Windows Azure vs Web Hosting

Question

I plan to develop a pretty simple app for Windows Phone 7. The app needs a central place to store some data. The application will not be something that will bring in a huge amount of money.

My plan is to use a WCF-service on the server side and sql (or even Access) as database.

The question is: Should I consider Azure for this, or should I go with a third party web hosting company like www.winhost.com/? From what I ca see, the chepest possible solution for me in Azure would be $10 for a database + a dollar or two for the traffic per month (total $12-$15). WinHost.com would only cost $4.95 per month and have pretty much included in that price.

Whats your opinion?

Answer 1

I plan to develop a pretty simple app for Windows Phone 7. The app needs a central place to store some data. The application will not be something that will bring in a huge amount of money.

My plan is to use a WCF-service on the server side and sql (or even Access) as database.

The question is: Should I consider Azure for this, or should I go with a third party web hosting company like www.winhost.com/ ? From what I ca see, the chepest possible solution for me in Azure would be $10 for a database + a dollar or two for the traffic per month (total $12-$15). WinHost.com would only cost $4.95 per month and have pretty much included in that price.

Whats your opinion?

Hi,

I think there is some confusion regarding "your dollar or two for traffic per month". At minimum (without SLA) it will be approximately $84.00 / month to host your WCF service ($0.12 / Hour). So basically at minimum you're looking at close to $100.00 / month to host a very basic app in Azure with SQL Azure as the database.

There are many threads here which covers the cost aspects and benefits you get out of hosting in Azure. I would strongly encourage you to go through them before deciding on porting your solution to run in Azure.

Hope this helps.

Thanks

Gaurav Mantri

Cerebrata Software

http://www.cerebrata.com

Answer 2

More closer to $180 per month + traffic, as you need 2 roles for SLA. 

If I'd be in the position of the OP I would host the actual Silverlight XAP on a CDN and consider some cheap hoster, just not godaddy ;)

You want to use Azure for web apps only if you either:

* expect a huge virality of what you are doing and thus need the ability to scale fast and scale elastically

* you have already a significant traffic

* You need raw on demand processing power

HTH

Martin

 

Answer 3

oh, is that really so... Then I'm really misstaken!!
I thought the $0.12 / hour was some kind of 'computing hour'. If it's per clock hour all days long, even if nothing is happening, it's like a total rip-of!!

Well, thank you very much for enlighting me about this!

Regards Andreas

Answer 4

Its not a rip-off. Think about it this way...

Azure guarantees you a level of performance by dedicating CPU/RAM exclusively for your use, not unlike leasing office space in a build guarantees you a given amount of square footage. You are paying for access to that space, regardless of if you only plan to use it 2 days a week. Its reserved for you 24x7.

Now a traditional co-loc host shares those resources. So you're paying less of a rate because that same office space is shared by 20 other people so the co-loc host is able to make use of a whatever space you aren't use. The problem is that if occasionally (or frequently depending on the provider) that the more folks that get shoved into the office, the less space each has. And eventually the work of all will suffer.

We also have to keep in mind, that the "lease" on space in Azure is by the hour and not by the month. So there's you can help control your costs by only consuming the amount of space you need, when you need it. This elasticity is one of the advantages the cloud is supposed to bring to us. In Azure, scaling up/down is a fairly simple matter and doesn't require alot of complex configuration and setup. Other providers can scale, but may require manual setup that can take days/weeks to execute.

Answer 5

Well, I mean it's a rip of for someone with as small needs as I have, but after reading some more threads about this, I realize that Azure isn't ment for this kind of applications/services. I'll look for a good web hosting solution instead.

Answer 6

there you hit it on the head. my hope is that eventually, there will be more options added that will allow azure to be more attractive to people in your position. Until there, it is what it is.

Answer 7

If you have msdn subscription, you can get a free subscription. A mini instance, but can be enough for you...

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tsabi

Answer 8

You can also get free instances through the Cloud Partner Program:

https://partners.microsoft.com/PartnerProgram/

Answer 9

we got into a very large argument discussing this very same topic last time, anyways the conclusion is:

There are limitations to both Azure and Windows Hosting. So I am trying to put cons here for both of them (best to my knowledge) you can decide if you like ;)

Azure's Cons:

1.When using a web hosting company you can put up any code that you want. Whether it is scalable or not is strictly left up to the person writing the code.Windows Azure is a little bit different. When writing code to run against Windows Azure the patterns that you are forced to follow to make it compatible ensure that it is scalable.

