Azure vs Hosted VPS

I thought it would be good to get a discussion started on the pros and cons to hosting a nopCommerce site on Azure.

Can someone explain the advantages and disadvantages of hosting a nopCommerce 3.x multi-store site on Azure versus a hosted VPS?

Let the discussion begin,
Thanks

I'm interested to have some idea on this as well..

I have been researching this a lot lately. Some of my findings is that with Azure you only pay for what you use, it is very easy to upgrade your resources when needed, and the server itself is managed by Microsoft (not you). I was also told that the free version is not suitable to run a production version of nopCommerce. I would love to hear more information if anyone has it.

This might be helpful...

http://abiolaomoniyideveloper.blogspot.in/2010/04/windows-azure-vs-vps-vs-shared-hosting.html

This website Signaturethings.com is hosted on Azure.  

I have it scaled to a  Reserved Instance with a Small size (1 core 1.75 GB Memory).

I think it is a little slow at First response then it is okay.  I have not optimized the code for Azure and am using Standard nopCommerce code with a custom Theme.  

The website uses a lot of memory for Cache and the Compute Hours is also high So I am sure I will get a good Invoice from Microsoft.  When it has run for a month I will let u guys know if interested.

manojmodi wrote:

Hi, thank you for sharing these information!

Have you compared the performance - Azure vs VPS? Perhaps that is something most of us would like to know!

Regarding scaling it when needed.. Azure has a definite advantage, but details on compute charged will help us understand cost advantage compared to VPS.. as a starter basic unmanaged VPS could cost somewhere between USD 20 to 40 which is sufficient to host a nopCommerce site with few thousand products. (unmanaged VPS may have other costs as well)

Can you share some details on nopCommerce Version, numbers of products in catalog, average traffic and response time.

Thanks for your response.

I want to get the azure shared website plan but it says  "include 240 minutes of cpu capacity per day"... this is such bullshit i have no idea how to calculate how many visitor a day 240 min of cpu time is???

I posted a quick wizard walkthrough here -> Host nopCommerce on Azure

...it has gotten very easy.

Live test site -> bigriverbooks.com

which website plan r u using?shared or standard? how much r u paying/plan to pay monthly?r u able to do custom ssl? do you know how to migrate the project and database from localhost to azure?