Microsoft Azure Reviews and Pricing

HimanshuTejwani

System Administrator and DevOps Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Apr 11, 2021

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Competitively priced, but the interface needs to be more user-friendly

Pros and Cons

"It's a cloud service, so it's always up to date."

"If you compare it with AWS, it is not very friendly to use. I find the UI better to work with on AWS."

What is our primary use case?

It's similar to AWS.

It's an infrastructure as a service.

What is most valuable?

It's a cloud service, so it's always up to date.

What needs improvement?

If you compare it with AWS, it is not very friendly to use. I find the UI better to work with on AWS.

They easily provide service with Windows, but not with Linux.

For how long have I used the solution?

I am a beginner, and only been using Microsoft Azure for a couple of months.

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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Microsoft Azure is pretty stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's a scalable product. Because it's a cloud service, there is an infinite opportunity for scaling.

We only have one or two people who are using this solution in our organization.

How are customer service and support?

I reached out to support once, but they were not that quick to respond.

Technical support could be faster.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have experience with AWS and Microsoft Azure is not that friendly. It is a bit complicated compared to AWS.

How was the initial setup?

It's a cloud service. There is no installation.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is expensive, but it is less expensive than AWS.

Even with it being cheaper than AWS, the price could be cheaper.

It is similar to AWS, where it is on-demand and is billed monthly.

What other advice do I have?

We are not currently using this solution and we are not sure if we will be using it in the future.

For those who are connected to the Windows Operating System, I would recommend this product. However, I would not recommend it for a Linux environment.

I would rate this solution a seven 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.

reviewer1314534

Owner and Senior Technical Architect at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

Feb 14, 2021

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A secure, vast, and powerful platform that provides many possibilities and reduces the strain on internal IT

Pros and Cons

"It is so huge and so powerful. The best thing is the possibilities of things that you can actually do with it. If you do it right, you can work or host your stuff a lot cheaper than traditionally. Its security is good, and it also reduces the strain on internal IT."

"I would like to see improved migration tools. It is improving week by week. They just need to make sure that they keep up with the new functionality provided in other clouds."

What is most valuable?

It is so huge and so powerful. The best thing is the possibilities of things that you can actually do with it. If you do it right, you can work or host your stuff a lot cheaper than traditionally.

Its security is good, and it also reduces the strain on internal IT.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see improved migration tools. It is improving week by week. They just need to make sure that they keep up with the new functionality provided in other clouds.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for nine years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not been overly impressed with stability in the last years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

By definition, it is scalable. Indirectly, one of our customers probably has more than 100,000 users.

How are customer service and technical support?

If you take the normal technical support, then it is okay. If you pay for premium technical support, then it is really good.

How was the initial setup?

Its initial setup is straightforward. You don't have to do anything. It is all done for you.

What other advice do I have?

I am a Microsoft partner, so I would, of course, recommend it. I would recommend Azure, then AWS, and then Google.

I would rate Microsoft Azure a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner

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December 2024

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reviewer1297236

Product Architect at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

Aug 2, 2020

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ExpressRoute makes it easy to connect to services, but it could be more user-friendly

Pros and Cons

"I like the ExpressRoute because that makes it easy to configure connectivity to Azure-hosted services."

"Azure could be made more user-friendly."

What is our primary use case?

We are a service provider and Azure is one of the products that I use to assist my clients.

What is most valuable?

I like the ExpressRoute because that makes it easy to configure connectivity to Azure-hosted services.

What needs improvement?

Azure could be made more user-friendly. For example, the configuration wizard should be more intuitive for the users.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Microsoft Azure for about 18 months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This product is stable enough.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability-wise, we have not had any problems.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have been in touch with Microsoft technical support and I would say that they are average.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I am also working with AWS and I find that it is more user-friendly. I am a fan of AWS and although it depends on the use cases and requirements, we generally implement AWS more often than Azure.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was fairly simple. If we did have any issues then we would consult with Microsoft Professional Services, or some of our cloud architects, just to figure out how to resolve them.

We follow the Microsoft update paths. There isn't any maintenance required because it's a managed service and the providers take care of it.

What other advice do I have?

For the most part, Microsoft Azure works well. They are constantly upgrading their services. That said, I don't think that it's perfect.

I would rate this solution a seven 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.

it_user7842

Owner with 51-200 employees

Oct 20, 2013

Session Affinity and Windows Azure

Everybody speaks about recently announced partnership between Microsoft and Oracle on the Enterprise Cloud. Java has been a first-class citizen for Windows Azure for a while and was available via tool like AzureRunMe even before that. Most of the customers I've worked with are using Apache Tomcat as a container for Java Web Applications. The biggest problem they face is that Apache Tomcat relies on Session Affinity.

