

Quick Redis Benchmark: AWS vs. Azure - felixrieseberg
https://zapier.com/engineering/quick-redis-benchmark-aws-vs-azure/

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omarqureshi
Having used their Linux offerings in 2012 - the only thing that I can say is
whilst Azure does provide good performance for the price. You lose out on
stability, sanity and on choice.

I know the cloud is supposed to be a place where the servers are volatile ...
BUT ... random reboots with non-writeable disks when they come back as well as
network connectivity problems between servers are not something that I've
experienced at Rackspace or AWS.

The support at Azure is pretty laughable ("what's a public key?" from one of
their so-called TCP/IP experts) if you manage to get a phone call with the
folks over at Redmond. Otherwise all you have is forum support where you are
basically treated like an idiot and blamed for their mistakes unless you can
prove otherwise.

The Windows offering is a little better, more stable for sure - but, then you
run into crazy firewall issues if you are using something like AzureRunMe to
do the work and set-up bespoke web app servers.

For what i spent the best part of a month failing at getting set up at Azure,
took me a few days to set up at Rackspace, with configuration management and
service monitoring.

I wont be rushing back to use Azure again any time soon and be warned that
this benchmark is only a small glimpse at what is otherwise a mighty shit
sandwich.

~~~
shaydoc
I can't comment on linux but I've had no issues with Azure using windows, in
fact I would say its fantastic. I been have using cloud services web/worker
roles, messaging, blob and SQL azure too... I have been also integrating cloud
TFS publishing, and automated deployments. Its been a dream so far. I am
looking at the elastic scalability block also for scaling out and in, it all
looks great.

I mean transitioning from staging to production is just a virtual IP swap,
sweet...

So if you get your setup right and go with the Microsoft cloud setup I think
its smooth sailing.

~~~
plasma
Check out [http://metricshub.com](http://metricshub.com) (acquired by
Microsoft) that provides a great dashboard of billing usage, but also lets you
auto-scale resources, all for free.

~~~
shaydoc
This looks very good, will definitely try it out..

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facorreia
Another recent benchmark:

Cloud Server Performance: A Comparative Analysis of 5 Large Cloud IaaS
Providers

[http://www.cloudspectator.com/cloud-server-performance-a-
com...](http://www.cloudspectator.com/cloud-server-performance-a-comparative-
analysis-of-5-large-cloud-iaas-providers-3/)

~~~
barista
Interesting that Windows Azure comes up at the top not only purely in
performance but also in the price performance ratio as well.

~~~
facorreia
Indeed, they're matching AWS' prices for IaaS, at least on pay-as-you-go. For
reserved instances there seems to be a difference.

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nsp
Color me impressed, 3x throughput for the price(60,000vs20,000) for azure
might be enough for me to create an account. Can anyone comment on what
accounts for the differential? It doesn't seem like the hardware would do
it,but I could be wrong.

~~~
bryceb
EC2's virtualization is pretty terrible for Redis
[http://redis.io/topics/latency](http://redis.io/topics/latency)

The newer m3 instance types are better, but for the most part Redis is
scarcely usable on EC2.

~~~
dvirsky
I wouldn't go as far as calling it scarcely usable, but EC2 does add some
overhead to running redis. I've been using it on EC2 for over 2 years (some of
the metrics in the doc you linked are on my machines BTW :) ), and you just
have to find workarounds for persistence because of the high fork times - it
adds a bit of complexity, but a dedicated slave for saving is not that big a
deal, and can reside on the same instance as the master).

We've recently moved to m3 instances and the problem has completely gone away,
hopefully Amazon will migrate all instances to use HVM.

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zerop
Try linode, numbers are going to surprise you.

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forgotAgain
The AWS medium tested is a single core. The Azure is dual core. Context
switching could account for the difference in preformance.

Just because they are both labeled medium doesn't mean they're comparable. The
Azure is also about %50 more the AWS last time I looked..

Edit: I was wrong about the pricing. They are similarly priced.

~~~
MBCook
They both cost $0.12/hour unreserved, so it's a fair comparison if you are
thinking performance per dollar.

~~~
forgotAgain
[http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-
ma...](http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-machines/)

Azure is listed at $0.18/hour.

Edit: My mistake. Windows is $0.18/hour, Linux is $0.12.

Edit2: Now that's interesting, Microsoft charges more for a Windows VM.

~~~
felixrieseberg
It's an honest approach: Windows VMs include a license.

~~~
cheald
You'd think that Microsoft wouldn't have to license their own software.

~~~
pdubs
It would probably be seen as anti-competitive if they licensed between
business units for free.

