This should be fun. Just a few days after Amazon announced its 19th price cut, Microsoft is announcing its own price cuts for Azure Storage and Compute. If you’re looking at running a smaller instance with a 100MB database, you can now get one for less than $20 a month. If you’re doing heavy computing, though, Azure still seems a bit behind AWS.
The cuts are 12% to Azure Storage (now $0.125 per GB), and the extra small compute instance for Azure has been dropped by 50% to $0.02 per hour. If you’re buying the six month plans, Microsoft has reduced storage prices by “up to 14%.”
Comparing Azure to AWS
Microsoft breaks their prices down by month rather than by compute hour on their pricing calculator, so it’s not as simple as one might hope to compare pricing. But here’s how it breaks down, assuming 732 billable hours per month:
- Microsoft Extra Small (1GHz CPU, 768MB RAM, 20GB Storage): $0.02 per hour, $15.00 per month
- Microsoft Small (1.6GHz CPU, 1.75GB RAM, 225GB Storage): $0.123 per hour, $90.00 per month
- Microsoft Medium (2 x 1.6GHz CPU, 3.5GB RAM, 490GB Storage): $0.25 per hour, $180.00 per month
- Microsoft Large (4 x 1.6GHz CPU, 7GB RAM, 1,000GB Storage): $0.49 per hour, $360.00 per month
- Microsoft Extra Large (8 x 1.6GHz CPU, 14GB RAM, 2,040GB Storage): $0.98 per hour, $720 per month
How does that stack up with AWS EC2 pricing? I took a look at the pricing for Windows instances on EC2, without any reserved pricing bonuses:
- AWS Micro (Up to 2 EC2 Compute Units in bursts, 613MB RAM, EBS Storage Only): $0.03 per hour, $21.96 per month
- AWS Small (1 EC2 Compute Unit, 1.7GB RAM, 160GB Storage): $0.115 per hour, $84.19 per month
- AWS Medium (2 EC2 Compute Units, 3.75GB RAM, 410GB Storage): $0.23 per hour, $168.36 per month
- AWS Large (4 EC2 Compute Units, 7.5GB RAM, 850GB Storage): $0.46 per hour, $336.72 per month
- AWS XL (8 EC2 Compute Units, 15GB RAM, 1,690GB Storage): $0.92 per hour, $673.44 per month
The EC2 compute units are described as “the equivalent CPU capacity of a 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeon processor,” so it doesn’t look like you’re getting quite the same horsepower out of an AWS compute unit, and AWS is more stingy with storage. AWS instances have a wee bit more RAM, though. Pricing-wise, AWS is coming in cheaper if you accept the instances as roughly equivalent.
Where it gets trickier is if you opt for longer-term pricing with Azure. You can buy six month plans with Azure for “up to 20%” less on a monthly basis. Amazon has several tiers of reserved instances, and additional discounts for big spenders as we covered earlier this week.
SQL Server Pricing
What gets trickier is adding in SQL server. If you want, specifically, Microsoft’s brand ‘o SQL, then you’re looking at Microsoft’s SQL Azure Database or running AWS EC2 Instances with SQL Server. Here you must choose large or XL instances, as AWS doesn’t offer micro, small or medium instances with SQL Server. You can run SQL Server Express Edition on any of the instance types, but for the full package you’re only going with the two higher-end instances.
That inflates the pricing to $1.06 per hour for large instances, and $1.52 per hour for XL instances.
Azure, on the other hand, charges by the size of the database and the number of databases. So comparing the two services gets pretty hairy if you factor in SQL Server.
If you’re looking at a lot of compute instances, Amazon still seems to have the edge in pricing. One might also be tempted to look at AWS after the Azure meltdown at the end of February, though AWS has had its own issues.
Microsoft does have plenty of money to throw at this, so this is unlikely to be the last price cut we see in 2012 from either vendor.
