Evaluating Windows Server in Azure Virtual Machines

The Azure Virtual Machines service offers Microsoft-hosted virtual machines (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.

What Is Azure Virtual Machines?

Azure Virtual Machines offers subscribers persistent VMs running production workloads on Windows Server or Linux. Organizations can provision VMs with required computing resources, and the subscriber is responsible for the deployment, maintenance, and management of all software within the VM. Azure Virtual Machines is an alternative to running Microsoft’s Hyper-V or solutions from VMware on premises, and it competes with Amazon Web Services’ EC2 and Google’s Compute Engine hosted services.