We currently self-host our website, but we've had a few downtime incidents outside of our control and we're looking at moving it into Azure. It's an ASP.NET website using Umbraco as the CMS.
Yesterday I signed up for an Azure trial, migrated a copy of our database onto an Azure SQL Server instance, spun up a new Web App and used Web Deploy to upload the app. This was my first experience with Azure, and I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was. There were a few issues working out how to hook up my new app to my new database but overall it was a simple process.
But the performance is awful. The database is a Standard S2 and I initially created the web app on the Free tier. I was experiencing both poor download speed and latency. The first thing I tried was bumping up the Web App's scale, so I took it to Standard Medium. This seems to have fixed the download speed, but the latency is still impressively bad.
I'm using Google Chrome's network panel to test the speed. Here's what I get downloading an image from our server:
Obviously this is going to be fast as it's going over our local network, but this does at least show that the application is not the issue.
Here's what I get with Standard S2 hosted on Australia East:
The speed once the download has started is not too bad, but having a 41.92s TTFB is insane! It's not consistent, sometimes I get as low as 8s, but that's still unacceptable.
I don't have this issue when visiting other sites, so my internet is not the issue. I've tried using Small S2 and Large S2 with no change in results.
Am I doing something wrong? I find it difficult to believe that every Azure customer experiences this level of performance.
EDIT: Here's what we've learned in the comments so far:
Setting Always On does not help.
Using the Azure CDN is just as slow.
I also had enormous performance problems within the Azure environment. The cause was the activation of Applications Insights. After I deactivated it, the response times were again in the millisecond range and no longer 2-3 seconds.
This was an issue with my own network's configuration. I'm not sure how to resolve it, but I can't reproduce this issue when using my phone's internet so it's clearly not an Azure problem.
Related
I've been looking around for a Node.js hosting service that suits my (probably rather exceptional) needs. It's basically a web app for CMS editors to preview CMS pages. (The actual website is statically hosted.)
So it handles only few requests, but all page requests (*.html) trigger quite a series of actions, to simplify let's say it rebuilds a good part of the website.
What I need is a service that delivers high performance on few occasions. Also it should support continuous deployment, so that when we update something, the app stays always on. (also the simpler the better: I'm a frontend developer, not a dev ops).
I've tried Google Cloud: painfully slow update mechanism, rather complex, but stable and fast, but only if you pay a lot.
Heroku is very simple, but their plans are for standard web apps, focusing on many requests, high bandwidth etc. Still, the $250 plan is rather ok in terms of performance. But again: pricey.
Jelastic would offer this flexible vertical scaling. But it's hard to do Continuous deployment and I have not yet figured out how to update an app without interruption of service.
I also though about renting a virtual private server, but again I would not know how to provide continuous delivery. Also, I'd rather have a dedicated service.
It feels like there must be a simple service that I've just missed. I'm grateful for any help or hints!
I have finally found an answer to my search: Google Cloud Run
You'll only pay by usage, and it still offers very good performance. For my scenario it decreases cost by a crazy factor: we'll pay less than 1% of the previous solution (driven by Google App Engine).
I've also tried AWS Lambda, but I had many issues with the rather extensive node app (like dynamic requires).
I've got a site that was in 7.2.8 that I migrated to 7.4.1. There are quite a few host names I have to support given our development, test, staging and production environments.
I was hosting the site on Windows Azure but it was too slow for our client's liking. We moved it to their data center. Their production site runs great now, but we're looking at deploying updates and their staging site runs DOG slow. The code is nearly identical asside from some web.config updates (SSL cookies, X-Frame-Options host header, and a few other minor things).
What could be causing this problem? I've noticed that Umbraco seems to need some time to "do it's thing" before speeding up but I can't make heads or tails of it. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you!
What is the staging site hosted on? Can you provide more details? It's possible the staging server is underpowered. If you have uSync turned on, and have a lot of DocTypes, that can slow up the site startup. Other things to look out for are any custom startup events, and where the DB is hosted. If it's an Azure DB, it'll be super slow, unless you're forking out for one of the higher tiers.
I deployed my website's dev version to Azure Free and my beta version to Azure Shared.
The same page it takes Free site 10 seconds to load, but it takes Shared site 30 seconds to load!!
