

What's on Azure right now? - amirmc
http://www.simple-talk.com/community/blogs/robbiet/archive/2011/01/18/98943.aspx

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lucisferre
We've been using Azure for a few months now working on a .NET REST API and
data service to deploy to it. In the end however while we are building it for
Azure we may not end up using.

1\. Mediochre deployment story

Honestly, it could be far worse. Azure is deployed by uploading a compiled
package via an HTTP(S) REST API. There are PS tools allowing this to be
scripted too. In fact, all of Azure can be interacted with via their REST API
which is one of the good things they did. Despite this, it is nowhere near as
nice as a Heroku deployment or any of the other push deployment PaaS
providers.

2\. The SDK isn't all that great

The SDK (now at ver. 1.3) is yet another example of Microsoft's tendency to
write nigh untestable APIs (mostly concrete classes, almost no interfaces,
etc.). They also apparently don't keep the docs up to date on the latest REST
API changes (it was actually suggested that we could use fiddler with their
Silverlight management console to figure it out).

3\. Azure storage is neat, but in the end insufficient and SQL Azure is
missing key features and is expensive

Personally, I don't think it makes a lot of sense to build most cloud based
applications on top SQL, but that is for another debate. In the end we've
chosen to run Mongo on a worker role for our storage needs. I really can't
wrap my head around how Azure tables could be useful, and blob storage is
really just I way to upload files for CDN or provide storage for VHDs.

4\. It's kind of expensive compared to the competition

Not much else to say here, but the only reason I can think of for this is that
MS doesn't feel the need to compete with the other PaaS providers, which in
turn would imply that the typical developer that utilizes PaaS isn't their
target market.

As seems typical for MS, they are targeting the less competent enterprise and
business markets and trying to sell them the cloud like it's the next SQL
server, offering lots of integration points (painful as they are to use) with
existing Microsoft technology (e.g., you can actually use local AD servers to
authenticate with Azure).

Bottom line, AFAICT Azure isn't for us.

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TomOfTTB
Things might get better thanks to the new Azure Appliances (which are only 6
months old).

I said it when Azure first started: No one wants an abstract cloud. Because it
means they're stuck with that platform. If I'm on EC2 I can easily move to
rackspace or my own private server. But with Azure I'd have to rewrite the
whole darn program.

The Azure Appliance doesn't completely solve that but at least it gives you
the ability to move to your own data center. Which in turn should make Azure a
little more viable

(Though Amazon's stolen Azure's best trick with beanstalk)

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Flemlord
We didn't do a thorough analysis, but got the impression we had a few months
of fiddling and rewriting various components to everything work on Azure. We
would have taken a closer look if we'd been starting from scratch, but we're
trying to move an existing app into the cloud.

Also our Plan-B was great--we went to the Rackspace cloud, where we can deploy
our app without having to rewrite anything. We're still testing and haven't
deployed to clients yet, but so far so good.

