Azure - Microsoft's Cloud Platform (The Good, Bad, and Expensive)

Look, Azure isn't the worst cloud platform out there, but it's definitely not the cheapest. Microsoft created it because they realized AWS was eating their enterprise lunch and they needed to do something fast.

The Reality of Azure Adoption

Most companies end up on Azure for one reason: they're already paying Microsoft for Office 365 and Windows Server licenses. The Active Directory integration actually works without the usual authentication headaches.

But here's the thing about Azure's market share - half of those deployments are just lift-and-shift Windows VMs that could run anywhere. It's not revolutionary, it's just convenient if you're already locked into Microsoft's ecosystem.

What Actually Works Well

Azure shines when you need to:

• Connect to existing Windows infrastructure
• Use SQL Server without AWS licensing fees
• Access OpenAI models with enterprise authentication
• Deploy .NET applications

The global infrastructure is solid - datacenters everywhere, which matters for GDPR and data residency requirements.

The Painful Parts

Azure pricing is confusing. The calculator gives estimates, but your real bill includes data transfer, backup storage, and other fees they don't mention upfront. Budget 30-50% more than the calculator suggests.

Reserved instances save money if you can predict usage 1-3 years out. Most startups can't.

The portal UI gets redesigned constantly, making older documentation useless. The Azure CLI breaks on Windows - use PowerShell instead.

AI Integration (The Current Hype)

Azure's AI story is simple: they bought OpenAI access and wrapped it in enterprise authentication. You're paying Microsoft markup for models you could access directly.

AI Foundry is decent for experimenting, but production gets expensive fast. Budget hundreds to thousands monthly for serious AI workloads.

Azure has 200+ services but you'll probably only use 10-15 of them. Here are the ones that work well, and some that don't.

Microsoft's service overview is marketing material, but the documentation occasionally mentions limitations. The Architecture Center has reference designs that might work in practice.

Compute: Where Your Apps Live and Die

Virtual Machines are VMs. They work. Windows VMs boot fast, Linux VMs are cheaper. The default VM sizes are overpriced marketing bullshit - use the B-series burstable instances for most workloads.

AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service) is actually pretty good. Auto-upgrades that don't break everything, decent monitoring integration, and you can ignore most of the complexity if you just want to run containers. But networking with existing VMs is a nightmare that'll take you down a 6-hour Stack Overflow rabbit hole.

Azure Functions are fine for small stuff, but cold starts will piss you off. If you're coming from AWS Lambda, expect 2-5 second cold starts instead of milliseconds. The new "Premium" plans cost more but actually work for production.

Databases: SQL Server Plus Some Others

Azure SQL Database is just SQL Server in the cloud, but they've removed half the features you actually need. No SQL Agent, limited backup control, and don't even think about using CLR functions. But it automatically scales and handles maintenance, so pick your battles.

Cosmos DB is fast as hell but will bankrupt you if you're not careful with request units. I've seen "$5,000 monthly bills" for what should be a $50 database. The multi-region replication is impressive until you see the data egress costs.

PostgreSQL/MySQL managed services work exactly like you'd expect. They're fine. No surprises, which is refreshing for Azure. The flexible server options actually deliver on their promises.

Storage: It's Just Files, How Hard Can It Be?

Blob Storage is Azure's version of S3. Hot storage is expensive, Cool storage has retrieval fees, Archive storage takes 15 hours to access your files. The pricing tiers are designed to trick you into spending more.

Azure Files gives you SMB file shares in the cloud. Performance is shit unless you pay for premium storage, then it's just expensive shit.

Networking: The Thing That Always Breaks

Virtual networks work fine until you try to connect them to anything else. VPN gateways cost hundreds per month and randomly disconnect. ExpressRoute costs thousands per month but actually works consistently.

Network Security Groups are like iptables but more confusing. Half the time traffic doesn't flow where you think it should, and the troubleshooting tools lie about what's happening.

The DevOps Stuff

Azure DevOps is fine for CI/CD if you like YAML files. GitHub Actions integration works better than it should. The build agents are slow but they have Windows containers, which matters if you're stuck with .NET Framework.

Azure Monitor collects metrics but the alerting sucks. Use something else for alerts that matter. The log queries use KQL (Kusto Query Language), which is like SQL had a baby with PowerShell - it's not pretty.

You've read the service descriptions, you understand the gotchas. Now let's talk about what actually happens when you try to use this stuff in production. Here's what nobody tells you about Azure deployments: they take longer than expected, cost more than budgeted, and half the integrations don't work like the demos.

The Azure Well-Architected Framework promises best practices, but the real deployment stories on Stack Overflow tell a different tale. Migration documentation covers best practices while ignoring the disasters.

Real Migration Stories (Not the Marketing Ones)

Common Azure migration patterns:

1. Projects take longer than planned
2. Costs often exceed estimates
3. Networking complexity requires specialized expertise

The successful migrations share one thing: they planned for everything to break and budgeted accordingly. The disasters assumed Microsoft's marketing was accurate.

Database Migrations: SQL Server migrations to Azure SQL Database work until you hit a feature that doesn't exist in the cloud version. Then you're stuck rewriting queries or paying for SQL Managed Instance, which costs 3x more.

Lift-and-Shift: Taking your VMs and running them in Azure works fine until you see the bill. Windows Server licensing in the cloud is expensive as hell unless you have Software Assurance.

The Hybrid Reality

Azure Arc is Microsoft's answer to "our shit doesn't run in the cloud yet." It lets you pretend your on-premises servers are Azure resources so you can use the same management tools.

It actually works pretty well if you can get it installed. The agent installation fails randomly on older Windows versions, and the documentation assumes you have perfect network connectivity.

AI Implementation (The Current Gold Rush)

Every company thinks they need AI now. Azure makes it easy to burn money on OpenAI API calls that generate mediocre chatbots.

What works: Document processing, simple Q&A bots, basic text analysis
What doesn't: Complex reasoning, anything requiring real accuracy, anything involving math

Budget thousands per month for production AI workloads. That's just the AI services - you still need to build and host your application.

Application Modernization (The Painful Truth)

"Modernizing" legacy applications usually means:

1. Containerizing a 10-year-old .NET app that wasn't designed for containers
2. Dealing with hardcoded connection strings and file paths
3. Figuring out why it worked on the developer's laptop but not in AKS

Serverless sounds great until you need state, long-running processes, or predictable performance. Azure Functions work for event processing but don't try to run a web app on them.

Cost Management (The Never-Ending Battle)

Azure's cost management tools show you spending trends but don't prevent overspending.

Reserved Instances save money if you can predict your usage a year out. Most businesses change their requirements every quarter.

Spot Instances are cheap until Azure decides it needs your VM back. Good for batch jobs, terrible for anything users depend on.

The real cost killers:

• Data egress (moving data out of Azure)
• Storage transactions (every API call costs money)
• Load balancer fees (tens of dollars per month per load balancer)
• Backup storage you forgot you were paying for

Azure bills can spike from forgotten dev environments running continuously. Set up billing alerts to avoid surprises.

What Actually Saves Money

1. Shut down unused resources: Dev/test environments running 24/7 waste money
2. Use B-series VMs: Burstable instances for most workloads
3. Pick the right regions: East US is usually cheapest
4. Avoid premium storage unless you actually need the IOPS
5. Delete old snapshots - they cost more than you think

That's the reality of using Azure in production. If you're still considering it after reading this, you probably have questions. Let's address the ones every engineer asks.