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MICROSOFT AZURE vs AWS (Amazon Web Services) is the biggest dispute of the decade in the cloud domain. The two Cloud Computing giants Azure and AWS are relentlessly taking the crest honors for a while now contesting for their supremacy. Ascertain the best cloud computing platform for your organization requirements checking out this article.
WHAT IS AZURE?
Microsoft Azure is a public cloud computing service by Microsoft for various tasks like building, testing, evolving and managing applications & services through Microsoft managed data centers. It is initially released on 1 February, 2010 as Windows Azure, later renamed Microsoft Azure on 25 March, 2014. Licensed by Closed source for platform, Open source for client SDKs. Official website is www.azure.microsoft.com .
It provides SaaS (software as a service), PaaS (platform as a service) and IaaS (infrastructure as a service). It also supports many programming languages, tools and frame works including both Microsoft specific and third party software and systems.
WHAT IS AWS?
Amazon Web Services(AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon providing on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies,and governments on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. It is launched on March, 2006. Official URL is aws.amazon.com .
These provide a variety of basic abstract technical infrastructure and distributed computing building blocks and tools. AWS operates from many global geographical regions including 6 in North America.
In order to differentiate these cloud giants, key features to be compared are listed out
- Compute power
- Storage.
- Network.
- Pricing models.
- Databases.
- Compliance.
- Containers and Orchestration support.
- User-friendliness.
- Hybrid cloud capabilities.
- Pros.
- Cons.
Microsoft Azure VS AWS
COMPUTE POWER
| AWS | AWS uses EC2 (elastic cloud computing), when the available resource footprint can grow or shrink o demand using cloud computing , with a local cluster providing only one part of the resource pool available to all the jobs. AWS EC2 users can choose pre-configured machine images or configure their own VMs or customize MIs. Users choose size, power, memory capacity and number of VMs and choose from different regions and availability zones with which to launch from. |
| AZURE | AZURE users can choose Virtual Hard Disk (VHD), which is equivalent to a Machine Instance, to create a VM. VHD can be pre-configured by Microsoft, the user or a third party. The user must specify the amount of cores and memory. |
The key difference is that EC2 can be adapted to a range of options, where as Azure VMs pair with other tools to help place applications on cloud.
See Also : Best free Cloud storage Apps (2020)
STORAGE
| AWS | AWS storage relies on machine instances. Once an instance is started, temporary storage is assigned and destroyed when the instance is terminated in AWS. Block storage, that can be separated or attached to an instance is provided. Archive services with Glacier and Object storage with S3 are offered. It completely supports relational & NoSQL databases and Big data. |
| AZURE | In Azure, temporary storage is offered through D drive, block storage through page Blobs for VMs. Block Bobs, files serve as object storage also. It also offers site recovery, import, export and Azure backup for additional archiving and recovery options. It also supports relational databases, NoSQL, big data through Azure table and HDInsight. |
Both Azure and AWS are equally strong in this area.
NETWORK
| AWS | AWS offers Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) helping users to create isolated networks within the cloud. Then, it uses API gateways for cross-premises connectivity. It uses elastic load balancing for smooth operation during networking. Users can create subnets, route tables, private IP address ranges and network gateways within VPC. |
| AZURE | Azure offers virtual network (VNET) instead of VPC, offering users ability to create isolated networks as well as subnets, route tables, private IP address ranges and network gateways. You will use VPN gateway for cross-network connectivity. Load balancer and application gateway handles Load balancing. |
Both the companies offer solutions to extend the on-premise data center into the cloud and firewall option without compromising your data.
PRICING MODELS
| AWS | Amazon has a pay-as-you-go model, they charge per hour.On demand: pay for what you choose without upfront cost.Spot: customers offer for a extra capacity available. |
| AZURE | AWS is also pay-as-you-go model, but they charge per minute. If provides a more precise pricing model. You can receive BT MPLS express route pricing for Azure, allowing you to extend your private business network into the cloud with the functionality you need. It also offers short term commitments opting between pre-paid or monthly charges. |
Both offer free introductory tiers with your on-premise software, giving you the taste of how their systems can integrate.
