AWS and Microsoft Azure are the top cloud providers and have been in a constant battle, fighting for cloud dominance. In this blog on AWS vs Azure, we will explore the differences between AWS and Azure on the basis of various factors such as their establishment, market shares, pricing, and more.
Following is the list of topics that we will cover in this blog:
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AWS Vs Azure: Establishment
Amazon Web Services
AWS (Amazon Web Services) was incepted in 2006 which fulfilled the enterprise need for an on-demand computing platform which hosts a variety of cloud computing services. It has over 200 services to offer like application services, database, compute, deployment, management, networking, storage, mobile, management, developer tools, and many more.
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Microsoft Azure
Azure was launched in 2010 to provide a competent cloud computing platform for businesses. It was renamed Microsoft Azure in 2014. It offers around 100+ services like analytics, computing, networking, storage, and also the Internet of Things. Microsoft through its global network of data centers enables the building, deploying, and managing of applications and services.
AWS Vs Azure: Availability Zones
AWS was the first one of its kind and has been in the cloud industry for a longer time than any other cloud provider. Naturally, AWS has had more time to expand its network globally. Microsoft Azure is also hosting in multiple locations but the difference in the number of their respective availability zones and regions.
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- AWS has a total of 66 availability zones and 12 more on the way
- Azure, on the other hand, has 54 regions worldwide.
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AWS Vs Azure: Pricing Models
Following table shows the comparison of the pricing models of AWS and Microsoft Azure on the basis of various machine types that they offer.
| Machine Type | AWS | Azure |
| Smallest Instance | For the most basic machine that AWS offers, you will be charged an amount of US$69 per month. This instance includes 2 virtual CPUs and 8 GB of RAM | For the same type of instance in Azure that includes 2 vCPUs and 8 GB of RAM, you will be charged an amount of US$70/month. |
| Largest Instance | The largest instance offered by AWS includes 3.84 TB of RAM and 128 vCPUs, will cost you US$3.97/hour. | The largest instance offered by Microsoft Azure includes 3.89 TB of RAM and 128 vCPUs. It costs around US$6.79/hour. |
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AWS Vs Azure: Services
Let’s compare both of them on the grounds of services to see who provides what type of services they offer and who has a competitive advantage over the other.
Networking Services
Both AWS and Microsoft Azure are really very good at providing networking services. You can extend your on-premises data center into the public or hybrid cloud using both of these providers.
| AWS | Microsoft Azure |
| If you are a business owner you can connect your Virtual Private Clouds (VPC) with your corporate data center | Through Azure ExpressRoute or site-to-site VPN networks, users can connect VNETs to on-premise data centers. |
| AWS users can group VMs into isolated networks in the cloud through its VPCs and Virtual Network (VNET) | You can achieve this in Microsoft through Azure Virtual Network (VNET) |
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Compute Services
| AWS | Microsoft Azure |
| If you want on-demand scalable computing, AWS provides you with an IaaS service called Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). They also offer a PaaS service called Elastic Beanstalk which is key in application development | Virtual machines which are mainly of the IaaS delivery model are helpful in providing good computing power to users. To deploy highly-available, highly-scalable APIs and applications |
| EC2 users can select pre-configured machine images or configure their own VMs. | Users can create VMs using Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) which is equivalent to a Machine instance |
| Docker with Elastic Beanstalk can be used where one has an infrastructure that handles the details of scaling, and capacity provisioning, load balancing, and application health monitoring. | Docker can deeply integrate with Azure infrastructure where native infrastructure capabilities can be realized without additional configuration |
Databases Services
| AWS | Microsoft Azure |
| Managed databases like Oracle, Postgresql, MySQL, MariaDB along with SQL Server itself are available in Amazon Redshift and Amazon’s Relational Database Service (RDS) | SQL Server supports relational database through Azure. |
| Database migration service is provided which allows customers to move to the cloud their on-premise relational data | The transition from on-premise SQL Server to SQL Database happens with very few changes. The Azure Stack allows one to bring Azure functionality to your on-premise data centers. |
| For NoSQL databases, DynamoDB offers high scale, low cost document and key value storage | Azure CosmosDB is the database platform that handles throughput, scaling, consistency, etc. Azure hasDocumentDB which is a highly available and high-performing document base that runs on CosmosDB. MySQL can be implemented in Azure using Azure CLI. |
Storage Services
One of the many prominent features to be considered in cloud computing services is storage.
| AWS | Microsoft Azure |
| Simple storage service (S3) is used for storage. | Through blog storage, Azure offers Block Storage and Object Storage which includes storing block blobs and page blobs |
| AWS has a better competitive edge in handling storage because of extensive documentation, free webinars, a plethora of sample code, libraries, articles, and tutorials, etc. Users find it useful. | To compete with AWS EBS, persistent block storage is provided by page blobs. |
| Relational databases, big data, and NoSQL are supported through S3 | Relational databases, big data, and NoSQL are supported through HDInsight and Azure Table |
| For hybrid cloud storage AWS storage gateway is used | For hybrid cloud storage StorSimple is used |
| Amazon Glacier provides backup | Azure backup is used for backup |
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AWS Vs Azure: Ease To Use
Amazon Web Services
- AWS offers a host of configurations and features and it takes time to understand it.
- AWS offers flexibility, customization room with support for many third-party integrations, and a lot of power.
Microsoft Azure
- Azure has an edge here because as the majority of people use Windows, Azure is easy to use for them.
- A hybrid environment is possible as it is simple to integrate on-premises Windows Servers with cloud instances.
Conclusion
AWS had started out the earliest when no other had thought storage and computing could be given on rent as a service and it would be such a huge business. Therefore it has a competitive advantage over the other cloud players because it has researched more on cloud technologies. How else do you think that AWS is able to provide more than 200 services whereas Azure provides around 100? Microsoft Azure even though it started late has an edge with Windows-based users. Those who want cloud services and are comfortable with the Windows operating system preferably choose Azure. Comparing AWS and Azure based on market share is another matter. AWS is way ahead of that its competitors. But both of them will continue to provide competent cloud services to their users. Upstarts and those with a low budget for infrastructure will always find these services a boon.
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