I'm hosting some (really) non-critical stuff on a Ubuntu image on it.

It seems fine. The manager interface is actually pretty good IMHO, but Linode is really cheap and running Linux on Azure is (I think) still a "beta" feature. I get the hours free though BizSpark. I was thinking of setting it up as a slave/mirror of our main sites for use as a fallover backup. It's been pretty reliable but I haven't done any benchmarks or really tested it in any way.

If I had need or inclination to use the Microsoft stack, though, it would definitely be a serious contender.

Sounds like it was just because it's free. (BizSpark)

Working on a project right now that will deploy on Azure Platform (not VMs). It's pretty nice to be able offload the OS to a third party and just deploy your app bits, knowing they're going to take care of OS, patching, and in general, server management tasks.

On the VM side, they're still catching up, I think. For instance, you can't get multiple IPs routing to a single VM, so if you have multiple SSL sites, you'll need multiple servers in general. (SNI isn't available on IE for XP which is a deal breaker for many people.)

But that's probably a reflection more of the mindset of people wanting dedicated servers and thinking "cloud VM" is the same thing, instead of people trying to build distributed applications.

I've worked with/for 3 companies all built completely on Azure. I was hired by 2 of the 3 companies to help them switch to Azure. The third is my own startup which has been on Azure since Microsoft launched it.

It really is a fantastic platform.

I played around with Azure and Heroku for node.js hosting and found that Azure wasn't as painful to setup and didn't trip up as often as Heroku (though my statement should be read as more of a criticism of Heroku than an endorsement of Azure)

I'm running an "established Internet business" on Azure. I moved from VPSes to Azure last year when the "Azure Websites" feature was available. It has saved me money over the VPS instances, actually increased performance a bit at the lower price point, and has dramatically lower administration overhead since I'm using it as PaaS.

The only thing negative I could say is that I have a hard time logging into the portal sometimes, due to some weird interaction between my primary MS account and one of my clients' Office365 organizational accounts. So, I sometimes have to switch to an incognito window to log in and use the portal. It's a nuisance, but trivial.

Otherwise, I couldn't be happier.

I run several services on it. .net/C# compute services. No VMs. No complaints.

different question: if you aren't why not? Amazon hasn't exactly been the picture of reliability and Heroku has had some important unanswered questions raised about its dispatch system.

building a new service on Azure here, started 3 monts ago, switching completely from LAMP to .NET. I love working with VS and I'm getting to know Azure setvices better day by day, so far so good.

Please everyone, not all at once.

I like how HN is so blatantly anti-Microsoft, but Reddit is overly Microsoft supportive. Which hipsters do I believe in?!

It depends what subreddit you go onto, HN is pretty small compared to the reddit hivemind.

I don't think it matters. If Azure is challenging AWS, Azure is challenging AWS. Who the buyers are is irrelevant; HNer dollars don't double when you deposit them in your bank.

I make a quip, and all of a sudden it's something to believe in? Humor me more :D

non-production