How to choose the right Windows Azure subscription - Windows Server - Techguide
Breaking News: CFOs increasingly involved in IT investment decisions

ZDNet / Techguide / Windows Server

How to choose the right Windows Azure subscription

By John Joyner , TechRepublic on January 17, 2012 

 

Summary

John Joyner goes over the main decision points of choosing a Windows Azure subscription. Here are some tips for picking out the right plan for your needs.

Events

Echelon 2012
June 11 and 12, 2012

University Cultural Centre, National University of Singapore

Startup Asia Jakarta 2012
June 7 and 8, 2012

12th Floor, Annex Building, Wisma Nusantara Complex, Jl. M.H. Thamrin No. 59 Jakarta 10350, Indonesia

MMA Forum Singapore
April 23-25, 2012

Grand Hyatt Singapore

Submit

When evaluating a public cloud provider, a key decision involves the "business usability" of the solution. In other words, how easy is it to select, purchase, and pay for services in the public cloud? This is a different area to consider, compared to the technical features of the cloud solution.

An otherwise sound application, that leverages a public cloud in a technically elegant or efficient manner, can still turn sour due to unexpectedly high consumption costs, or by selecting the wrong sizes and capacities of hosted services. This article covers the user experience when purchasing, provisioning, and running a Virtual Machine (VM) role in the Windows Azure public cloud.

There is a lot to like about the Microsoft public cloud VM hosting implementation in Azure. The fact that you can upload your own Window Server 2008 R2 VHD image is appealing -- some cloud providers only allow you to spin up VMs using VHD images they provide. The Azure mega-datacenters around the world are extremely robust and well-connected platforms to host anyone's application. Customers can join Windows Azure VM role instances to an on-premises Active Directory domain using the "Windows Azure Connect" service.

The big downside to the Azure VM model is that persistent data storage is not available, so you need to (1) always deploy at least two instances of any VM role and (2) develop and support a process that configures a replacement VM with the volatile data it needs to do its job. If your server-based application can be deployed in Azure within these limitations, you need to buy the right-sized VM and the correct subscription terms for your business model.

Selecting the right Azure subscription offering
At the heart of your Azure purchasing experience are one or more Azure subscriptions. Everything in Azure account management revolves around your subscription(s). A subscription can be associated with any Azure service in any quantity, such as two Windows Azure core instances and one SQL Azure instance, all in the same subscription. A subscription is a sales vehicle for Azure services, usually linked to a credit card, and may be tied to a particular promotion or special offer.

As you scale out your Azure services, it's easiest to just add new services to the same subscription. You might have several subscriptions because you got a better deal or a special promotion on the later ones. Be advised it's not easy to move applications or share data between subscriptions. For example, in the case of VMs, uploaded Virtual Hard Drives (VHDs) can be shared among instances of a VM role in the same subscription, but not across separate subscriptions.

There are two main decisions to make when purchasing an Azure VM role: The compute instance size and the Azure product offering.

  • Select the size of the compute instance(s) you need. There are five classes of compute instance you can purchase, from extra-small to extra-large. Each instance has progressively more processor, memory, storage, I/O performance, and cost.
  • Decide what kind of Azure product offering is right for you. The most important decision is whether you will go with the "Pay-As-You-Go" model, or the "Subscription" model. In the subscription model, you commit to use a resource for 6 months and take advantage of price discounts of up to 20 percent off of the Pay-As-You-Go rate.

Figure A - Azure subscriptions are managed in the customer portal along with other Microsoft online services.

Once you have purchased your Azure subscription, you can view the status of the subscription in the Microsoft Online Services Customer Portal (Figure A). This is a common customer-facing portal for all Microsoft public cloud services, such as Windows InTune and Office 365. In this portal you can take actions like modify the billing address for a subscription or add quantities of roles to your Azure applications.

"Would you like to view your bill online?"
You won't get any kind of paper billing statement from Windows Azure. Your credit card will be billed each month for your base subscription costs, overages to your subscription allowances, and "pay-as-you-go" charges. Since automatic electronic billing can fall into the out of sight/out of mind category, to avoid surprises you want to keep a firm handle on what you are paying for.

Microsoft will send you an email reminder (Figure B) when your use of metered cloud resources, such as compute hours, storage blobs, or network bandwidth exceeds 75 percent of the allowance for your Azure instances and offerings. If you are on a monthly subscription model with 750 compute-hours, you will expect to get this email around the fourth week of the month, after consuming 23 compute-days (562 compute-hours). This is a welcome feature of the service to avoid surprises.

Figure B - Email received when an Azure instance exceeds 75 percent of the monthly base units.

