Updated June 15, 2023
Differences between AWS vs AZURE
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a cloud service platform from Amazon, which provides services in different domains such as compute, storage, delivery, and other functionality which help the business to scale and grow. We can utilize these domains in the form of services, which can be used to create and deploy different types of applications in the cloud platform. Microsoft Azure is a cloud service platform by Microsoft, which provides services in different domains such as compute, storage, database, networking, developer tools, and other functionality which help organizations to scale and grow their businesses. Azure services are broadly categorized as platform as a service (PaaS), software as a service (SaaS), and Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) which can be used by developers and software employees to create, deploy and manage services and applications through the cloud.
What is AWS?
AWS services are designed in such a way that they work with each other and produce a scalable and efficient outcome. AWS offering services are categorized into 3 types Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), software as a service (SaaS), and platform as a service (PaaS). AWS was launched in 2006 and became the best cloud platform among currently available cloud platforms. Cloud platforms offer various advantages, such as management overhead reduction, cost minimization, etc.
What is AZURE?
Microsoft Azure was launched in 2010, and it emerged as one of the biggest commercial cloud service providers. It offers a wide range of integrated cloud services and functionalities such as analytics, computing, networking, database, storage, mobile, and web applications that seamlessly integrate with your environment in order to achieve efficiency and scalability.
Head to Head Comparison Between AWS and AZURE (Infographics)
Below Is The Top 6 Comparison Between AWS vs AZURE
Key Differences Between AWS and Azure
Both are popular choices in the market; let us discuss some of the major differences:
- AWS EC2 users have the flexibility to configure their own virtual machines (VMs) or use pre-configured images. In contrast, Azure users must select a virtual hard disk (VHD) to create a VM, which may be pre-configured by a third party.
- AWS offers temporary storage, which will be assigned when an instance is started and destroyed when it is terminated, and S3 for object storage. At the same time, Azure offers temporary storage by block storage through page Blobs for VMs and Block Blobs for object storage.
- AWS offers a Virtual private cloud so that users can create isolated networks within the cloud. In contrast, Azure offers a Virtual network through which we can create isolated networks, subnets, route tables, and private IP address ranges as same as in AWS.
- Azure is open to Hybrid cloud systems, whereas AWS is less open to private or third-party cloud providers.
- AWS follows pay-as-you-go and charge per hour, whereas Azure also follows pay as you go model, and charge per minute, which provides a more exact pricing model than AWS.
- AWS has more features and configurations, offering much flexibility, power, and customization with support for many third-party tools integration. Whereas Azure will be easy to use if we are familiar with Windows as it is a Windows platform, and it’s easy to integrate on-premises Windows servers with cloud instances to create a hybrid environment.
AWS vs AZURE Comparison Table
Below are the lists of points; describe the Comparison:
| Basis of Comparison | AWS | AZURE |
| Compute | We have computers to perform the calculation, processing, and computing of data, and we can scale to thousands of processing nodes with the help of cloud service providers based on our requirements. AWS uses Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) as a primary solution for scalable computing. For managing software containers with Docker or Kubernetes, it uses ECS (EC2 Container service) and EC2 container registry. | For computing purposes, Azure uses virtual machines and, to scale to a large extent uses virtual machine scale sets. For software management, the Docker container uses Container Service (AKS) and uses Container Registry for the Docker container registry. |
| Storage | Storage is next to the main service for the cloud provider. AWS uses S3 (Simple storage service), which is longest running than Azure and provides lots of documentation and tutorials. It offers Archive storage by a Glacier, data archive, and S3 Infrequent access (IA) | Azure uses Storage Block blobs for efficient storage, which are composed of blocks and enable the efficient upload and storage of large blobs. It uses Storage Cool and a storage archive for archiving data. |
| Networking | Cloud providers offer different partners and networks that interconnect with data centers using different products. AWS uses a virtual private cloud for networking and uses an API gateway for cross-premises connectivity. AWS uses Elastic load balancing for load balance during networking. | Azure uses a virtual network for networking or content delivery and uses a VPN gateway for cross-premises connectivity. For load balancing during content delivery, it manages with a load balancer and application gateway. |
| Deploying Apps | AWS also offers similar solutions with Elastic Beanstalk, Batch, Lambda, container service, etc. But it doesn’t have many features on the app hosting side. | One of the advantages of cloud providers is the simple process of deploying an application. As developers, we want to deploy our app on multiple servers virtually using PaaS features. Azure has multiple app deployment tools such as cloud services, container services, functions, batch, app services, etc. |
| Database | Almost all cloud providers provide the ability to implement a database in both SQL and NoSQL solutions. AWS uses a relational database as a service by using RDS; for NoSQL, it uses Dynamo DB, and for caching, it uses Elastic Cache. | Azure uses SQL database, MySQL, and PostgreSQL for the relational database; it uses Cosmos DB for NoSQL solutions and Redis Cache for caching purposes. |
| Open source Developers | AWS is excellent for open-source developers as it welcomes Linux users and offers several integrations for different open-source applications. | Azure provides the facility for enterprise users they can use their current active directory account to sign on to the Azure cloud platform and runs .net framework on Windows, Linux, and MacOS. |
Conclusion
Finally, it’s an overview of the Differences Between AWS vs AZURE cloud providers. I hope you will have a better understanding of the services offered by these AWS vs AZURE providers and choose a cloud provider based on your requirements. If you are looking for Infrastructure as a service or a wide range of services and tools, then you can choose AWS. If you are looking for Windows integration or a good platform as a service (PaaS) cloud provider, then you can choose Azure.
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