Compare Azure to Windows On Prem for Normal Business Workloads
-
Real World Avimark Plus AD Comparison
One of the key reasons that Avimark is often deployed with Windows Standard instead of Windows Essentials is to get the two VM option so that an AD DC can be run on the same hardware, as there is way, way more than enough spare capacity to do so without any additional purchases. You can run the AD DC and Avimark on the same VM with Essentials, and certainly many places do, but it's nice to have the more robust option of having both. If we assume the Essentials path with the aforementioned example, that would shave a lot of cost off of the Avimark deployment there and make the on prem dramatically more cost effective.
So in our example above, the $7,800 for Avimark doesn't just provide for the cost of the hardware and the Windows Server license and the CALs for Avimark, but all of the cost of doing the on prem AD DC is actually included in that. But if we look at Azure, those costs are not overlapping, but have to be added together.
So let's assume the same scenario as for Avimark, but now getting AD DC services in the mix as well and you'll see how in the real world cloud starts to fall down quickly with its "pay in total for each service separately" model.
Azure for Avimark: $2,698 / year
Azure for AD: $1,059 / year
Azure Total: $3,757 / yearOn Prem Avimark + AD: $780 - $975 / year
Paying a $3K premium per annum for the privilege of being on Azure seems crazy for common workloads. That's not a drop in the bucket. That's a lot of money to a small business. And more importantly, it's a huge percentage leap over the cost of doing it the way that they've always done it. That's more than 400% more costly.
Over a ten year time span, this setup would cost $29,770 more on Azure than on premises!
-
@scottalanmiller I think you wrote that you "hate anything on prem" in some old thread. What have changed in the meantime?
-
@Mario-Jakovina said in Compare Azure to Windows On Prem for Normal Business Workloads:
@scottalanmiller I think you wrote that you "hate anything on prem" in some old thread. What have changed in the meantime?
Well the first really key thing is .... remember cloud != off prem.
Cloud vs. Non-Cloud is unrelated to On Prem vs. Off Prem. So your question is completely unrelated to this discussion of pricing.
I still hate anything on prem, it's a ridiculous way to run things. But when you can't get solid Internet, and you can't move your business, you are trapped. But otherwise, yeah, get away from on-prem, but it is rare that you'd consider going to cloud.
-
https://www.datamation.com/cloud-computing/is-cloud-computing-really-right-for-your-business-1.html
I've been really consistent over the years that cloud is an amazing technology, and one that applies to almost no one in the real world. But also that on prem is never going to go away, but that it sucks and you never want to be on prem unless you can't get around it.
-
@scottalanmiller I am not questioning your consistency. My company uses on on prem servers because of both, unreliable internet, and calculations similar to yours in this thread.
I was just wandering whether something has changed in your view or not.
You are mentioning on prem here, not colo. I was not asking about cloud, so cloud != off prem does not mean anything here. -
@Mario-Jakovina said in Compare Azure to Windows On Prem for Normal Business Workloads:
You are mentioning on prem here, not colo. I was not asking about cloud, so cloud != off prem does not mean anything here.
Colo adds more complicated pricing to consider. This came from a discussion about an assertion that cloud would just save you money over traditional on premises deployments. I wanted a place to point people to show that no one should be thinking that cloud is a cost saving measure or cheap approach for any normal situation. It has amazing use cases that are just really uncommon and very unique and almost never apply to internal infrastructure.
-
@scottalanmiller I agree
-
@Mario-Jakovina said in Compare Azure to Windows On Prem for Normal Business Workloads:
My company uses on on prem servers because of both, unreliable internet, and calculations similar tou yours in this thread.
At NTG, we use colo for the majority of our needs and cloud for more specialized needs. But we are always looking at how to pull back from cloud for workloads as there is almost always a big cost savings getting from cloud to colo. But there are definitely cloud advantages for some use cases. We have zero on premises, we are a very modern company and are physical disparate, so we are ideally situated to have nothing on premises. Our design is LANless from the ground up and without good Internet we can't do anything, so that works out for us that we know that that will always be there.
