Abstract
?
Figure 1: Key Cloud providers
The nature of cloud providers that are considered for the comparison in this
white paper are as follows:
The following table captures the comparison of significant features offered by key public cloud providers of the industry
Amazon AWS Google App Engine Windows Azure Force.com Rackspace GoGrid
Features
Platforms Operating systems Runtime Operating systems Software Operating systems Operating systems
supported Red Hat Enterprise Linux Java Runtime Environment Windows 7 Unlimited real-time Linux Windows server 2008
database customizations
Windows Server 2003/2008 Python Runtime Environment Windows Server 2008 Mac OS X Windows server 2003
Programmable user
Oracle Enterprise Linux Features Windows Vista Windows CentOS 5.1
interface
OpenSolaris Integration with Google CentOS 5.3
Programmable cloud logic
Accounts
OpenSUSE Linux Real-time workflow and Redhat Linux 5.1
URL Fetch
Ubuntu Linux approvals Redhat Linux 5.4
Mail
Fedora Gentoo Linux Real-time web sites
Memcache
Debian Real-time mobile
Image Manipulation deployment
Software
Scheduled Tasks and Task Integrated content library
IBM DB2 Queues
Real-time analytics
IBM Informix Dynamic XMPP
Server Granular security and
Blobstore (which supports sharing
Microsoft SQL Server objects upto 50MB in size)
Standard 2005
Software
MySQL Enterprise
External software like AppServers
Oracle Database 11g Databases cannot be installed
Hadoop
Cloud Amazon CloudWatch API Google Secure Data Connector Windows Azure Platform Apex Language Code Beanstalk – Hassle-free GoGrid's
Tools Training Kit Editor Subversion Hosting Cloudcontrol
services Private gadgets Command Line Tool
and tools Auto Scaling API Tools Windows Azure Software Enhanced Metadata Attachment fu in Ruby
Google Visualization API Development Kit Support Cloud Wizard's Open
Elastic Load Balancing API Cloudvox Source Cross Cloud
Tools Google Apps APIs Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Upgrade Wizard
Nautilus Cloud Files Scripting Language
Google web toolkit Service Pack 1
AWS Toolkit for Eclipse Plugin by Chmouel Mitch Denny's
IDE support Windows Azure platform Boudjnah Windows PowerShell
AWS Management Console AppFabric SDK V1.0
Paperclip-Cloudfiles Snap-in
Amazon EC2 API Tools Windows 7 Training Kit For
Developers Olark Live Website Chat
Amazon EC2 AMI Tools
Vanilla – Free Forum
Elasticfox Firefox Extension Hosting
for Amazon EC2
Javascript Scratchpad for
Amazon EC2
Amazon S3 Authentication
Tool for Curl
CloudBerry Explorer for
Amazon S3 and CloudFront
Manager for Amazon
CloudFront
Firefox Organizer for
Amazon S3 and Amazon
CloudFront (S3Fox)
AWSzone.com
Javascript Scratchpad for
Amazon SQS
Amazon Mechanical Turk
Developer Sandbox
Amazon Mechanical Turk
Command Line Tools
Iaas
Integrated MySql GAE doesn't support external Sql azure Not applicable MySQL, Microsoft SQL MSSQL 2008
DB databases; it provides a data Oracle Workgroup (64-bit) -
store of its own which can be Microsoft SQL Server
supported accessed through standard JDO Workgroup Edition 2008
and JPA APIs.
MSSQL 2008 Standard
(64-bit) - Microsoft SQL
Server Standard 2008
MSSQL 2005 Standard
(32-bit) - Microsoft SQL
Server 2005 Standard
Edition
MSSQL 2005
Workgroup (32-bit) -
Microsoft SQL Server
2005 Workgroup Edition
Maximum Amazon S3 - Store object up Automatic scaling is built in Azure has a 64MB limit on In the unlimited edition, Infinite scalability Horizontal server
limits to 5 GB with App Engine individual blobs and also allows scaling—use a GSI to
Number of sites - 25
you to split a blob into blocks of rapidly deploy new
Amazon EC2 [Elastic Block No matter how many users you 4MB each servers to meet sudden
[Features available more for
storage] - Volume sizes have or how much data your spikes in demand. Delete
additional fee]
ranging from 1GB to 1TB application stores, App Engine the servers when demand
can scale to meet your needs 2,000 Database objects total drops, paying only for the
(20 TB/account limit while
in beta) storage - 120MB/user resources used.
