Azure Hands-On Series 4: Is Microsoft Azure really expensive? Is it worth it?

In the previous article, I believe that you have a basic understanding of azure, and then we look at the price as one of the most important factors in choosing public cloud services as a business. We all know that the so-called public cloud, is to make it resources in our lives similar to water and electricity resources, on-demand, on-time billing. The point is to let it spend on real needs, and to make the public cloud resource consumption as close to the requirements as possible, so as to achieve the effect of the public cloud as much as possible.

So it is not difficult to see, choose the right configuration, corresponding to the appropriate needs, and then have a higher quality of services and prices, is the public cloud very specific comprehensive capacity embodiment. Here we still look at the price of a medium-performance Linux virtual machine (A3 level, Quad core, 7G memory, 120G disk):

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We refer to the same configuration, and then look at the price of domestic friends:

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Because friends do not exactly match the model of Azure's virtual machine performance configuration, I believe that the comparison will make it true that the price of Azure in China is actually more competitive than that of your friends. In addition, careful friends will see, on-time payment of virtual machine services, public network traffic is a separate billing, friends of the virtual machine on demand, the public network traffic price of 0.80 yuan/GB. The price of Azure in China is as follows:

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According to 10 this configuration of the virtual machine is not powered off for one year, and contains 1TB of traffic, the price of Friends is:

Compute resources: 1.79 x 10 VMS per hour x 744 hours x 12 months = 159,811/year

Traffic resources: 0.8 per GB of traffic x 1000GB x 12 month = 9,600/year

Total: 169,411/year

We look at the price of azure in China according to the same algorithm:

Compute resources: 1.31 x 10 VMS per hour x 744 hours x 12 months = 116,956

Traffic resources: 0.67 per GB of traffic x 1000GB x 12 month = 8,040

Total: 124,996/year

You can see that China's azure, even if it only looks at the price, is more advantageous. So does Azure China have this advantage? In fact, far more than this advantage, the main point here is three points, respectively, bandwidth limit, billing mode and data retention .

Bandwidth limit

For China's azure, the virtual machine is not the maximum bandwidth limit, that is, how much bandwidth to use, how much bandwidth is actually used according to the network load of the virtual machine, only according to the traffic of 0.67 yuan/GB to billing, this is the true concept of public cloud, on-demand use per use charges.

The friend's virtual machine is not so, the maximum bandwidth for each virtual machine is 100M, and is still billed as traffic usage:

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To be blunt, it is also billed by usage, and the maximum bandwidth available to friends is only 100Mbs and metered, compared to China Azure has no maximum bandwidth limit and the traffic price is relatively cheap, network resiliency and throughput is stronger. This is like, you rented a house, the landlord told small A, all the electrical power of small A can not exceed 100W, how to collect electricity charges or how to collect, and small C in another landlord rented house without limiting electrical power. There is no difference, but in summer small a can be open air-conditioning to watch TV, and small c can only be blown fan watching TV.

Billing mode

Watching the difference between the bandwidth, we look at the billing model, China's azure billing is very interesting, we can shut down the virtual machine to stop billing, such as our 12 months above, perhaps actually our virtual machine only need to run 3 months a year, then the cost can save three-fourths:

Compute resources: 1.31 x 10 VMS per hour x 744 hours x 3 months = 29,239/year

Traffic resources: 0.67 per GB of traffic x 1000GB x 3 month = 2,010/year

Total: 31,249/year

However, some friends asked, since China's Azure can do so, the friend is also on time billing, you can also shut down the virtual machine to save money, to achieve the same effect. In practice, however, some friends do not support the cost reduction by turning off on-time billable VMS and do not support the tuning of the virtual machine configuration (including bandwidth spikes, CPU, and memory) during use.

In other words, even if the virtual machine has been shut down, many friends will continue to be billed, resulting in a lot of unnecessary expenses at night.

Want to know how Azure makes you more economical?

http://reinember.blog.51cto.com/2919431/1784569

And the Chinese azure is able to be accurate to the minutes to charge, so avoid a lot of unnecessary costs, such as sometimes we have to face the following situation:

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However, China Azure can avoid such problems directly, because of the higher the granularity of billing, so that users can further make money to spend on the edge.

