AWS vs. Azure: Comparison
Tags: azure, aws, cloudcomputing
Published: 2023-09-29 14:26:03

## Introduction

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure are the two giants when it comes to cloud computing. The most critical business decision is to choose the cloud platform.

Not only cloud providers, but AWS and Azure have come a long way to provide technological services to revolutionize the way organizations operate and innovate.

In this comparison, I will share my understandings of the vast ecosystems they offer, the pricing models that govern their services, the global infrastructure, and the security measures they employ to protect sensitive data. 

## Ecosystems

> Below are the **Compute Services** offered

**AWS** comprises of AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud),  AWS Lambda, Amazon ECS (Elastic Container Service), and more.

**Azure** comprises of Azure App Service, Azure Functions, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Virtual Machines (VMs), and more

> Then if we talk about storage then below are the **Storage Services** offered

**AWS** offers Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store), Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service), Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Redshift

**Azure** offers Azure Blob Storage, Azure File Storage, Azure Table Storage, Azure Disk Storage, and Azure Data Lake Storage

> Let's see the **Database Services**

**AWS** offers Amazon RDS, Amazon Aurora, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon Neptune

**Azure** offers Azure SQL Database, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MariaDB, Azure Cosmos DB, and more

## Pricing 

Both AWS and Azure provide a free tier that you can use to try your hands on to explore their service offerings. Both also offer pricing calculators that you can use to make cost estimations as per your needs. 

There is also **pay as you go pricing** that charges you based on the amount of time you use the resources. It can be per minute or per hour basis.

If you want to use the resources for a longer duration like for a year or more then both AWS and Azure offer special discounted rates which are termed as **Reserved Instances**

## Global Infrastructure

**Azure** global infrastructure is made up of two key components—physical infrastructure and connective network components. The physical component is comprised of 200+ physical datacenters, arranged into regions, and linked by one of the largest interconnected networks on the planet.

With the connectivity of the global Azure network, each of the Azure datacenters provides high availability, low latency, scalability, and the latest advancements in cloud infrastructure—all running on the Azure platform.

The **AWS Cloud** has across 102 Availability Zones within 32 geographic regions around the world, with announced plans for 12 more Availability Zones and 4 more AWS Regions.

## Security Measures to protect sensitive data

To manage access to resources, AWS offers **IAM** roles, users and group and in Azure, you can use **Azure Active Directory**

If you want to secure configurable data then **AWS** offers **Secrets Manager** and **Azure** provides **Azure Key Vault**

## Conclusion

This is a brief comparison that I have shared based on my experience of working on Azure and AWS. There is still lot out there in Azure and AWS that you can explore by visiting their official documentation.

Thanks for reading!