azure subscription info - azure

I am a newbie to web development
I would like to host my site in azure.
There are so many subscriptions plans.
So which subscription is reasonably good and give me price details of that?
Thanks in advance

Windows Azure has few types of hosting. For a website you might want to look at the following -
Web Sites - You can host right away without modification of your existing project.
Cloud Services - I used this, but it requires changes such as Caching.
Here is the calculator based on your need.
FYI: Rule of thumb is you need a least two instances in Production to minimize the downtime.

If you are a newbie , I would strongly suggest using azure websites for now, and you can always move to a custom solution using webroles/caching Etc later if you feel it doesn't cater all your needs..
Azure websites pricing can be obtained from here :
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/web-sites/
Again on what parameters would you choose the right package, you are the best judge for that since you know what traffic are you expecting and how much memory etc you need

Related

Possible to Move In-house Windows Server to Azure Equivalent ( Cloud )?

We have an old SBS2008 server that is on the way out. We only use it for Authentication as all our apps are in the cloud now. Is it possible to be done with an in-house server altogether and use cloud services to do some/all of what SBS does? Has anybody done this?
[my thoughts so far]
Azure Active directory Looks like it might do the authentication part, and very cost effective.
Azure Domains services look like it might to the Group policy part, but looks expensive ( probably more expensive than a server for a small business).
Azure DNS looks like it might do the DNS part and cost effective as well.
Obviously, DHCP would now go on the router
Please don't shut this question down, I need a helpful answer to a specific question, I will reword it if need be ( just comment ). :-)
You have to look at your overall roadmap and strategy for the company really, rather than just replacing what you have with new technologies.
I'd recommend that you try and move away from using ADDS and modernize workstations to Windows 10, being Azure AD joined. Move away from Group Policy, and look at using Intune for policy management.
For your cloud apps, look at using Azure AD for authentication and not something like ldap or the sorts. Basically, standardize using Azure AD for auth across all your access mediums, and stay away from traditional AD or using ADDS.
These recommendations might seem drastic and rather large effort, however if your company is running SBS still, it might be that you have a low enough amount of apps and infrastructure to take on a transformational change.

Advice on the best config for web hosting scenario on Azure

I've been trying different scenarios/configs and finally decided to just ask for your advice...the Azure forum linked me here so I hope this is the right spot!
Just going crazy with the many different variables...need a solid, FAST, web hosting solution that I have much, if not complete, control/access.
I have a Wordpress site with 75K custom posts, a 2 gb mysql db, getting about 10,000 visits a month, currently on a shared 1and1 hosting package. Now I'm looking to implement some advanced search functionality using either "Views" or something like "Php Maker"...any of these tools, or ones like it, are resource intensive as they allow searching from the custom fields in the db.
I have credits on Azure so...
Linux/Lamp or Windows Wamp or Windows IIS? And I'm not a great Linux admin.
Can I, should I, setup the MySql on it's VM?
What would you all recommend for a minimum, solid, config?
Do I really "need" an availability set?
A Linux DB server and an IIS webserver?
I'm not sure where to spend the money - if I host the DB on it's VM and beef it up is that fact that it's not on the webserver VM going to cost me any of that benefit?
I've been searching for some general documentation outlining specific web hosting, website, scenarios but the data I've found is not at all conclusive - it's all over the place!
Finally (although I think I know the answer to this one ;) - can I access VM's, or Azure services, spanning multiple user accounts? A friend has offered his corporate account where he has a few hundred a month in credits - it would be cool if I could setup the DB there, at least, and the webserver on my account.
I very much appreciate your time and advice!
Rob
The last thing wou want to do is create and maintain VMs. Create an Azure website with a WordPress template, use ClearDB for your MySQL DB (the standard MySql option for Azure websites) - you'll need to get a paid solution for this size of DB.
With Azure website extensions, like Kudu, you can use any browser to maintain your files, or use a standard FTP option.

How to deal with the recent Azure outage (Azure Websites)?