What is Session Affinity and why it is so important in Windows Azure? Let's rewind a little back to this post I've written. Take a look at the abstracted network diagram:

So we have 2 (or more) servers that are responsible for handling Web Requests (Web Roles) and a Load Balancer (LB) in front of them. Developers has no control over the LB. And it uses one and only one load balancing algorithm – Round Robin. This means that requests are evenly distributed across all the servers behind the LB. Let's go through the following scenario:

I am web user X who opens the web application deployed in Azure.
The Load Balancer (LB) redirects my web request to Web Role Instance 0.
I submit a login form with user name and password. This is second request. It goes to Web Role Instance 1. This server now creates a session for me and knows who I am.
Next I click "my profile" link. The requests goes back to Web Role Instance 0. This server knows nothing about me and redirects me to the login page again! Or even worse – shows some error page.

This is what will happen if there is no Session Affinity. Session Affinity means that if I hit Web Role Instance 0 first time, I will hit it every time after that. There is no Session Affinity provided by Azure! And in my personal opinion, Session Affinity does not fit well (does not fit at all) in the Cloud World. But sometimes we need it. And most of the time (if not all cases), it is when we run a non-.NET-code on Azure. For .NET there are things like Session State Providers, which make developer's life easier! So the issue remains mainly for non .net (Apache, Apache Tomcat, etc).

So what to do when we want Session Affinity with .NET web servers? Use the SessionAffinity or SessionAffinity4 plugin. This basically is the same "product", but the first one is for use with Windows Server 2008 R2 (OS Family = 2) while the second one is for Windows Server 2012 (OS Family = 3).

I will explain in a next post what is the architecture of these plugins and how exactly they work.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user7842

Owner with 51-200 employees

Jul 22, 2013

Bending the Windows Azure Media Services–H.264 Baseline profile

Disclaimer: What I will describe here is not officially supported by Microsoft and by Windows Azure Media Services. This means that if task fails you cannot open support ticket, nor you can complain. I discovered these hidden feature by digging deeply into the platform. Use the code and task preset at your own risk and responsibility. And note that what works now, may not work tomorrow.

Exploring the boundaries of Windows Azure Media Services (WAMS), and following questions on StackOverflow and respective MSDN Forums, it appears that WAMS has previously supported H.264 Baseline Profile and have had a task preset for Baseline Profile. But now it only has Main Profile and High Profile task presets. And because the official documentation says that Baseline Profile is supported output format, I don’t see anything wrong in exploring how to achieve that.

So what can we do, to encode a video into H.264 baseline profile if we really want? Well, use the following Task Preset at your own will (and risk :) ):

