Looking into it I came to find out that a 1 role of 1 small compute Cloud Service is almost 60% more expensive as the same 1 small "vitual machine"...
So why should i choose to use cloud service over virtual machine?
Searching the web I came across a lot articles about this including this article but none were clear enough for me... the comparison in the last one is plain useless in my opnion...
Is there a "perk" that i don't know about or is not being considered? something to justify the "extra-charge" for cloud service... Does a code running on cloud service perform better than running on a virtual machine (maybe because there's less overhead)? anything?
I think virtual machine would be used when we need to migrate our application to the cloud and make it 'just work'. We don't need many additional effort to move our legacy code to azure if using virtual machine. But it doesn't provide the rich PaaS features comparing with cloud service such as automatically deployment, automatically update, load balance, etc.
So if we have a legacy system and we wanted to quick move to azure, then we can choose virtual machine. But if we need to manage bunch of machines, cloud service would helps us a lot and make us focus on the business logic.
Related
Please help me understand why we say azure functions is a serverless compute service. It does require cloud to host it and run. Cloud is also a server still why we are saying it is serverless?
Serverless computing does not mean that servers are out of the picture. Servers are very much required, just like they have been for all these years, or else, where will your code run. The reason why the phrase was coined is that as a developer, you do not need to worry about what server your code runs on. In fact, you do not know which server it eventually runs on. Once your code is deployed, Azure assigns the responsibility of executing the code to the next available server. What Azure ensures, and what is ultimately important for you, is that your code will execute whenever required.
Ref: Serverless Computing with Azure Functions
Hope it makes sense :)
To get a better idea this is how we evolved. Cloud providers are making sure we should only worry about the business logic but nothing else.
IaaS (Infrastructure as a service)
You get a running VM somewhere in the data centre but you are required to maintain everything. From Deployment to patching your VMs or anything running on the VM.
PaaS(Platform as a service)
You are not longer required to maintain platForm but you are still responsible to manage your server in terms of load balancing etc.
FaaS(Function as a service)
Servers are abstracted from you . You are only required to maintain your code without worrying about what's under the hood or how to load balance your servers. It's then cloud provider responsibility to package your code and run it for you. But servers are still there.
Going by the official documentation of Azure Serverless computing service, Azure Functions can be defined as;
Azure Functions is a serverless compute service that enables you to run code on-demand without having to explicitly provision or manage infrastructure. Use Azure Functions to run a script or piece of code in response to a variety of events.
Azure Functions is an event driven, compute-on-demand experience that
extends the existing Azure application platform with capabilities to
implement code triggered by events occurring in virtually any Azure or
3rd party service as well as on-premises systems. Azure Functions
allows developers to take action by connecting to data sources or
messaging solutions, thus making it easy to process and react to
events. Azure Functions scale based on demand and you pay only for the
resources you consume.
Here the serverless compute service is like a metaphor which implies, the end user doesn't need to manage the servers or infrastructure to run the applications over the Azure and can spend time to focus on managing and improving the business logic.
Few more points to consider,
Serverless in Azure builds on an open-source foundation, the core of
which is Azure Functions, an event-driven compute experience and open
source project. Community contributions include support for new
languages, integrations and deployment targets.
Azure Functions can be used on-premises, in hybrid environments such as Azure Stack, on IoT Edge devices and deployed on top of orchestrators such as Kubernetes – as well as in other clouds.
They enable faster time to market with lower infrastructure and operating costs.
There are heaps of definition of serverless which you can easily google. But I will share my understanding anyways.
1. It does require cloud to host it and run.
You are correct with this. But anything on Cloud requires Cloud, doesn't it? Azure being one of the cloud providers consists of hundreds of services to cater to different needs people are after from using Cloud.
2. Cloud is also a server still why we are saying is serverless
This is not quite right. Cloud is different from a server. Server is a physical box sitting somewhere. With hundreds of thousands of servers all over the world, Cloud hosts all sorts of different services on these servers.
The reason we say Functions are serverless is that the infrastructure of hosting a Function is abstracted away from devs. It is still deployed to some servers but Azure is responsible for all the resource managing, configuration, load balancing, scaling and networking etc. It allows developers to focus primarily on their code, not having to worry about servers.
I thought one of the advantages of Azure was that I could turn services on and off depending on when I want them to be available.
However I cant see how to pause my App Service Plan.
Is it possible?
I want to use the S1 tier so that I can play with what it offers. However I want to be able to pause the cost accumulation when I am not using it.
I see from the app service pricing help that an app will still be billed for even though it is in the stopped state.
Yet the link also clearly states that I only pay for what I use. So how does that work?
If you put your hosting plan onto the free tier, you will stop being charged for it. However if you have things like deployment slots and certificates these will be deleted.
The ability to turn services on and off, is more to do with being able to scale services, so if you need 50 servers for an hour you can easily do that.
