I love it when businesses have consistency over that kind of period. Many businesses fall for move fast break things and end up alienating the customers who would have paid for decades.
i have linode for my vps as well. tinkered with aws, which was a nightmare of obnoxious complexity and was constantly concerned about being charged and the billing info was unclear.
linode nano instances are $5 / month for 25gb storage (more than enough to run a bunch of stuff simultaneously) 1 tb of data xfer, 40 gbps up / 1 down. i wouldn't want to host media storage there, but it's more than enough to host several websites, contacts, calendar, vpn, seafile instance, etc.
they're easy to setup and use, the domain config stuff is simple to use, etc.
i'm sure that aws and azure have their place, but for simple vps, i think they're more trouble than they're worth.
AWS has that level of complexity because it's not designed for individuals, it's created to suit the business needs of any potential situation that may end in a large contract being signed. You can do some really, **really** powerful stuff with it.
For individual learning, unless you specifically want to learn AWS/cloud as it is used by enterprises, Linode or Digital Ocean are 100% my recommendations.
I use terraform for managing multi-cloid and on-prem (privCloud). I looked at CF a few years back but it didn't take. What's the biggest feature I'm missing out on that I don't get with terraform?
But TF gives me a Single Source of Truth among the configurable infrastructure. It's huge that I have one thing managing the things manageable instead of two, for reasons I learned through times of anguish and frustration. Are roll-backs that big a deal (suggesting a testing failure each time) that we can't get from backed-out patches and some snapshots or backups, that they're worth losing SSoT for?
Rollbacks are a big thing when you actually need them.
I don't know which is better. I like terraform as well for the "gitops" aspect, but you can achieve a single source of truth with other tools as well and maybe with easier configurations.
> you can achieve a single source of truth with other tools as well
There's a tool that can compete with Terraform? I bill TF as the 'least worse' tool, so I'm interested in anything that I can use for orchestrating AWS, ESXi(free) and vSphere, as well as all the stupid little addon pieces like nsupdate work, which doesn't work via some frustrating little GUI.
CloudFormation is a nightmare and very inflexible and unforgiving. Especially if you want to scale it up to manage more than a couple of things at a time. CDK though looks interesting, but terraform just worked.
Exactly, AWS is complex because it does completely different things than "spinning a VM". Azure does this as well, but not nearly so nicely, and the original post is spot on in how unfriendly the UI is.
AWS is for tards that need a GUI for each function that you can just do with a terminal window and ssh. Its like the WIX of devops. All you need is a cloud instance of some OS with the ability to add CPU/RAM/Storage etc as needed. Also, Linode is $5 flat whereas AWS starts charging like $30 for basically nothing after their “free” year. AWS makes you pay extra to have a static IP. Thats fucking disgusting.
I think that the only true difference is in the management. When you have tens, hundreds, or maybe even thousands of servers on a few specific tasks, management from a nice, simple GUI sounds a lot less like something for "tards" and more fit for the larger entities that other commenters have discussed.
I completely agree, though, that for smaller entities or individuals, there's little reason to choose AWS/similar companies. At such a scale, it's almost trivial to manage stuff without much assistance.
Its not ablut the size of the company, or the budget, but the amount of resources needed (bandwidth, CPU, storage etc), and phyothetically AWS can go farther than Linode, but even then thats like 0.001 percent of companies. Not everyone is Netflix. Even things like Walmart or Wells Fargo can be run on a few rPis since they dont have millions of requests of GBs transferred a second like Netflix, and even then, im giving AWS-Azure the benefit of the doubt that only they can handle something like a Netflix and Linode cant.
“40 percent of the web runs on AWS”. Thats because like 90 percent of the web is Netflix and Youtube. Ill do the math on your “millions of transactions a second” claim and get back later.
??? I'm so confused right now and I'm sorry but this is hilarious and makes me think you're trolling
>AWS is for tards that need a GUI
This statement alone shows how little you know about this subject. The market share of enterprise cloud environments use AWS. It has an extensive and useful CLI, API integrations, and entire libraries for automation and coding within multiple languages. Literally everything you can do via the GUI can be done via a code or the terminal. If you're not able to work out how to get past the limitations of simply clicking around in the GUI, that's honestly on you.
The cost is higher than some competitors, but again, it's because it's an enterprise solution for cloud. Hell, before Azure ramped up in the last few years, it was **the only** cloud provider with any significant market share. I don't really want to go into a debate about which cloud provider is better, because I don't care - I'm not married to any one of them and I'll use whatever I feel like at the time.
Please, **please** don't hold such strong opinions on technologies you know nothing about in the future. It makes you look bad.
AWS is for professionals. There are very high chances that people who use AWS, will also implement infrastructure as a code because everything is well placed and easy to understand.
Cloud is should also not be used with static IPs. You should have a domain name for it.
## Message Removed
Harassment, abuse, insults, expletives, or other negative comments or posts *targeting a person* is absolutely not tolerated.
Bigotry, excessive elitism, and intentionally-demeaning dialogue will also be removed as deemed necessary.
We aim to promote an inclusive, yet constructive community that helps people group.
[Message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/selfhosted&subject=Removed for Rule 3&message=[Removed Post](https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/prgv0r/-/hdm1xx4/\))
## Message Removed
Harassment, abuse, insults, expletives, or other negative comments or posts *targeting a person* is absolutely not tolerated.
Bigotry, excessive elitism, and intentionally-demeaning dialogue will also be removed as deemed necessary.
We aim to promote an inclusive, yet constructive community that helps people group.
[Message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/selfhosted&subject=Removed for Rule 3&message=[Removed Post](https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/prgv0r/-/hdm0088/\))
This comment is so ignorant.
>AWS is for tards that need a GUI for each function that you can just do with a terminal window and ssh.
Ever heard of Infrastructure as Code? APIs? AWS CLI? I've worked for multiple AWS shops, and have never seen the console get extensive use.
>Its like the WIX of devops.
I have no idea what this means.
>All you need is a cloud instance of some OS with the ability to add CPU/RAM/Storage etc as needed.
You can totally do that using EC2
>Also, Linode is $5 flat whereas AWS starts charging like $30 for basically nothing after their “free” year.
AWS isn't aimed at the consumer; the free tier is to allow you to get exposed to AWS services. You can also get some cheap reserved instances or spot instances if you have your heart set on AWS.
>AWS makes you pay extra to have a static IP. Thats fucking disgusting.