Is there something wrong with Azure?! How can I contact them as they only provide billing support, but no tech support.
I'm going to have to agree with the original question. This is a real issue. If I can confirm it I will post it again as a new question and issue with details.
I had my website in the shared plan and it was running blazingly fast, but... I hit my 512 meg limit and it 403'd.
I moved it to the $32/month basic, and its running 2-4 second lag on page retrieve.
I'm moving it up into premium levels now, but this is a real situation.
Note I'm an Azure Certified Developer ( 70-532 ), MCAD, and also a Microsoft Technology Evangelist in the field.
I'm planning on doing a deployment of the exactly same app to Shared, Basic1, Standard1, and Premium1. I'm then going to load test both from azure and from local visual studio and we'll see what happens.
All my stuff is in East US2 right now.
This is a real issue, at least to me.
I'll keep this issue alive and keep you posted.
Healy in Tampa
Hopefully my question is in the right forum here. I've just checked out the pricing model of windows azure and checked out the different configuration options:
http://www.windowsazure.com/de-de/pricing/calculator/
I have been working as a developer for almost two years now and worked a lot with IIS and the WPF technology. As a little private project I checked out HTML 5 and JS with MVC4 Web API and wondered what azure configuration I'd need to host a MVC 4 Web API project. Would it be rather a virtual machine or a full calculator? What benefits grants one over another?
I am going to start my studies soon, so I'd like the cheapest I can possibly get. I won't use it a lot (mainly for testing reasons), as well I think there won't be too much traffic either. Would a virtual machine also include the possibility of using IIS?
Could I also run a MVC project with something else than VM/full calculator?
And what would happen if for some reason my traffic just explodes? Would my services just be shut down until I increase the power of my machine? Or would I just get a huge bill and be surprised quite a lot?
Use websites.
You can start with 10 Web Sites absolutely free! So this is the cheapest. And it certainly supports MVC4 Web API.
For starter you can get a 3 month trial with enough credits to start. By default you'll have a spending limit on your account. This mean if you start to get too much traffic your services will shut down and you won't have to pay any extra. I think you can configure how much you are willing to pay but I never tried, it is still the default which is 0$.
You should start with Shared Web Sites and move to reserved instance, VM or web role later if you ever need to scale up or out.
I'd like to start a free budget/personal finance site and will need plenty of horsepower and storage. I'm definitely a nubee, so how does one get started in terms of hardware infrastructure? Do I need to get a dedicated IP from my ISP and obtain my own servers? Do I go with amazon or Sql Server Data Services/Azure or something like that? Is the latter services free or a discount offering available to non-profit/free services such as the budget/personal finance site I'm looking to start?
If you don't mind writing your web application in python, then I's suggest using Google App Engine. See: What Is Google App Engine?
What I like to do when I have new ideas for a site is to find an inexpensive hosting solution ($10 per month). This allows me to test the idea and see if the site is going to be successful. If it is a flop, I haven't wasted much money and if it is successful I can upgrade to better hosting (dedicated server).
There are many hosting options available and several of them have great tools such as an online SQL Server management studio. Your other option would be to host it yourself if you are prepared to deal with firewall issues, backups, storage, etc.
Whether it is feasible to DIY varies a lot by country...if you have a decent broadband connection with a fixed IP this can be the cheapest route to play around with first, especially if you need an awful lot of storage.
Note however that many fast broadband connections are only fast for downloads - when you're running a server, the speed your users will see is the upload speed, which is usually a lot less. Also, you'll need to do your own admin and backup etc.
Apart from this most hosting options have a price tag on top, varying from virtual hosts (sharing a real machine), to colocation (your machine in somebody's data center), to cloud services like amazon et al (which have a good scaling ability)- and you will need to shop around for the software stack and hardware features you really need.
There's really two ways to answer this question, what differentiates them is budget.
One is to properly design this solution, prototype it, benchmark the prototype, extrapolate anticipated user load, add overhead and scale accordingly. This takes time, costs but gives you a supportable solution that serves your customers well.
The other is to just give something, anything a go and fix the problems as they come along. This is quicker and cheaper but might be a headache for a while and might p*** off your customers.
Basically it comes down to budget.
Best of luck.