Cloud Wars: from sign-up to VM (3/6) | Microsoft Azure

Team Reprise

March 5, 2021

Chapter 3, Part 3: Microsoft Azure

Introduction

Welcome to the continuation of the third installment of Paul’s Tutorial Series! As mentioned in my previous article, this tutorial is all about exploring cloud providers.

More specifically, I wanted to look at first user experience across them, so I decided to sign-up to (6) cloud providers, and capture my experience spinning up a free-tier VM right after sign up.

The (6) cloud providers I tested are, in alphabetical order:

This means that this third chapter of my tutorial series will have 6 parts, one for each cloud provider.

While I walk you through every part of this chapter, I will measure the following:

Configuration of the default VM offered in free tier
Approximate number of clicks needed from post-signup page to having a VM up and running
Number of screens needed in a replay to publish this tutorial
Spin-up time
Usability score (from my perspective, in a scale of 1 to 5)

Today’s Tutorial: Microsoft Azure

Let’s dive into Azure, by clicking on the image below:

Azure has a solid flow of creating a first VM. The thing that can throw people off is perhaps the existence of resource groups or the fact there is not “real” free tier. Overall, a good experience nonetheless, as rated here:

Config of default free tier VM	1 vCPU / 0.5GB RAM
Approximate number of clicks from signup to VM	10-15
Number of draft replay screens	40
Spin-up time	< 20s
Paul’s usability score (1-5)	3.5