maybe I should start that I am pretty new with Azure and I want to apologize in advance if my question is stupid. I am currently looking into the option to move my WordPress website to Azure. However, as I was looking through the pre-configured templates, I am quite confused and would be really thankful if someone can explain this for me. (Thank you in advance).
The template, which was created by WordPress for WordPress is using "App Service" model with a tier plan S1 (which comes with 100 total ACU & 1.75GB memory) and according to rough estimate it should be around 75 USD per month.
However, an alternative template created by Cloud Infrastructure Services is using a virtual machine model with a tier plan Standard_B1ms (which comes with 1 vcpu & 2 GiB memory) and according to rough estimate it should be around 36.83 USD per month.
I am quite struggling to understand the difference between the two options and more particular why one is using "App Service" and the other "Virtual Machine". In addition, what are the benefits and disadvantages to use one over the other. For example, when it comes to spikes in website traffic, the need to upgrade to higher tier, reliability, etc. Furthermore, I am not sure what 100 total ACU means. Is this supposed to be more powerful than the output that comes from a 1 core v-cpu? If yes, how much more? Last but not least, would like to hear your general opinion on hosting WordPress website on Azure, as well as, which of the two options would you go with and why? Thank you in advance!
ACU is a made-up measure for estimating the amount of computing power you receive. The ACU is a type of estimator since certain processors have turbo boost and some don't. DTUs for Azure SQL are similar, where DTU is a made-up statistic that combines IOPS, CPU, and RAM.
Azure App Service as "Build, deploy, and scale web apps on a fully managed platform". It's a Platform as a service and hence would be managed in the containers or any operating system can be used. Use the fully managed platform for your operating and monitoring activities to meet stringent, enterprise-grade performance, security, and compliance requirements.
Azure Virtual Machine It provides on-demand, high-scale, secure, virtualized infrastructure. It provides the flexibility of virtualization for a wide range of computing solutions, including development and testing, application execution, and datacenter expansion. It's the flexibility of open-source software set to your specifications.
Hence, Azure App service has lots of advantages as it has got tools with which it can be integrated. Scaling up is an ability using both the services and if you have an fix budget then you can opt Azure Virtual Machines then resize it anytime.
Here, is the Pricing Calculator which might help you to calculate the exact expenditure according the resources you choose.
I would definitely suggest to go for Azure App Service as it has a wide range of advantages.
Related
Recently we have upgraded our SSAS resources. Currently our SSAS is on Azure VM costing us based on this VM type 'Standard E32-8s_v3'.
I am looking for a way to save more cost by selecting a better option.
What can be a good option to save cost and at the same time have better efficiency.
what factors/ differences can be considered if we go to Azure analysis services instead of SSAS on Azure VM.
Our SQL server is also on Azure VM.
We have our reports on Power BI report server and SSRS.
Data is coming from different resources like SAP, external parties etc using SSIS.
Can you please Advice/ Suggest a better options for our data architecture.
Thank you.
Your VM is 8 cores and 256GB RAM.
One factor in pricing you haven’t mentioned is SQL licensing. You didn’t specify whether you are renting the SQL license with the VM or bringing your own license and what that costs. I’m going to assume you are renting it. With Azure Analysis Services the license is included in the price.
In Azure Analysis Services 100QPU is roughly equivalent to 5 cores. So 200QPU (an S2) would be an equivalent amount of CPU and a similar price but only has 50GB RAM.
To get the equivalent amount of RAM the S8 would get you close (200GB RAM) but for substantially more cost.
If you have one large model which (at least during peak usage or processing) uses most of the 256GB RAM then it may be tough to move to Azure Analysis Services for a similar price. If you have several models on that one server then you could split them across several smaller Azure Analysis Services servers and it may be a reasonable price for you. Or you could scale up for processing when RAM is needed most and scale down for the rest of the day to save cost.
I need to devise a pricing strategy for a SaaS product I plan to go live with, as tricky a task as that is.
Putting product 'value' and things like RoI aside (since they're off-topic here), I'm looking for some assurances against a situation whereby my competitively priced product incurs losses because of increasing blob storage/SQL costs in Azure.
