Azure quota is exceeded

4
votes

I'm trying to understand the correct way when hosting a web service using Windows Azure. After reading some of the documentation available, I have reached these lines:

Windows Azure takes the following actions if a subscription's resource usage quotas are exceeded in a quota interval (24 hours):

Data Out - when this quota is exceeded, Windows Azure stops all web sites for a subscription which are configured to run in Shared mode for the remainder of the current quota interval. Windows Azure will start the web sites at the beginning of the next quota interval.

CPU Time - when this quota is exceeded, Windows Azure stops all web sites for a subscription which are configured to run in Shared mode for the remainder of the current quota interval. Windows Azure will start the web sites at the beginning of the next quota interval.

I was always under the impression that using cloud solution will prevent such events, as I really don't know a head of time what needs my web service will have, and that the cloud will provide the resources as needed (and off-course I will be charged for them) - is that assumption is wrong?

EDIT

I found this great post that really explains Azure perfectly Scott Hanselman - my own Q&A about Azure Websites and Pricing

2
azure
Azure provides resources (processing) on demand - so when your web service is not processing anything - it will not cost you anything. Obviously - you need to make sure your web services is stateless. – Donal
My question is what happens when I do need to process but have exceeded the quota. – Udi Idan
You will have to start paying. – Donal
I don't understand what you mean, I'm already paying. – Udi Idan
@Donal this is really not true. my experience doesnt say thats. especially azure is not transparent at all. it keeps charging like a counter. Aws is for example, looks more expensive but it is transparent and let you tweak the things and they have amazing support can have free phone call. – Emil

2 Answers

0
votes

Azure provides you different scalability levels according to the method of hosting you pick. For example if you host your web service on an azure web site you can't scale to thousands of servers. If you host your web services in a cloud service you can scale much further.

In Azure the scalability does not always happen transparently. In the case of a web service your choices are "azure web sites", "azure mobile services" and "azure cloud services". None of these will provide transparent scalability. You will need to define how you want scalability to be processed by azure. Most of the time you can do it in your azure management portal and define "Auto-Scaling" based on your pre-defined metrics as in "total amount of memory used" or "compute power used". Azure helps you gather metrics from a distributed environment, define scaling rules and scale without worrying about the underlying infrastructure but you will need to glue these pieces together as it defines how much you will get billed as well.

Hope this makes sense.

2
votes

If you are hosting the Windows Azure Website in the Shared mode, although you are paying, there are certain quotas that are in place because in the background you are basically sharing the resources with other websites which are hosted on the same Virtual Machine.

If you are hosting using the Standard mode, then you no longer have quotas and you will not experience this issue. As an added bonus, you can now setup Autoscale to automatically scale out your website under load.