Features
- Deployment Model: Public Cloud
- Service Model: Platform as a Service (PaaS)
- On-demand self service
- Network Access
- Internet
- VPN
- Windows Azure Connect
- Resource Pooling
- Datacenters
- N. Central U.S.
- S. Central U.S.
- N. Europe
- W. Europe
- E. Asia
- S.E. Asia
- Datacenters
- Elasticity
- Rapid provisioning of Cloud Resources using the management portal
- Scaling compute capacity
- Azure Compute
- Scaling storage capacity
- Azure Storage
- Measured Service
- Monitoring resource usage
- Not available through Microsoft
- 3rd party applications like AzureWatch ,
- See pricing below for a better understanding of metering metrics
- Monitoring resource usage
- Security
- VPN
- ISO27001 Compliance
- Administration Sign-In
- Windows Live ID and password
- API Access Control
- User-generated Public/Private key-pair and self-signed certificate registered through management portal
- Storage access is governed by a secret Storage Account Key.
- Encryption
- Self-signed SSL certificates for encryption of data in transfer
- MD-5 and SHA-2 for data integrity checks, digital signing and token generation
- Account Identifiers
- Windows Live ID
- Storage Account Key (for Storage Service only)
- Interoperatiblity
- OS: Windows Server
- Software: Most Windows platform software
- Languages: .NET, PHP, Ruby, Python, Java
- Development tools: Visual Studio, Eclipse
- API:
- Azure SDK is closed-source
- REST
Compute (Windows Azure Compute)
Features
- Windows Azure Compute Service is build from one or more roles. It supports:
- Web role: Configured for web application programming using IIS7, ASP.NET, WCF (Windows Communication Foundation), PHP, Java and other web technologies.
- Worker role: Configured for generalized development. Developers can run .NET or any other Windows Application.
- Virtual Machine role
- Each instance represents a virtual server
- Network and Disk bandwidth are shared
Pricing
- All prices are in USD
Compute Instance Size |
CPU |
Memory |
Storage |
I/O Bandwidth |
Price |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Extra Small |
1.0 GHz |
768 MB |
20 GB |
5 |
0.05/hr |
Small |
1.6 GHz |
1.75 GB |
225 GB (165 GB for VM Role) |
100 |
0.12/hr |
Medium |
2 x 1.6 GHz |
3.5 GB |
490 GB (340 GB for VM Role) |
200 |
0.24/hr |
Large |
4 x 1.6 GHz |
7 GB |
1,000 GB (850 GB for VM Role) |
400 |
0.48/hr |
Extra Large |
8 x 1.6 GHz |
14 GB |
2,040 GB (1890 GB for VM Role) |
800 |
0.96/hr |
Source(s):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff959173.aspx
Storage (Windows Azure Storage)
Functionality
- Storage Models:
- Binary Large Objects (Blobs)
- Block Blob
- Comprised of blocks of 4 MB each identified by a BlockID
- The maximum size of a "Block Blob" is 200 GB or 50,000 blocks
- Page Blob:
- Comprised of a collection of pages.
- A page is a range of data identified by its offset from the start of the blob
- Pages are aligned to 512-byte page boundaries
- Max size of a page blob is 1 TB
- Max size of a page written to a page blob is 1 TB
- Block Blob
- Tables
- Queues
- Drive (Virtual Hard Drive)
- Binary Large Objects (Blobs)
Pricing
- Storage: $0.15/GB/month
- Transactions/Requests: $0.01/10,000
- Data Transfer (Bandwidth):
- North America/Europe
- $0.10/GB IN
- $0.15/GB OUT
- Asia Pacific
- $0.30/GB IN
- $0.45/GB OUT
- North America/Europe