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Microsoft Azure Overtakes Amazon's Cloud In Performance Test
alphadogg writes "Microsoft Azure's cloud outperformed Amazon Web Services in a series of rigorous tests conducted by Nasuni, a storage vendor that annually benchmarks cloud service providers (CSPs). Nasuni uses public cloud resources in its enterprise storage offering, so each year the company conducts a series of rigorous tests on the top CSPs' clouds in an effort to see which companies offer the best performing, most reliable infrastructure. Last year, Amazon Web Services' cloud came out on top, but this year Microsoft Azure outperformed AWS in performance and reliability measures. AWS is still better at handling extra-large storage volumes, while Nasuni found that the two OpenStack powered clouds it tested — from HP and Rackspace — were lacking, particularly at larger scales."
When no one's using the platform of course its going to be faster than the competition when shared resources are concerned.
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I wish there was a standard definition of "cloud". From the article, it sounds like they are just creating and deleting AWS S3 objects and timing the transfer rates. I guess that's in line with the traditional definition of a cloud server, but I'd be more interested in seeing how EC2 stacks up against the competition.
I'm sure S3 object benchmarks mean something to someone, but seems to be an awfully simplistic measurement. It'd be more useful to see how well each service scales across many users since individual object manipulation time is only a small part of the story for people that depend on the cloud for scalability. It could take one provider more time to manipulate a single object, but still be faster when serving that object to a million users.
Nasuni scores $20M to build out storage sales effort
Nasuni, which helps distributed companies manage their cloud storage securely, has $20 million in a new funding round — led by a mystery investor — to help it pay for new features and expand sales and marketing, said CEO Andres Rodriguez.
http://gigaom.com/2012/10/30/nasuni-scores-20m-to-build-out-storage-sales-effort/
Upload speed shouldnt be your only benchmark. If I upload a 10GB file to my raspberry pi server in the other room, its way quicker than either of these. Clearly raspberry pis overtake Azure and Amazon's cloud.
1. I don't know who these Nasuni people are and am not sure why I should care.
2. My experience of Microsoft over 2 decades is of a company that seems to be mostly stumbling along and not quite getting things right, occasionally hitting the target seemingly by accident, engaging in questionable business practices to ensure their market position and generally being a company many avoid doing business with if they can.
3. Amazon, by contrast has been a pleasure to do business with from my first day as a customer, continually improves it's services in a way that most people seem happy with, occasionally surprises me with things like AutoRip and is a company that most of my family (extended too) is happy to do business with. Dealing with Amazon as a partner may leave something to be desired, but dealing with Amazon as a customer is almost always a pleasure.
Given that MIcrosoft is a company that thrives by forcing customers to accept what *it* wants, while Amazon seems to be a company that thrives on giving customers what they want, my initial reaction to this report is:
Meh. So what? It's a little bit faster now - but ... Microsoft. Amazon will probably narrow and exceed that performance gap in a reasonable time frame if that's what their customers find important. So jumping over to Azure based on this report might make short-term sense, but doesn't make sense to the long-term thinker.
Addendum: What all of the above really says is that any genuine talent or ability Microsoft may have is undermined by how it chooses to do business and the resulting reputation it has earned. Which is a damned shame, particularly for all the people that work there and believe in what they do.
Actually Azure does support Linux servers (SUSE and Ubuntu). It is NOT strictly Windows and NOT strictly Microsoft. In addition to generic Linux servers, they support platform-as-a-service applications written in Java, PHP, Python, and Node.JS. In other words, not just .NET. They support not just SQL Server databases, but also MySQL and various embedded database and no-SQL options. I believe they are also working on supporting automated build/deployment from Git repositories in addition to TFS.
I neither work for nor own shares of Microsoft. But I have used both Azure and Amazon services. You may or may not like Microsoft as a company (or even Azure as a platform), but you're simply spreading misinformation. Azure has come a LONG way in the past year or two, and in a good way that embraces both traditional Microsoft and open-source technologies. This choice is a VERY good thing.
-James
>Azure is strictly windows and strictly Microsoft
Um - no. It used to be windows and MS stack only. It's not any more.