I have moved a classic ASP site with a SQL Database to Azure.
We moved from a shared hosting.
The sites runs really fast and we are happy with Azure.
Our only situation is the cost. We pass from a Us $8 monthly cost to a Us$ 90.
And we have only 8000 visits per month.
Actually the 90% of the cost of processor hours and 10% is BD units.
Is there some best practices we can use in Azure Websites so we can reduce this cost without changing the web (which is a very old one)?
Thanks
I don't think Azure is a real good alternative to replace $8/mo shared hosting. Azure provides a more... sophisticated and scalable environment. You're getting very impressive suite of middleware (cache, storage, nosql, relational, acs, vpn, etc) and managed environment, but the implication is that your either middleware, management or scalability needs are a little more demanding than $8/mo shared hosting can provide.
So in a nutshell, if you were happy with $8/mo - you should have probably stayed there.
Related
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.
I am developing a Xamarin mobile app that requires a central cloud data storage (so a database). I also need an app service to host an API to interface with the database. I have been leaning towards Azure for both of these needs to keep everything in the Microsoft/Azure space and I am also familiar with it, but I am not sure if that would be overkill for my needs.
The data I need to store is only a few hundred records across a couple of tables and does not contain sensitive information. The app service would be quite small. I used their cost calculator with the cheapest options and that came out to only about $7/month for a small database and they have a Free Tier for the app service, although I have read that it is very slow, not sure to what extent though for the simple use case I have for it. This is very reasonable unless I have to upgrade to the Basic Tier App Service which jumps up to $70/month, that becomes a bit more than what I am looking to spend for this.
Wondering if folks know if the Free Tier of the Azure App Service would be impractically slow to host an API. It is listed as using Shared Cores, 1 GB RAM, and 1GB of storage. Also open to suggestions for other options that play well with .NET. Thanks!
I run several web services between AWS and Azure. Depending on how you are planning to write your App Service you can go with Azure VM Standard B1s and they will fall under FREE tier usage. Else around $10 per month.
You can run an embedded DB like SQL Lite with ASP.net. I use Spring Boot and works well.
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 am using a normal IIS web host to host my website and web services.. It is just a hobby and I get very little traffic. I would let to be using Azure instead since I would like an excuse to learn azure.
Is anyone out there using Azure in this way and can tell me about what is thier monthly cost? I long ago subscribed to azure and forgot about it and a month later had a $90 bill so that really scares me.
Right now my web host + sql is about $25 a month.
Is there a way to have azure shut the service off if it gets over a certain monthly cost?
Well, even a very small instance costs $0.05/hour, and the SLA is only guaranteed if you run two or more instances. That in itself adds up to approximately $75/month.
SQL Azure is at least $9.99/month. Add to this charges for traffic, etc.
There are reasons why the SQL Azure pricing model is like this. You do get your very own virtual machine instances with dedicated RAM, which you typically don't get in a web hotel, so taking that into account, the Azure price may be reasonable, but isn't very competitive for very small hobby sites.
The official price list is here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing/
Unfortunately, Azure is not designed to host hobbyist sites. You won't be able to beat $25 a month, but then you don't need things like SLA's and HA databass. But, as I commented earlier, it is nice to be able to work with it to train up on the platform.
There are ways of getting onto Azure cheaply.
Firstly There is the free introductory offer. Very much a "toe in the water" just to play/learn the platform. There aren't enough compute hours to host a site.
Secondly, if you're prepared to put in a little effort you can join either the partner or Bizspark programs which will give you access to enough resources to host a site for free, but there is an expectation that you're trying to build "something".
Oh, and for a hobbyist site you don't need the SLA so a single instance is fine.
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.