In a nutshell, this web app will allow users to create tasks, to which they may attach any number of hi-res images, documents etc.
So, in order to keep this question specific and technical, what services does the Azure platform offer that helps mitigate against escalating costs of data/blob storage? Or which services lend itself to managing these losses/costs?
For example, I think a DTU option for my SQL Server will be a flat rate as opposed to a dynamically priced VCore alternative. So I could opt for DTU so I at least know where I stand.
Question/s
Does Azure offer flat rate services for storage? Would IaaS instead of PaaS give me this?
Does Azure ofer flat rate for SQL Server? (Is my understanding of DTU correct?)
So i am comparing Amazon Workspace and Azure RemoteApp offerings for our customer to choose from. While looking at Amazon Workspace, it clealy defines bundles with specific CPU cores, memory and user storage.
http://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/pricing/
However, Azure RemoteApp only specifies user storage and vaguely compares its basic vs. standard plans in terms of "task worker" vs. "information worker"
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/remoteapp/
I tried looking up its documentation but couldn't find specific CPU cores that are dedicated per user in basic vs. standard plans. I have following questions:
Can anyone point me in the right direction or help understand how
many CPU cores and memory are dedicated (or shared) per user in each
plan?
Our customer would most likely need a "custom" image for their custom apps. Is it possible for us to choose specific CPU cores and memory for the users to be able to run their apps in azure remoteapp?
In case i am misunderstanding the basic difference between AWS workspace and Azure RemoteApp, i'd appreciate some help in understanding it as well.
Thanks!
Azure RemoteApp uses A3 Large VMs and the difference between the two billing plans is the number of users that are allowed to connect to one VM: Basic allows a higher number of users than Standard and is geared towards lighter applications.
Disclosure: I work on Azure RemoteApp.
I have recently been looking at Azure as a hosting platform for a number of small asp.net websites with MSSql database back-ends. I currently use a non-microsoft host that charges a fixed amount each month.
The Azure demos and webinars that I have seen are very seductive.
The problem I have is that I need some predictability on costs so that I can charge my clients appropriately. I've run thru a number of pricing calculators but have gotten a wide mix of results. In the real world what could I expect?
The sites would be low traffic (<100 unique visits a day).
My biggest fear is that I would open the management dashboard some day and see a bill that is far bigger then what I quoted a client.
Anyone have experience with Azure, and could give me some insight into their experiences?
As an example: I currently have 6 small sites that I have under my reseller account at a hosting service. I pay ~$35.00/month for all the space I need, including SQL, and bandwidth.
Let me share my thoughts on this.
Before looking at costs, I think what you need to evaluate if a cloud platform is a right platform for your applications. The picture below summarizes some of the common application patterns:
2 biggest benefits (at least to me) that you get out of any cloud platform is elasticity and pay-per-use pricing model. Generally speaking for low volume sites, cloud is generally costlier than other hosting providers. The questions you may want to ask yourself are:
Do my applications need elasticity as far as resource consumption is concerned? Or in other words, will there be a scenario where you would need 1 server for a week and then 10 servers for next week and then 1 server again week after that and things like that.
Am I willing to pay some extra even if my resources are under utilized? Or in other words, will you be happy to host a site in a single VM even if with a hosting company you can host 10 sites in a similar sized VM?
Will there be any scenarios where I have to handle predictable/unpredictable bursting in traffic?
If the answer is No to any of these questions, then IMHO Windows Azure may not be a right platform for you to host your applications.
There may be some components of Windows Azure which you can use - Storage for example where you don't have to worry about running out of disk space ever or Mobile Services so that you don't have to worry about building a backend for any mobile applications you may develop.
I run my own uk based hosting and web design company.
We have about 10 physical servers in a DC in the UK and host about 300 or so web sites, email servers and web applications. They are all on a windows server platform with a few linux VM's.
I now have a Windows Azure account, I have set up a medium windows 2008 server within my azure account and want to start using it to maybe host and migrate some of my web sites and services onto my azure account and new server. With the view that maybe I could move ALL my services over and get rid of the need for any of my physical servers in the DC.
