Microsoft Azure vs. Amazon Web Services, For Programmers

Nerval's Lobster writes "Tech writer and programmer Jeff Cogswell does a head-to-head comparison of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from a pure programming perspective, examining the respective sides' vendor lock-in and vendor-specific APIs (among other issues). 'If you're not using any vendor-specific APIs, then it's safe to say the experience you get on either Amazon or Microsoft will be roughly the same,' he writes. 'But that means you're also not developing an app that necessarily takes advantage of all possible cloud capabilities—not just add-ons, but scalability. Your app might need to expand and grow as your user base grows.' He suggests it's ultimately a tie between the two companies. 'From a strict programming perspective, both companies have their own RESTful API, and their own libraries for using the API.'" The problem with both of these services, though, that RMS could have told you about: "The moment you start using either, you're locked in for the most part."

Comments

This is a solved problem?

[kwerle]

Please google "Cloud Abstraction Layer".

Here; I'll help you out:
https://www.google.com/search?q=cloud+abstraction+layer

Re:This is a solved problem?

[dave562]

Now I know we don't actually READ the articles around here, but did you even skim the summary?

"If you're not using any vendor-specific APIs, then it's safe to say the experience you get on either Amazon or Microsoft will be roughly the same,' he writes. 'But that means you're also not developing an app that necessarily takes advantage of all possible cloud capabilities—not just add-ons, but scalability"

Why just those two?

[bennomatic]

I wonder why Cogswell ignored Google's cloud services. They've got the Python- or Java-based AppEngine, and they've got a full virtual server service. There are a lot of other platforms, too, but as far as size and industry impact, I'd put Google on a similar level.

Funny, though, that out of the three of them, if I were to choose the least "evil" one, it'd be Microsoft.

Last, but not least, if you're using Azure, I'm pretty sure that New Relic has an agent that's compatible, for performance monitoring.

Re:Why just those two?

[chrb]

Funny, though, that out of the three of them, if I were to choose the least "evil" one, it'd be Microsoft.

Why? Serious question. App Engine doesn't even lock you in that hard - there are APIs for exporting all of your data, and you can run your own App Engine cloud with an open source implementation like AppScale or TyphoonAE. Google is not hostile to these projects - they actually sponsor AppScale development. Is Microsoft sponsoring any alternative implementations of their server-side cloud software?

Well

[kelemvor4]

I've got an azure account with MSDN and TechNET subscription (I don't remember which of the two came with the azure). Processor time on their service is very expensive if you go beyond the allotment of free time given to you by those subs. The service works well, although getting your code to the servers is a little kludgy. Given the high cost, I think you'd be hard pressed to find value when weighed against leasing a full server or even multiple servers from a regular hosting provider. The exception to that would be if you had a simply massive load requirement and just couldn't muster enough horsepower out of a few traditional servers.

For what I would am doing, the cost is unreasonable. I've never really looked at amazon; so I can't compare them.

Summary

[hawguy]

Briefer summary of linked article:

Amazon and Azure use different API's, if you use one vendor's API, you're locked into that vendor. There might be libraries available that hide the vendor specific API's but that's outside the scope of the article.

Techwriter != Developer

[Anonymous Coward]

You're never forced into using AWS APIs. They are there if you want to use them. If you don't want to use S3, you stand up a storage server as an instance. No vendor lock-in. If you don't want to use RDS, you build your own DB instance. No vendor lock-in. If you don't want to use ELB, you build your own load balancer instances. AWS offers shortcuts for those developers who want big features and don't want to build them. It doesn't force them on you.

Another comparison, from programmers

[leonbloy]

All That Cloud: Amazon, Google App Engine, Windows Azure, Heroku, Jelastic

Re:After what happened to Wikileaks?

[medv4380]

Really? You're hung-up on that little point? Your domain name could be seized by ICE and who knows what else, and you're concerned that the Amazon caved to pressure to pull Wikileaks? This kind of thing has been going on for a long time before Wikileaks and Amazon. It's apart of the risk of doing business in this world. There is no way around it.

Depends

[Kupfernigk]

For what we are doing, the principal benefit of Azure is the scalable SQL Server.The ability to fap around with little 1Gbyte databases and then scale them all the way to 150Gbytes (and beyond with sharding) is what sold me on it. The cost of hosting your own SQL Server is much higher.

I'm also not so convinced that the VM cost is that way out of line. The performance we get, both in and outbound, is high, and we pay considerably less than we used to for our hosting. I guess you have to compare like with like taking into account bandwidth, scalability and SLA, and the flexibility to dial cost up and down as the machines are scaled, which you do not have with a true hosted server and database.