Viewing live Azure service consumption and billing data
An important feature for a public cloud provider to extend to customers is access to a live view of the allowance vs. consumption data. In the case of Windows Azure, you can view your exact Azure usage charges for past and current billing periods. Figure C shows billing details for a Windows Azure Compute instance and associated Windows Azure Storage.

Figure C - Reviewing live detailed billing information in the customer portal. (click to enlarge)

John Joyner is senior architect at ClearPointe, a Microsoft MVP for Operations Manager, and co-author of the Operations Manager: Unleashed book series.

Talkback

Add your opinion

In order to post a comment, you need to be registered. (Sign In or register below)

Post your comment

Resource Centre Useful content from our premier sponsors

Windows Server TechGuides

Configuring Server Manager for multiple connections with Windows Server 8

Configure Remote Desktop through Group Policy

4 methods of remotely managing Windows Server 2008 Server Core

Install Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 to start building Metro-style apps

Hybrid, on-demand BI with SQL Azure Reporting

Manage apps across Microsoft's public, private clouds

How Google competes with Microsoft in cloud

Locate Windows Azure partners with Microsoft Pinpoint directory

How Windows Azure changes vendor, reseller relationships

Deploy an Azure VM Role Service Package

More

ZDNet Asia Live

Alibaba seeks $2.3B from shareholders for Yahoo deal http://t.co/ySyCwLvJ via @zdnetasia

Rise in Chinese-funded acquisitions could trigger more hurdles: By Ellyne Phneah , ZDNet Asia on May 22, 2012 (6... http://t.co/L4QzDq3H

Kodak loses patent ruling against Apple, RIM - ZDNet Asia http://t.co/O7P8U2Ya

Rise in Chinese-funded acquisitions could trigger more hurdles - ZDNet Asia http://t.co/WJCfhWLs

Kodak loses patent ruling against Apple, RIM. http://t.co/N1j7aZ6o

#radio Radio Serbia by EnjoyIT 1.0 http://t.co/nGQFvX2E

Rise in <b>Chinese</b>-funded acquisitions could trigger more hurdles http://t.co/0pXBS1HR

Rise in Chinese-funded acquisitions could trigger more hurdles: By Ellyne Phneah , ZDNet Asia on May 22, 2012 (6... http://t.co/W3SOdw2c

RT @zdnetasia: CFOs increasingly involved in IT investment decisions. http://t.co/8QrfwOSb

CFOs increasingly involved in IT investment decisions http://t.co/XD1LerFq via @zdnetasia #PrivateCloud #SC2012 #CAPEX

Rise in Chinese-funded acquisitions could trigger more hurdles. http://t.co/VC3G3m3o

RT @zdnetasia: Rise in Chinese-funded acquisitions could trigger more hurdles. http://t.co/VC3G3m3o

So much as we know , MTK6575 extremely integrated frequency1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor, the superiority of 3G / HSPA Modem, and help the...

2 hours ago by y15822137359 on 5 SaaS adoption speed bumps to avoid

Rise in Chinese-funded acquisitions could trigger more hurdles - ZDNet Asia: Rise in Chinese-funded acquisitions... http://t.co/bZaAQnRL

Rise in Chinese-funded acquisitions could trigger more hurdles http://t.co/mIsuZjnU http://t.co/erFX4aVv #arcavir

http://t.co/VNaZtseV Rise in Chinese-funded acquisitions could trigger more hurdles: "Cash r... http://t.co/N0gZZEdR http://t.co/wiqY9ktt

I reckon your view: "CRM is strategy, not software", if a company replicating the approach uses in ERP implementation into CRM, what they...

1 day ago by wykoong on Gartner: Mobile CRM gives better ROI than social

This video will teach you about the Excel fill handle but also provide you with a workook to download... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...

1 day ago by TradeBrother on A quick fill handle trick for Microsoft Excel

waiting...

3 days ago by eapete on What should count in a company's market value?

Boy, you've opened a can of worms now.

Wait for the rants & raves.

3 days ago by eapete on What should count in a company's market value?

I was puzzling before this whether to replicate the success formula we executed for a financial institute, and come out with a standard s...

4 days ago by wykoong on Drop the egos, copy ideas, then innovate

Keep up with ZDNet Asia

Facebook Join our fan page

RSS Feeds Subscribe now

NewslettersNewsletters Subscribe today

Twitter Follow us

Whitepapers

Understanding Awareness in Mixed Presence Collaboration

How to gain total message system visibility

IBM System x® x86 servers: Delivering customer satisfaction by excelling in hardware and support

Analytics and the Smarter Planet

Social Media Analytics: Making Customer Insights Actionable

Downloads

Make Me Old : Photo editing and effects to look older 1.1

MarsEdit 3.5.3

NETWORK PLAYER CONTROLLER - US 2.03

Sleep Sound Premium Funny 1.0

Confidence: The Game 2.10