Microsoft Azure Reviews: 4.3/5 — Solid Choice

Using Azure fabric we developed poc for our product

usability can be more simplified as visual studio

BUsiness prob;lems such as data security

Azure cloud storage provides affordable and reliable storage offerings in addition or in conjunction with other cloud based products. We are currently using it for our SharePoint Online tenants.

So far, I have not found anything negative about the product.

We’re using Azure storage for our SharePoint Online tenants which is replacing an OpenText Documentum solution.

The confidence in the ecosystem and trust in security and transparency

Nothing to point out at this time the system is very robust

Internal domain characterization , active directory sync

An easy to navigate graphical user interface. Allows easy and practical access to cloud data. Has intuitive drag-and-drop functionality (transfers are multithreaded). Easy to view data plus transfer files, plus supports copy and paste. Supports common blob operations (create, delete, rename, move) with the ability to quickly view and edit blob metadata and create/delete blob snapshots. Provides the ability to search across storage account with wildcards. Can bookmark specific containers for quick access.

There's very little not to like, it does what it says on the tin and does it well.

The is an essential tool for developers and administrators working with Azure. It allows easy access to view and manage Azure storage. Developers should have this installed alongside Visual Studio.

It is constantly updated, they added recently added support to check cosmos db

Sometimes is hard to keep the accounts updated when changing between the office and home, because of the proxy

I have to check if one of the azure storage queue is getting cleaned and this tool helps a lot

I love how all the apps integrate into making a platform that is easy for me whole team to manage.

Migrating our data from an ancient system was very tedious

Im combinign SQL data management along with inventory control for our ecommerce site.

By using it, I can view many Azure Storage Account in just one windows then can explorer, copy/paste contents between them.

The speed is quite low than using Poweshell command line.

Easy to use.Just drap and drop. No need to remember any command to copy, edit contents.

The Azure Container Instances service provides fast and isolated computing resources that can be used in the event of traffic increases

I think that Microsoft can improve the quality of technical support.

Data processing tasks.

Easy to set up and manage, per-minute charging, your VMs are not charged when turned off. Using ARM Templates or Terraform to manage infrastructure allows you to create entire cloud datacenter in couple of minutes.

You have to build availability sets to get SLA guaranteed, this will increace your costs drammatically

Migrated old applications without biying new hardware

The Azure interface is exceptionally good - I enjoyed working in it

The rest api was hard to implement the docs could have been better

Being able to handle all aspects of my business under one roof was refreshingly convenient

Flexible and convenient to use. Instead of using command to copy/transfer file to Storage Account, I can use it just drap and drop.

The speed is quite slow than using AZ copy to Azure Storage

I can transfer files between local to Azure Storage or between Azure Storage accounts without any mistake when using PowerShell

It has lots of OS that I could not find by other provider. Also the time for installing is very quick then easy setup. I can found some OS that never seen before like F5 BIG - load balancer.

Price is quite expensive and the trial version is quite short.

We moved on-premise server to Azure cloud. It reduced issues like power, network issues...

I like that it has automatic backups and you can restore anything from within 35 days. I also really like the azure portal which is a great tool to manage your servers and cost analysis.

There is nothing that I dislike at the moment other than that it is a bit on the expensive side.

It provides a way to store your data efficiently and securely. Our system has been running faster due to switching over to an Azure database.

Incredibly easy and fast container deployment

Technical documentation is still scarce

Smaller administrative footprint

Easy, portal and fast to create and deploy on server.

Its new to me and I like everything so far and its not supporting docker-compose .

In creating custom docker image files and deploying it to Azure. Benefits are very fast in deployment.

Its ability to upscale the Virtual Machines based on the needs of your applications. Need more CPU power and need it quickly without having to migrate information from one Virtual Machine to another or do complicated tasks? then this is what you need. We went quickly from a server with 4 cores, then needed to upgrade to 8, then 16 Cores for our applications as it is a very CPU intensive application and we need to make it work fast for the 200 users we have using it on one server (we have more than one), and all it needed was a quick restart.

