery point of view, please enable geo-replication on your storage accounts.
Best Practices – Windows Azure SQL Database (WASD)
Here’re some recommendations I could think of as far as working with WASD:
- It is important to understand (and mentioned above and will be mentioned many more times in this post :)) that it’s a shared resource. So expect your requests to get throttled or timed out.
- It is important to understand that WASD != On Premise SQL Server. You may have to make some changes in your data access layer.
- It is important to understand that you don’t get access to data/log files. You will have to rely on alternate mechanisms like “Copy Database” or “BACPAC” functionality for backup purposes.
- Prepare your application to handle transient errors with WASD. Use TOPAZ for implementing retry logic in your application.
- Co-locate your application and SQL Database in same data center for best performance.
Best Practices – Windows Azure Storage (Blobs, Tables & Queues)
Here’re some recommendations I could think of as far as working with Windows Azure Storage:
- (Again :)) It is important to understand that it’s a shared resource. So expect your requests to get throttled or timed out.
- Understand the scalability targets of Storage components and design your applications accordingly.
- Prepare your application to handle transient errors with WASD. Use TOPAZ or Storage Client library’s Retry Policies for implementing retry logic in your application.
- Co-locate your application and storage account in same affinity group (best option) or same data center (next best option) for best performance.
- Table Storage does not support relationships so you may need to de-normalize the data.
- Table Storage does not support secondary indexes so pay special attention to querying data as it may result in full table scan. Always ensure that you’re using PartitionKey or PartitionKey/RowKey in your query for best performance.
- Table Storage has limited transaction support. For full transaction support, consider using Windows Azure SQL Database.
- With Table Storage, pay very special attention to “PartitionKey” as this is how data in a table is organized and managed.
Best Practices – Managing Latency
Here’re some recommendations I could think of as far as managing latency is concerned:
- Co-locate your application and data stores. For best performance, co-locate your cloud services and storage accounts in the same affinity group and co-locate your cloud services and SQL database in the same data center.
- Make appropriate use of Windows Azure CDN.
- Load balance your application using Windows Azure Traffic Manager when deploying a single application in different data centers.
Some Recommended Reading
Though you’ll find a lot of material online, a few books/blogs/sites I can recommend are:
Cloud Architecture Patterns – Bill Wilder: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023777.do
CALM (Cloud ALM) – Simon Munro: https://github.com/projectcalm/Azure-EN
Windows Azure Storage Team Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazurestorage/
Patterns & Practices Windows Azure Guidance: http://wag.codeplex.com/
Summary
What I presented above are only a few of the best practices one could follow while building cloud services. On purpose I kept this blog post rather short. In fact one could write a blog post for each item. I hope you’ve found this information useful. I’m pretty sure that there’re more. Please do share them by providing comments. If I have made some mistakes in this post, please let me know and I will fix them ASAP. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them by providing comments.
http://gauravmantri.com/2013/01/11/some-best-practices-for-building-windows-azure-cloud-applications/Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Manufacture at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Limitless infrastructure possibilities with good reliability and a potentially quick deployment
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable aspect of the solution is the limitless possibilities of the infrastructure."
- "Technical support needs improvement."
What is most valuable?
The most valuable aspect of the solution is the limitless possibilities of the infrastructure.
What needs improvement?
The documentation is out of date. It needs to be improved and modernized.
Technical support needs improvement.
I would like to see more flexibility surrounding what framework you can use for machine learning model creation.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. it's reliable and the performance is good. It doesn't crash or freeze.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution scales well. A company can expand it as necessary.
We have around 100 consultants using the solution.
How are customer service and support?
They do not seem to have enough technical support staff. Sometimes you have to contact them using email. You get the answer maybe three weeks after that email. It's available, however, it's not enough, and it's not very fast.
How was the initial setup?
In terms of the initial implementation, how difficult or easy it is depends on the services. The most common deployments are pretty clear and it's pretty simple, however, in some cases, it's very difficult.
The deployments can be fast. For the simplest ones, five minutes is enough. However, sometimes when you are trying to use a specific service, for example, the cloud solution, it could take days or weeks just to get it available.
What about the implementation team?
We have had a partner support us with the implementation.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We pay a licensing fee on a yearly basis. I don't have details in terms of the exact costs. Sometimes there are extra costs here and there.
What other advice do I have?
We're a partner.
Inside the cloud, I have experience using different kinds of products like databases products virtual machines, etc.
I'd advise new users to prepare for certification. The most basic one is fine. Companies should preview the solution before they start any project.
I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Microsoft Azure Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros
sharing their opinions.
Updated: December 2024
Popular Comparisons
Amazon AWS
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)
Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode)
Google Cloud
Google Firebase
Alibaba Cloud
SAP S4HANA on AWS
VMware Cloud Foundation
Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)
DigitalOcean
SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud
Equinix Metal
Google Compute Engine
NTT Cloud
Skytap Cloud
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Microsoft Azure Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros
sharing their opinions.
Quick Links
Learn More: Questions:
- Gartner's Magic Quadrant for IaaS maintains Amazon Web Service at the top of the Leaders quadrant. Do you agree?
- PaaS solutions: Areas for improvement?
- Rackspace, Dimension Data, and others that were in last year's Challenger quadrant became Niche Players: Agree/ Disagree
- What Is The Biggest Difference Between Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud Platform?
- Which backup and recovery solution can backup Azure machines to its own (dedicated) cloud?
- Which is better - SAP Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure?
- Which solution do you prefer: Alibaba Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
- How does Microsoft MDS (vs Informatica MDM) fit with Azure architecture?
- SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC): how to migrate to Microsoft Azure?
- Does F5 Advanced WAF work with Azure App Service?