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Ask HN: AWS vs Azure

8 points by C1D ↗ HN
Hello, So i'm currently trying to find a cloud host for a web app i'm working on. I've been looking at AWS and Azure and I really can't see which is the better option so i'm turning to HN. I'm new to cloud providers and would like to know the main differences between AWS and Azure. The price doesn't matter all I care about is performance, up-time and scale-ability. Thanks :)

NOTE: If this helps my web app is coded in node.js

15 comments

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niggler
Start with Azure and add AWS later:

They have an AWS-like virtual machine offering as well as the heroku-like hosting, the service is about as reliable, and if you set up your entity now you can register for bizspark and get a ton of free service to get you off the ground.

Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5293098

C1D
Thanks for that. I have some friends at Microsoft so I can get bizspark and Azure for free.
niggler
Bizspark is free for startups in general (you don't need to pull strings)
seanalex
Note: I've never used AWS.

Currently, I use Azure for my projects. Primary reasons are due to being a C# developer professionally, and it just made sense to use it. In Visual Studio, it is very easy to publish projects directly to Azure without ever actually logging into the Azure dashboard.

I can't comment on price comparisons, which are much different. But I'd say give Azure a try for free initially to demo it and see if it fits what you need.

One thing of note that I feel is not mentioned often when discussing these two options. If you are planning on using Azure's storage options, there will be a sort of "vendor-lock-in" involved with the code-base. I have great experiences with it, but both Azure and AWS have different approaches to how they handle storage options including the NoSQL choices such as Azure Table Storage.

Additionally, I have used Nodejs on Azure. I truly enjoyed it when using Azure Table Storage for my database. Overall publishing to Azure was pretty simple and required minimal setup effort. Let me know if you have any questions!

C1D
>Additionally, I have used Nodejs on Azure. I truly enjoyed it when using Azure Table Storage for my database. Overall publishing to Azure was pretty simple and required minimal setup effort. Let me know if you have any questions! That basically answers my node.js question, I actually thought node would run better on AWS for some reason also does Azure do Linux?
Avalaxy
Yes, Azure is both PaaS (Windows machines that require no configuration) and IaaS (you can install whatever you want, including Linux).
PinkSapphire
Azure does have a Linux VM option. Do correct me if I am wrong.
merinid
I would seriously consider going straight to AWS and starting to learn their APIs. It is a much scaleable service and is relied upon by startups that have actually reached web scale ( like Instagram ). Seen that your webapp is in node, you could also benefit from node specific hosting platforms, like https://www.nodejitsu.com/
amac
I've used both and both are adequate for deploying a web application. That said, I'd recommend AWS if you're looking for more than just a box e.g dns, cdn etc.
hkarthik
If you're writing code in Node.js, I assume you're doing it on a Unix (Mac OSX or Linux) development environment.

If that's the case, I would suggest AWS or something like Linode. While Azure has Linux support, I think you'll probably be better off with a service where the majority of users are using Linux and they have more supported distributions. AWS is probably a better fit there.

If you're writing your node app on Windows, then I would undoubtedly go with Azure since you'll be able to utilize Microsoft support and will likely need it at some point.

C1D
How does what I'm writing my node.js on affect anything. It really dosnt matter if I write my node.js on linux or windows, It will still run the code the same. node.js code written linux runs like node.js code wrttien on windows when I run it on windows and vice-versa.
hkarthik
In general, to get anything done with Node you're going to be pulling in open source libraries with C-based dependencies to do things like resize images or talk to databases. Many times you'll find that you will hit cross-platform compatibility issues with some of these libraries.

This is the same problem that Python, Ruby, and PHP devs had to deal with for years. And it's one of the main reasons that most of us write code on Macs when we deploy to Linux since it minimizes the cross platform headaches (although it doesn't fully eliminate them).

So long story short, if you're developing on Windows, I would recommend sticking to all things Microsoft, including Azure. You're more likely to find solutions to your cross platform problems, or at the very least have an easy path to move to Windows if they become a nightmare.

dholowiski
> The price doesn't matter all I care about is performance, up-time and scale-ability.

AWS only has your 3rd requirement (scalability). If you care about the first two, you'll have to build that yourself using the API's to handle the random failures from AWS. I've never used Azure so I'm not sure on that side.

If price really doesn't matter (over the other things) you probably want something like Rackspace's Storm On Demand servers.