While packages are flexible, they are based on CPU Cores and don't let you select the RAM. For instance, we upgraded to 16 CPU Cores, but the amount of RAM available on the servers over exceeds our needs, which could be a hit to the pricing. Having a way to balance CPUs and RAM better will be welcome in the future, but is surely not a game stopper today.

We run Aspect Worforce Management for a large Global Operation, requiring us to centralize the application and deploy it via Remote Desktop connection and as our business and core user base grows, we need our servers to follow the pace of our growth. If we were an On-Prem based operation like we used to be, upgrading our servers was hard, now it's a breeze. Just make sure the governance of the virtual machines and upgrading it won't be trapped in a network of approvals, make sure the business is made aware quickly when the need arise to upgrade the servers.

Constantly pushing updates to make it better. Love the design..makes it easy to navigate through the database

Searching is a bit slow, but maybe that is due to the large database we have

It helps me look in the cloud to see if everything matches what our customer has on their end, or if there's a disconnection somewhere. Helps me dig deeper on some cases. I can easily see whether or not a customer has set something up wrong by digging here.

I recently needed to create a dozen containers in very short order. I was able to quickly and easily do this with My Azure Web App.

So far everything has been a breeze so I can't provide any negatives at the moment.

We use it to contain a variety of image files in variety of sizes for use in an online image library that integrates with our e-commerce platform.

It's absurdly easy to set up extremely powerful web infrastructure for your application. You can have a web app set up and deployed in minutes if you know what you want.

Azure is less affordable than AWS in my experience, and is optimized for Windows development.

We host all of our windows infrastructure on azure now.

It is private so it makes it harder for those trying to steal photos are be involved in infringement.

It is difficult to use at first because there are many apps. to access before usage.

Keeping others from stealing images or leaking images.Use container registries in Azure with your existing container development and deployment pipelines. Use Azure Container Registry Build (ACR Build) to build container images in Azure. Build on demand, or fully automate builds with source code commit and base image update build triggers.

It is easy to use and very intuitively designed

The cost is very high. It can be cheaper.

Helps me manage my severs

Very useful when you just need to quickly download or upload small amount of files to Azure Storage. It works much faster than Azure portal and allows you to fully manage storage accounts regardless of it`s type. You can easily manage BLOB and File storage as well as Tables and queues. Preview features also allows you to work with NoSQL databases and data lakes. In addition to manage content of your storage accounts you can also control access by creation of shared access signatures

Not very easy bulk operations with files, you`d better rely on powershell for this

Storage accounts management tool

Scale sets allows creating a number of synchronized Virtual Machines and use load balancers to distribute load between these. This makes you sure that you will always have needed resources when load increases and will not be charged for resources that currently idle. Creation of auto-scale rules based on desired metrics will allow to automate resource provision and avoid calls from helpdesk in the middle of the night because there is a huge user activity on your application and it becomes slow. And after sime time after activity falls, scale set will remove additional instances to save your costs

scaling will take some time to deploy additional instances so performance will not grow immediately. Hard integration with databases

Scaling of business critical workloads

Very simple tool to manually manage all aspects of your storage accounts. You can upload and download files to blob containers and file shares, edit data in queue storage and manage messages in queues. You can control access to your resources and create SAS tokens directly from Storage Explorer. you can manage snapshots of your files and create storage structure. It is very easy to start working, I had to spend several minutes to be able to control my storage. Preview functions allows integration with even more Azure resources

Nothing critical, but maybe including storage management automation tasks could be a good idea.

Simple tool to access storage contents

Azure Virtual Machines provides the way to work in cloud right like are used to do it on-premise. VMs are connected to virtual networks and storage accounts, that means you can extend your existing network to cloud using IPSec tunnel and just integrate you data center with Azure. It is very useful when you already have a set of applications thatyou want to move to Azure without actually rebuilding these. VMs are available in different sizes and based on HDD and SSD drives, so you can select needed performance without spending additional costs. VMs could be created in availability and scale sets so you can have stable and scalable environments when it is needed without manually deploying additiional copies in case of load growth. You can automate scaling based on metrics collected from these VMs so you application will get additional instances when some heavy events are going on, and remove these when load falls, to save your costs. You can select any OS you need, everybody used to think that Azure is mostly Windows oriented, but you can even find plenty of Oracle Linux images on marketplace, you also can get get VMs with pre-installed software or migrate your own from on-premises with several possible ways.

