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by okreallywtf 3477 days ago
What are the problems you have the most with it? I've been working with it for a couple years now and despite a clunky interface (and the bifurcation of the two portals) the infrastructure has seemed pretty solid and has saved us (small dev shop working for small/medium companies) a ton of time and money. For most things (spinning up a new env with databases, redis caches, storage accounts etc) it is remarkably easy once you get used to the process and occasional workarounds. Granted I haven't used the other cloud services and I want to do that on my own time just to have a point of comparison.

I find myself being really suspicious whenever something being used by thousands or millions of people is just waved off by other people as being terrible. To me being "terrible" usually translates as "I started with something else and it works differently than this and its what I'm used to has its own failings and workarounds but I'm at least used to them and more productive there and I don't really feel like taking the time to get used to how things work for this other system."
1 comments
morgante 3477 days ago
It's been a while since I last used Azure, but here are some of the bigger problems I remember:

1. No managed option for MySQL or Postgres hosting.

2. Hard to find resources in the panel and lots of confusion on security practices.

3. Instances randomly dying at an astonishing rate.

You're right that "terrible" is hyperbole. I'm sure there are people who are happy with Azure, especially if they're using a Microsoft stack.

Your translation of "terrible" is how I feel about GCP: it's fine, but it takes me longer to do things because I'm familiar with AWS. Compared to Azure, where I would spend hours on trying to do something and still couldn't find a way to do it.

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tallanvor 3477 days ago
Well, for #1, is that really surprising when they offer Azure SQL Server instead? And they offer a NoSQL option as well (two, if you include their DocumentDB service). #2 probably more depends on what you are used to. #3 I can see being a problem, although I haven't seen it myself. I've had 3 servers running for over 6 months now and they haven't died once.
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morgante 3477 days ago
Just because the suck isn't surprising doesn't mean it's not there.

Like I said, if you're interested in the Microsoft ecosystem then Azure is probably great. I'm not. For running an open source stack, Azure is not competitive with AWS and GCP.

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