
Ask HN: Which cloud provider to use in 2017? Azure, AWS or GCE? - niranjan92
Google cloud has grabbed a number of huge customer in 2016. However it doesn&#x27;t seem to dent AWS&#x27;s growth figures. I personally don&#x27;t know much about Azure, but would love to find out.<p>Some criteria on which the clouds can be judged:  Performance, Cost, Features and Ease of use<p>What do you guys think based on personal experiences?<p>Please refer relevant articles and benchmarks.
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tabeth
Azure is lacking in very basic features: I'd run away from it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13501433](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13501433)

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That being said, I think for the traditional use cases they're all pretty
comparable. I'd go with what's easier to learn/use and what will get better
adoption in your org.

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tracker1
That's only a problem is you want to use blob storage to host the root of a
static site content... blob storage can be used for a lot more than just as
static content hosting.

I think the ease of Azure Storage (Table/Blob/Queues) is pretty awesome, and
getting up and running with Azure SQL is nice as well. Both are _FAR_ easier
to get started with than the AWS and GCE equivalents.

By comparison I think that AWS is really painful in the number of options for
any given service, and their cost model makes it more expensive to get started
with. On the flip side, it feels like Azure's compute nodes are pretty
overpriced as well.

If you're willing to roll your own, Linode or DigitalOcean may be better
options.

I haven't used GCE enough to comment really.

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accraze
I've used AWS quite a bit and recently started using GCE for a project. One
thing that stands out is Google Cloud Platform does not feel as mature as AWS,
some features are still beta or invite only (like Cloud Functions for
serverless code). Also, AWS I believe has more data center coverage around the
globe.

One major pro is Google Cloud's pricing was much more straightforward and
easier to estimate.

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tracker1
From what I've read GCE offers better performance numbers, but I haven't
worked with it so can't comment.

I will say I find that Azure's service offerings (blobs, tables, queues, and
sql) much easier to get started with, and for less cost than the AWS
equivalents, but compute nodes are more expensive and less performant.

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johnnycarcin
What about Azure as well? I work for MSFT under the Azure umbrella so feel
free to ask questions. I'm a no BS guy who was a long time AWS guy and know
where Azure falls short and where it might be better.

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niranjan92
updated the question

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johnnycarcin
:)

So as someone who has been knee deep in Azure for around a year but who had
previously used AWS for 2-3 years I would say: it depends. If you are looking
at PaaS offerings, specifically around the application hosting side (not
database) I would say Azure is an awesome fit. The idea of deployment slots in
their Web Apps offering is really cool I think. I personally like the ARM
templates for automation compared to something like AWS Cloud Formation. Of
course if you are using a Microsoft stack the integration with Azure is going
to be pretty tight. 3rd party products are bit hit or miss.

If you are looking to do all IaaS or some type of PaaS database outside of
MSSQL I'd point you at AWS. I think all of the providers at the core level are
probably pretty similar when it comes to IaaS VMs but AWS has a leg above when
you look at the whole process. AWS has tons of tooling (both native and 3rd
party) built around it, plus you can typically find answers for issues via
Google, something I think that is less likely with Azure.

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clhigh
We were using GAE, Amazon EC2 (also Elastic Beanstalk), Rackspace, Heroku and
Jelastic. So I can share some feedback. With GAE, it was easy to setup
environment. The only drawback is the limited control over certain things
related to domains and forwarding etc. That did not allow full functioning of
our project technology. Then we turned to AWS and Rackspace. There we had
complete control, but it was very hard to set up things manually. Every time
we need to configure the project, it was a total pain, and we had to do more
IT tasks than we should. Now we stopped on Jelastic having control over
environments with ease of setup. At first, we were using their public cloud
(the choice of hosting providers with prices are stated here
[https://jelastic.cloud/](https://jelastic.cloud/)) but after growth moved to
private on premise (license based per server price).

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iDemonix
I have tried using AWS and Digital Ocean for personal stuff, and Azure at
work.

AWS for me personally was too complicated interface wise. It was easy to lose
track of running instances and being billed for things, the vast amount of
types of things you can spin up also made it sometimes hard to navigate
without lots of reading. I think if one of my side projects ever gets to a
point where it needs a CDN, scalable EC2 instances and things like that, I'd
research AWS, but probably only move to it if I had to. With all this said I
do use Amazon SES for my newsletters I run as it's so cheap, I send a 4k
subscriber list an email a week, costs about 60p a month.

Digital Ocean is my go to. It's stupidly easy to use, a great UI, genuinely a
pleasure to use even compared to work VMWare enterprise stuff. I've been
thinking lately about AWS due to load balancing being built in without me
having to run my own keepalived stuff, but DO have announced load balancers
are almost ready, so I'm rethinking. Here's a shameless referral link that'll
give you some free credit:
[https://m.do.co/c/f24e8a65668a](https://m.do.co/c/f24e8a65668a)

Azure is Ok. It's not great, it could be worse. The original interface is now
called 'legacy', and that's good because it was pretty bad. The new one is a
lot nicer to use, but as someone who's biased towards Mac/Linux for the
desktop, it feels like Microsoft designed it. It can be a bit clunky, it can
be difficult to figure out what the IP of something is instead of its hostname
or to jump between different places without having to go through tons of
breadcrumbs.

Price wise you can figure that out yourself using publicly available
calculators, specific to your needs. DO is probably slightly more than AWS,
but for the instant VM spin up from a really nice drag-drop UI (with lots of
prebuilt images), easy automated backup, auto SSH key deployment and so on - I
can't see myself leaving DO unless I have a specific requirement they can't
meet.

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sidcool
GCE is faster and cheaper. The number of features are less though. Azure has
the advantage of deep integration with enterprise suites already in use.

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dmarlow
I've been pleased with Azure. VMs and SQL can be expensive, so make sure to
plan ahead on those. Some features I'd like to see aren't available or deep in
the priority pipeline. However, overall it's been a good platform.

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siquick
I'd add Digital Ocean to that list, super easy to spin up instances and their
support is first rate.

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mkrishnan
It's 2017. You may not need cloud provider since hard drive and processor
costs are way below than it was few years ago. It would be cheaper in the long
run.

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jetblackio
AWS or GCE are the way to go. Azure is horrible. Stay away from it.

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GordonS
I've only ever used Azure, and I've been pretty pleased with it. Care to
elaborate and let me know what I've been missing out on?