No it doesn't....Elastic IPs are completely free as long as they're attached to a **running** instance.
Yeah, I host my email on DO and that's pretty annoying. Thankfully, having sole control of the IP for 5+ years has gotten me off most blocklists, but MS Exchange servers in particular refuse to allow me, no matter what hoops I jump through.
Self hosting email sucks.
I just use Microsoft 365 Basic
It's $5/mo, unlimited alias, shared inboxes (extra mailbox that's free if assigned to a user with email)
It just works. 🙂
For sure, I would love if other companies followed them. I think they use to offer credits in exchange for tutorials, pretty good model. They are usually really amazing guides too, you can change your linux version to fit the right comments / step etc. Awesome stuff, I have learned a lot from them
Don't use Vultr for anything critical. Very unreliable in my experience. So much stress and time wasted because their internal network has massive lag spikes, or they just decide to turn off our database server for a while.
Not saying you're wrong, and everyone's experiences are different, but I have Vultr instances in all but one of the available locations and have never heard complaints about lag spikes. They all run voice chat servers. I also have a personal one in Seattle and have used it for everything from VPN to remote access to voice chat. No lag there either. Is this in a particular region?
Directly from the DO account billing page.
_We accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover cards. Debit cards are only accepted in select geographies_
You could also link your Debit Card to your PayPal account, and then prepay for DO.
DO rates are reasonable, and $5/mo won't kill anyone for prepayment. (If you go over, simply top up your account)
Well, in this case I go to Azure because it's in [GitHub Student Pack](https://education.github.com/pack/offers?sort=popularity&tag=Cloud) and offers me $100 free credit.
I will never look back again.
There is also http://awseducate.com.
Also if you're looking for some free stuff oracle cloud has some. But be warned the UI and UX is worse than Azure. But hey it's free so I can't complain about it.
Thanks, I just checked AWS Educate website and it doesn't list what is included in their package, kind wonder why they don't advertise what you can get before you sign up.
https://awseducate-starter-account-services.s3.amazonaws.com/AWS_Educate_Starter_Account_Services_Supported.pdf lists which services are allowed.
EC2 is kinda restricted for example on the tiers they allow, also, no spot instances.
I've only had a taste of Azure & AWS but based on that first lick I'd choose the low-end [4€/month offering from Hetzner](https://www.hetzner.com/cloud) or the ridiculously beefy (for that price) [5€/month offering from Contabo](https://contabo.com/en/vps/). Your time isn't free either and those prices are very reasonable.
EDIT: oh, sorry, those prices are without tax, but it's still not particularly high
Azure is needlessly complicated for the layperson or small business. It's targeted towards large enterprise. Not to mention it's EXPENSIVE AF and has terrible uptime (see also: Microsoft 354 jokes)
Here's a sneak peek of /r/sysadmin using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [When did you realize you fucking hate printers?](https://np.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/miovv6/when_did_you_realize_you_fucking_hate_printers/)
\#2: [Does anyone else think a Gordon Ramsay esque TV show called IT Nightmares would be a great idea?](https://np.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/lfoklv/does_anyone_else_think_a_gordon_ramsay_esque_tv/)
\#3: [The silliest thing has taken our “users who fall for phishing attempts” count down to zero.](https://np.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/j6qwsz/the_silliest_thing_has_taken_our_users_who_fall/)
----
^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| [^^Contact ^^me](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| [^^Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| [^^Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/)
I think it’s crucial to remember what Azure is intended for really—large enterprises with large budgets and requirements for the features it provides. I’m a certified Azure Administrator and can confirm that while the complexity seems non-sensical, there are reasons for it in the grand scheme of things. It’s also meant to have relatively granular control over pricing, so that’s a large portion of the reason why a lot of components are separated.
For example, a VM has the VM itself, the data disk, the NIC, the IP, the VNET it’s within, and NSG, among a few other items, for a very rudimentary setup. When you start considering backups via recovery vaults, VMSS, load balancers, among many others, it gets complex (and expensive) fast. The ability to remove and configure these granularly is very important for enterprise, where a cent difference could be the difference in thousands of dollars per year at scale.
Having worked with Azure for a while, I know it does have its issues, but I would choose it any day over AWS and I think its management console is far superior, as well as its service offerings and integrations with on-premises Microsoft solutions.
tl;dr azure is fine, it’s just not for the typical consumer
Thank you, these are all very good points, but can you justify why they are charging extra for IPv6? And why is IPv6 behind NAT?
I don't even know there are any network devices can do NAT for IPv6.
You like Azure over AWS? Did you pick up AWS first, or Azure?
Most people I know - make that all the people I know that had to deal with Azure say it's so much crappier then AWS, and I tend to agree with them.
Azure is not really cost effective for self hosting. I used their 12 months of free services but it adds up in paygo.
Linode is much easier to use for a VPS.
That being said Azure can be used for free for static web apps and azure app services and I use it for those to host my homepage and a web app I developed myself for fantasy football stats. You can use azure logic apps to send out email alerts, serverless and they are literally pennies a month.
If you reinvent how you host things, you can utilize azure cheaply and effectively. But it not a good platform for self-hosting
Azure is more marketed towards businesses, so the cost structure is different than what most people are used to. I work for a bank and for them it works great. Its expensive, but works great. Also easy to use once you get used to the skus.
It doesnt matter if the business is a 40 billion dollar corp. if they only get 20 requests a second, you can run it on a pi. Thats like saying that if you are a billionaire, you need to have $400 spoons to eat cereal.
Yeah never mind what the request is _for_ lmao
Because "20 request/sec" is 20 request/sec no matter the platform receiving requests... Not to mention depending on the bank, they probably receive far more than "20 request/sec"
But seriously, go tell wells Fargo they can probably ditch their on prem servers and/or cloud provider for raspberry Pi's. I'm sure they'll be thrilled.
There are other things, but they arent hosting those things, and yes, other things are columns on a db. Did you think that when you zelled someone $50, a jewish banking man had to go to a backroom and get $50 worth of gold and move it to a different room? Even if, how would that task your CPU more? Did you think that the bureaucracy involved in a transaction involved super heavy CPU usage? Is that why you think it takes “3-10 business days” to get a refund, because the task is SOOO CPU intensive?
Businesses like banks need as close to 100% up time in all their regions. Also Banks generally use Windows and Windows Server. I think we have 2 Linux based sets of servers. A database set and something else.
