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I apologize if this is in the correct StackExchange site. I couldn't find a place that seemed perfectly suited for this question. My question is as follows..

Being a Microsoft BizSpark member I have access to free Azure hosting. The hosting provided is 1,500 hours a month of small instances free (this equals out to 2 small instances running 24 hours a day for a full month). The details of the offer go on to state "You can run 2 Small instances full-time or other sizes at their equivalent ratios."

Does this mean I can run one Medium instance for 24 hours a day for a month, for free? If you look at the pricing, a Medium instance is exactly twice as much as a small.

Does anyone have any experience with this that can chime in? Many thanks in advance!

Jason L.
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Yes, I know, I use BizSpark subscription and I have advised and follwoing couple of fellow ISV to use it. And yes, you are correct, the BizSpark gives you 1500 small instance hours, which is 1 full month of single Mednium sized instance. This is in terms of compute. But you know that if you run only one instance, you are not covered by the 99.95% SLA! The SLA only takes place when you have 2 or more instances per role!

astaykov
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  • I second that. If you only have one instance with Azure you might only get 95% up time in my experience. Can you handle half a day of downtime a month? – Craig Aug 02 '12 at 05:19
  • actually I also have deployments with single instance, and I am getting pretty good uptime (~100%). But these comments here not related to the question. – astaykov Aug 02 '12 at 11:43
  • Does this uptime "non guarantee" still hold true if you're hosting a VM service and a WebSite service? While not related to the question, it is something I should consider :) – Jason L. Aug 02 '12 at 12:08
  • VM (Windows Azure Virtual Machines) and WAWS (Windows Azure Web Sites) are in CTP and thus no SLA of any kind if provided for these services. They can go up and down as we talk, as many times, as neccessary, prior to general availability (GA). When it comes out of CTP, you will have 99.9 for the VMs, and I think it is same for the sites. – astaykov Aug 02 '12 at 20:05
  • I knew there was no sla for preview. Was concerened about GA. You've been most helpful, thanks! – Jason L. Aug 02 '12 at 20:19