Microsoft Azure Reviews

• IoT with C# and .NET Core 2.1. 
• Raspberry Pi with Raspbian OS.
• Docker containers
• For use in security applications in the retail sector
• Using RabbitMQ for message queueing between the internet of things and the cloud.

I compare it to AWS that I used prior to this. I find it much more intuitive, more visual, more obvious where things are and how to change their configurations, etc.  

• Being able to set up, change and configure VMs is easy - a lot easier than in AWS
• Feedback and error messages make much more sense in Azure than in AWS.

I get the impression there are a number of services offered by AWS that are not yet available on Azure, but it seems to be catching up pretty fast.

It seems to me that Azure is a little less stable than AWS but not so that it makes a difference, given how much time you save doing other stuff like configuring, etc.

Very easy to scale in and out but has unpredictable costing as a result. However, AWS is the same.

I do not use tech support. I use online forums, etc.

AWS. I started a new job.

No, it is simpler in Azure than in AWS.

In-house.

Pricing is the worst aspect of both AWS and Azure. It is very difficult to predict costs in my experience. There is often a base price (for running a VM for example), but then you have to pay for data storage costs plus data transmission costs, etc. I would prefer to have a predictable monthly cost for unlimited storage within a bandwidth for example, but there isn't an easy way to predict costs.

I evaluated Google Cloud too and compared AWS with Azure. Azure is definitely the best for me; I am more productive because I understand the tech architecture better.

If you are a C#, .NET or SQL server person, do not even think about using AWS, use Azure instead. If you are more of a Linux/PHP/Java type of person, you may consider AWS as it works much better from the command line and much more like a Linux or Java environment.

We wanted to deploy applications and have them interact with services on the back-end, so we deployed Azure for this. The performance has been quite good.

It was easy to deploy our applications on Azure. It provides more compatibility and scalability than the .NET application. This is why we chose to use Azure.

We are looking for the Azure to get involved in the case of other applications, like the Java application. Because it is predefined and has been set by Microsoft, who is providing better compatibility to the .NET application, so we are looking for the same from Azure for the Android app. Therefore, we are looking for better compatibility and scalability.

It is stable. I have not seen it have any downtime.

We have faced some challenges trying to deploy a new ESP application.

The technical support was good. I would give them an eight out of 10 rating.

The initial setup was straightforward.

The pricing is very competitive.

We evaluated AWS. 

If I were advising a colleague in my organization who is looking for a solution and is comparing AWS and Azure, I would prefer that they go for Azure, or any software using Microsoft technologies because we have had good experiences with them. If I were advising on Java, I wouldn't advise him to specifically use another tool rather he should do research and use my comparison history on IT Central Station.

I would rate this solution a seven out of 10. 

Most important criteria for selecting a vendor: The client will choose the license and buy it. We can try to convince them, but we can not compel them to use a specific vendor's license. Ultimately, the decision-maker is the client.

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

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.

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.

Being a big item, it has it's own share of bugs. I had a great deal of difficulty establishing the account at first.

No

No

We are at 150% at this time, not considering the time that we concentrated on something else.

Yes, we searched Google and Amazon.

Installation of SQL Server, Cloudera Hadoop, and MySQL. The performance has been great.

The benefit is the time to generate all these machines. It's in the cloud so I don't feel it.

I come from the DBA side so for me it's the easy maintenance; backups are very easy as well.

I would like to see more databases on the cloud, what they call today Big Data should be there. I think it's going in the right direction.

Stability is great.

Scalability is also great.

Personally, I have not used support, but the guys who do are happy with it.

Cloudera.

When choosing a vendor what's important to me are stability, a lot of features, variety, and good support.

My advice would be, try it using the free trial and I am sure you will be satisfied and take it.

Azure Cloud App Services can be classified as a MEAP, Mobile Enterprise Application Platform. It is also a Platform As A Service solution. These Cloud PaaS services are the backbone and the back-end structure that you can use to build omnichannel applications (mobile + web SPA + Kiosk). Azure App Service eases the creation of flexible Express Node.js or .NET WCF microservices. It has an API based on OData and integrated security with OpenID Connect with federated or corporate login. If you need a quick mobile solution, particularly an enterprise mobile solution, this is a wonderful choice.