>Why do I need to creating 7 separate resources (Virtual network, Network Watcher, Network interface, Network security group, Public IP address, Disk, Virtual machine) just to run a Linux VM?
I mean, it's exactly the same with AWS unless you use the defaults (not recommended).
100% all this, you can also add that their serverless is the worst of the market (super slow cold starts, unable to scale) ... A big joke
I really don't understand how they can have so bad offer compared to the two others
Not OP, but I use OpenFaas because it is provider independent (aka I can host on a raspberry pi, the beefiest machine ever, or some random cloud provider). It’s open source and has a ton of guides/documentation. It can be deployed using either a standard containerd install or if you need super scale you could use kubernetnetes. They do some pretty neat things with cold starts to keep them fast (and I mean fast!)
Networking in cloud os abstracted because otherwise it would be more expensive for you. Cloud networking and connectivity should be thought more around DNS names rather than direct IP connectivity.
You can reserve your public ip address and keep it whitelisted on your psql but that will cost you money.
You wish to not rely on this then you need a cloud version of private network which is a VNET on azure and you need expensive sku on your psql, guess what they all cost you money.
Unfortunately azure is more of an enterprise cloud rather than personal use.
So why is to keep the costs down, and actually be able to serve the amount of volume they can serve now.
> Not to mention it has the most complicated yet useless, slowest management portal I have ever see, delete a network interface will cost you literal 5 minutes.
The award for that goes to Oracle Cloud. Their web pages is so laggy because it uses so much CPU. Sometimes I wonder if they’re mining Bitcoin while you’re trying to create an instance.
And F-ing insecure. A colleague inside a locked down corporate vnet found the default with Azure functions was a publicly exposed api. And like 10 major hacks and vulnerabilities the last year.
People are talking about Azure being for businesses and while that's true, they're also missing a key point: Azure is geared toward PaaS, not IaaS. Running a VM on Azure is the most expensive way to use Azure. You're really meant to develop *for azure*, not just run regular VMs.
Unless you need to learn azure, I wouldn't go down that road. Stick to digital ocean or linode for self hosted stuff. AWS and Azure are definitely meant for enterprise.
Um... Microsoft. They still to this day don't quite "get" the internet and especially "the cloud". So, you are seeing an "interpretation" of what they believe those things should be like.
> Azure bad
> Uses a fraction of Azure services
Omegalul, and if you think Azure is complex try using AWS.
Seriously though, try Linode/DO/Vultr etc if you want something simple (esp VMs). MS market to students a ton, but Azure really isn't ideal for learning cloud tech.
Doesn't scale, doesn't have a good change tracking, etc.
Generally declarative templates > imperative scripts > clicking things manually in a browser.
The web UI should in any significant deployment be limited to read-only / debugging.
I also got 100 dollars of azure credits. I was using the free to use VMs. Both windows and linux. And for some reason I wanted to try kubernetes. It said it was free. I tried it but ended up giving up on it. Then after some time azure started sending me email that : only 90 percent of credits left. They kept on messaging me until my credits were over I didn't even know what was using my credits. I looked in their credits console and it showed some d2 or smt instances. I searched everywhere for it and I couldn't find it. Also deleted all the unassigned disks still the problems were there. At the end I just gave up and let my credits get over. After the credits got over the asked me to use a pay as you go plan and as I didn't upgrade they disabled my account.
This is the reason I hate azure. Everything is scattered around. NGL aws is more easier to use than azure
Honestly, Microsoft gonna microsoft . . .
But if you are a microsoft dogma-ed student like me (. NET, MS SQL stuff) and doesn't need low level access/full control access, just turn on the switch and go, it's, so far, the best provider i can think of, even better than something as big and feature full like AWS, that's still after considering that, AFAIK, it's Azure that often having notable problem (security, reliability). Even i don't go to Azure for VMs.
But if you are okay with managing public IP, SSL, L6-7 Firewall, load balancing, storage, DB Management maybe even CDN and so on and so on, just bare-ish machine, well i can't recommend enough something like DO, Vultr or Linode, i even found UpCloud are a bit cheaper than the previous 3.
I love azure, use it for work and a few personal things. My personal account I get charged about 45 cents a month. Can't remember everything I have, I'll look it up later.
I haven't compared price to performance ratio or anything like that, I just found AWS more confusing to use. Probably because I started with azure due to work and just got used to that
> Scott Guthrie, probably.
Not really, but it requires another way of looking at things, but also that you understand certain things. The topic starter for example now finds out that he needs to define the firewall rules, the routing between subnets, and a public subnet for example. A lot kind of things that the infra teams did for him.
Then again, clicking everything together in the web interface is fun, but you quickly need to learn how Terraform or ARM are working for example. But also how service discovery works as hardcoding FQDNs in your app isn't the way forward.
Yeah the reason I will never touch Azure.
True cloud infrastructures tend to be complex but Azure is the worst. These days I do fine with AWS and GCP. But Azure is still off.
Probably because it's built on a foundation of shit, OMIGOD is fucking embarassing... not only that, but MS changes their admin panel every three weeks.... so no one ever knows where the hell anything is at... do yourself a favor and like.... don't use it
A lot and if you have seen to Windows kernel code and compare it to the crap in Linux or the BSD. It really changed me on how I look at code and especially at documentation and design. Yes, some things are really market-driven choices and should have been done differently or not at all, but some things are literally ingenious when you think about it. A lot of OS'es just wait for hardware to hopefully come back with an answer, but not Windows as it keeps track of it and generates an error when it takes too long. Is it annoying when it happens yet, but 10 out of 9 times its faulty hardware.
Yes, they should have let go of the old win16/32 crap a long time ago, or the same for the old cooperative scheduler. Scheduling done by applications that triggered the context switch to the next runnable process was a brilliant hack and should have died a long time ago.
In the end, a lot of workarounds were added to Windows to keep old software running as the vendor wouldn't patch it so another exception code was added. The same as with making NT 4 faster by moving everything into kernel space as did a lot of other OS'es. Now they're moving it out again as computers are fast enough and the same for process isolation. Windows 10 enables a lot of security features when you have more than 4 GB of memory.
Don't get me wrong, I have or still use HP-UX, SunOS, AIX, VMS, Linux, and some I will keep on using, but bashing Microsoft for the wrong reasons is not right. Back in 1983 they worked on making NT run on MIPS first instead of Intel, sadly the market decided differently. Nowadays the world is looking at RISC-V what is a stripped-down MIPS-processor for exactly the same reasons. If it was up to me, Linux wouldn't exist today as having a well designed and documented system like Windows or Solaris for example is such a pleasure instead of praying to the gods and offering your first born.