`01`	`<?xml` `version="1.0"` `encoding="utf-16"?>`

`02`	`<!--Created with Expression Encoder version 4.0.4276.0-->`

03 <Preset

`04`	`Version="4.0">`

`05`	`<Job` `/>`

`06`	`<MediaFile`

`07`	`WindowsMediaProfileLanguage="en-US"`

`08`	`VideoResizeMode="Letterbox">`

`09`	`<OutputFormat>`

`10`	`<MP4OutputFormat`

`11`	`StreamCompatibility="Standard">`

`12`	`<VideoProfile>`

`13`	`<BaselineH264VideoProfile`

`14`	`RDOptimizationMode="Speed"`

`15`	`HadamardTransform="False"`

`16`	`SubBlockMotionSearchMode="Speed"`

`17`	`MultiReferenceMotionSearchMode="Speed"`

`18`	`ReferenceBFrames="True"`

`19`	`AdaptiveBFrames="True"`

`20`	`SceneChangeDetector="True"`

`21`	`FastIntraDecisions="False"`

`22`	`FastInterDecisions="False"`

`23`	`SubPixelMode="Quarter"`

`24`	`SliceCount="0"`

`25`	`KeyFrameDistance="00:00:05"`

`26`	`InLoopFilter="True"`

`27`	`MEPartitionLevel="EightByEight"`

`28`	`ReferenceFrames="4"`

`29`	`SearchRange="32"`

`30`	`AutoFit="True"`

`31`	`Force16Pixels="False"`

`32`	`FrameRate="0"`

`33`	`SeparateFilesPerStream="True"`

`34`	`SmoothStreaming="False"`

`35`	`NumberOfEncoderThreads="0">`

`36`	`<Streams`

`37`	`AutoSize="False"`

`38`	`FreezeSort="False">`

`39`	`<StreamInfo>`

`40`	`<Bitrate>`

`41`	`<ConstantBitrate`

`42`	`Bitrate="4000"`

`43`	`IsTwoPass="False"`

`44`	`BufferWindow="00:00:04"` `/>`

`45`	`</Bitrate>`

`46`	`</StreamInfo>`

`47`	`</Streams>`

`48`	`</BaselineH264VideoProfile>`

`49`	`</VideoProfile>`

`50`	`<AudioProfile>`

`51`	`<AacAudioProfile`

`52`	`Level="AacLC"`

`53`	`Codec="AAC"`

`54`	`Channels="2"`

`55`	`BitsPerSample="16"`

`56`	`SamplesPerSecond="44100">`

`57`	`<Bitrate>`

`58`	`<ConstantBitrate`

`59`	`Bitrate="160"`

`60`	`IsTwoPass="False"`

`61`	`BufferWindow="00:00:00"` `/>`

`62`	`</Bitrate>`

`63`	`</AacAudioProfile>`

`64`	`</AudioProfile>`

`65`	`</MP4OutputFormat>`

`66`	`</OutputFormat>`

`67`	`</MediaFile>`

`68`	`</Preset>`

You can quickly check whether it works for you by using the RunTask command line, part of the MediaServicesCommandLineTools project. The H264_BaselineProfile.xml is provided for reference in the etc folder of the project. You can tweak and Audio and Video bitrates at your will by editing the XML.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user7842

Owner with 51-200 employees

Jul 22, 2013

Bending the Azure Media Services – clip or trim your media files

Disclaimer: What I will describe here is not officially supported by Microsoft and by Windows Azure Media Services. This means that if task fails you cannot open support ticket, nor you can complain. I discovered these hidden feature by digging deeply into the platform. Use the code and task preset at your own risk and responsibility. And note that what works now, may not work tomorrow.

So, we have Windows Azure Media Services, which can transcode (convert from one video/audio format to another), package and deliver content. How about more advanced operations, such as clipping or trimming. I want, let’s say to cut off first 10 seconds of my video. And the last 5 seconds. Can I do it with Windows Azure Media Services ? Yes I can, today (5 April 2013).

The easiest way to start with Media Services is by using the MediaServicesCommandLineTools project from GitHub. It has very neat program – RunTask. It expects two parameters: partial (last N characters) Asset Id and path to task preset. It will then display a list of available Media Processors to execute the task with. You chose the Media Processor and you are done!

So what task preset is for Clipping or Trimming? You will not find that type of task on the list of Task Presets for Azure Media Services. But you will find a couple of interesting task presets in the MediaServicesCommandLineTools project under the etc folder. Lets take look at the Clips.xml:

01 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>

`02`	`<!--Created with Expression Encoder version 4.0.4276.0-->`

03 <Preset

`04`	`Version="4.0">`

`05`	`<Job` `/>`

`06`	`<MediaFile>`

`07`	`<Sources>`

08 <Source

`09`	`AudioStreamIndex="0">`

10 <Clips>

11 <Clip

`12`	`StartTime="00:00:04"`

`13`	`EndTime="00:00:10"` `/>`

`14`	`</Clips>`

`15`	`</Source>`

`16`	`</Sources>`

`17`	`</MediaFile>`

`18`	`</Preset>`

It is a very simple XML file with two attribute values that are interesting for us. Namely StartTime and EndTime. These attributes define points in time where to start clipping and there to end it. With the given settings (StartTime: 00:00:04, EndTime: 00:00:10) the result media asset will be a video clip with length of 6 seconds which starts at the 4th second of the original clip and ends at the 10th second of the original.

As can also see, I haven’t removed an important comment in the XML – "Created with Expression Encoder version 4.0.4276.0". Yes, I used Expression Encoder 4 Pro to create a custom job preset. You can try that too!

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

reviewer1772160

Manufacture at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees

Jan 30, 2022

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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?

Microsoft Azure

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

reviewer1037115

senior system integrator at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

Dec 1, 2021

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Highly stable and scalable

Pros and Cons

"Microsoft Azure is scalable."

"There are many bugs in the solutions and we already have a ticket to Microsoft. Their content team is working on that."

What is our primary use case?

We are using Microsoft Azure for deploying our Windows. Additionally, Microsoft Azure for some analytic functions where we can have all our sales data and budgeting can be done.

What needs improvement?

There are many bugs in the solutions and we already have a ticket to Microsoft. Their content team is working on that.

We don't have the active-active options for Microsoft SQL Server. This is something they can work on.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Microsoft Azure for one and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is scalable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Microsoft Azure is scalable.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Microsoft Azure an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Implementer