Support for Amazon Mechanical Turk Not available Not available Not available Not available Not available
human-only
tasks
Amazon AWS Google App Engine Window Azure Force.com Rack Space Go Grid
Support
Service Amazon S3 - available with 100% Uptime 99.9% uptime 99.9+ percent uptime 100% Network Uptime 100% Uptime , which
a Monthly Uptime Guarantee means
Level Percentage of at least 99.9%
Agreements during any monthly billing 1-Hour Hardware Network Outage: None
Replacement Guarantee
availability cycle Packet loss < 0.1%
Amazon EC2 - available 2-Hour Commencement of
Onsite Data Restores Latency < 5ms
with an Annual Uptime
Percentage of at least Jitter < 0.5ms
99.95% during the Service Maximum Jitter: 10
Year milliseconds within any
15-minute period.
Support Premium Support - Silver Free Support is available Developer support is charged on a Basic Support, Premier Support, 24x7x365 Live Support & FREE 24/7 Phone
and Gold support available 24x7x365 from on-site cloud per incident basis. However, you Premier Support with Expertise [Pricing details not Support
Pricing and are charged accordingly hosting experts are able to utilize support incidents Administration. Developer mentioned in the website]
Policy that you already have from Support is only available for a Free 24/7 Premium
existing programs such as the fee, on a per-case basis. Support
Microsoft Developer Network
(MSDN) and the Microsoft Partner
Network (MPN).
Support Severity level vs response time Not available Not available Support type vs response time 24 x 7 x 365 online live chat EMERGENCY Cases - 30
and toll free phone support minutes
response Urgent - 1 hour (available Basic Support - 2 business backed by Fanatical Support
time for Gold subscribers only) days The following are the
EMERGENCY categories:
High - 4 business hours Premier Support - 2 hours
Server down
Normal - 1 business day Premier Support with
Administration - 2 hours Packet loss
Low - 2 business days
Routing issue
All other Cases - 120
minutes
Service Monthly uptime percentage vs Not available Microsoft will provide a 10 percent Not available Not available A "10,000% Service
Service credit percentage credit if compute connectivity falls Credit" is a credit
credit for below 99.95 percent uptime; a 10 equivalent to one hundred
an outage Amazon S3
percent credit if role-instance (100) times Customer's fees
Equal to or greater than 99% but uptime or storage falls below 99.9 for the impacted Service
less than 99.9% - 10% percent uptime. If it falls below 99 feature for the duration of
percent availability across anything, the Failure
less than 99% - 25% 25 percent credit will be provided
Amazon EC2
If the Annual Uptime Percentage
for a customer drops below
99.95% for the Service Year, that
customer is eligible to receive a
Service Credit equal to 10% of
their bill (excluding one-time
payments made for Reserved
Instances) for the Eligible Credit
Period
Incidence Amazon Web Services publishes The user should subscribe to this Microsoft may send periodic e-mails Trust Site -trust.Salesforce.Com-for Incident reports are mostly Not available
the most up-to-the-minute announcement-only list to receive informing you of technical service Incident Communications proprietary information between
notification information on service availability updates on system outages, issues related to a product or service us and Rackspace customers
approach in Service Health Dashboard maintenance periods, and other you requested
service disruptions.
Amazon Web Services keeps a
running log of all service Go to the group: google-appengine-
interruptions downtime-notify
Subscribe via email: google-
appengine-downtime-notify-
subscribe@googlegroups.com
Apart from the above,when there is a
scheduled down time, GAE puts the
data store in read-only mode. During
that time any attempt to write data to
the data store will throw an
exception which can be caught in the
application to show a user friendly
message to the user
Access/usag Amazon Cloud watch The Administrative console provides "Dallas" Features allows users to get Force.com Sites Usage Reporting The Rackspace Cloud Control GoGrid CDN (Content
the following details, detailed access report containing the Package gives you reports and a Panel provides specific usage Delivery Network) provides,
e reports services/datasets that were accessed, dashboard to analyze usage of the metrics
view access data and error logs, and Basic Reporting
grouped by date and by account key Force.com Sites
analyze traffic
Portal health check reports show Advanced Reporting and
browse the application's datastore Analytics
sensitive administrative and user
and manage indexes
permissions, object Real-Time Reporting
view the status of the application's permissions,field-level security, Dashboard
scheduled tasks organization-wide default settings,
and custom sharing rules
http://googleappengine.blogspot.com
Pricing
Service/Res Amazon S3 - Storage Used / Data An efficient application on a free Billing is based on Compute, Storage, Force.com Free, Force.com Cloud Server (virtual instance) Resources that are charged are
Transfer In or Data Transfer account can use up to 500MB of Storage transactions and Data transfers Enterprise, Force.com Unlimited by the hour,Bandwidth In and for the RAM usage and data
ource Out/PUT, COPY, POST, LIST or storage and up to 5 million page Bandwidth Out,Amount of data transfer from the server to the
pricing GET request (No charge for delete views a month. When you are ready backed up,Additional public IP internet. Each account has the
requests) for more, you can enable billing, set addresses ability to deploy up to 200
a maximum daily budget, and servers.