We use this solution as a template to build mobile, back-end-of-corporate-omnichannel apps. 

When mobile is a necessity for an already-running corporate system, you do not want to lose time setting up a whole new environment and platform. You need something that can help you easily put in place all the scaffolding you need, and concentrate on the business solution that you are providing. Azure does this.

The time-to-market. Once you master the technology, you can create running, mobile back-ends in a few weeks. Additionally, it easily enables integration with legacy environments (like connecting to existing servers).

Scalability is definitely in need of improvement. Azure is a very good solution but it still lacks the performance of other cloud platforms.

We had issues with the Mobile Service ORM and the Azure SQL Database (cloud version of SQL Server). At times, the queries that are created automatically from the ORM mapping are not very well optimized for this database and that can lead to performance and stability issues. On occasion, the connection manager from the ORM does not handle the database connections very well.

Azure does not handle scalability as well as its competitors. Sometimes a 10 percent increase in a server with 20 percent of CPU usage pushes the server up to 100 percent load, and you start having performance issues.

Microsoft allows you a certain number of tickets, depending on the cloud plan that you are paying for. If you have an available ticket, technical support is great, but if you happen to have none, it will be more difficult to find good support. 

Once you gain a certain level of expertise on the platform, you will be able to handle most of the problems. Also, now that the platform is very open (Node.js + Express) it is easier to access good documentation and an excellent community.

We tried many solutions. We tried Kinvey and Kony but prices were absolutely prohibitive for our customers. We also tried BAASBOX which is now a (mostly) defunct open-source MBaaS solution.

We move forward with a .NET customized solution that we created ourselves but maintenance of a general platform requires a lot of work and we couldn’t afford to charge our customers for the required amount of work.

We tried AWS Mobile Services once but our customers preferred Microsoft Azure (their existing back-end was mainly implemented in .NET, and they preferred to stay in the Microsoft world).

We also built a solution with SAP Mobile gateway which is the safest choice for companies that have huge legacy systems already running on SAP.

The initial setup is very straightforward. You can very easily have an application up-and-running almost out-of-the-box. The learning curve is steeper once you need to start building more services or when you need to take care of performance issues.

The cost-benefit equation for Azure is very good, particularly for small applications. However, Microsoft should do much, much more to improve how costs are communicated and how to forecast them. The Azure Pricing Calculator is not useful.

We checked the big players in MBaaS, particularly Kony and Kinvey. Kony was extraordinary (circa 2013) but the price was prohibitive. Kinvey was also very good and prices were slightly better but not affordable at all for our customers. We started using WAMS, Windows Azure Mobile Services, the previous version of Azure App Service, which was one of the first MBaaS solutions. Microsoft improved a lot the platform with App Service.

I would rate Azure at nine out of 10. The previous version of Microsoft's mobile cloud platform, Mobile Service, had some security and scalability problems but the new version, App Service, has many improvements in these areas. It also uses open-source tools and allows developers to work in isolated environments, in their own workstations (without all the hassles and costs of putting the cloud into the developer’s cycle).

If the mobile application is not that big (up to 15 services) and time-to-market is very important, Azure App Service is a great solution. If you need heavy integration with an existing .NET legacy system, this solution will also work very nicely and will reduce costs. If you need to implement a much bigger system, my advice is that you should think about gathering a specialized team that has a very good grasp of the platform.

Currently we are hosting custom web applications, boxed applications, Azure VMs, Azure files for shared company files, Azure blob storage, Azure Active Directory with Active Directory sync, Single Sign On, and development and testing purposes.

Creating VMs for development has been huge since we ran out of resources locally. Creating Hybrid solutions provides us with greater confidence in higher availability. Storage has made remote access to files much more painless and easy. Using SSO has also been great reducing the number of passwords and locations required to use them.

Customized Dashboard, Site-to-site and point-to-Site VPN, Virtual Machines, Web Apps, SQL, SharePoint, Storage, Test/Dev environments.

