Comparison of laaS
Amazon Web Service Azure Rackspace
Introduction Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a collection of remote computing services (also called web services) that together make up a cloud computing platform, offered over the Internet by Amazon.com. Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure, created by Microsoft, for building, deploying and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. Rackspace is a managed cloud computing provider offering high percentage availability of applications based on RAID10.
Distinguishing Features Rich set of services and integrated monitoring tools; competitive pricing model. Easy-to-use administration tool, especially for Windows admins. Easy to use control panel, especially for non-system administrators.
Virtualization Xen hypervisor Microsoft Hyper-V Opensource (Xen, Kvm ) and VMware
Base OS Linux (+QEMU) and Windows Windows and Linux Ubuntu
Pricing model Pay-as-you-go, then subscription Pay-as-you-go Pay-as-you-go
Major products Elastic block store, IP  addresses, virtual private cloud, cloud watch, CloudFront, clusters etc. Server Failover Clustering, Network Load Balancing, SNMP Services, Storage Manager for SANs, Windows Internet Name Service, Disaster Recovery to Azure, Azure Caching and Azure Redis Cache. Managed cloud, block storage, monitoring
CDN Features Origin-Pull, Purge, Gzip compression, Persistent connections, Caching headers, Custom CNAMEs, Control Panel & stats, Access Logs. Robust security, Lower latencies, Massively scalable, Capacity on demand. Rcakspace provide CDN services through a partnership with Akamai’s service.
Access interface Web-based, API, console Web interface Web-based control panel
Security features
i) Preventive measures Moderate Basic Basic
ii) Reactive measures Moderate Basic Basic
Reliability Good Average Good
Scalability Good Good Good
Support Good and chargeable Good Excellent
Availability (%) 99.95 99.95 99.99
Server Performance
(Over a period)		 Good Excellent and consistant Average
Tools/ framework Amazon machine image (AMI), Java,  PHP,  Python, Ruby PHP, ASP.NET, Node.js, Python     -
Database RDS MySQL, MsSQL, Oracle Microsoft SQL Database MySQL
Pricing Instances range from $0.113/hour to $6.82/hour, with volume discounts available for reserved instances. Storage prices range from $0.095/GB/month to $0.125/GB/month. Instances range from $0.02 to $1.60 per hour. Storage prices range from $0.07/GB/month to $0.12/GB/month, depending on level of redundancy. Instances start at $0.04/hour and go up to $5.44/hour. File storage starts at $0.10/GB/month and block storage is $0.12/GB/month.
Sample Average Pricing(4GB RAM,CPU 2 Core,100GB HD, Bandwidth 100GB, Linux) 62$ per month 99$ per month 140$ per month
Trial Offering New users can get 750 hours, 30GB storage and 15GB bandwidth for free with AWS’s Free Usage Tier. Free 30-day trial with a limit of up to $200 is available for new users. Rackspace is currently offering a $100 credit on your first month bill.
Limitations AWS is a complex mixture of services. As your workflows become more complex and you use more services it can be difficult to project expenses. However, Amazon offers a monthly calculator to help estimate your costs. Minimal, easy-to-use portal interface may not be so appealing to command line gurus. No messaging or specialized services (like Amazon Simple Queue Service and DynamoDB), although there are alternatives (like RabbitMQ and MongoDB or CouchDB) that you can run, you’ll just need to manage them yourself. But it offers mailgun for sending mail upto 50,000 / p m
Data Centers Location US East, US West, South America, Europe/Middle East/Africa & Asia Pacific US East, US Central , US West, Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia Chicago, Dallas, Northern Virginia, London, Hong Kong, and Sydney
CDN Locations (Edge) North America, South America,Europe/Middle East/Africa & Asia Pacific US East, US North, US Central, US South central , US West, Europe, Asia Pacific / Rest of World Over 200 global content delivery network (CDN) edge locations.
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