DATABASES
| AWS | AWS supports more instance types,Amazon Aurora.MariaDB.Microsoft SQL.My SQL.Oracle.PostgreQL. |
| AZURE | Azure’s SQL database, is a completely based on Microsoft SQL. It works perfectly with NoSQL and relational databases. It’s interface and tooling are delightfully customer-friendly for a smooth database operations. |
Inspite of whether you need a relational database or a NoSQL, both AWS and Azure have healthy database offerings.
COMPLIANCE
| AWS | Amazon has had a very good relationship with Government agencies and their compliance offers including certifications in ITAR, DISA, HIPAA, CJIS, FIPS for a really long time now. It provides reliable security that, only screened persons can access the cloud, a must for agencies handling sensitive information. |
| AZURE | Microsoft states to have more than 50 complaint offerings, which include ITAR, DISA, HIPAA, CJIS, FIPS and a lots more. It provides security equal to AWS. |
Both offer a strong and equal security permissions so that only the screened persons can access a government-level cloud.
CONTAINER AND ORCHESTRATION SUPPORT
| AWS | Amazon keeps investing in meeting demand for new services, introducing more mature analytics. Machine learning tools and features targeting IOT are added and allows mobile apps to be built or create high-performance computing environment. Also supports for Docker. |
| AZURE | Microsoft has a great track record for meeting new demands and offers Hadoop support with Azure HDInsight. Windows server 2016 provides integration with Docker for both windows container and Hyper-V containers. |
Azure can run Windows or Linux containers, making it a formidable competitor with AWS.
USER-FRIENDLINESS
| AWS | For beginners, Amazon provides more features and configurations. Many IT pros agree that AWS offers a fine power, flexibility, customization room for the support of many third-party integrations. |
| AZURE | If you are a window’s admin, Azure is easier because of its windows platform and does not require learning. Tools like SQL database and Active directory work well with Azure. |
There is a learning curve with AWS while Azure is established.
HYBRID CLOUD CAPABILITIES
| AWS | With the launch of Outposts in 2018, AWS started seriously into hybrid deployments, a completely managed service where the vendor delivers pre-configured racks to your premises, services can be run in the data center. It unveiled Snowball Edge in November, a 100 TB hard drive to move workloads between cloud and clients data centers. |
| AZURE | Azure has been the go-to option for hybrid developments with the well-established Azure stack. It provides customers with the needed software and hardware to utilize Azure public cloud services from a local data center with a shared management portal, code and APIs for simple interoperability. Platforms like Azure storsimple, Hybrid SQL server and Azure stack , a new hybrid cloud platform allowing you to bring nearly full public Azure functionality. |
AWS has recently take up and is still developing its hybrid story whereas Azure has a longtime legacy in the sector.
PROS
| AWS | Its overwhelming dominance in the market.Elder comparatively effecting the services wisely.Most mature service available currently.Pre-existing infrastructure. |
| AZURE | Azure has made up by a real hard work.Sped up by adapting its pre-existing on-premises solutions for the cloud.It is omni present.Many organizations rely on Azure comparatively.Offers discounts if you are an old customer. |
CONS
| AWS | Costly price.Difficulty to make heads or tails of AWS’s pricing structure. |
| AZURE | Relatively young cloud platform.Is less enterprise ready. |
WHICH IS THE BEST?
Choosing AWS or Azure depends completely on your team and what you prioritise most. It is very difficult to accurately predict about the fortunes of these platforms.
Research firm Gartner published a document claiming that, “Public cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google cloud and IBM cloud, are innovation juggernauts that offer highly operating-cost-competitive alternatives to traditional, on-premises hosting environments”.
From the above-descripted features, one can opt according to the Organization requirements in the specific sector.