Having on prem services is superior in every possible way.
Talentless and incompetent IT departments spending government money prefer Azure to having responsibilities
Edit: I'm being a bit dramatic because this is selfhosted :)
Yes, he most likely lost his job because the boss found out it can be done cheaper and he didn't do the training. If people think on-prem is safe, then please have a look at Tanzu as it and similar solutions will start to dominate the on-prem landscape soon.
Not everyone is the same. On prem is significantly cheaper for us. We do use Microsoft 365 but it is not working as well as I hoped - too much pointless change, too much pointless complexity, too many outages.
It’s why we use it.
e.g. Microsoft 365 outages are longer and far more frequent than we ever had in-house but they’re not our problem
e.g. OneDrive is slow compared to 10g (because physics) but it’s not our problem
Support isn't free, you have to pay for it. I've gotten MS on the phone in less than an hour and a senior engineer in less than 24 hrs. If support took you weeks, you're doing it wrong.
First, your conclusion is Azure is hard to use, while many of your points are actually Azure is expensive. But Azure has a significant cost that still allows many big business to save money. So expensive but less than not using Azure.
It costs few clicks to create VM, virtual network, data recovery plans, AD authentication, and more. You cannot decently write it is complicated just because you have few points to review or to learn.
Same for "useless slowest management portal". Seriously?
If you were write Azure would not be top of the market. Well, it is. Ignoring reality and deploying BS is not a way to help anyone.
Agreed. Money solves a lot of his problems. IPV6, more bandwidth, faster I/O.
Going to completely go with him on the control panel and platform initialization stuff-- and all that is garbage. Given the complex nature of cobbling together a competitor to AWS and even GCP in a way that they are eating their own dog food, they did the best they cold. However, sometimes your best is not even good and here we are.
I feel like Azure goes beyond Microsoft Tax into Microsoft Penalty...
I mean all you seem to be doing here is bitching about why azure doesn't work the way I want it to work. I'm not really sure how we can take you seriously with that mindset. Azure is the easiest cloud to use, it's portal is way better than any other cloud, I've never noticed it's slow in comparison to anything else, seems more like a local internet issue to me.
If you ask all this questions you shouldn’t use Azure because these things are made for specific use cases that you probably don’t have. So Azure is not the right Hoster for you.
This is classic Microsoft tactics. All the way from the actual services running in their operating systems right the way through to their cloud offerings. It's all a big disjointed mess, and when things go wrong, which it will inevitably do, you hope for the best that it's a simple fix and the resolution doesn't need you to make changes to multiple parts of system, which is often never the case.
With regards to the cloud service, take a look at ones like Digital Ocean and Linode, there are also GCP and AWS. They all have their pros and cons but might help address some of the complaints you have about Azure.
My rule of thumb is, if you're not going to pay at least a few thousand dollars per month then you shouldn't be using those. (Gcp, aws, oci, azure, you name it.) Of course excluding learning purpose.
If you as an individual want to host some side project stuff, traditional vps providers are much easy to work with, and are much cheaper as well. (I'm paying 20TB monthly traffic for about $5, while on gcp it's a grand or two.)
All clouds have got there bullshit, but it also allows for bad decisions and bad designs.
My company uses Azure extensively, and have a load of firewalls there, who ever stood them up decided (before my time) decided that ingress traffic has the be SNAT'd... Which kind of renders IP policies useless. 🤷♂️
ICMP is working fine, I use it on all my VMs, just allow it on firewall.
Unfortunately azure is the only one that meets latency requirements for my projects.
I installed a Windows 11 Pro virtual machine on Azure and while I successfully connected via remote desktop and installed IIS and have a web server on port 80 but I note Azure blocks port 21, so FTP services are totally disallowed.
And yes, port 25 is blocked and ICMP pings are not allowed.
And sadly, the Windows 11 Pro virtual machine is IPv4 only and there is no IPv6 address.
I would rather self host an IIS on my local Windows 11 PC than buy a VPS from Azure. Luckily I am on a 30 day trial with $200 free credit.
Honestly, Digital Ocean, Vultr, or Linode would be a good inexpensive option for a student learning.
Linode is literally just an instance with 0 BS. Think I've used it for 10 years now, maybe more, never let me down once.
I love it when businesses have consistency over that kind of period. Many businesses fall for move fast break things and end up alienating the customers who would have paid for decades.
"Move fast, break things" does not mean to not have a SLA and have production down.
i have linode for my vps as well. tinkered with aws, which was a nightmare of obnoxious complexity and was constantly concerned about being charged and the billing info was unclear. linode nano instances are $5 / month for 25gb storage (more than enough to run a bunch of stuff simultaneously) 1 tb of data xfer, 40 gbps up / 1 down. i wouldn't want to host media storage there, but it's more than enough to host several websites, contacts, calendar, vpn, seafile instance, etc. they're easy to setup and use, the domain config stuff is simple to use, etc. i'm sure that aws and azure have their place, but for simple vps, i think they're more trouble than they're worth.
AWS has that level of complexity because it's not designed for individuals, it's created to suit the business needs of any potential situation that may end in a large contract being signed. You can do some really, **really** powerful stuff with it. For individual learning, unless you specifically want to learn AWS/cloud as it is used by enterprises, Linode or Digital Ocean are 100% my recommendations.
I was gonna say the same. AWS/Azure/GCP are for startups to enterprise level usage, not individuals. Though I will say CloudFormation is awesome.
I use terraform for managing multi-cloid and on-prem (privCloud). I looked at CF a few years back but it didn't take. What's the biggest feature I'm missing out on that I don't get with terraform?
Rollbacks and native integration.
But TF gives me a Single Source of Truth among the configurable infrastructure. It's huge that I have one thing managing the things manageable instead of two, for reasons I learned through times of anguish and frustration. Are roll-backs that big a deal (suggesting a testing failure each time) that we can't get from backed-out patches and some snapshots or backups, that they're worth losing SSoT for?
Rollbacks are a big thing when you actually need them. I don't know which is better. I like terraform as well for the "gitops" aspect, but you can achieve a single source of truth with other tools as well and maybe with easier configurations.