Amazon SimpleDB - measures
allocate your budget for each
the machine utilization of each Cloud Storage billing begins
resource according to your needs.
request and charges based on the after you exceed the initial
amount of machine capacity used Billing is based on the following 10GB storage quota
to complete the particular request parameters -
(SELECT, GET, PUT, etc.),
normalized to the hourly capacity Outgoing Bandwidth
of a circa 2007 1.7 GHz Xeon Incoming Bandwidth
processor
CPU Time CPU
Amazon CloudFront - Charged
based on the amount of data Stored Data
transfer out and the number of Recipients Emailed
GET requests
Amazon Elastic MapReduce –
Charged per instance-hour
consumed for each instance type,
from the time job flow began
processing until it is terminated.
Each partial instance-hour
consumed will be billed as a full
hour
Amazon SQS - Based on data
transferred ―in‖ and ―out‖ of
Amazon SQS/based on Amazon
SQS requests which includes
CreateQueue, ListQueues,
DeleteQueue, SendMessage,
ReceiveMessage,
ChangeMessageVisibility,
DeleteMessage,
SetQueueAttributes,
GetQueueAttributes,
Special Amazon Flexible Payments No special service available No special service available No special service available No special service available No special service available
Service (Amazon FPS) and
Payment Amazon DevPay.
Services
AWS also provides consolidated
Billing feature which lets you
designate one AWS account as a
paying account and a set of other
accounts as linked accounts to
form a simple one-level hierarchy
Data
Choices of US – N. Virginia, Not available USA - Anywhere Not available Not available San Francisco
data hosting US – N. California, USA – NorthWest
location EU – Ireland USA – SouthWest
[Information that is collected by or
sent to Microsoft may be stored
and processed in the United States
or any other country in which
Microsoft or its affiliates,
subsidiaries, or service providers
maintain facilities]
Data Amazon RDS automatically The user is solely responsible for The user is solely responsible for All networking components, Although the Rackspace Cloud Whether or not Customer's
patches the database software and securing and backing up the securing and backing up the data. SSL accelerators, load service may be used as a backup Signup calls on GoGrid to
backup backs up the database, storing the Application and any Content. balancers, Web servers, and service, you agree that you will maintain back-ups, Customer
backups for a user-defined application servers are maintain at least one additional will have to keep a back-up
Google has no responsibility or
retention period configured in a redundant current copy of your programs copy of all data hosted by
liability for the deletion or failure to
configuration. and data stored on the Rackspace GoGrid.
Amazon AWS may delete, store any Content and other
Cloud system somewhere other
without liability of any kind, any communications maintained or All customer data is stored on a than on the Rackspace Cloud
of the Amazon SQS Content that transmitted through use of the primary database server that is system.
sits in a queue or any queue that Service. clustered with a backup
remains inactive for more than database server for redundancy
the number of days specified in
the user documentation. All customer data is stored on
disk storage that is mirrored
Amazon SimpleDB, in during the across different storage cabinets
previous six (6) months you if and controllers
there are no incurred fees for
SimpleDB and have registered no All customer data, up to the last
usage of the Amazon SimpleDB committed transaction, is
Content, Amazon AWS may automatically backed up to a
delete, without liability of any primary tape library on a nightly
kind, the Amazon SimpleDB basis
Content upon thirty (30) days Backup tapes are immediately
prior notice to you. cloned to a second tape library
Amazon S3 versioning provides to verify their integrity, and the
an additional layer of protection clones are moved to secure,
for your S3 objects. You can fire-resistant, off-site storage on
Data after Amazon will not take any action If Google suspends or terminates the Upon expiration or termination of your Upon a request made by you within You will not have access to yourNot available
to intentionally erase any of the use of the Service with cause (or if online service subscription, you must 30 days after the effective date of data stored on the Rackspace
termination data stored on the Services for a the user voluntarily discontinues the contact Microsoft and tell whether to: termination of Your Force.com Free Cloud system during a
period of thirty (30) days after the use of the Service), the user will Edition service, Force.com will suspension or following
(1)disable your account and then delete
effective date of termination have access to, and the ability to make available to You for download termination.
