Microsoft Updates Azure
A released Azure update this week boasts a new pricing model, is more open to open source and deals better with databases.
On the open source front, users can now try out a test version of Hadoop on Windows Azure. Hadoop is an open-source framework for cloud and distributed computing. Azure is also chummier with Eclipse and Node.js -- a system for writing scalable Internet apps that supports the open source database MongoDB.
Azure SQL-based databases can now be three times as large with a new upper limit of 150 GB. That still seems kind of small by data center standards.
Pricing is reduced, at least when it comes to data transfers, with those fees coming down 25 percent.
Azure's complicated pricing hasn't been fundamentally simplified, but tracking is made easier through a new 'pricing calculator.'
Are you using or looking at Azure? Tell us what you think at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/14/2011 at 1:18 PM