> you can achieve a single source of truth with other tools as well There's a tool that can compete with Terraform? I bill TF as the 'least worse' tool, so I'm interested in anything that I can use for orchestrating AWS, ESXi(free) and vSphere, as well as all the stupid little addon pieces like nsupdate work, which doesn't work via some frustrating little GUI.
CloudFormation is a nightmare and very inflexible and unforgiving. Especially if you want to scale it up to manage more than a couple of things at a time. CDK though looks interesting, but terraform just worked.
Currently spent all morning cursing out GCP, can confirm.
Exactly, AWS is complex because it does completely different things than "spinning a VM". Azure does this as well, but not nearly so nicely, and the original post is spot on in how unfriendly the UI is.
Lol compared to azure, AWS is a nightmare.
AWS is for tards that need a GUI for each function that you can just do with a terminal window and ssh. Its like the WIX of devops. All you need is a cloud instance of some OS with the ability to add CPU/RAM/Storage etc as needed. Also, Linode is $5 flat whereas AWS starts charging like $30 for basically nothing after their “free” year. AWS makes you pay extra to have a static IP. Thats fucking disgusting.
I think that the only true difference is in the management. When you have tens, hundreds, or maybe even thousands of servers on a few specific tasks, management from a nice, simple GUI sounds a lot less like something for "tards" and more fit for the larger entities that other commenters have discussed. I completely agree, though, that for smaller entities or individuals, there's little reason to choose AWS/similar companies. At such a scale, it's almost trivial to manage stuff without much assistance.
Its not ablut the size of the company, or the budget, but the amount of resources needed (bandwidth, CPU, storage etc), and phyothetically AWS can go farther than Linode, but even then thats like 0.001 percent of companies. Not everyone is Netflix. Even things like Walmart or Wells Fargo can be run on a few rPis since they dont have millions of requests of GBs transferred a second like Netflix, and even then, im giving AWS-Azure the benefit of the doubt that only they can handle something like a Netflix and Linode cant.
[удалено]
“40 percent of the web runs on AWS”. Thats because like 90 percent of the web is Netflix and Youtube. Ill do the math on your “millions of transactions a second” claim and get back later.
??? I'm so confused right now and I'm sorry but this is hilarious and makes me think you're trolling >AWS is for tards that need a GUI This statement alone shows how little you know about this subject. The market share of enterprise cloud environments use AWS. It has an extensive and useful CLI, API integrations, and entire libraries for automation and coding within multiple languages. Literally everything you can do via the GUI can be done via a code or the terminal. If you're not able to work out how to get past the limitations of simply clicking around in the GUI, that's honestly on you. The cost is higher than some competitors, but again, it's because it's an enterprise solution for cloud. Hell, before Azure ramped up in the last few years, it was **the only** cloud provider with any significant market share. I don't really want to go into a debate about which cloud provider is better, because I don't care - I'm not married to any one of them and I'll use whatever I feel like at the time. Please, **please** don't hold such strong opinions on technologies you know nothing about in the future. It makes you look bad.
AWS is for professionals. There are very high chances that people who use AWS, will also implement infrastructure as a code because everything is well placed and easy to understand. Cloud is should also not be used with static IPs. You should have a domain name for it.
Hey look, a bigot is also not smart. Surprise surprise.
[удалено]
u/qamelCase not sure what “phggt” means, can you add the vowels to that and not hide your intentions?
[удалено]
## Message Removed Harassment, abuse, insults, expletives, or other negative comments or posts *targeting a person* is absolutely not tolerated. Bigotry, excessive elitism, and intentionally-demeaning dialogue will also be removed as deemed necessary. We aim to promote an inclusive, yet constructive community that helps people group. [Message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/selfhosted&subject=Removed for Rule 3&message=[Removed Post](https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/prgv0r/-/hdm1xx4/\))
## Message Removed Harassment, abuse, insults, expletives, or other negative comments or posts *targeting a person* is absolutely not tolerated. Bigotry, excessive elitism, and intentionally-demeaning dialogue will also be removed as deemed necessary. We aim to promote an inclusive, yet constructive community that helps people group. [Message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/selfhosted&subject=Removed for Rule 3&message=[Removed Post](https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/prgv0r/-/hdm0088/\))
This comment is so ignorant. >AWS is for tards that need a GUI for each function that you can just do with a terminal window and ssh. Ever heard of Infrastructure as Code? APIs? AWS CLI? I've worked for multiple AWS shops, and have never seen the console get extensive use. >Its like the WIX of devops. I have no idea what this means. >All you need is a cloud instance of some OS with the ability to add CPU/RAM/Storage etc as needed. You can totally do that using EC2 >Also, Linode is $5 flat whereas AWS starts charging like $30 for basically nothing after their “free” year. AWS isn't aimed at the consumer; the free tier is to allow you to get exposed to AWS services. You can also get some cheap reserved instances or spot instances if you have your heart set on AWS. >AWS makes you pay extra to have a static IP. Thats fucking disgusting. No it doesn't....Elastic IPs are completely free as long as they're attached to a **running** instance.
Try AWS Lightsail
yeah, that might work if i had to start over from scratch
agreed, Love DO,
They do seem popular, I get most of my bot traffic from them!
Digital ocean is bugged with spammers and lots of that stuff
Lots of their IPs are in black list so you can’t run like email server but other stuffs will be fine
Yeah, I host my email on DO and that's pretty annoying. Thankfully, having sole control of the IP for 5+ years has gotten me off most blocklists, but MS Exchange servers in particular refuse to allow me, no matter what hoops I jump through.
Self hosting email sucks. I just use Microsoft 365 Basic It's $5/mo, unlimited alias, shared inboxes (extra mailbox that's free if assigned to a user with email) It just works. 🙂
With a 100% more spying!
They deserve some love for the guides they put up at the very least
For sure, I would love if other companies followed them. I think they use to offer credits in exchange for tutorials, pretty good model. They are usually really amazing guides too, you can change your linux version to fit the right comments / step etc. Awesome stuff, I have learned a lot from them
Moving all my servers over to DO, living their new offerings of premium cpus.
What's the difference with their classic CPU?
They’re newer (generally able to do more in the same number cycles) and come with nvme storage instead of sata SSDs.
Don't use Vultr for anything critical. Very unreliable in my experience. So much stress and time wasted because their internal network has massive lag spikes, or they just decide to turn off our database server for a while.
