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Amazon S3

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Amazon S3 vs Microsoft Azure: What are the differences?

## Key Differences between Amazon S3 and Microsoft Azure

1. **Storage :** Amazon S3 is an object storage service, while Microsoft Azure offers different types of storage like Blob storage, File storage, and Queue storage. Azure provides more options for different types of data storage, whereas Amazon S3 is mainly focused on object storage.

2. **Pricing Model :** Amazon S3 pricing is based on different tiers of storage and data transfer, while Azure Blob storage offers both hot and cool access tiers which provide more customized pricing options based on the access frequency of data. Azure also offers discounts based on reserved capacity, which is not available in S3.

3. **Encryption :** Amazon S3 supports server-side encryption with AWS Key Management Service (KMS) or customer-provided keys, while Azure Blob storage also supports encryption but has more granular control over encryption options such as client-side encryption and Azure Disk Encryption for virtual machines.

4. **Access Control :** Amazon S3 uses Access Control Lists (ACLs) and bucket policies for managing access to objects, while Azure Blob storage uses Shared Access Signatures (SAS) and Azure Active Directory for access control. Azure provides more fine-grained access control options compared to Amazon S3.

5. **Integration :** Amazon S3 is tightly integrated with other AWS services like EC2, Lambda, and CloudWatch, providing a seamless experience for AWS users. On the other hand, Azure Blob storage is part of the broader Azure ecosystem, allowing for easy integration with other Azure services like Virtual Machines, Functions, and Data Lake Storage.

6. **Global Availability :** Amazon S3 has a larger global footprint with more regions worldwide, while Microsoft Azure has a slightly smaller number of regions but has a strong presence in regions where Amazon may not have data centers. Both services offer high availability and durability guarantees but differ in their global presence.

In Summary, Amazon S3 and Microsoft Azure differ in storage offerings, pricing models, encryption options, access control mechanisms, integration with other services, and global availability.
Decisions about Amazon S3 and Microsoft Azure
Gabriel Pa

We offer our customer HIPAA compliant storage. After analyzing the market, we decided to go with Google Storage. The Nodejs API is ok, still not ES6 and can be very confusing to use. For each new customer, we created a different bucket so they can have individual data and not have to worry about data loss. After 1000+ customers we started seeing many problems with the creation of new buckets, with saving or retrieving a new file. Many false positive: the Promise returned ok, but in reality, it failed.

That's why we switched to S3 that just works.

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Pros of Amazon S3
Pros of Microsoft Azure
  • 590
    Reliable
  • 492
    Scalable
  • 456
    Cheap
  • 329
    Simple & easy
  • 83
    Many sdks
  • 30
    Logical
  • 13
    Easy Setup
  • 11
    REST API
  • 11
    1000+ POPs
  • 6
    Secure
  • 4
    Plug and play
  • 4
    Easy
  • 3
    Web UI for uploading files
  • 2
    Faster on response
  • 2
    Flexible
  • 2
    GDPR ready
  • 1
    Easy to use
  • 1
    Plug-gable
  • 1
    Easy integration with CloudFront
  • 114
    Scales well and quite easy
  • 96
    Can use .Net or open source tools
  • 81
    Startup friendly
  • 73
    Startup plans via BizSpark
  • 62
    High performance
  • 38
    Wide choice of services
  • 32
    Low cost
  • 32
    Lots of integrations
  • 31
    Reliability
  • 19
    Twillio & Github are directly accessible
  • 13
    RESTful API
  • 10
    PaaS
  • 10
    Enterprise Grade
  • 10
    Startup support
  • 8
    DocumentDB
  • 7
    In person support
  • 6
    Free for students
  • 6
    Service Bus
  • 6
    Virtual Machines
  • 5
    Redis Cache
  • 5
    It rocks
  • 4
    Storage, Backup, and Recovery
  • 4
    Infrastructure Services
  • 4
    SQL Databases
  • 4
    CDN
  • 3
    Integration
  • 3
    Scheduler
  • 3
    Preview Portal
  • 3
    HDInsight
  • 3
    Built on Node.js
  • 3
    Big Data
  • 3
    BizSpark 60k Azure Benefit
  • 3
    IaaS
  • 2
    Backup
  • 2
    Open cloud
  • 2
    Web
  • 2
    SaaS
  • 2
    Big Compute
  • 2
    Mobile
  • 2
    Media
  • 2
    Dev-Test
  • 2
    Storage
  • 2
    StorSimple
  • 2
    Machine Learning
  • 2
    Stream Analytics
  • 2
    Data Factory
  • 2
    Event Hubs
  • 2
    Virtual Network
  • 2
    ExpressRoute
  • 2
    Traffic Manager
  • 2
    Media Services
  • 2
    BizTalk Services
  • 2
    Site Recovery
  • 2
    Active Directory
  • 2
    Multi-Factor Authentication
  • 2
    Visual Studio Online
  • 2
    Application Insights
  • 2
    Automation
  • 2
    Operational Insights
  • 2
    Key Vault
  • 2
    Infrastructure near your customers
  • 2
    Easy Deployment
  • 1
    Enterprise customer preferences
  • 1
    Documentation
  • 1
    Security
  • 1
    Best cloud platfrom
  • 1
    Easy and fast to start with
  • 1
    Remote Debugging

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Cons of Amazon S3
Cons of Microsoft Azure
  • 7
    Permissions take some time to get right
  • 6
    Requires a credit card
  • 6
    Takes time/work to organize buckets & folders properly
  • 3
    Complex to set up
  • 7
    Confusing UI
  • 2
    Expensive plesk on Azure

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What is Amazon S3?

Amazon Simple Storage Service provides a fully redundant data storage infrastructure for storing and retrieving any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web

What is Microsoft Azure?

Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that 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.

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What companies use Amazon S3?
What companies use Microsoft Azure?
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What tools integrate with Amazon S3?
What tools integrate with Microsoft Azure?

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What are some alternatives to Amazon S3 and Microsoft Azure?
Amazon Glacier
In order to keep costs low, Amazon Glacier is optimized for data that is infrequently accessed and for which retrieval times of several hours are suitable. With Amazon Glacier, customers can reliably store large or small amounts of data for as little as $0.01 per gigabyte per month, a significant savings compared to on-premises solutions.
Amazon EBS
Amazon EBS volumes are network-attached, and persist independently from the life of an instance. Amazon EBS provides highly available, highly reliable, predictable storage volumes that can be attached to a running Amazon EC2 instance and exposed as a device within the instance. Amazon EBS is particularly suited for applications that require a database, file system, or access to raw block level storage.
Amazon EC2
It is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.
Google Drive
Keep photos, stories, designs, drawings, recordings, videos, and more. Your first 15 GB of storage are free with a Google Account. Your files in Drive can be reached from any smartphone, tablet, or computer.
Amazon Redshift
It is optimized for data sets ranging from a few hundred gigabytes to a petabyte or more and costs less than $1,000 per terabyte per year, a tenth the cost of most traditional data warehousing solutions.
See all alternatives