Question

Compare and contrast two difference cloud computing services (Amazon Web Service and Microsoft Azure). Explain the differences and the similarities and select your choice of providers if you had to make the decision for your business. Write up a comparison on the services offered (2 pages maximum). Once again, it is essential that you use your own words (do not just copy and paste from the Internet).

Answer 1

Explain the differences and the similarities and select your choice of providers if you had to make the decision for your business

AWS	Azure
On-demand cloud computing platform for Amazon	Public cloud platform for Microsoft
Friendly with the open source model from the beginning.	Not so good relationship with the open source community.
Has an edge over Azure in terms of government cloud offerings.	Limited reach when it comes to government cloud offerings.
Flexible Pricing Model	Comparatively less flexible pricing model when compared to AWS.
AWS is yet strengthening its offerings to support Hybrid clouds.	Excels in Hybrid Cloud Space-Organizations can integrate onsite servers with Cloud instances.
AWS has a software marketplace with extensive partner ecosystem -Windows and Linux	With limited Linux options, Azure is still building its partner ecosystem.
EBS storage is superfast for big data.	Standard storage has difficulties for big data and hence premium storage is required.
More mature cloud environment for big data.	Less mature for big data but Azure’s services are improving.
Machines can be accessed individually.	Machines are grouped into cloud service and respond to the same domain name but different ports.
Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2); pay by the hour.	Azure Infrastructure Services , pay by the minute.
S3 – Short-term archiving and retrieval. Long term data archiving and retrieval through Amazon Glacier.	Blobs, Queues and Tables- Similar to S3. No long term data archiving and retrieval option yet.
Security is provided through user defined roles with exceptional permission controls.	Provides security by enabling permissions on the whole account.

AWS vs Azure - Compute

Service AWS Azure Deploy, Manage, and Maintain Virtual Servers EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) Virtual Machines and Virtual Machine Scale Sets Docker Container Registry ECR (EC2 Container Registry) Container Registry Scale Instances Automatically Auto Scaling Virtual Machine Scale Sets Auto Scaling App Service Scale Capability (PAAS) Platform-as-a-service Elastic Beanstalk Cloud Services Integrating systems and running backend logic processes AWS Lambda Event Grid Web Jobs Functions

Azure vs AWS - Object Storage

Service AWS Azure Service Name S3 Azure Storage-Blobs Hot S3 Standard Hot Blob Storage Cool S3 Standard -Infrequent Access Cool Blob Storage Cold Amazon Glacier Archive Blob Storage Object Size Limits 5 TB 4.75 TB # of Object Limits Unlimited Unlimited

Azure vs AWS– Block/Disk Storage

Services	AWS	Azure
Service Name	EBS	Managed Disks
Volume Types	Cold HDD General Purpose SSD PIOPs SSD Throughput Optimized HDD	Standard Premium SSD
Availability SLA	99.9%	99.9%
IOPs/GB for SSD	GP SSD -3 PIOPS SSD up to 50/GB.	1.8 to 4.9 – This is fixed based on the disk type.

AWS vs Azure Pricing

AWS provides pay-as-you-go model and charges per hour while Azure’s pricing model is also pay-as-you-go , they charge per minute. AWS can help you save more with increased usage- the more you use, the less you pay. AWS instances can be purchased based on one of the following models –

• Reserved Instances – Paying an upfront cost based on the use, one can reserve an instance for 1 to 3 years.
• On-demand Instances -Just pay for what you use without paying any upfront cost.
• Spot Instances- Bid for extra capacity based on the availability.

Azure offers short term commitments to its users allowing them to choose between pre-paid or monthly charges. Azure is a little less flexible than AWS when it comes to pricing model.

AWS vs Azure – Databases

All software applications today require a database to save information. Azure and AWS both provide database services, regardless of whether you need a relational database or a NoSQL offering. Amazon’s RDS (Relational Database Service ) and Microsoft’s equivalent SQL Server database both are highly available and durable and also provide automatic replication.

AWS works perfectly with NoSQL and relational databases providing a mature cloud environment for big data. AWS’ core analytics offering EMR ( a managed Hadoop, Spark and Presto solution) helps set up an EC2 cluster and provides integration with various AWS services. Azure also supports both NoSQL and relational databases and as well Big Data through Azure HDInsight and Azure table. Azure provides analytical products through its exclusive Cortana Intelligence Suite that comes with Hadoop, Spark, Storm, and HBase.