2. Microsoft is a huge corporation and cant provide the level of the support we are used to by the other companies

3. I personally think 99.7% uptime is less while other hosting providers guarantee 99.9%

4. Its costly and also features other facalities like sliver light application hosting etc. etc.

WebHosting Cons:

1. You are right about the hosting providers not being serious these days I had the same experience with Arvixe but there are still few excelling shared Windows Hosting providers left like discount asp and phi9.com which sell their services cheaper then Azure with phenomenal support.

2. Most of them dont live upto the up-time guarantees and have lesser money back guarantee period.

3. I personally like the support element if you can find any hosting provider with great support you should stick to it.

Answer 10

if it's something very simple, you can also use virtual machine in Windows Azure, it's just $9 per month. The benefits you can host multiple websites on a single VM, so you can save a lot.

I used Godaddy hosting before and payed 25 for VM where I have DB and applications on the same machine

Now in Azure, I have 1 VM for database and 1 vm for applications which is $9+$9=$18 - but the same machine can be used. I have about 5 websites hosting on the same machine and happy with performance.

Alex.

http://www.yaplex.com/

Answer 11

1 VM machine and sql server express seems like a pretty good deal at $9 a month.  It's just when you jump up in ram or CPU, the price goes to 50+ a month.  I'm guessing that is why you are using 2.

It also says now that multi-tenant webhosting is free and $9 a month for 1GB of sql server.  Is there any additional cost to that sql server?  If this is true would it get better performance than someone like arvixe?   Hard to tell how much CPU/ram is guaranteed.  Then they have the free/shared and reserved pricing.  I'm guessing isn't not going to be a big difference between arvixe and the free web azure with 1GB database.

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dan

Answer 12

we got into a very large argument discussing this very same topic last time, anyways the conclusion is:

There are limitations to both Azure and Windows Hosting. So I am trying to put cons here for both of them (best to my knowledge) you can decide if you like ;)

Azure's Cons:

1.When using a web hosting company you can put up any code that you want. Whether it is scalable or not is strictly left up to the person writing the code.Windows Azure is a little bit different. When writing code to run against Windows Azure the patterns that you are forced to follow to make it compatible ensure that it is scalable.

2. Microsoft is a huge corporation and cant provide the level of the support we are used to by the other companies

3. I personally think 99.7% uptime is less while other hosting providers guarantee 99.9%

4. Its costly and also features other facalities like sliver light application hosting etc. etc.

WebHosting Cons:

1. You are right about the hosting providers not being serious these days I had the same experience with Arvixe but there are still few excelling shared Windows Hosting providers left like discount asp and phi9.com which sell their services cheaper then Azure with phenomenal support.

2. Most of them dont live upto the up-time guarantees and have lesser money back guarantee period.

3. I personally like the support element if you can find any hosting provider with great support you should stick to it.

Yes, I definetely agree with this opinion. Azure is part of Microsoft and Microsoft is huge company. I also want to add that Azure is very great and easy for deployment, but the problem is only the cost. Azure is very costly. If you have high budget, I would recommend you to go with them. Just imagine that Azure will bill you for $70-$80/month, you can find other alternative hosting solution. They are many great hosting provider on Microsoft and cheaper than Azure

I personally use http://asphostportal.com. I use their cloud server. If I compare with Azure, I save a lot of money. hehe.... :)

Answer 13

Personally I wouldn't use websites on Azure as they are expensive - it makes much more sense to run a webrole - cheap, all the features of websites plus a lot more.

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Answer 14

To me it looked like you can get a virtual server for $18 a month.  It's very light weight, but if you're using it for testing you can put a sql server express database and the webserver on there.  Or you could get 2 virtual machines, 1 for the web server and 1 for the database.  Are they going to charge you much more on top of that?  I'm currently paying $30 a month for a small go daddy virtual server.

The other way is to use a shared webserver at $10 a month and you can have up to 10 websites.  A larger database is a little extra.  How did you get $70-$80 a month?  Assuming this is a low traffic website?

As for the initial post, they have a azure mobile services that could be pretty useful if you're just doing phone things and don't need everything WCF has to offer.  From what I've heard, you can access your azure mobiles services database with management studio.  Only problem I saw is you can't write c# code for it and you can only manipulate the data with javascript or something.

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dan