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by neogodless 1944 days ago
While I was doing the "free 30 days + 12 months of free stuff", a certain level of MSSQL was listed as free, but hidden under that is creating the storage for MSSQL which is a separate and additional cost that you cannot avoid. (At least, not that I could figure out.)

By the end of my 30 days, I found the bare minimum performing low volume .NET + SQL on Azure was going to be $30+/month even for just a prototype/development site, and I can pay less elsewhere for higher performance (though perhaps less control). And when I say "performing", I just mean the VM not being too slow to actually use as a UI, and throwing low memory errors constantly. The free tiers for Windows Server are, in my opinion, unusable at all.
2 comments
redstripe 1943 days ago
I run a hobby .net core website on a $5 digital ocean instance and it runs fast as hell. You definitively don't need to spend $30. I'm using a PG database but it looks like maybe it would even be possible to run SQL server on a 2GB instance.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-...

You just have to bite the bullet and learn a few linux admin tasks like setting up nginx, supervisor, file permissions.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/host-and-deploy...

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GordonS 1944 days ago
You do get some free storage with the free tier database, but it is only a paltry 32MB. Additional storage is only $0.221/GB/m though. The paid cheapest SQL database (B0) is only $5/m, which comes with 2GB of storage. In practise, this is absolutely fine for light usage.

By .NET + SQL, I assume you mean you were using an App Service? They come with a lot of convenience, but I definitely agree that they are too expensive, especially when considering the level of compute you get. I raised this with someone from Microsoft before, and they said they were confident the value offered was worth it.

There is a free tier for App Service though. It's a shared compute model - I tried it a while back, and the performance was totally fine for light usage.

I wouldn't try to run Windows Server on a B1S, as they only have 1GB of RAM :) You might just about get away with it for Server Nano, but I've never actually used it. Best stick with Linux or BSD for these tiny VMs.

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