What you can do to make your solution temporary is to create a deployment script, using Powershell or Resource manager Templates then you can deploy your solution for exactly as long as you need it and then delete it again when you don't. In this sense you can turn your services on and off at a whim.
Azure provides building blocks for you to create the solution you need, it is up to you to figure out how to best use those building blocks to create the solution you seek.
Edited to answer extended question.
If you want to use the S1 pricing plan, and not have it charge when you are not using it, the only way of achieving that is by using automation. Fortunately, this is reasonably trivial to achieve.
If you look at this template it is pretty much all configured to deploy a website from Github to Azure on demand. If you edit that to configure it to your needs you can have a new Azure website online with 2 minutes of running the script.
Then you would have another script that deleted it once you had finished.
Doing it this way you would loose no functionality, and probably learn quite a bit about what is possible with Azure along the way.
App Service Plan
An app service plan is the hardware that a web app runs on. In the free and shared tier your web apps share an instance with other web apps. In the other tiers you have a dedicated virtual machine. It is this virtual machine that you pay for. In that case it is irrelevant whether or not you have web apps running on your app service or not, you still have a virtual machine running and you will be charged for that.
To change the App Service Plan via PowerShell, you can run the following command
Set-AzureRmAppServicePlan -ResourceGroupName $rg -Name $AppServicePlan -Tier Free
I was able to accomplish this using the dashboard by selecting the App Service Plan, clicking Scale up (App Service Plan), and then from there if you click Dev/Test you can select the Free tier.
As others have mentioned, you need to script this. Fortunately, I created a repository with one-click deployment to your Azure resources.
https://github.com/jraps20/jrap-AzureVerticalScaling
The steps are intended to be as simple and generic as possible:
Execute the one-click deployment from the repo readme
Select the subscription, resource group etc.
Deploy resource to Azure
Set up your schedule to scale up and scale down as-needed
The scripting relies on runbooks and variables to maintain the previous state of each App Service Plan and App Services within those plans. Some App Services cannot be scaled due to specific settings being used (AlwaysOn, Use32BitWOrkerProcess, ClientCertEnabled, etc.). In those cases, the previous values are stored as variables prior to down scaling and then the original values are reapplied when the services are scaled up.
For more clarity, I have written a blog post that goes into detail. The post is pertaining to Sitecore, but applies to any App Service setup- Drastically Reduce Azure PaaS Hosting Costs in Non-Prod Environments With Scheduled Vertical Scaling. It also includes a brief video tutorial to show its use case.
Myself and others have been using this repository/approach for well over a year and it works great. I mostly use it for POC's to reduce costs when I'm not actively working on something. However, its main intention was for targeting non-prod environments to save costs during non-work hours.
Azure App Service Plan is just an logical concept of a set of features and capacity that you can share across multiple apps. I don`t think you can "pause" a plan, instead you can pause your service. and depends on billing model of each service, you might or might not get charged.
Pausing = Delete or lower tier.
Scripting is the key.
Design Diagram
Use scripts to create (also consider shared resources)
Delete using scripts
Use scripts to recreate.
eg: If we use resource group properly per environment then
Export-AzureRmResourceGroup will create a template for us (everything in the resource group will be pulled out as script). So we can delete it and recreate it anytime.
To pause a VM and stop billing you need to shut is down and deallocate it. Just shutting down still has the capacity reserved as if its running.
Storage can't be shutdown - it can be moved to lower cost tiers.
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
I am recently evaluating Windows Azure. One of the problems I found is that Azure start charging as soon as the app is deployed even if it is in the testing stage.
I want to ask existing Azures how much of your tests are done locally and how much are done after it is deployed? Does Azure provide any means of testing web services locally?
Many thanks.
Yes, Azure provides an emulation framework that largely (but not completely) mimics the Azure deployment environment. This is usually sufficient for testing.
Costs of test deployments can be controlled somewhat, however:
It's possible to deploy "extra-small" instances that are significantly less expensive than larger instances, at the expense of throughput - which unless you're doing load testing isn't usually an issue
You won't generally need to have multiple instances of a role deployed, just one will usually do, unless you have major concurrency issues under load
Some of the cost of Azure is in data traffic, which will obviously be less expensive for test instances
It's not necessary to have test instances permanently available. They can be torn down or re-deployed at will; if your environment becomes sophisticated this can be done programmatically by a continuous integration engine.
In practice we're finding that the cost of test instances is relatively insignificant compared to the cost of our developers and the alternative, which would be to provision and maintain our own data centre.
In particular, being able to quickly spin up a test environment that is a direct mimic of production in a few minutes is a very powerful feature.
Windows azure already provide option to do testing locally.
The Microsoft Azure storage emulator provides a local environment that emulates the Azure Blob, Queue, and Table services for development purposes. Using the storage emulator, you can test your application against the storage services locally, without creating an Azure subscription or incurring any costs. When you're satisfied with how your application is working in the emulator, you can switch to using an Azure storage account in the cloud.
To get complete detail please check link below.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/documentation/articles/storage-use-emulator/
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.