your subscriber data; or
export, the Content for a period of a file of Your Data in comma
ninety (90) days following such (2) Retain your subscriber data in a separated value (.csv) format along
Post termination retrieval of data suspension or termination. Fees will limited function account for at least 90 with attachments in their native
stored on the Services will be continue to be assessed for usage of days after expiration or termination of format
conditioned on the payment of the Service in excess of any portion your subscription (the ―retention
30-days after termination, Force.com
Service data storage charges for of the Fee Threshold during the 90 period‖) so that you may extract the
shall have no obligation to maintain
the period following termination, day period data.
or provide any of Your Data and
payment in full of any other
If you indicate (1), you will not be able shall thereafter, unless legally
amounts due Amazon,and the
to extract your subscriber data from prohibited, delete all of Your Data in
compliance with terms and
your account. If you indicate (2), you the systems or otherwise in
conditions Amazon may establish
will reimburse Microsoft for any Force.com’s possession or under its
with respect to such data retrieval
applicable costs. If you do not indicate control.
(1) or (2), Microsoft will retain your
subscriber data in accordance with (2).
Following the expiration of the
retention period, Microsoft will disable
your account and then delete your
subscriber data.
Account
Free Services - Notice period will You may discontinue your use of the There is no notice Period before Salesforce may terminate Your Rackspace may terminate the GoGrid will provide 30
Notice termination or suspension, but upon
be provided to via the email Service at any time. Google may, at Force.com service at any time Agreement for breach on days advanced written
period address provided to during any time, terminate your use of the expiration or termination of your without cause upon 60 days’ written notice notice of any termination
before registration for the Services Service if (A) you have breached online service subscription, you can written notice to You, or (b) upon for convenience. Upon
contact Microsoft and tell whether You may terminate the
termination any provision of the Terms (or have 7 days’ written notice to You of a termination for
Paid Services (other than Amazon to: Agreement for breach on
acted in manner that clearly shows material breach of the Agreement convenience, GoGrid will
FPS and Amazon DevPay) - sixty written notice if: (i)
that you do not intend to, or are (1)disable your account and then if such breach remains uncured at refund any amounts
(60) days’ advance notice Rackspace materially fails to
unable to comply with the provisions delete your subscriber data; or the expiration of such period prepaid for Service not yet
provide the Services as
Amazon FPS and Amazon of the Terms); or (B) Google is provided.
(2)retain your subscriber data in a agreed and do not remedy
DevPay - Notice period will be required to do so by law (for
limited function account for at least that failure within five (5)
provided to via the email address example, due to a change to the law
90 days after expiration or days of your written notice
provided to during registration for governing the provision of the
termination of your subscription describing the failure, or (ii)
the Services Service); or (C) the Service relies on
Rackspace materially fails to
data or services provided by a third
meet any other obligation
party partner and the relationship
stated in the Agreement and
with such partner (i) has expired or
do not remedy that failure
been terminated or (ii) requires
within thirty (30) days of
Google to change the way Google
your written notice
provides the data or services through
describing the failure.
the Service; or (D) providing the
Service could create a substantial
economic burden as determined by
Google in its reasonable good faith
judgment; or (E) providing the
Service could create a security risk
or material technical burden as
determined by Google in its
reasonable good faith judgment.
New user Amazon SimpleDB users pay no An efficient application on a free During Community Technology Force.com free edition Not available Included free with every
charges on the first 25 Machine account can use up to 500MB of Preview (CTP), services included in account,
trail Hours, 1 GB of Storage, and 1 GB storage and up to 5 million page Windows Azure will be available
credentials of Data Transfer Out consumed views a month without charge - subject to certain f5 Hardware Load
every month limits. Balancing
Amazon AWS Google App Engine Window Azure Force.com Rack Space Go Grid
Security
Data Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud App Engine runs Java applications Filtering Routers User authentication features such Enterprise firewalls,email Provided via ServePath’s
(EC2) provides Host Operating using the Java 6 virtual machine as SAML through to IP range accounts include antivirus secure infrastructure and
security System,Guest operating system (JVM). The JVM runs in a secured Firewalls restrictions on logons, session and spam protection. SSL telecom facility
and a complete firewall solution. "sandbox" environment to isolate Cryptographic Protection of security and auditing. capabilities available as an
It also provides a way to encrypt your application for service and Messages add on service
Security Addresses all layers,
the API calls in transit with SSL security. The JVM can execute any
to maintain confidentiality.AWS Java bytecode that operates within Software Security Patch Physical Security
network provides significant the sandbox restrictions Management
protection and also enables Logical Network Security
The Python interpreter also runs in a centralized monitoring,
customer to implement futher correlation, and analysis systems Host Security
secured "sandbox" environment to
protection
isolate your application for service Transmission Level Security
Network Segmentation
Amazon Simple Storage Service and security
(Amazon S3):Amazon S3 is Database Security
Service Administration Access
accessible via SSL encrypted
endpoints. