Windows Azure - Compute Hours Equals Deployed Hours

by Iain Angus 16. February 2010 16:43

I signed up for the Windows Azure Platform Introductory Special. You get 25 hours of a small compute instance per month which is more than enough for my current development needs. I checked the billing after a couple of days and was surprised to see that I had used 4 hours of compute time. I'd only deployed a test application and loaded some test data. The compute instance had also been suspended for some of that time as well.

The little light in my head switched on.... COMPUTE HOURS equals DEPLOYED HOURS, suspended or otherwise. The only way to stop the clock ticking is to delete your application.

I still think 25 hours per month is good enough for my needs and the Windows Azure Platform Introductory Special is a great way to get used to Windows Azure as a commercial platform - just watch those hours.

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Comments (3) -

Iain
Iain
2/21/2010 6:04:41 AM #

Just to clear it up a bit more:
Is it a right understanding that even if my application is idle in Azure (basically, not using any processing power), I still have to pay MS for the time it was in memory?

Practically, $0.12 per hour would turn out to ~$0.12*24hrs*30days no matter how much computing power you used during the month?

I think that is bad and sad!

-nitinkoshyATgmail.com




Iain
Iain
2/22/2010 10:42:32 AM #

I think this aspect has been less than clear and what you have said is correct. The billing timer starts when you deploy your application and only stops when you delete your application.

If possible it is worth signing up for the Windows Azure Platform Introductory Special to gain experience of how Azure operates as a commercial platform.

Iain
Iain
3/22/2010 6:15:01 PM #

It's terrible! I'm totally pissed off and I'm fighting Microsoft about it at the moment. I have a $166 bill for a single month on a practice application that I've only accessed twice (yes, it is "deployed" but doing absolutely nothing!)


I keep seeing the word "Computing Hours", and never "Deployed Hours"... It's extremely misleading to the extent of false advertising.  My invoice has a whopping 1,300 computing hours for  the $166.


What sense does it make if I had to delete the application to save hours? How on earth is anyone going to know if my application is alive or not? If it is, it's +$160 / mo regardless... I'd stick with hosting sites for $8 / mo at this stupid rate.