Hey Noen, is the hardware abstraction over multiple nodes stuff for reals or is it a load of junk?

10/29/2008 10:59:52 PM

i loled. nice south park reference

10/29/2008 11:03:12 PM

^^ epic latency if that is the case

10/29/2008 11:11:16 PM

some guys at work have been trying to get it work with vmware, but they couldn't. Ended up calling vmware support and they were like "lol ya thats what we originally wanted to do with this whole thing, buuuut it doesn't really work"

10/29/2008 11:18:07 PM

I have absolutely no idea. But based on what I've seen, it's extremely for realz.

https://sessions.microsoftpdc.com/public/timeline.aspx

click on Azure at the top to see all their presentations, you can watch em all. And if you have questions, you can always email the presenters.

10/29/2008 11:47:08 PM

GNU was trying to accomplish this with HURD oh.... 15 years ago? In fact I believe it was the major motivator for going with the microkernel architecture. However, in that time they haven't delivered much along those lines with what amounts to a purely research platform... so I would go with "load of crap" myself.

It obviously ain't that easy, and MS doesn't exactly have a long track record of delivering their supposed innovation in product form. We're all still holding our breath for the WinFS feature set that was first mentioned for the original NT release and promised again, later dropped again for Longhorn.

[Edited on October 30, 2008 at 5:02 AM. Reason : .]

10/30/2008 4:55:14 AM

I was talkin to shaggy about this last night. it's mostly total crap. there's no way to abstract parallel threading efficiently. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_kernel is an excellent example of this. rpc calls for every operation made it super inefficient and killed it with any sort of scaling. the only way this system would ever work is if microsoft rearchitected all their core service apps to work in a grid format. then, you might have a nice grid/HAC ms farm, but only for a select few apps/services.

10/30/2008 12:54:53 PM

Why does MS have to pick names that don't roll off the tongue well?

I hate saying "Vista" and saying "azure" feels really awkward for some reason.

do you say ahzhooor or azhur or what?

this is a critical issue for me.

10/30/2008 3:53:33 PM

azure will be a good scrabble play

10/30/2008 3:57:32 PM

At least it doesn't sound like "Oh Sex" when you say it fast ...

But yes, some names are unwieldy. At least the upcoming version is just Windows 7, much easier.

10/30/2008 3:59:24 PM

Quote :

"GNU was trying to accomplish this with HURD oh.... 15 years ago? ... so I would go with "load of crap" myself. We're all still holding our breath for the WinFS feature set that was first mentioned for the original NT release and promised again, later dropped again for Longhorn. "

I've seen it, I've used it. It's not total crap.

WinFS was never mention with the original NT. It was a core tenent of Longhorn, and was cancelled in 2005, there were several enterprise issues that there is/was no architectural solution to. As a consumer FS, it was (and still is) pretty awesome if you can get your hands on the old beta.

----------------

Guys, I think you are missing what Azure is. This isn't an OS you buy/download and the install on your own farm of machines. This is a CLOUD OS. All of the hardware is kept, run and sits in Microsoft datacenters, and it's all managed for you. As an administrator, developer, or user you only have to deal with the platform, not the hardware.

There's a lot of information about Azure in the PDC talks that addresses a lot of these questions. And Bobby, I totally agree with you. The codename for Azure was a HELL of a lot better and easier to remember/say.

10/30/2008 5:01:55 PM

Quote :

"At least it doesn't sound like "Oh Sex" when you say it fast ..."

You know, the "X" is pronounced as "ten," not "ex."

10/30/2008 5:04:20 PM

or you could pronounce it "Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, or Snow Leopard"

10/30/2008 5:28:39 PM

^^I know, and yet I can't stop from saying it the way I do.

10/30/2008 5:38:34 PM

^^^ Then why do the kids in the Apple Store call it Oh-Es-Ex.

11/1/2008 3:25:30 PM

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2011/12/12/improved-developer-experience-interoperability-and-scalability-on-windows-azure.aspx

hadoop, node.js, mongodb, memcached support being added to Windows Azure

12/12/2011 6:42:07 PM

oh snap

12/12/2011 7:05:16 PM

Apple's iCloud supposedly runs on Azure (or the test bed did).

12/12/2011 7:07:40 PM

unfortunately, existing .net ecosystem apps don't just port over

12/12/2011 10:24:31 PM

the last four posts in this thread seriously made my head assplode

12/12/2011 11:26:29 PM

This is super exciting to me for a variety of reasons.

12/12/2011 11:29:05 PM

I've been working on this for a while. There's a lot of really cool shit coming to Azure I'm pretty damn excited about it, but its killing me that there's just sooo much work to do

12/13/2011 1:04:57 AM

Got this mail tonight about Azure billing changes:

"Reduced price for data transfers (all inbound data is free):
$0.12 per GB for outbound data transfers for Zone 1 (Europe and North America)
$0.19 per GB for outbound data transfers for Zone 2 (all other locations)

Service Bus is free for a promotional period:
Service Bus is migrating to a new billing model based on relay hours and messages. To help customers get a feel for this new model, Service Bus is offered at no charge (except for standard data transfer fees) for billing months beginning before April 1, 2012.

For billing periods beginning on or after April 1, 2012, Service Bus will be charged as follows:
$0.10 per 100 relay hours
$0.01 per 10,000 messages

Access Control’s period of free service has been extended:
Access Control’s period of free service has been extended through November 30, 2012.

For billing periods beginning on or after December 1, 2012, Access Control will be charged at $1.99 per 100,000 transactions.

SQL Azure database size limit increased to 150 GB:
Size limit on a SQL Azure Business Edition database has increased from 50 GB to 150 GB.
Maximum charge for an individual database remains unchanged and is capped at $499.95 per billing month.

The SQL Azure Business Edition cap of $499.95 per database per month is based on the accumulated charges for the entire billing month for each database. Our billing cap allows you to scale your database from 50 GB to 150 GB at no additional charge, which lowers the effective price for larger volumes. For example, a customer who uses a 150 GB database for an entire billing month will see an effective price drop of 67%. "

12/13/2011 1:18:43 AM

Well if you get a free minute, how about turning a Windows XP activation server back on in a closet somewhere. You guys trying to save on the light bill or what? It seems like connecting to them these days works about one day a week at best, and spending 15 minutes reading numbers to some poor indian chap on the phone just because I added a stick of ram isn't healthy for me or him. If you aren't going to support a product anymore, fine. But for the love of god disable your DRM bullshit before you abandon it.

Why should I trust the microsoft cloud with my applications or my money when they regularly disable a piece of software I've owned and physically possessed for nearly a decade? If I can't rely on Microsoft to keep a simple server going to pass short validation keys back and forth, there's no way I'm trusting you with any real data.

If you could pass that along to Ballmer the next time you guys play hacky sack at the company picnic I'd appreciate it.

[Edited on December 13, 2011 at 1:44 AM. Reason : .]

12/13/2011 1:35:28 AM

How comparable is Azure to Amazon's Cloud thing?

12/13/2011 1:51:29 AM

^^ perhaps you should stop using an outdated OS.

[Edited on December 13, 2011 at 8:26 AM. Reason : MY IE5.5 DON'T WORK! IT'S YOUR FAULT, Noen]

12/13/2011 8:26:14 AM

^^ amazon's cloud is cheaper and more full featured as well as being more geographically available. they also offer real infrastructure as a service where as ms is platform as a service, with only 1 choice of platform

12/13/2011 8:38:18 AM

If their flagship and most successful product, still in use by millions of users and a majority of workplaces, quits working because of cumbersome antipiracy controls, it's absolutely his fault. I would think it would be of some concern, at least.

[Edited on December 13, 2011 at 9:10 AM. Reason : http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/12/microsoft-says-74-percent-of-work-pcs-still-use-windows-xp-exte/]

12/13/2011 9:07:48 AM

Quote :

"it's absolutely his fault"

really, guy?

12/13/2011 9:26:13 AM

If he's a good employee and cares at all about the only product from his company that most people have ever used...

Of course, I'm sure microsoft is actively working to fix the problematic stability and longevity of XP. Hence the push for cloud-based computing they can charge for on a monthly basis.

Look, if he's going to use this thread to peddle his wares, I think a little feedback from a customer like me is acceptable.

[Edited on December 13, 2011 at 9:52 AM. Reason : .]