Data retention

Now that we've seen so much about money, we have to think about what to do if the machine running in the clouds suddenly shuts down when we are asleep. To this end, I also specifically compared the major cloud service providers for downtime after the countermeasures.

Cloud service Provider 1: account balances less than 0 are considered to be under-paid. From the time of arrears (hourly settlement time) within 2 hours of the metered host can still be used, and continue to be billed; After 2 hours, the host mirror will be shut down, while the charges are stopped, if the account is not credited within 24 hours after the shutdown, the corresponding resources will be destroyed and cannot be retrieved.

Cloud service Provider 2: when the cloud account is in arrears, that is, the Cash account (the voucher account is only valid for the Universal coupon available) balance "of 0 yuan," pay-per-use "cloud server will not be available, such as no renewal within 7 days, the server will be automatically released, the data is not recoverable.

Cloud service Provider 3: The data is automatically closed and retained for seven days after expiration, and a renewal notification is sent to the user. After the renewal, the system will automatically restore the use of the original service. When it expires for more than seven days, the data resource is purged and cannot be recovered. The user needs to re-purchase the service.

China Azure: to avoid impacting your service, you need to recharge it as soon as possible. Because once the balance is exhausted, your subscription will be automatically suspended and you will not be able to continue using Azure services (your data will be retained for 90 days).

Not hard to see, compared to a few days of data retention, China Azure is very kind, even if the cloud account is not money, can still retain data for 90 days. The previous billing model introduced, can shut down the machine to reduce costs, the normal situation is impossible to suddenly have no money, even if the balance is used up or other changes, 90 days of data retention time, completely enough.

When it comes to prices, some friends will say, you are talking about the use of charges, if uttered a year, the price of China's azure more expensive than the friend! As follows:

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In fact, China Azure has also launched a virtual-package-for-business-year service after April 1, which offers up to 48% to 84% of the price at official standard prices. Here we still take a medium-performance Linux virtual machine (A3 level, Quad core, 7G memory, 120G disk) For example, the original price is:

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small R from the multi-channel to inquire, the annual A3 Linux The unit price of the virtual machine is 0.48/hour, one year prices:

0.48 x 744 h x 12 month = 4,285.44/year

At one glance, there is no big price advantage in the year, but in fact China Azure's annual service is not simply a virtual machine that runs 24x7 for a year, but instead buys up a virtual machine model for 12 months, and a total of 744 hours of running time per month.

Give two examples:

Small A purchase of 1 years of A3 Model Linux virtual machine, one-time payment of 4,285.44, then the small a can be opened during the Workday 3 and the same model of the year virtual machine A3 Linux virtual machine to achieve workload response (8 hours); shut down all virtual machines of the same model size (16 hours) during non-work . As long as the A3 Linux model of the virtual machine in one months of use within 744 hours can be, beyond the normal price of the official website billing;

Small C purchased 1 years of A3 Model Linux virtual machine, a one-time payment of 4,285.44, then the small a in the face of peak access can be increased by 1 and the same model as the annual virtual machine is A3 Linux virtual machines to respond to business growth (a total of 2 A3 Linux virtual machines); turn off all virtual machines of the same size as the annual virtual machine at night, as long as the A3 Linux model of the virtual machine in one months of use within 744 hours, Out of the normal price according to the official website charges;

China azure with this kind of year-old virtual machine, the year of the virtual machine is really expensive? If the purchase of the annual virtual machine, and in accordance with the use of on-time billing, that is, enjoy the annual price of the package, but also enjoy the flexibility of on-time billing, Microsoft Cloud is really expensive?

Reference documents:

Http://bbs.qcloud.com/thread-10813-1-1.html

Https://help.aliyun.com/knowledge_detail/5974991.html

Http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_6b8988220102weey.html

https://www.azure.cn/support/faq/#How-to-check-whether-the-correct-vm-and-no-longer-has-to-stop-charging

This article is from the "Reinember" blog, make sure to keep this source http://reinember.blog.51cto.com/2919431/1787654

Azure Hands-On Series 4: Is Microsoft Azure really expensive? Is it worth it?