Azure FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions and answers concerning Azure basics, purchase details, and account management.
Azure is the cloud platform for modern business. The open and flexible cloud platform enables you to quickly build, deploy, and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. You can build applications using any language, tool, or framework. And you can integrate your public cloud applications with your existing IT environment. With Microsoft Azure, you have a seamless path to benefits of cloud computing such as back up servers to cloud, or host applications in cloud to reduce capital expense and scale up or scale down as needed.
Azure delivers a 99.95% monthly SLA, built-in software patching, network load balancing, and high-availability. You can run your solutions on the same cloud that powers Skype, Office 365, Bing, and Xbox. Azure also offers 24×7 technical support with engineers constantly monitoring service health.
Azure offers a flexible cloud platform that can satisfy any application need. You can use any language, framework, or tool to build applications. You can build and run highly available applications without focusing on the infrastructure. You can also easily scale your applications to any size. And with the fully automated self-service platform, you can provision resources within minutes.
The cloud helps you instantly expand your IT capabilities. You can get your apps up and running quickly, freeing you to spend more time innovating and less time managing. You can instantly scale and save money by only paying for what you use. The cloud also offers enterprise-level security, with the high level of data protection and datacenter security required by the world’s largest organizations.
A lot of vendors position the cloud as an “all or none” proposition. Microsoft is the only vendor that offers a consistent technology platform whether you are running servers on-site, virtualizing your workloads, or moving them to the cloud. Microsoft offers the same familiar tools to make this hybrid IT approach easy and seamless. So whether you are testing the cloud for the first time, or going “all-in”, Microsoft has the platform and tools to help you every step of the way.
Azure pricing is specific to the services consumed. Detailed pricing for Azure services can be found at http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/overview/
Azure is priced on a consumption basis by the specific service being used. For example, Azure Backup pricing is different from basic Azure storage, as it includes additional capabilities such as backup compression, data encryption, and the network bandwidth required to restore backups.
Customers can either contact their partners directly or submit a support case online through the Azure Management Portal. Subscription and billing issues do not require a support contract. However, technical/break-fix issues will require an Azure support plan.