Pricing is very difficult to guesstimate. With so many a la carte options and individual pricing it can be a hassle to understand. I constantly need to go over the report to find out where I can save money and what is eating up the monthly costs.

No issues with stability. Has been rock solid.

Scalability is Microsofts big advantage. At anytime you can scale up or down your servers or services growing them or shrinking them to your needs. You can even automate this process. I personally do not get into Enterprise solutions but they continue to add larger solutions frequently.  

Customer Service:

First response is 2-4 hours. Staff is knowledgeable but can often be difficult to understand and slow. Although I do not call about routine issues and bring very complex problems there way. With that said I will say every issue does get resolved.

Technical Support:

I rate technical support 7/10. First response is 2-4 hours. Staff is knowledgeable but can often be difficult to understand. I have also found that a few of them try to e-mail you despite your request for a call. This causes much miscommunication and additional time your problem is not getting resolved.

I only give them an 7 because I have struggled a time or two with understanding their English or getting the ball rolling resolving my issue. This all really depends on the department you need.

I will say that they always get the issue resolved regardless of the complexity of the problem.

No I have not, but we chose Azure simply simply because we are Microsoft partners and get free Azure credits to work with.  Microsoft is also a power player in cloud solution and a trusted name.  

Huge learning curve for me. I found just diving in was incredibly difficult. Much lab time required to understand how things work together. Once you get going however it all makes sense.

I also find the GUI to be more intuitive then AWS and feels better.

They are constantly changing the GUI while they continue migrating the ASM model to the ARM model. Since this is a living platform it can change from one day to the next adding features. 

I implemented all the solutions myself with a little research.

Microsoft does have special pricing for Development purposes. This does help reduce the monthly costs for our team.

As our local resources reach their end of life, we have moved servers and services to Azure.  It becomes more of an operation expense as apposed to a capitol expense. 

We are MS partners. Depending on your partnership you may or may not get Visual Studio Enterprises licenses. Each license allows you to get a $150 Azure credit per month.

This has been great for our developers and I to put in to practice some Azure solutions.

There are many other free credits available as well.  Do some searching.

If you need to purchase Azure they do have a pricing calculator that may help you determine costs.  https://azure.microsoft.com/en...

I know AWS is another great solution, but have not tackled it yet. I do have plans to experiment with Amazons solution to determine for my own the differences. 

The biggest advantage to using Azure over any other cloud solution is the ability to move your domain into the cloud and be completely server free and still have domain services.

I have also found that site-to-site vpn with domain services rack up a good percentage of our monthly costs. These are the fundamentals to move your network into Azure.

We have been using Azure for DevOps and non-production environments. It is great when you want to deploy apps in your staging environment first using deployment slots. This allows you to flick the switch very quickly between your current prod app and the newly developed in staging to see how it behaves in the real world. If something goes wrong, you can easily switch it back.

Azure is a platform which allows our organization to be agile. It very quickly provisions servers, infrastructure, and apps on the fly and complies with security requirements and data safety.

Azure Active Directory, Azure VMs, Azure network security groups (NSG), and  monitoring endpoints across different regions to check how your platform operates from different geographic locations. Azure backups are another feature which are quite useful, especially since they allow us to backup our Azure VMs and our on-premise servers. Data can be backed up to Azure, saving time, space, and using clunky tapes to restore data, when needed.

Azure ARM console can be a bit overwhelming at the beginning. 

If you are not aware of costs, pricing, etc., you can end up with a hefty bill. However, I found that the Azure price calculator is a valuable tool to use before starting to deploy VMs in Azure. This tool will give you an overview of the costs you should expect on a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis.

I have had no stability issues. It is a very stable platform and very resilient. It comes down how you set up your geo-redundant options for backups, SQL replication. and VMs which run your services/apps.

I have had no scalability issues. It is an elastic platform. It all depends how you set up your scale up options to address heavy loads, but the options are there for you to use.

Microsoft Premier support is great to deal with. They understand very quickly the scenarios and how critical a scenario can be. They provide info, support, and knowledge to address issues. 

