Cloud computing has become the normal way of doing business. Cloud computing is a computing model in which shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand via the internet. The main advantage of cloud computing is that all data can be accessed from one central location. Also, it allows businesses to pay only for what they use instead of committing to an expensive upfront investment in hardware or software. There are many different types of clouds available today, such as private clouds (an internal implementation), public clouds (clouds operated by a third party), virtual data centers (a service provider that offers hosting services), and hybrid clouds (a mix between public and private).
What is Azure?
Azure was announced in Oct 2008 and released on Feb 1, 2010, as the successor to Windows Azure, which provided services for websites and web applications. On Nov 1, 2014, Microsoft announced that it would start referring to its “public cloud” service simply as Azure (and not Windows Azure) to be consistent with its new naming scheme where each of the products reflects a “version” number rather than an operating system. In April 2015, Microsoft acquired Deis, a startup selling open-source tools so companies could use Docker containers with their custom code on any cloud provider’s infrastructure (including Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform). This acquisition has been viewed as something of a vote of confidence for the container ecosystem, which at this point includes Kubernetes but not Mesosphere Marathon or Apache Aurora—both based on Apache Mesos—or OpenShift Container Platform from Red Hat.
What is AWS?
AWS is a cloud computing platform that allows companies to build and run applications on the internet. It provides two types of services: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), where you can rent virtual servers from AWS, and software as a service (SaaS), where you can rent applications hosted by AWS.
The acronym stands for Amazon Web Services, the company that owns and develops this technology. It was launched in 2006 as just one part of Amazon’s overall strategy to provide online retail services but has since grown into its separate business unit within the company.
AWS provides core infrastructure like computing power, storage space, and bandwidth, as well as other services like databases, data analytics tools, and messaging systems that let customers build their apps on top of it all. The company says it currently has over 750 individual products available through its various offerings—everything from basic storage containers to high-performance computing clusters capable of handling millions of requests every second!
AWS vs. Azure for Compute
Let’s start with the basics. Compute refers to the actual hardware that runs your workloads, so this covers things like virtual machines (VMs) and load balancers. Both providers offer a wide variety of computing resources, including dedicated server instances, VMs, and elastic pools. The two platforms have comparable pricing regarding compute resources—they’re pretty close in price if you compare their most basic compute offerings side-by-side. However, remember that since Amazon offers so many more options for their computing services than Microsoft does on Azure, better deals will likely be available through Amazon if you know where to look!
AWS vs. Azure for Database
- AWS DynamoDB is a fully managed database service that provides fast, predictable performance and scalability. It’s ideal for web-scale applications, IoT devices, mobile apps, and other applications requiring a high volume of up to millions of requests per second.
- Azure SQL Database is an enterprise-grade, relational database-as-a-service (DBaaS) solution that provides instant scalability and reliability for mission-critical applications like business intelligence (BI), data warehousing, or line-of-business (LOB) applications built on Microsoft technologies such as .NET Framework or Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS).
- AWS RDS is partially managed. Users manage their instances from the AWS Management Console or command line interface. Still, Amazon can patch and upgrade all software components inside your DB instance—including the operating system itself—for you at no additional charge beyond your standard usage fee for RDS.
- AWS Aurora provides high availability through automatic failover between availability zones without loss of client connectivity during failovers; seamless upgrades without downtime; advanced security features like encryption at rest using Hardware Accelerated Encryption Processors (HAEP); backups using point-in-time restore with snapshots taken every five minutes; zero-downtime schema changes; encryption support through Secure Socket Layer/Transport Layer Security protocol suite with certificate-based authentication.
AWS vs. Azure for Networking Features
The networking features of both AWS and Azure are impressive in their own right. For example, AWS has a lot more networking features than Azure does, but when it comes to networking capabilities, Azure is the clear winner.
Azure’s networking services are more mature than those of Amazon Web Services (AWS). They’re also more flexible and secure. They offer better integration with enterprise IT systems and platforms like VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) and Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM).
DevOps and Management Tools in AWS and Azure
The two cloud providers have several management tools. AWS has CloudWatch, its monitoring service that uses data from the operating systems and applications running on your instances to provide alerts and notifications. Azure has Application Insights (formerly known as HockeyApp), Service Health, Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and Network Watcher (for getting information about all network traffic). Both also offer management services for databases such as RDS for Oracle or SQL Server for Microsoft SQL Server.
Both AWS and Azure offer DevOps tools as well as security monitoring tools that can be used by both developers and IT professionals in their day-to-day workflows. These include important capabilities such as application deployment automation through code repositories like GitHub or Bitbucket; source control management using Git; continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) frameworks including Jenkins; mobile app development platforms such as Xamarin Studio or Visual Studio for Android apps; user interface (UI) design software like Sketch 3.
Pricing Comparison Between AWS and Azure
AWS and Azure have similar pricing structures, making them ideal shared-hosting solutions for small businesses. Azure may be the better option if you’re looking for an environment where you can experiment with various cloud solutions or run applications that need significant scalability.
The costs of both services will vary depending on your needs and use case. With AWS, you pay per hour of usage; with Azure, there are tiered plans based on your computing needs (number of cores) and storage capacity (how much data you can store). Other factors like geographical location also impact costs—for example, if your business needs servers near its clients in New York City. Still, most of your customers are in California or Europe (and therefore accessing via satellite). Choosing an Azure data center location closer to their target audience makes sense.
Choosing the right cloud depends on your individual needs
When choosing an Azure or AWS cloud, there is no right answer that applies to everyone. It depends on your individual needs.
For developers and small-to-medium businesses:
If you are a developer who wants to build apps on either platform, AWS has more options for you than Azure does. This includes services like Lambda and Elastic Container Service (ECS), which can be used with other Amazon Web Services (AWS) products like DynamoDB or S3 for application development. In comparison, Microsoft’s equivalent offering—Azure Functions—is only meant for smaller projects.*
For IT professionals:
If you’re an IT pro looking to migrate from the corporate network to the cloud, Microsoft has a better track record of supporting large enterprises than AWS.*
Conclusion
Ultimately, choosing the right cloud for your business is up to you. Many factors go into making this choice, including budget and technical needs. But if you want to know more about AWS vs. Azure, we can help! Check out our other blog posts on the advantages of Azure over Google cloud and AWS.
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