Amazon’s RDS supports six popular database engines – MariaDB, Amazon Aurora, MySQL, Microsoft SQL, PostgreSQL, and Oracle while Azure’s SQL database service is solely based on MS SQL Server. Azure’s interface and tooling makes it easy to perform various DB operations while AWS has more instance types which you can provision and get that additional control over DB instances

AWS vs Azure – Content Delivery and Networking

Every cloud service provider offers multiple networks and partners that interconnect the data centres across the globe through diverse products. AWS provides Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) for users to create isolated networks within the cloud. A user can create route tables, private IP address ranges, subnets, and network gateways within a VPC. Similarly, Azure offers Virtual Network (VNET) for users to create isolated networks. Both AWS and Azure provide firewall option and solutions to extend on-premise data centre into the cloud.

AWS vs Azure - Content Delivery and Networking

Service Name AWS Azure Isolated private cloud Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Virtual Network (VNET) Global Content Delivery Networks CloudFront Content Delivery Network (CDN) Manage DNS Names and records Route 53 Traffic Manager Azure DNS Dedicated Private Network Connection DirectConnect ExpressRoute

Below is the topmost comparison between Microsoft Azure vs Amazon Web Services

The basis of comparison between Microsoft Azure vs Amazon Web Services	Microsoft Azure	Amazon Web Services
Platform As A Service	Azure supports Cloud Services	AWS supports Elastic Beanstalk
Instances Family	Azure support 4	AWS support 7
Instance Types	Maximum up to 33	Maximum up to 38
Caching	Azure supports Redis Cache	ASW supports Elastic Cache
Analytics	Azure Support tool- Azure Stream Analytics	AWS support tool – Amazon Kinesis
Data Warehouse	Azure Supports SQL Data Warehouse	ASW supports Redshift
Virtual Networking	Virtual Network	Virtual Private Cloud
Administration	Log Analytics, Operations Management Suite, Resource Health, Storage Explorer	Application Discovery Service, System manager, Personal Health Dashboard
Pricing	For Infrastructure pay Per Minute	For Infrastructure pay Per Hour
Big Data Platform	Less mature comparing AWS for Big Data environment	More mature for Big Data environment
Hadoop	HDInsight	Elastic Map Reduce
NoSQL Databases	Azure Document DB	Amazon Dynamo DB
Security Features	Provides security by enabling permissions on the whole account	More Secured as security is provided through user-defined roles with exceptional permission controls.
Object Size Limits	4.75 TB	5 TB
How many platforms are Matured	Azure is 8 years old	AWS is 18 years old
Market Capture	20% of the entire cloud market	62% of the entire cloud market
Maximum Processor in VM	128	128
Maximum Memory in VM	3800 GB	3904 GB
SAL Availability	99.90%	99.95%
Operating System Supported	RHEL, OpenSUSE, Windows, SLES, CoreOS, CentOS, Cloud Linux, Debian, FreeBSD, Ubuntu, Oracle Linux	RHEL, Ubuntu, Oracle Linux, Cloud Linux, CentOS, Windows, SLES, Windows, FreeBSD, Debian, CoreOS
Platform	Public Cloud Platform for Microsoft	An on-demand cloud computing platform for Amazon Web Services
Open Source Community	Not much open-source tool supported	A large number of Open Source Tool-Supported

Conculsion:

Most of the data are stored in the cloud. and it opened the door of more growth and business opportunities to cloud vendors. With the exponential growth and demand of Cloud Technology, public cloud vendor are in very high demands. Cloud vendors are increasing their services and reducing their commercials to lead in the market. 62 % of market share is occupied by AWS while 20% by Azure. Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure are truly game player of cloud services. They are important players in the cloud industry. Both Microsoft Azure vs Amazon Web Services are well matured and providing a long list of services. You can choose any of them based on your project requirement. Due to competition, both Microsoft Azure vs Amazon Web Services are trying to attract the customer. Amazon AWS offers the most cloud services but if you are looking for a hybrid approach then Microsoft Azure is a better choice.