We have TONS of websites hosted on Azure. Our VMs appear to be running now, but many of our Azure Websites are not. In an effort to bring our sites back up sooner than later, we have tried scaling UP, OUT, and changing our hosting plan, to no avail. Is there a way to force an Azure Website VM to move to another (working) datacenter? We don't want to destroy the site and bring it back up, as we will be forced to update DNS, which will cause an even longer delay in service to our customers.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Sorry to everyone else experiencing a long night right along with me.
Your best bet is to run two instances of the site in two Regions and use something like Traffic Manager (or AWS Route 53 if you want something external to Azure) to perform failover routing for you.
Depending on the type of sites you could run a static holding site in a non-Azure environment and failover to that. How you choose to solve this will depend on what your budget is (or opportunity cost in the event your sites are offline).
Note that a 99.9% yearly SLA equates to almost 9 hours of downtime in a year.
If you want to understand how you could solve this intra-Azure here's a good guide: http://blog.kloud.com.au/2014/11/03/deploy-an-ultra-high-availablity-mvc-web-app-on-microsoft-azure-part-1/

Moving to IasS on MS Azure

We have got an application running fine on On premises and plan to move it to IaaS on Ms Azure, do we need to make any changes to it or will it work as is?
I agree with the above post. You have not detailed if you are using Virtual Machines (Sql server or going to use Azure SQL). You will have to make choices about fail-over and geo redundancy, cloud services, etc. There are IP restrictions that may affect you (I don't know since I am not sure what you are moving). More than anything, I always warn people about the cost, it is difficult to understand. Here is an article series I wrote on Azure & SharePoint, you can skip the SharePoint stuff but the cost/limitation/VMs and such would still apply.
http://www.matthewjbailey.com/sharepoint-azure-guide/
We've managed a lift-and-shift of an on-premise Windows app into Azure, but I wouldn't say it's been without its pain. The above comments definitely ring true; you need to provide a bit more of an overview of what the current application does so that people can help answer your question.
In my experience, the only stumbling blocks to moving on-premise into Azure are:
Hardware requirements; i.e. if your application requires some specific hardware
Cost: It's not always cheaper to move large systems into Azure
Licensing: Make sure that your existing licensing is compatible with a cloud system which you don't control

Doubts about Windows Azure Platform Introductory Special

I'm considering to join the Windows Azure Platform Introductory Special, but I'm a little bit afraid of losing money with it. I don't wanna develop any fancy large scale application, I want to join just to learn Azure and do my experiments, what should I be afraid of?
In the transference, it says: "Data Transfers (per region)", what does that mean?
Can I put limits to stop the app if it goes over this plan in order to avoid get charged?
Can it be "pre pay" instead "bill pay"?
Would it be enough for a blog?
Any experiencie so far?
Kind regards.
As ligget pointed out, Azure isn't cost affect as a host for an application that can be easily deployed to a traditional shared hosting provider. Azure's target market are those that want dedicated resources without the need to micro-manage the infrasture and the capability to easily scale up/down based on demand.
That said, here's the answers to the questions you posted:
Data Transfers are based on bandwidth in and out of the hosting data center. bandwidth for communication occuring within components (SQL Azure, Windows Azure, Azure Storage, etc...) in the same datacenter are not billable.
Your usage is not currently capped when the free quotas are used up. However, you will recieved warning emails when those items approach their usage threadsholds.
There is the option to pay your subscription using a PO, but the minimum threshold for most of these operations is $500/month. So as a hobbyist, its unlikely you're wanting that route.
The introductory special does not provide enough resources for hosting a 24x7 personal blog. That level includes only 25hrs of compute resources. Each hour a single instance of your application is deployed will count against this, even if the application received no traffic. Think of it like renting office space. You still pay rent on the office even if there are no customers there.
All this said, there's still much to be learned with the introductory special. The azure development tools allows you to work with Windows Azure and Azure storage locally and get a feel for how they work. The introductory special then lets you deploy those solutions so you can see what works and what doesn't (not everything that works locally works hosted).
I would recommend you host your blog somewhere else - it's a waste of resources running it on Azure and you'll find much cheaper options. A recently introduced extra small instance would be a better choice in this case, but AFAIK it is charged separately as of now, e.g. even when you have an MSDN subscription those extra small instance hours do not count towards free Azure hours that come with the subscription.
There is no pre-pay option I know of and it's not possible to stop the app automatically. It'll be running until the deployment is deleted (beware! even if suspended/stopped the deployment will continue to accrue charges). I believe you will be sent a notification shortly before reaching your free hours threshold.
Be aware that when launching more than 1 instance you are charged for every hour of every instance combined. This can happen for example when you have more than one role in your Azure project (1 web role + 1 worker role - a separate instance will be started for each role).
Data trasfer means your entire data trasfer: blobs/Table storage/queues (transfers between your hosted service and storage account inside the same data center are free) + whatever data is transfered in/out of your hosted application, e.g. when somebody visits your pages. When you create storage accounts and hosted services in Azure you will specify a region that will be hosting your account/app - hosting in Asia is slightly more expensive than in Europe/U.S.
Your best bet would be to contact Microsoft with these questions.

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