azure

Save with BYOL and Azure Hybrid Benefit

Richard Green on 20th December 2017

In my post from earlier today, I talked about the benefits of using Azure Instance Reservations to save money on the compute of IaaS virtual machines. When we think about the components that make up an IaaS VM, we have a few: the VM instance and configuration, the storage, and the software that runs on it. For most people, the software at the most basic level will be either Microsoft Windows or Linux and likely some application software layered on top such as SQL Server.

When we are talking about Microsoft Windows there is a license associated with running the operating system and when you commit to running a Microsoft Azure IaaS VM running Microsoft Windows, the cost of that virtual machine includes that license. If you are an enterprise client of Microsoft’s with an Enterprise Agreement you will likely already have entitlement some Windows Server licenses through that agreement. If you already have licenses that you are paying for, why would you want to pay for them again in Azure? The obvious answer is that you wouldn’t unless your intentions are to do away with the Enterprise Agreement and license everything through retail channels.

Microsoft Azure offers a lesser known option called Azure Hybrid Benefit which is often referred to as Hybrid Usage Benefit (HUB for short). HUB allows you to apply your Enterprise Agreement licenses to your IaaS VMs deployed in Azure. What this means in cost terms is that the price of the Azure IaaS VM ceases to include the Windows Server license element and you are paying purely for the compute. The benefits of HUB are not limited to Windows Server either. You can also use the HUB option with SQL Server IaaS VMs deployed to Azure which means you no longer pay the list price in Azure for either the Windows Server or the SQL Server application license.

Saving with Azure Reserved Instances

Richard Green on 20th December 2017

The cloud is everywhere we look in IT now: more, and more organisations are adopting cloud services of one flavour or another. One of the benefits of cloud is that the costs can come out of operational expenditure in nice little monthly packages instead of giant wedges of capital expenditure. While cloud also offers us the commodity of scale providing services faster, better protected, and more reliable than we can often build ourselves on-premises for equivalent cost but that doesn’t mean we need to pay the recommended retail price.

In this article, I’m going to cover a little-known feature in Microsoft Azure called Reserved Instances (RIs). Previously called Compute Pre-Purchase, this feature is available to anybody using a Pay As You Go (PAYG) subscription or an Enterprise Agreement Subscription. If you are using any other type of subscription such as one bundled as part of an offer then you will not be able to participate. Reserved Instances are only available for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) virtual machines. They cannot be used for any other types of service.

MySQL and PostgreSQL Database as a Service in Azure

Richard Green on 11th May 2017

Today is the day that ClearDB users rejoice. Today is the day that a viable platform as a service offering for both MySQL and PostgreSQL exist in Microsoft Azure. Announced last night, Microsoft have now launched their own platform as a service offerings for the two database engines.

For years, ClearDB have offered a PaaS solution for MySQL. I had the misfortune of trying it out first hand recently on a web project and I can tell you that the performance was shocking. So bad was the performance that we actually deployed a Linux VM in Azure to run the MySQL service in IaaS and take the management hit on IaaS vs. PaaS. Even the support offered was terrible, blaming the performance on Azure itself when there were no issues with the Azure platform globally at the time.

The announcement puts these new services in preview. This means that the services and features aren’t going to be ready for your production workloads nor are all of the features going to be available right now. For example, I deployed an Azure Database for MySQL server last night to try it out and the Basic pricing tier is the only tier available right now. The ability to force all connections to secure and to define firewall rules for access is important and good to see there from day one.

All in all, it looks like a good first release. As I have been using In App MySQL database for Azure Web Apps to run the MySQL database on this site for sometime now (since preview in fact), and I have been debating whether to step back to IaaS for MySQL because of the fact that In App MySQL limits my ability to use features like Azure Load Balancer or Azure Traffic Manager with multiple site instances, this is going to be something I can definately see me using in the near term for real.

You can check out the documentation, pricing and scaling details for yourself at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/mysql/concepts-servers.