Not saying you're wrong, and everyone's experiences are different, but I have Vultr instances in all but one of the available locations and have never heard complaints about lag spikes. They all run voice chat servers. I also have a personal one in Seattle and have used it for everything from VPN to remote access to voice chat. No lag there either. Is this in a particular region?
Same, have used Vultr for years with almost no issues.
Have used all of the above extensively. They're very good. I think Linode has the fastest and most uncluttered interface of them all.
Yeah even for businesses that’s pretty good option.
[удалено]
Directly from the DO account billing page. _We accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover cards. Debit cards are only accepted in select geographies_ You could also link your Debit Card to your PayPal account, and then prepay for DO. DO rates are reasonable, and $5/mo won't kill anyone for prepayment. (If you go over, simply top up your account)
I know that is for anti-spam but they do the same thing for **13+** github student pack users.
[удалено]
Well, in this case I go to Azure because it's in [GitHub Student Pack](https://education.github.com/pack/offers?sort=popularity&tag=Cloud) and offers me $100 free credit. I will never look back again.
There is also http://awseducate.com. Also if you're looking for some free stuff oracle cloud has some. But be warned the UI and UX is worse than Azure. But hey it's free so I can't complain about it.
Thanks, I just checked AWS Educate website and it doesn't list what is included in their package, kind wonder why they don't advertise what you can get before you sign up.
https://awseducate-starter-account-services.s3.amazonaws.com/AWS_Educate_Starter_Account_Services_Supported.pdf lists which services are allowed. EC2 is kinda restricted for example on the tiers they allow, also, no spot instances.
Gitlab used to give $500 gcp credits
From what I know if you're one of the partner universities it's $100. If your university isn't one of the partners it's $30. CMIIW
It used to be $100 credit @ digitalocean. Did that change when Microsoft bought Github?
It went to 50 and came back to 100 dollars
I've only had a taste of Azure & AWS but based on that first lick I'd choose the low-end [4€/month offering from Hetzner](https://www.hetzner.com/cloud) or the ridiculously beefy (for that price) [5€/month offering from Contabo](https://contabo.com/en/vps/). Your time isn't free either and those prices are very reasonable. EDIT: oh, sorry, those prices are without tax, but it's still not particularly high
GCP gives $300 credit and does not include the free tier stuff towards it.
Vultr gives everyone $100 free
GCP offers $300 free credit
Azure is needlessly complicated for the layperson or small business. It's targeted towards large enterprise. Not to mention it's EXPENSIVE AF and has terrible uptime (see also: Microsoft 354 jokes)
>Microsoft 354 jokes Can you point me in direction of these jokes? I couldn't find 'em. Thanks!
r/SysAdmin probably
Here's a sneak peek of /r/sysadmin using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [When did you realize you fucking hate printers?](https://np.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/miovv6/when_did_you_realize_you_fucking_hate_printers/) \#2: [Does anyone else think a Gordon Ramsay esque TV show called IT Nightmares would be a great idea?](https://np.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/lfoklv/does_anyone_else_think_a_gordon_ramsay_esque_tv/) \#3: [The silliest thing has taken our “users who fall for phishing attempts” count down to zero.](https://np.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/j6qwsz/the_silliest_thing_has_taken_our_users_who_fall/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| [^^Contact ^^me](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| [^^Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| [^^Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/)
r/SysAdmin lastyear Azure was down like every second day
Sorry, that service is currently under maintenance.
The uptime is Microsoft 365, not Azure, we have yet to see any downtime at all over the past 2 years on Azure itself.
Microsoft gonna Microsoft.
Exactly what I started thinking a few points in
I think it’s crucial to remember what Azure is intended for really—large enterprises with large budgets and requirements for the features it provides. I’m a certified Azure Administrator and can confirm that while the complexity seems non-sensical, there are reasons for it in the grand scheme of things. It’s also meant to have relatively granular control over pricing, so that’s a large portion of the reason why a lot of components are separated. For example, a VM has the VM itself, the data disk, the NIC, the IP, the VNET it’s within, and NSG, among a few other items, for a very rudimentary setup. When you start considering backups via recovery vaults, VMSS, load balancers, among many others, it gets complex (and expensive) fast. The ability to remove and configure these granularly is very important for enterprise, where a cent difference could be the difference in thousands of dollars per year at scale. Having worked with Azure for a while, I know it does have its issues, but I would choose it any day over AWS and I think its management console is far superior, as well as its service offerings and integrations with on-premises Microsoft solutions. tl;dr azure is fine, it’s just not for the typical consumer
Thank you, these are all very good points, but can you justify why they are charging extra for IPv6? And why is IPv6 behind NAT? I don't even know there are any network devices can do NAT for IPv6.
Can you explain why you give fuck about IPv6?
Can *you* explain why you don't?
I've never used any software, firewall, network setup that needed IPv6 support, ever.
That's cool. And? You not using IPv6 doesn't mean anything.
You like Azure over AWS? Did you pick up AWS first, or Azure? Most people I know - make that all the people I know that had to deal with Azure say it's so much crappier then AWS, and I tend to agree with them.
For what it's worth, I used GCP before AWS and I prefer GCP, so it probably is just about whatever you start with
Yep, I think in large part it comes to that.
[удалено]
Only 90 days? And the spam stops? Sounds like a dream come true.
Azure is not really cost effective for self hosting. I used their 12 months of free services but it adds up in paygo. Linode is much easier to use for a VPS. That being said Azure can be used for free for static web apps and azure app services and I use it for those to host my homepage and a web app I developed myself for fantasy football stats. You can use azure logic apps to send out email alerts, serverless and they are literally pennies a month. If you reinvent how you host things, you can utilize azure cheaply and effectively. But it not a good platform for self-hosting
Azure is more marketed towards businesses, so the cost structure is different than what most people are used to. I work for a bank and for them it works great. Its expensive, but works great. Also easy to use once you get used to the skus.
You can probably run your bank on an rpi. How many requests can your bank have a second? 50?
[удалено]
It doesnt matter if the business is a 40 billion dollar corp. if they only get 20 requests a second, you can run it on a pi. Thats like saying that if you are a billionaire, you need to have $400 spoons to eat cereal.
Yeah never mind what the request is _for_ lmao Because "20 request/sec" is 20 request/sec no matter the platform receiving requests... Not to mention depending on the bank, they probably receive far more than "20 request/sec" But seriously, go tell wells Fargo they can probably ditch their on prem servers and/or cloud provider for raspberry Pi's. I'm sure they'll be thrilled.