My question that I am still really struggling with how much this will really cost me on an ongoing basis.
The billing area, doesnt really tell me much as it simply shows my bill as £0.00. It shows my usage but I am really struggling to compare the resources I am currently using compared to how its billed in azure? It doesnt even show me what it would have cost me if I werent ona trial.
I dont want to move web hosted sites over if its going to cost me more than hosting in my current DC.
I was thinking of moving many sites onto the new server i have set up as its a better spec than a few of my current servers, so would see a big benefit, I even considered setting up a much larger Server in my Azure account but again unsure as to the real cost of that box its hard to compare.
Do I simply need to look at the calculator and select the number of servers i wil deploy, select how much storage I need and bandwidth? Or do I need to look at the items in the billing area as well - such as:
Compute units,Storage Transactions,Data Transfer Out,Data Transfer In
When I set up the server it didnt ask me for how much storage I wanted it just set it up with about 150GB avaialble in the actual server.
Any advice as I really see this as something i want to use over the next 12 months, but not if once i have finally migrated stuff its going to cost me more than my normal hosting and i have to move stuff all back at the end of the 12 months.
Cheers
Because you're using Windows Azure Virtual Machines, you should first use the virtual machine pricing calculator. This calculator only displays the costs that are relevant for your scenario except for the storage transaction cost. Here is a breakdown of the costs you'll have to consider:
Virtual Machines
The Virtual Machine cost appears on the bill as compute units. Throughout the Windows Azure Virtual Machine preview, the cost per core per hour is $0.08. Once VMs reach general availability, the cost will be $0.115 per core per hour for Windows VMs and $0.085 for Linux VMs. Using the calculator, you can see that a medium instance uses two cores and will therefore be billed at $0.16 per hour during the preview period. You will have to use your best judgement to determine how many virtual machines you'll need and how large they should be.
Storage
You will have to pay for the data actually used within your VHDs. Let's assume you have one virtual machine with one VHD attached. If the size of the VHD 200GB, but only 100GB is used, you will have to pay for 100GB per month.
Bandwidth
Microsoft now only charges for egress data transfers (data going out of the data center). With this pricing change, the Data Transfer In section of the billing area will always be 0.00. Hopefully, you already have a good idea about your current outbound data usage. If so, you can calculate your bandwidth cost by simply moving the bandwidth slider to the correct spot.
Storage Transactions
If you scroll down to the Transactions section of this blog post, you'll see how storage transactions are counted. Basically, you count one transaction per write operation and possibly one transaction per read operation depending if the data is cached or not. The cost of storage transactions are negligible because you only have to pay one cent per 100,000 transactions. That's why storage transactions are left out of the calculator.
HTH
To answer such question in an input box has limitation to express in details. The cost calculator is there to give you an estimate of upper limit about what the cost will be if your usage are under selected limit. Based on my personal experiences if you choose higher limits of usage and keep the usages within your forecast limits, there will be no hidden charges. But the reality could be far different because you may not estimate the usages correctly at first and this could change the cost later.
For moving a traditional web hosting solution to Windows Azure, latest release of Windows Azure Virtual Machine is best fit as this requires minimum migration complexity. So the VM size you will choose will have fixed resources (compute, local storage, network bandwidth, disk I/O etc) and the cost will be fixed as long as you are under limit so there will not be unseen charges.
Windows Azure Storage is pay as you go (ranges ~$0.012/GB depend on usage limit) and there is no limit. When moving from traditions web hosting to Cloud environment, due to application architecture design, I have seen less Cloud storage usage and more VM storage so it may not cost a lot.
The place you will see cost variation is data egress/ingress and it is difficult to forecast as it is all depend on application usage, so this is something you will have to account as variable cost.
You can also contact Windows Azure Virtual Machine Forum where dedicated Windows Azure Virtual Machine resources are available to answer your such questions.
Finally One thing I would also add that Windows Azure Virtual Machines are still in preview mode so it would be best to bring some of your business to Windows Azure VM as trial and testing purpose because now matter what you think you may encounter problems (because it is preview release) and this could case service disruption.