-
Applying legacy thinking to cloud and cloud migrations almost always results in increased costs.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Compare Azure to Windows On Prem for Normal Business Workloads:
**
Azure: $175.80 / year
Vultr: $60 / year
On Prem: $40 / yearVultr and Azure are nowhere near the same. Vultr compares more to AWS lightsail. Which essentially gives you the same VPS functionality without the entire infrastructure benefits in the cloud.
You don't talk about autoscaling or building a multi tiered application so of course you would use something like Vultr or Lightsail.
-
I would recommend taking a professional level AWS or Azure course when you get a chance. If it's not something you've done before, it can be eye opening for the multitude of options and capabilities that you get. Even if you've done a course more than 2 years ago, a bunch has changed.
-
I work in a cloud only environment and there is so much. I've done 100 hours of so training and I'm still learning.
-
All of these scenarios sound like "hobby businesses".
Purchasing a piece of software and then not updating anything for 12 years....
-
@scottalanmiller said in Compare Azure to Windows On Prem for Normal Business Workloads:
Disclaimer: Cloud is actually a no-go for Avimark, or nearly any program like it, from the get go.
Elasticity has nothing to do with the clients internet connection. Hopefully you mean hosted here...
-
Scott where are you getting the AAD pricing from? Does AAD have some cloud computing non user based pricing? I’m only aware of the $4/u/m option ( or more)
-
@Dashrender said in Compare Azure to Windows On Prem for Normal Business Workloads:
Scott where are you getting the AAD pricing from? Does AAD have some cloud computing non user based pricing? I’m only aware of the $4/u/m option ( or more)
He was referring to AAD DS, which was correct pricing for just that.
-
@stacksofplates said in Compare Azure to Windows On Prem for Normal Business Workloads:
All of these scenarios sound like "hobby businesses".
Purchasing a piece of software and then not updating anything for 12 years....
It's the real world, though. Just look at discussions on here, it's how nearly everyone works.
-
@Dashrender said in Compare Azure to Windows On Prem for Normal Business Workloads:
Scott where are you getting the AAD pricing from? Does AAD have some cloud computing non user based pricing? I’m only aware of the $4/u/m option ( or more)
I linked the pricing page when I stated it.
$4u/m would be massively more expensive.
-
@IRJ said in Compare Azure to Windows On Prem for Normal Business Workloads:
I would recommend taking a professional level AWS or Azure course when you get a chance. If it's not something you've done before, it can be eye opening for the multitude of options and capabilities that you get. Even if you've done a course more than 2 years ago, a bunch has changed.
Oh it's great knowledge to have, for sure. And even businesses that "mostly" need to be on premises, will often need to know how to use cloud for special workloads.
-
@IRJ said in Compare Azure to Windows On Prem for Normal Business Workloads:
@scottalanmiller said in Compare Azure to Windows On Prem for Normal Business Workloads:
**
Azure: $175.80 / year
Vultr: $60 / year
On Prem: $40 / yearVultr and Azure are nowhere near the same. Vultr compares more to AWS lightsail. Which essentially gives you the same VPS functionality without the entire infrastructure benefits in the cloud.
You don't talk about autoscaling or building a multi tiered application so of course you would use something like Vultr or Lightsail.
Normal businesses, the 99%, don't have scaling, and often all tiering goes in a single "container". That's the thing, when we discuss real world workloads, cloud's tooling applies to almost nothing that they do. Even on Wall St. the number of workloads that would actually leverage cloud was only around 20% at best, and that's an environment that is really conduscive to that.
Obviously hosting environments are the primary customers of cloud, where 80% or more of their workloads can autoscale and are tiered. I think this is why cloud gets the attention that it does - because Silicon Valley specifically makes cloud, makes products that are primarily hosted, and do most of the talking about the industry. But customers like Google, Change, Facebook are the exception, not the norm, and even the big SI players only get advantages from cloud heavily for their customer facing products (operations) not their internal IT infrastructure (IT).