12/13/2011 9:50:13 AM

post in an XP thread then or contact microsoft support. pestering noen about something he has nothing to do with in a thread completely unrelated to your issue is stupid

[Edited on December 13, 2011 at 10:47 AM. Reason : does this really need to be explained]

12/13/2011 10:46:51 AM

http://www.learnwindowsazureevent.com/
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/windowsazure/learn

live sessions all day today

12/13/2011 12:04:58 PM

Quote :

"amazon's cloud is cheaper and more full featured as well as being more geographically available. they also offer real infrastructure as a service where as ms is platform as a service, with only 1 choice of platform"

The compute prices (for windows) are exactly the same. You can debate whether the cheaper Linux vm's are a better deal from a cost/perf standpoint.

The RDB services are apples and oranges. Amazon RDS uses VMs for it's SQL storage. It charges based on compute time. SQL Azure is completely SaaS, scale is free. You pay based on storage, not compute.

For data storage, under 1TB of storage, Azure is cheaper. Up to 50TB they are the same, and over that Amazon starts getting a little cheaper again.

Bandwidth prices are the same up to 10TB/mo, after which Amazon gets cheaper.

So depending on your application, Amazon can be massively cheaper or Azure can be massively cheaper. It 100% depends on the individual application. For "VAP Apps" like blogs, cms systems, small ecommerce, Amazon will come out a lot less expense because of the DB cost difference.

For data processing heavy apps, and for high-data-access apps, Azure is insanely cheaper.

Oh and if you get VS Pro + MSDN ($1,199 new, $799 renewal), you get $1,200 bucks a year in freebies (Compute, SQL Azure and Block Storage).

Geographic availablility?

Amazon has 1 in virginia, 1 in ireland, 1 in singapore.
Azure has 2 US , 2 European, and 2 Asian datacenters (based on the Geolocation options).

Amazon's cloud services all run on the same IaaS VM expansion model. Elasticity is BYO (you have to actually handle how your app scales across VMs). That means implementing your own load balancing, queueing, et al.

Azure has both a PaaS model and an IaaS model. In PaaS there are still VMs under the covers, but they are "typed", so Azure handles scale for you. Prior to now, yes the only interface to this has been via .NET. In IaaS, the VM's work just like Amazon EC2, and you can BYO scale in the same way.

It's not a "choice of one platform", it was a choice of one framework for prebuilt client libraries. That's done now, with node.js, java and php getting full language support. There's NOTHING stopping anyone from using Azure's PaaS with ANY language. All the service apis use http/rest protocols, so you can use any language that supports rest. You just don't get the MS build client libraries to do it.

12/13/2011 8:53:05 PM

Will Hadoop and MongoDB fall under the same sort of flat price for SQL storage model?

12/14/2011 9:36:08 AM

the database pricing per GB is a little disappointing to me, actually. it's still cheaper than windows/sql on amazon ec2, but anything over 40GB is in the highest pricepoint $500/mo.

12/14/2011 9:46:19 AM

I will preface this that I did a 6mos PoC hybrid cloud bursting to several 3rd party vendors and have researched this very thoroughly.

Quote :

"The RDB services are apples and oranges. Amazon RDS uses VMs for it's SQL storage. It charges based on compute time. SQL Azure is completely SaaS, scale is free. You pay based on storage, not compute."

Not true, as you can use amazon's built in db services rather than creating your own db instance.
http://aws.amazon.com/simpledb/
their RDS does charge by cpu but again, you're going to have some idea of the size your db will need to scale as a function of time in most cases AND amazon offers an auto-scaling service.

Quote :

"For data storage, under 1TB of storage, Azure is cheaper. Up to 50TB they are the same, and over that Amazon starts getting a little cheaper again. Bandwidth prices are the same up to 10TB/mo, after which Amazon gets cheaper. "

This is mostly true, depending on the region you look at but you have to consider the cost at getting at your data. Azure is 20-90% more expensive
"Reduced price for data transfers (all inbound data is free):
$0.12 per GB for outbound data transfers for Zone 1 (Europe and North America)
$0.19 per GB for outbound data transfers for Zone 2 (all other locations)

vs a flat $0.10/gb
as well as the service bus, which costs a lot more per IOP than amazon.

$0.10 per 100 relay hours
$0.01 per 10,000 messages
vs
$0.10 per 1 million I/O requests assuming you're using high perf block based storage, object level storage is free I/O.

