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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Azure Virtual Machines

    Score8.1 out of 10
    N/AVirtual Machines (VMs) are available on Microsoft Azure, providing what is built as a low-cost, per-second compute service, available via Windows or Linux.

    $0

    Per Hour

    FreeNAS

    Score5.4 out of 10
    N/AFreeNAS is an open source operating system that allows nearly any hardware serve as a network-attached storage device. It was developed by iXsystems.N/A
    Pricing
    Azure Virtual MachinesFreeNAS
    Editions & Modules
    3 Year Reserved - Burstable VMs - B1S
    $0.0038
    Per Hour
    Spot - General Purpose - Av2
    $0.005
    Per Hour
    1 Year Reserved - Burstable VMs - B1S
    $0.0059
    Per Hour
    Pay as You Go - Burstable VMs - B1S
    $0.0075
    Per Hour
    Spot - Compute Optimized - Fsv2
    $0.0104
    Per Hour
    Spot - General Purpose - Dv3
    $0.0125
    Per Hour
    Spot - Memory Optimized - Ev3
    $0.016
    Per Hour
    3 Year Reserved - Compute Optimized - Fsv2
    $0.0307
    Per Hour
    3 Year Reserved - General Purpose - Dv3
    $0.0369
    Per Hour
    3 Year Reserved - Memory Optimized - Ev3
    $0.0481
    Per Hour
    1 Year Reserved - Compute Optimized - Fsv2
    $0.05
    Per Hour
    1 Year Reserved - General Purpose - Dv3
    $0.0548
    Per Hour
    1 Year Reserved - Memory Optimized - Ev3
    $0.0753
    Per Hour
    Pay as You Go - Compute Optimized - Fsv2
    $0.0846
    Per Hour
    Pay as You Go - General Purpose - Dv3
    $0.096
    Per Hour
    Pay as You Go - Memory Optimized - Ev3
    $0.126
    Per Hour
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Azure Virtual MachinesFreeNAS
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Azure Virtual MachinesFreeNAS
    Considered Both Products
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    iXsystems
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    96%
    Would buy again
    25 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    92%
    Delivers good value for the price
    22 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    25 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    21 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    25 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    Azure Virtual MachinesFreeNAS
    Server Virtualization
    Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Azure Virtual Machines and FreeNAS
    Feature
    Azure Virtual Machines
    7.6
    25 Ratings
    6% below category average
    FreeNAS
    -
    Ratings
    Virtual machine automated provisioning9.025 Ratings00 Ratings
    Management console4.523 Ratings00 Ratings
    Live virtual machine backup6.521 Ratings00 Ratings
    Live virtual machine migration9.017 Ratings00 Ratings
    Hypervisor-level security9.017 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Azure Virtual MachinesFreeNAS
    Small Businesses
    Proxmox VE
    Score9.2 out of 10
    DiskStation
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    VMware vSOM (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    DiskStation
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    IBM PowerVM
    Score9.6 out of 10
    DiskStation
    Score8.8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Azure Virtual MachinesFreeNAS
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.4
    (25 ratings)
    9.0
    (7 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Azure Virtual MachinesFreeNAS
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Microsoft
    If you want to host a dedicated Windows server on the cloud, and especially if you want to integrate it with your on premises Active Directory, Azure Virtual Machines should be your first choice. Obviously running Linux on Azure works very well too, but given Azure's pricing is not the cheapest, there are other providers out there that have a better cost-benefit ratio for Linux. That said, hosting Windows on Azure can be affordable (especially when compared to other providers) if you plan your licensing, topology, and application architecture correctly.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    iXsystems
    FreeNAS is well suited for most storage serving scenarios, whether it be for an office file server, backup destinations, data replication across the internet, or as backend storage for virtual machines. It can serve various types of clients via a plethora of standard protocols and can easily integrate with existing infrastructure using LDAP authentication and so on. It's pretty simple to use (it helps to have at least a basic understanding of the underlying technologies) and almost maintenance-free. One scenario that springs to mind that it may not be appropriate for (yet) is as S3 storage. However, S3 functionality was added in a recent release and may have improved greatly since then. I'm sure it will eventually work very well for this.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Microsoft
    • When demand is high, we scale the service out, eg During a Football Match.
    • When a football match is over and the throughput of data from OPTA drops we save by the service scaling back in.
    • Our App Service Plans along with the Clean C# code are lightening fast giving a good customer experience.
    • When producing the TV Guide information and a program overruns its scheduled time, a client can instantly be updated to the new programming schedule as our change is instant and its in the right place for all the clients to download and adjust their television guides appropriately to send out to the public giving a 24x7 uptime service that is precise and accurate and resilient to outages due to failover zones around the world.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    iXsystems
    • The FreeNAS web interface is modern looking. It makes tasks like provisioning drives into raid volumes easy.
    • The ZFS raid option allows you to add in an SSD as a cache drive to increase performance.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Microsoft
    • Pricing can be a concern if you are truly agnostic to which cloud you are building your particular solution in.
    • The UI, as is the case with any cloud provider, is crowded.
    • As with any cloud provider, it can be difficult to tune in exactly the right amount of servers for your needs...you might find yourself under/overprovisioning.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    iXsystems
    • Not good for beginners as it requires deep understanding of networking and storage.
    • Most of the good and required features are not available in free version.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Microsoft
    definitely it will be renewed. considering the ROI and uptime.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    iXsystems
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Microsoft
    No VM console, weak management interface, changing CPU/memory is not straightforward. On the positive side, basic RDP functionality is good to have. As long as things are working, the ability to host Windows VMs is appreciated.
    Read full review
    iXsystems
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Microsoft
    I give the overall support for Azure Virtual Machines a 7 because I think while the overall support do a great job there are still areas that it could improve on such as efficiency and speed. So while I only give it a 7 and it has some issues it is still better than the overall support at Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling.
    Incentivized
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    iXsystems
    There were some things that can be found by other users on forums and Google and some things that were not.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Microsoft
    Azure Virtual Machines offer unparalleled flexibility in provisioning, managing and upgrading the VM instances, both manually and programmatically. AVM offer very granular billing options and enables high costs optimisations (while still being costly). The other competitors I mentioned are very good at offering dead-cheap VMs. But if you need anything beyond that, especially for big computing, you need Azure Virtual Machines.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    iXsystems
    FreeNAS effectively uses all resources really well and it is highly recommended for in premises NAS. It has unlimited ROI as it is really free and open-source. The only payment we need to pay is when we need any support from those guys. FreeNAS helps us to effectively do our work with the legacy systems as it manages all the components really well. FreeNAS although rebranded to TrueNAS will still be there until our legacy systems run.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Microsoft
    • It's so easy to spin up new instances, that it becomes also to easy to have to many of them to manage. Many teams end up with a couple of hundreds of VMs after a short while, making the whole thing very hard to maneuver
    • Azure VMs are the next step for us to rely on Onprem servers, and leaving the management of the infrastructure to the professionals
    • The ease of use, is also important when our main focus is to deliver new applications and integrations fast, and not having to worry about infrastructure. We sell bottles, not CPUs
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    iXsystems
    • Low-Cost Network Attached Storage
    • Provides additional network storage to support client & business operations
    • FreeNAS secures our data using custom encryption keys
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots