Windows Azure or Amazon EC2 for ASP.NET MVC Development?

Question

If you want to build enterprise ASP.NET MVC applications that use MSSQL databases is it better to use Windows Azure or Amazon EC2?

I didn\'t find any satisfying answ

Answer 1

While Amazon looks good from a cost perspective, their free instances are linux only. For windows costs are comparable. Amazon roles are basically VMs, you have to manage the rest of the box. While VM roles are now available on azure if you want that, I prefer using the Azure Web roles as the rest of the platform/load balancing is all taken care of for you.

If you subscribe to MSDN or become a Microsoft partner (or via Bizspark or similar program) you can get access to azure resources for free:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/offers/default.aspx

SQL Azure is also a big advantage with Azure - it's fully replicated and managed. If you want MSSQL on Amazon you can install it, but you have to manage it yourself.