Features

  • Deployment Model: Public Cloud
  • Service Model: Platform as a Service (PaaS)
  • 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
  • Measured Service
    • Monitoring resource usage
      • Not available through Microsoft
      • 3rd party applications like AzureWatch ,
    • See pricing below for a better understanding of metering metrics
  • 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
    • Tables
    • Queues
    • Drive (Virtual Hard Drive)

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

Sources(s):
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazurestorage/archive/2010/07/09/understanding-windows-azure-storage-billing-bandwidth-transactions-and-capacity.aspx

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