[mark_l_watson]

Microsoft Azure has very good support for Linux. One thing I like in particular is how quick it is to reboot a running Linux VPS with more or less memory and CPU. It has made me reconsider using vertical scaling in addition to horizontal scaling for some applications. Faster and easier than with AWS.

Except for writing a commercial app for Windows 1.0, I have not been much of a Microsoft fan over the years but that has changed. I joined their BizSpark program, I now have a family subscription to Office 365, and even recently bought a Windows 8.1 laptop. I usually develop using a Linux laptop but Windows 8.1 and OS X are also both nice enough to use for development.

I think Microsoft's change in direction with supporting their productivity tools on all platforms (for Linux, using the web based version of Office 365 is handy) is surprising, but makes a lot of sense.

[doczoidberg]

rebooting/starting Linux on a VPS takes much more time on Azure for me? This is the case I use AWS instead of Azure for my VMs.

[mark_l_watson]

That is interesting. Last month I wanted much more memory in my VPS, and using the web interface, the server was available in about 10 seconds with more RAM.

I agree though, AWS is also a great platform - I have been using it for customer work just about since they released EC2s.