Thursday, January 02, 2014

Windows Azure Websites / Cloud Services and VM's Confusion

I keep getting same query from my technology friends and clients on the main difference between  the Windows Azure Website/ Cloud Service and VM's. 

Which one should be considered while rolling out a cloud solution. I understand it can be quite confusing  for a non techie or even for IT management who are not into technology jargons. 

I generally tend to provide the below MS links to understand the difference but the article is still too technical.


So below are my take in simple terms. (Hopefully!!!)

Website Option is for you if :
  • Are you looking for hosting websites with good UI  with simple data transaction which does not deal with high transaction data and probably won't require complex engine in backend business tier.
  • If you don't want want to worry about maintenance of infrastructure(patches..)
  • Would like to have websites which can load balance as per traffic 
  • Provides templates to create websites using wordpress, joompla , droopal .....

Cloud Service (Platform as Service)
  • You can dealing with applications which involves high transaction and required scaled up business tier
  • You need remote access to servers to perform additional configuration e.g.
    • Scripting IIS
    • custom deployment of framework and configuration etc.
  • If you don't want want to worry about maintenance of infrastructure(patches..)
  • Would prefer to have staging and production environment

Virtual Machines ( Infrastructure as service)
  • This option is similar to the server management today done on -Premise. The only difference is that the server is hosted by Microsoft but management of infrastructure and application is your responsibility.
  • This option is good when you are moving your current application as-in in the cloud. The advantage of having VM in azure is that you will get servers on demand up and running in any part of world and won't have to worry about scaling your own datacenters
Now the most important part. COSTING!!!!

Well MS have a neat tool for calculating price. Give it a shot:


Hope this gets your understanding better than when you started reading this article..(I HOPE :-))

Rags


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