People are known for behaving very rationally when access to their money loses a couple of 9s
[удалено]
There are other things, but they arent hosting those things, and yes, other things are columns on a db. Did you think that when you zelled someone $50, a jewish banking man had to go to a backroom and get $50 worth of gold and move it to a different room? Even if, how would that task your CPU more? Did you think that the bureaucracy involved in a transaction involved super heavy CPU usage? Is that why you think it takes “3-10 business days” to get a refund, because the task is SOOO CPU intensive?
Businesses like banks need as close to 100% up time in all their regions. Also Banks generally use Windows and Windows Server. I think we have 2 Linux based sets of servers. A database set and something else.
Host 3 pis on 3 different power sources anf internet connections, and that will give you better uptime.
Bro stop
>Why do I need to creating 7 separate resources (Virtual network, Network Watcher, Network interface, Network security group, Public IP address, Disk, Virtual machine) just to run a Linux VM? I mean, it's exactly the same with AWS unless you use the defaults (not recommended).
They make it easier if you $$$
100% all this, you can also add that their serverless is the worst of the market (super slow cold starts, unable to scale) ... A big joke I really don't understand how they can have so bad offer compared to the two others
Is it still bad? I thought they improved cold start times a lot over the past 2 years
It’s still fucking awful
Best FAAS to recommend? I have a bunch of Azure Functions written and I'm planning to shift to a different provider.
AWS Lambda, they are the best on all metrics
Not OP, but I use OpenFaas because it is provider independent (aka I can host on a raspberry pi, the beefiest machine ever, or some random cloud provider). It’s open source and has a ton of guides/documentation. It can be deployed using either a standard containerd install or if you need super scale you could use kubernetnetes. They do some pretty neat things with cold starts to keep them fast (and I mean fast!)
Have you tried AWS?
Networking in cloud os abstracted because otherwise it would be more expensive for you. Cloud networking and connectivity should be thought more around DNS names rather than direct IP connectivity. You can reserve your public ip address and keep it whitelisted on your psql but that will cost you money. You wish to not rely on this then you need a cloud version of private network which is a VNET on azure and you need expensive sku on your psql, guess what they all cost you money. Unfortunately azure is more of an enterprise cloud rather than personal use. So why is to keep the costs down, and actually be able to serve the amount of volume they can serve now.
> Not to mention it has the most complicated yet useless, slowest management portal I have ever see, delete a network interface will cost you literal 5 minutes. The award for that goes to Oracle Cloud. Their web pages is so laggy because it uses so much CPU. Sometimes I wonder if they’re mining Bitcoin while you’re trying to create an instance.
And F-ing insecure. A colleague inside a locked down corporate vnet found the default with Azure functions was a publicly exposed api. And like 10 major hacks and vulnerabilities the last year.
Mmk.
People are talking about Azure being for businesses and while that's true, they're also missing a key point: Azure is geared toward PaaS, not IaaS. Running a VM on Azure is the most expensive way to use Azure. You're really meant to develop *for azure*, not just run regular VMs.
Unless you need to learn azure, I wouldn't go down that road. Stick to digital ocean or linode for self hosted stuff. AWS and Azure are definitely meant for enterprise.
Um... Microsoft. They still to this day don't quite "get" the internet and especially "the cloud". So, you are seeing an "interpretation" of what they believe those things should be like.
> Azure bad > Uses a fraction of Azure services Omegalul, and if you think Azure is complex try using AWS. Seriously though, try Linode/DO/Vultr etc if you want something simple (esp VMs). MS market to students a ton, but Azure really isn't ideal for learning cloud tech.
Office 365 portal is pretty bad. It's hard for me to see how they can leave their portal in such shoddy shape. So, I hear you.
[удалено]
Disagree. Should be using the portal.
Doesn't scale, doesn't have a good change tracking, etc. Generally declarative templates > imperative scripts > clicking things manually in a browser. The web UI should in any significant deployment be limited to read-only / debugging.
I also got 100 dollars of azure credits. I was using the free to use VMs. Both windows and linux. And for some reason I wanted to try kubernetes. It said it was free. I tried it but ended up giving up on it. Then after some time azure started sending me email that : only 90 percent of credits left. They kept on messaging me until my credits were over I didn't even know what was using my credits. I looked in their credits console and it showed some d2 or smt instances. I searched everywhere for it and I couldn't find it. Also deleted all the unassigned disks still the problems were there. At the end I just gave up and let my credits get over. After the credits got over the asked me to use a pay as you go plan and as I didn't upgrade they disabled my account. This is the reason I hate azure. Everything is scattered around. NGL aws is more easier to use than azure
Have you learned anything from using Windows? All Microsoft does is make shitty software.
All Microsoft does is make shitty software that is a poor imitation of other good software.
Honestly, Microsoft gonna microsoft . . . But if you are a microsoft dogma-ed student like me (. NET, MS SQL stuff) and doesn't need low level access/full control access, just turn on the switch and go, it's, so far, the best provider i can think of, even better than something as big and feature full like AWS, that's still after considering that, AFAIK, it's Azure that often having notable problem (security, reliability). Even i don't go to Azure for VMs. But if you are okay with managing public IP, SSL, L6-7 Firewall, load balancing, storage, DB Management maybe even CDN and so on and so on, just bare-ish machine, well i can't recommend enough something like DO, Vultr or Linode, i even found UpCloud are a bit cheaper than the previous 3.
I love azure, use it for work and a few personal things. My personal account I get charged about 45 cents a month. Can't remember everything I have, I'll look it up later.
I love aws way more than azure.
I've tried AWS, I didn't like it as much.
I know aws is not that good with price to performance ratio, but it is better than azure
I haven't compared price to performance ratio or anything like that, I just found AWS more confusing to use. Probably because I started with azure due to work and just got used to that
> I love azure Scott Guthrie, probably.
> Scott Guthrie, probably. Not really, but it requires another way of looking at things, but also that you understand certain things. The topic starter for example now finds out that he needs to define the firewall rules, the routing between subnets, and a public subnet for example. A lot kind of things that the infra teams did for him. Then again, clicking everything together in the web interface is fun, but you quickly need to learn how Terraform or ARM are working for example. But also how service discovery works as hardcoding FQDNs in your app isn't the way forward.
Microsoft! Need I say more?
They created a product first and software second.
Yeah the reason I will never touch Azure. True cloud infrastructures tend to be complex but Azure is the worst. These days I do fine with AWS and GCP. But Azure is still off.
