Does Windows Azure offer static IP for VMs?
I have been trialling the Bizspark / Azure offer for my company. When we accidentally exceeded our free usage limit by 1c, Microsoft deleted our VMs and handed our IP addresses to other customers. This was done instantly, out of hours and without prior warning. It took three days for the DNS changes to propagate for our new IP address and during this time, anyone accessing our web sites saw the sites of random other Azure customers.
We had been encouraged to set a zero $ spending limit during test, however we have corporate credit cards registered for the account. The terms of service indicate that service suspension will take place if the spending limit is exceeded, however this was not a suspension of service that could be quickly lifted, this was a permanent removal of our IP addresses resulting in a 3 day service suspension and the deletion of data from our temp disks etc.
Our services were not in production; they are being trialled for production. However management is now concerned that such an event could take place and asks if Microsoft really knows what it is doing in the was that Amazon EC2 knows what it is doing. I have now invested time in Azure but I am also worried.
My question is: does Microsoft offer static IP addresses for Azure customers that are not lost during a server upgrade, a billing issue or other minor problem? Can this be done by setting up an Azure virtual network? Why does Microsoft take such damaging action against customers when service suspension could easily be carried out in an instantly reversible manner (for example by blocking ports)?
Is Azure a viable platform to run a reliable server?
Answer
Azure Virtual Machines come with a DNS, HOST NAME, PUBLIC VIRTUAL IP ADDRESS (VIP), INTERNAL IP ADDRESS.
You can use the PUBLIC VIRTUAL IP ADDRESS as the static IP address.
The VIP remains intact with the VM through its life time i.e. restart / stop and then start etc. the VIP remains with the VM. Once you kill the instance, you don't get the hold of the IP.
Microsoft Azure's behavior of deleting the VM and IP address release is due to the spending limit. However you may talk to the support for removing the spending limit and then continuing your operation.
Azure Virtual Machines are relative new when compared to AWS EC2, perhaps, Azure VMs are being constantly upgraded with new features. A Static IP i.e. AWS EC2's notion ELASTIC IP is much awaited feature which all Azure devops are waiting for.