We did not have a particular issue when implementing. It was mostly understanding all the options Azure had. We used Premier support to generate inquiries with Microsoft seeking clarification about what option was best suited for what we wanted to do.

I used AWS (Amazon Web Services), but mostly because I was involved in a project. AWS is also a great solution, but I found Azure was easier to use and it had a native integration with my current platform (Windows).

The key here is design. You need to design and orchestrate how you want your VMs (geo-redundant, in an availability set, size of VMs, etc.). It is the key to understanding the costs of each set of VMs available to you in terms of size and computing resources. Also, understand what type of storage will be required for you to deploy your virtual infrastructure SSD storage and larger disks. Plan to use this (Standard, Basic, or Premium) and it needs to be taken into consideration depending of what you want to use Azure for.

In-house deployment, as there were Azure skills on the team.

Not applicable.

Use Azure price calculator before embarking on an Azure deployment. This will help you understand straight away what your cost expectations are on a regular basis. You can always run Azure on a 30 day trial, see how you feel about it, then make the decision to switch to the full Azure usage.

In addition to AWS, I also trialed Oracle Cloud (on a smaller scale) and it is great if you are running Oracle Databases. You can also stand up your VMs and build your environment. A cool feature of Oracle Cloud is you can run a private cloud version in your data center, exactly the same experience if you are running it on a private or public cloud. The private cloud solution comes in the form of an Oracle appliance which gets configured, deployed and installed by Oracle directly in your data center.

Run Azure on a 30 day trial and see how you feel about it, then make the decision to switch to the full Azure usage. You see the reason when you view the benefits of using its cloud solution, especially one that integrates so seamlessly with your environment, collaboration tools, and apps.

Building development and production environments to support business acrivity.

Getting resources up and running quickly and providing secure access to those resources makes life easier. Also, Microsoft Azure really does offer a great deal which allows one to completely think about software development in new ways. I love the WebApps feature and am currently learning everything I can about Logic apps.

I am really into the Everything as a Service model that Azure seems to be heading towards. Less fussing over VM's and Operating Systems.

The ability to quickly create and manage resources is critical to getting things done, Azure just makes getting things done a lot simpler.

You eventually end up with a large collection of 'bits' all working together, I find it hard to be able to create a logical 'box' and put all the 'bits' that need to be in that box / application into the one place.

We're still learning though, so odds are there's something that will help us with this already in Azure.

No, so far we've had no problems with anything we've deployed onto Microsoft Azure, rock solid.

At our early stage we've not encountered any scalability issues at all, and we're not likely to either, Azure will easily handle whatever workload we plan to throw at it.

Customer Service:

Excellent! I raised a support ticket on a question I had and got a prompt, clearly articulated and knowledgeable reply from the Microsoft Technical support person which addressed our question in a very short time-frame.

Technical Support:

Excellent! Was very impressed with the person I liaised with.

I was using an on-premises solution with servers running a HyperVisor, we were due to replace old hardware and needed to make resources available everywhere the team is, Microsoft Azure 'just made sense'.

Setting up was quite simple, before jumping in though make sure you watch some of the video's on the MVA site about virtual networking and so forth, the Azure user interface makes deploying these resources relatively straight-forward.

We went in-house, learning as we go. We're still very new to Azure and learning all the time, we'd be beginner to intermediate at most. We're not deploying to production for some time and will work with a Certified Microsoft Partner when we get to that stage.

Several thousand dollars and counting, we haven't needed to upgrade on premises hardware (In fact we eliminated all of the old on-premises hardware and run 100% on Azure) or pay for it's maintenance, power etc.

Understand and use the pricing calculator!

Learn PowerShell, a quick tip is that you can shut down and de-allocate your VM's when you are not using them, this way the VM's are not incurring charges. We absolutely love this feature, as it means that when the environment is not in use, it isn't costing much (if anything), so it lends itself to making the I.T environment more efficient.

We looked at AWS, but we chose Azure because we use a lot of Microsoft Products and it just felt more integrated.

Start with the simple things first, design your environment before deploying anything, even a simple development environment. Understand the charging model used and get to grips with the basics of PowerShell, as nice as the web based front end is, PowerShell is very handy.