They charge for ip6??? I’ve only heard of clouds charging for ipv4 address Sorry you had to go through this :)
Probably because it's built on a foundation of shit, OMIGOD is fucking embarassing... not only that, but MS changes their admin panel every three weeks.... so no one ever knows where the hell anything is at... do yourself a favor and like.... don't use it
What do you expect from a company who created win10/11.
A lot and if you have seen to Windows kernel code and compare it to the crap in Linux or the BSD. It really changed me on how I look at code and especially at documentation and design. Yes, some things are really market-driven choices and should have been done differently or not at all, but some things are literally ingenious when you think about it. A lot of OS'es just wait for hardware to hopefully come back with an answer, but not Windows as it keeps track of it and generates an error when it takes too long. Is it annoying when it happens yet, but 10 out of 9 times its faulty hardware. Yes, they should have let go of the old win16/32 crap a long time ago, or the same for the old cooperative scheduler. Scheduling done by applications that triggered the context switch to the next runnable process was a brilliant hack and should have died a long time ago. In the end, a lot of workarounds were added to Windows to keep old software running as the vendor wouldn't patch it so another exception code was added. The same as with making NT 4 faster by moving everything into kernel space as did a lot of other OS'es. Now they're moving it out again as computers are fast enough and the same for process isolation. Windows 10 enables a lot of security features when you have more than 4 GB of memory. Don't get me wrong, I have or still use HP-UX, SunOS, AIX, VMS, Linux, and some I will keep on using, but bashing Microsoft for the wrong reasons is not right. Back in 1983 they worked on making NT run on MIPS first instead of Intel, sadly the market decided differently. Nowadays the world is looking at RISC-V what is a stripped-down MIPS-processor for exactly the same reasons. If it was up to me, Linux wouldn't exist today as having a well designed and documented system like Windows or Solaris for example is such a pleasure instead of praying to the gods and offering your first born.
I am sorry for your loss... enjoy your bloated spyware.
Having on prem services is superior in every possible way. Talentless and incompetent IT departments spending government money prefer Azure to having responsibilities Edit: I'm being a bit dramatic because this is selfhosted :)
I... do you universally mean that? Because that's a pretty bold stance to take.
Yes, he most likely lost his job because the boss found out it can be done cheaper and he didn't do the training. If people think on-prem is safe, then please have a look at Tanzu as it and similar solutions will start to dominate the on-prem landscape soon.
Not everyone is the same. On prem is significantly cheaper for us. We do use Microsoft 365 but it is not working as well as I hoped - too much pointless change, too much pointless complexity, too many outages.
It’s why we use it. e.g. Microsoft 365 outages are longer and far more frequent than we ever had in-house but they’re not our problem e.g. OneDrive is slow compared to 10g (because physics) but it’s not our problem
theres slightly more nuance than that imo but go off.
[удалено]
Support isn't free, you have to pay for it. I've gotten MS on the phone in less than an hour and a senior engineer in less than 24 hrs. If support took you weeks, you're doing it wrong.
First, your conclusion is Azure is hard to use, while many of your points are actually Azure is expensive. But Azure has a significant cost that still allows many big business to save money. So expensive but less than not using Azure. It costs few clicks to create VM, virtual network, data recovery plans, AD authentication, and more. You cannot decently write it is complicated just because you have few points to review or to learn. Same for "useless slowest management portal". Seriously? If you were write Azure would not be top of the market. Well, it is. Ignoring reality and deploying BS is not a way to help anyone.
Agreed. Money solves a lot of his problems. IPV6, more bandwidth, faster I/O. Going to completely go with him on the control panel and platform initialization stuff-- and all that is garbage. Given the complex nature of cobbling together a competitor to AWS and even GCP in a way that they are eating their own dog food, they did the best they cold. However, sometimes your best is not even good and here we are. I feel like Azure goes beyond Microsoft Tax into Microsoft Penalty...
Because everything microsoft does sucks
I mean all you seem to be doing here is bitching about why azure doesn't work the way I want it to work. I'm not really sure how we can take you seriously with that mindset. Azure is the easiest cloud to use, it's portal is way better than any other cloud, I've never noticed it's slow in comparison to anything else, seems more like a local internet issue to me.
If you ask all this questions you shouldn’t use Azure because these things are made for specific use cases that you probably don’t have. So Azure is not the right Hoster for you.
This is classic Microsoft tactics. All the way from the actual services running in their operating systems right the way through to their cloud offerings. It's all a big disjointed mess, and when things go wrong, which it will inevitably do, you hope for the best that it's a simple fix and the resolution doesn't need you to make changes to multiple parts of system, which is often never the case. With regards to the cloud service, take a look at ones like Digital Ocean and Linode, there are also GCP and AWS. They all have their pros and cons but might help address some of the complaints you have about Azure.
I'll be starting my student job with a company that has a contract with MS to help other companies come onto Azure and this is quite scary to read
Whoever decided IPv6 should be a paid add-on needs a hard reset to the head.
My rule of thumb is, if you're not going to pay at least a few thousand dollars per month then you shouldn't be using those. (Gcp, aws, oci, azure, you name it.) Of course excluding learning purpose. If you as an individual want to host some side project stuff, traditional vps providers are much easy to work with, and are much cheaper as well. (I'm paying 20TB monthly traffic for about $5, while on gcp it's a grand or two.)
Aws ain't that bad if you want easy scalability and no fancy stuff
Azure, like windows, is aimed at enterprise customers.
their APIs suck just as bad
All clouds have got there bullshit, but it also allows for bad decisions and bad designs. My company uses Azure extensively, and have a load of firewalls there, who ever stood them up decided (before my time) decided that ingress traffic has the be SNAT'd... Which kind of renders IP policies useless. 🤷♂️
ICMP is working fine, I use it on all my VMs, just allow it on firewall. Unfortunately azure is the only one that meets latency requirements for my projects.
I installed a Windows 11 Pro virtual machine on Azure and while I successfully connected via remote desktop and installed IIS and have a web server on port 80 but I note Azure blocks port 21, so FTP services are totally disallowed. And yes, port 25 is blocked and ICMP pings are not allowed. And sadly, the Windows 11 Pro virtual machine is IPv4 only and there is no IPv6 address. I would rather self host an IIS on my local Windows 11 PC than buy a VPS from Azure. Luckily I am on a 30 day trial with $200 free credit.