[Maarten88]

What I don't understand about Azure pricing is how much more expensive a Windows VM is compared to an equivalent Linux machine. A D1v2 costs $54 with Linux and $104 with Windows (per month). This extends to larger instances: Windows costs twice the price of Linux on the same instance. The only difference is the Windows licence, and $50 per month for the smallest machine (and hundreds for bigger instances) seems very unreasonable.

The only explanation I can think of for this is that they probably want to compete on price with AWS, while keeping profits from their traditional customers high.

[gsam]

There's also the fact that their Windows infrastructure is probably costlier to maintain. Windows wasn't built for this use-case, and they're desperately trying to catch up. In the meantime, they have this convenient project called Linux on hand.

[nbevans]

"Costlier to maintain" how? "Not built for this use-case" errr? The real answer is licensing cost. If you already own a Windows Server license then you are free to use it and gain 41% price reductions via this: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/hybrid-use-benefit...

[thr0waway1239]

Interesting: when I combine your comment with the GP's comment, I start wondering about the recurring revenue aspect of Azure.

There seems to be three types of Windows Server licenses you can purchase [1]. Assuming a price differential $50 per month between Linux/Windows as GP states.

I don't know exactly what would be the server license you would purchase if you got the actual license. But after month 20, even after the 41% discount - lets round it out to 50%, you have paid more than a one-time payment for the Essentials server. After month 36, you have paid more than a one-time payment for Standard server. It takes a while to get to the DataCenter server (~20 years), and I honestly don't know enough to figure out which use case matches which license type, but if someone can manage with the Essentials server (touted as being useful for small businesses up to 25 employees), then you are now paying, just based on difference between Linux and Windows, a perpetual excess fee over getting a Windows server after about 1.5 years for Essentials and 3 years for Standard.

Obviously, on the cloud you get a lot of extra features, including not having to pay the cost of server maintenance. But for the traditional customers GP is referring to, that might well be a sunk cost. (E.g. you need your sysadmin anyway because of other internal stuff)

However, this statement from GP might actually make a lot of sense:

> The only explanation I can think of for this is that they probably want to compete on price with AWS, while keeping profits from their traditional customers high.

If, like is usually mentioned here on HN, you probably wouldn't go with Windows for server related stuff anyway if you just started out, this does seem like an excellent golden goose for MS - keep your traditional customers within the Windows ecosystem without really doing a whole lot for them in terms of competitive pricing, and in addition turn your one time revenue generating software (Windows server license) into a recurring revenue generating software.

Having said that, I suppose this also means it is generally easier for AWS and Google to compete on price, because MS cannot allow this pegging (Linux vs Windows comparison) to get too wide because you would get comments like GP's.

Is that a reasonable analysis?

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-platform/windows-serve... DataCenter: $6150 Standard: $882 Essentials: $500

[besselheim]

How do you mean? All current Windows versions and Linux distributions have built in support for running under Hyper-V, which the Azure hypervisor is based upon.

[timClicks]

It'll be price segmentation. Perhaps Windows VMs can't be scheduled so tightly together by a hypervisor, but it'll mainly be about charging what the market is prepared to pay.