Quote :

"Geographic availablility? Amazon has 1 in virginia, 1 in ireland, 1 in singapore. Azure has 2 US , 2 European, and 2 Asian datacenters (based on the Geolocation options)."

Not even remotely correct. Amazon has 5 zones in VA, 4 in ireland, 5 in california, 5 in oregon, 5 in tokyo, and 5 in singapore. Another 10 to be deployed in "obvious" areas I'm not at liberty to say due to NDA.

Quote :

"Elasticity is BYO (you have to actually handle how your app scales across VMs). That means implementing your own load balancing, queueing, et al."

Again, where do you get this stuff?
http://aws.amazon.com/sqs/
http://aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/
http://aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/

The stuff you're quoting might have been true 2 years ago but not even remotely today. You've also completely disregarded the privacy amazon can offer with VPC and direct connect. Direct connect is the real game changer in the public cloud space imo. Lots of things just don't translate well to VMs when architecting a full enterprise solution, especially when it comes to supporting it (no console? for real?)

12/14/2011 10:05:44 AM

Quote :

"Not true, as you can use amazon's built in db services rather than creating your own db instance. http://aws.amazon.com/simpledb/ their RDS does charge by cpu but again, you're going to have some idea of the size your db will need to scale as a function of time in most cases AND amazon offers an auto-scaling service."

Really? You're pointing to a non-relational db option? Azure supports mongodb now, and shortly will support hadoop, and also as Azure Tables. All 3 options for big-data non-rdb solutions if you want to avoid the SQL costs.
And what does knowing the size of a db have anything to do with charging based on db compute? If anything you just pointed to why Azure has a better db pricing model (size is much more predictable than compute on databases).

Quote :

"cost at getting at your data. Azure is 20-90% more expensive "

You're talking about block storage, not S3. I'm talking about S3, which is not .10/gb flat transfer, it's actually .14/gb for the 1st TB, and has a cascading cost structure. But yes, Amazon IS significantly cheaper for +500TB scenarios.

Quote :

" as well as the service bus, which costs a lot more per IOP than amazon. $0.10 per 100 relay hours / $0.01 per 10,000 messages vs $0.10 per 1 million I/O requests assuming you're using high perf block based storage, object level storage is free I/O. "

Again you are comparing block storage I/O to Service Bus. You don't pay for internal storage I/O at all on Azure, and the Service bus costs nearly the same as Amazon (.01/10000 messages).

Quote :

"Not even remotely correct. Amazon has 5 zones in VA, 4 in ireland, 5 in california, 5 in oregon, 5 in tokyo, and 5 in singapore. Another 10 to be deployed in "obvious" areas I'm not at liberty to say due to NDA."

We obviously have differing definitions of zones. Zone=data center. That is cool that AWS has expanded (3 US, 1 EU, 2 ASIA) Very good to know there's at least some real redundancy now.

Also really cool to see the elastic scaling capabilities, and that they have pretty good language SDKs, thanks for the heads up on that!

Quote :

"You've also completely disregarded the privacy amazon can offer with VPC and direct connect. Direct connect is the real game changer in the public cloud space imo. Lots of things just don't translate well to VMs when architecting a full enterprise solution, especially when it comes to supporting it (no console? for real?)"

No I haven't actually. Azure Connect does the same thing, except it's free, unlike which charges .30/hr per gbit port, or 2.25/hr for 10gb port. Oh and its part of a suite of VPN capabilities that let you create and manage hybrid deployments and infrastructure.

This is a really cool discussion actually. I'm the first to admit that there's a LOT of cases where Amazon is cheaper than Azure, and that Azure still has a lot of catching up to do

[Edited on December 14, 2011 at 1:01 PM. Reason : .]

12/14/2011 12:51:36 PM

I've read about azure connect but what I haven't seen is the ability to change tenancy requirements like you can with a vpc. In amazon you can actually reserve a private sector of the ec2 datacenter for your stuff as well as colocate stuff (direct connect) in a datacenter that shares border ports with amazon. This is huge for putting in your own IDS, storage that can't be public, public facing gateway, etc.

Right now each zone in amazon isn't a separate data center in that it is all contained in the same building, but it's a collection of rows with separate power, storage, compute and external connection.

In general, you don't want to use s3 in amazon for things you need high I/O on. s3 is great for storage due to 99.9999% availability but terrible for performance. you want to back your applications with EBS, which is why I quoted it instead of s3.

I'm sure there are cases for both to be cheaper, but as it stands amazon is a much more full featured system. I will say there is virtually no SLA and the support you get from amazon is questionable at best.

12/14/2011 1:02:37 PM

Quote :

"I've read about azure connect but what I haven't seen is the ability to change tenancy requirements like you can with a vpc. In amazon you can actually reserve a private sector of the ec2 datacenter for your stuff as well as colocate stuff (direct connect) in a datacenter that shares border ports with amazon. This is huge for putting in your own IDS, storage that can't be public, public facing gateway, etc. "

This is the big difference between PaaS and IaaS. You're right, you don't get to specify physical hardware separation, or boundary conditions on Azure. It's managed at a service level on individual nodes/instances/roles. Which I would argue is actually more secure than managing at the gateway from a risk and exposure standpoint.

But I realize in a LOT of industries (and countries) this is a policy/regulation problem more than a technological one. It's a pretty big gap right now for sure.

Quote :

"In general, you don't want to use s3 in amazon for things you need high I/O on. s3 is great for storage due to 99.9999% availability but terrible for performance. you want to back your applications with EBS, which is why I quoted it instead of s3. "

See, here's another difference. In Amazon, you have a matrix of storage options (S3, EBS, RDS) depending on the usage.

Unlike EBS, Storage on Azure is always free inside the service. So you can use blob storage just like EBS without worrying about I/O costs

12/14/2011 3:40:02 PM

well one of the regions was announced today. amazon sao paulo is open

12/15/2011 9:07:03 AM

Has anyone here used Hadoop on Azure yet?

I need to bring up a Hadoop cluster(?) sometime in the near (very) future.

Might need to break this off onto another thread, but basically -- I need Hadoop. Does the Azure implementation not suck?

1/16/2012 2:58:32 PM

I know the amazon hadoop AMI is pretty solid, never tried it with azure though

1/16/2012 3:04:01 PM

For those currently using SQL Azure, what do you use to query against your data? Is there some query tool built into Visual Studio or am I buying something like RazorSQL?

3/28/2012 3:52:46 PM

^ SQL Management Studio R2 works with SQL Azure.

In Visual Studio 2010, SQL Azure support is baked into the Server Explorer (just like connecting to any other server)
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vsdata/archive/2010/08/04/sql-azure-support-in-visual-studio-2010.aspx

So basically, you query against (and dev against) SQL Azure with exactly the same toolset as SQL Server.

^^^ Hadoop on Azure is, well Hadoop on Azure. You can check the roadmap for support here: http://www.cmswire.com/cms/information-management/leaked-slide-reveals-microsofts-hadoop-roadmap-014665.php

[Edited on March 28, 2012 at 5:17 PM. Reason : .]

3/28/2012 5:13:09 PM

dropping the brand Azure

http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-renames-azure-services

5/7/2012 10:39:02 PM

dumbing it down to the consumer level, how long til iWin

5/8/2012 12:50:43 AM

The biggest problem with the Azure name was that no one had any idea how to pronounce it.

My usage of it is about to start ramping back up. I played with a bit last month and got some proof of concepts I was really happy with. Now it's just time to turn it into production level code.

I will say though, it's a completely different look at things from how Amazon and other providers handle a lot of their cloud services. Kind of a big fan, despite not being a .NET guy at all.

5/8/2012 1:26:57 AM

^^^Not dropping the Azure brand at all. Just simplifying product/service names. No reason to call the Service Bus "Windows Azure - Azure Service Bus".

^Totally agree. And that no one understands what the hell a "cloud OS" is. And yeah its basically the complete opposite approach of Amazon (though at this point they both offer almost exactly the same set of services, just got there from opposite directions).

5/8/2012 3:57:50 AM

^ oh yeah? i guess that makes more sense than dropping the entire brand. i agree i've never been a huge fan of the word azure, but i was very surprised to see that they were dropping it altogether. makes more sense that it's just a naming simplification (although that's not exactly keeping with character for microsoft either)

5/8/2012 9:30:41 AM

^^^"Azure" is a common term for a shade of blue: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/azure

The most common American pronunciation is "AZH-er" (although for the longest time I thout it was "a-ZHOOR").

5/8/2012 4:48:11 PM