Pricing policy is very confusing, montly bill bill is usually different from what you have get from Azure Pricing calculator prior to deployment

Extension for on-premise datacenter without adding hardware

Way better than SQLite, there's a lot more customization available.

Nothing much really, it's a very powerful system.

It fits perfectly with my clients needs and it makes my workflow go much faster

Storage explorer allows management of all aspects of cloud storage with simple and user friendly UI, it works much faster than Azure portal, and allows wider range of tasks. you can upload and download files, create shared access signatures for temporary access, create file share snapshot and even get cmd string to connect the share to VM as network drive. Functionality gets more advanced with time, preview options allows connecting to DB accounts and data lake. You can put messages in queue storage and manage tables and contents using this tool

Could not find bulk object manipulation tools, except of this everything looks good

Storage management tasks

Storage Explorer allows you working with Azure storage account in way similar that it was on Norton Commander in MS-DOS, you can download and upload files to blob and file storage, copy files between storage account and control access. You can easily create Shared Access Signatures and set Storage Access level. Latest version also allows creation of snapshots of file shares and switch views based on these. Preview functions alows you to connect to Azure Data Lake Store and even Cosmos DB. It works with both public Azure Environment and private solutions like Azure Stack. Allows connection to multiple storage accounts and perform file operations across these. Very simple in installations and usage.

Does not support ADFS accounts to log on, users could be authenticated only in Azure AD. This makes some limitations in implementing storage explorer widely. No option to create new storage account from it, you need to go to Azure portal

Managing Azure Storage and contents

Azure SQL database is the first step in cloud data platform, allows you using functionality similar to SQL Server in conjunction with modern technologies and features. Database is provided as PaaS, so you don`t have to manage it`s host or perform any system administration. Database using new features of cloud deployment, like automated tuning and performance insights, which allows you to reduce administrative efforts and follow best practices of cloud location. High Availability and disaster recovery features allows replication of database to another region and perform failover in case of Azure location outage. New security functions like firewall rules and virtual network integration allows to restrict access to only locations specified by you, but not make additional problems for your applications connected to these databases. Implementation of elastic pools for several databases will allow you to manage resources needed for every database without additional costs. Different pricing tiers will allow you to pick eactly what you need at current stage of work on your application. You can always increase resources when it will be needed and application will go live. You can configure auto=scaling so database will have more resources in case of increased load, and don`t consume much when it is idle.

Azure SQL database is not SQL Server, it just looks similar and have partially common functionality, in most cases you will have to adjust the code of your applications to have it working with Azure SQL database

RDBMS solution for webapps

Azure Virtual Machines could be the perfect solution, if you desired to start moving your services from outdated hardware to cloud. These machines are running almost just like your regular VMs in data center and moving your applications and databases there will not require rewriting the code to start. So you can just start your applications as it is, and only after this plan any code changes to move to PaaS level. All VMs are running in virtual networks and can access storage accounts. Your staff will not have to do much efforts to get familiar with new environment and will be able to support applications like it was in on-premise data center. Marketplace allows you to pick all almost all needed images to deploy, it has Windows, Linux machines, machines with installed software. License for everithing installed before deployment is always included in cost of machine. If you will not find suitable image, you can capture image from your existing on-premise virtual machine and deploy it to Azure.

Lots of pricing tiers could be confusing for first time, from a first sight you can`t understand why similar in resources VMs, has different costs. No generation 2 Hyper-V VMs support, you need to convert your machine before migration

Running application designed to be deployed on-premises, without redesigning these. Running SQL Server for applications that can`t work with Azure SQL database