

Ask HN: Does anyone use Azure? - vshlos

Does anyone use windows Azure for their startups? What are your impressions?
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vyrotek
Yep! Our company IActionable.com is running on Windows Azure platform. In
fact, I'm writing this comment from the Microsoft campus in Redmond. We are
attending a Windows Azure Deep Dive hosted this week.

My CoFounder and I were both .Net developers in the past and love C# and SQL
Server. We are happy with the Azure platform so far. We're using a little bit
of everything too. Worker and Web Roles, Queues, Table Storage and SQL Azure.
I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.

~~~
PonyGumbo
It seemed like the pricing structure (for SQL Azure, particularly) made for a
big unknown. Was the billing in line with your expectations? What are things
to watch out for?

~~~
vyrotek
Some things completely depend on the type of project you run. We decided that
only the bare-minimum/must-be-relational data will go into SQL Azure so that
the database doesn't grow too fast. Instead, we use Table Storage for the
really big data. It does require a big change in the way you think about
storing and querying your data though since you lose functions such as
Count,GroupBy,Joins,etc.

But, there is now something called 'Federations' coming out for SQL Server
which will let you automatically and sometimes magically shard your data
across multiple database with little maintenance. I'm not sure what the
roadmap of that feature is but it eliminates any of the GB cap worries that
existed before.

The biggest surprise we ran into was the cost of Transactions. Even though you
get 10k storage transactions for pennies, it does add up. Especially since
every request for items from a queue is a transaction. So a lot of thought has
to go into things to make sure parts of the system aren't too 'chatty' when it
comes to Azure Storage. You don't have this problem with SQL Azure. There is
no transaction cost, only the GB used.

~~~
vshlos
We mainly use TableStorage as well for storing data, however since none of the
data that we have is stored (besides user information) we have each webnode
talking directly to each other. I am not quite sure if each of these
transactions costs money, but since all the connections between servers are
stable connections that are left open in a separate thread, I am thinking it
will be pretty cheap. We did run into some problems when using TableStore
since I think we underestimated how much we need Count, GroupBy, Sort, etc.
Even basic operations such as bringing back a list to display to the user,
then clicking to sort by a column is difficult.

------
deniz
I'm considering using Azure atm & would love to hear some
opinions/limitations. Initial reading is suggesting there will be a lot of
configuration to get things going.

~~~
vyrotek
My first recommendation is to get into the BizSpark program. It will give you
an MSDN account and a nice chunk of free Azure Hours every month and (I think)
3 1gb Sql Azure databases.

Our company deals with lots of data and real-time responses so we push many of
the existing features to their limits. We haven't really had any blockers that
didn't have some sort of reasonable work around. And most of the time the next
release of features will eliminate a good chunk of those.

We're pretty lucky in that we're part of Microsoft' early adopter programs and
get to peek at some features coming down the pipe soon. There is some awesome
stuff coming, but of course we're under NDA.

There are some extra things to consider but they are more a result of using
the Cloud in general. For example, it highly recommended that you add retry
logic into your code which makes sql queries. This is because your data is
triple replicated and fail overs or db moves can drop your pooled connections.

Also as I mentioned in my other comment. There are some limits to Table
Storage which you need to account for or you'll find yourself stuck and
frustrated. Things like Count,GroupBy,Joins,Distinct,etc are not available.
For those familiar with NoSql db then this is no surprise. But if you're a
hardcore relation guy like I was then this takes getting used to.

We're pretty happy with our decision to use Azure.

