Compute and Networking

Before joining Directions on Microsoft, Rob worked at Microsoft for 14 years where he designed technologies for Microsoft products and... more

Azure includes IaaS and PaaS offerings for application workloads running on virtual machines (VMs). Azure Virtual Machines (the IaaS offering) may be of particular interest to organizations migrating to Azure because workloads deployed on-premises or with non-Microsoft hosting providers can be moved to Azure Virtual Machines with little or no code rewriting. Subnets can be created to connect Azure Virtual Machines together and with on-premises servers. Azure services also allow scheduled job triggering and automated distribution of workloads across pools of VMs.

Virtual Machines

The Azure Virtual Machines service offers Microsoft-hosted VMs in a subscription model. Recent versions of Windows Server are available in Azure Virtual Machines for production use with the price of the OS included in the hourly cost of the VM. Organizations may find Azure Virtual Machines useful for running Windows Server with little or no upfront expense or for flexibility in scaling applications or adding disaster recovery. Comparing the cost of Azure Virtual Machines running Windows Server to running Windows Server on-premises is difficult, but hardware savings and software licensing flexibility may offset extra costs required with the service.

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