[glogla]

> SQL Azure, as I understand, not only does backups, but allows you to restore to arbitrary points in time.

It does, but they take about hour to hour. Restore takes about that much time. Changing performance level of DB takes similar time.

I'm not sure hot quick Amazon or Google is, but I know lot of ops guys who are sorely disappointed by Azure slowness.

[MichaelGG]

True. Azure is slow slow slow. Even their new portal is just laggy (JS/layout overload). But the service, yikes! Create a new VM, wait minutes. Then find out it failed. Or try to add a port mapping, and wait a minute, unable to do another operation cause one is in progress. It's infuriating. And the VMs take forever to start. And the SSD options are late, under performing and downright janky (they actually tell you to do RAID on the SSDs, since they cannot figure out how to scale storage for you.)

I tried Google Compute Engine on a whim and I'm totally in love (despite a deep distrust of Google). Everything is fast. VMs load in seconds. And it's simple - no inane UI, no crazy leftover bits from being a PaaS. No idiotic design for SSD. And as a kicker, it's half the price for compute. Oh, and SSH client right there in the portal? It's such a small thing but really made me happy.

It's just that Google doesn't do startup outreach and give us cash and court us. Unless you're in an "established" incubator or yc or something. Whereas MS is super friendly and does everything they can.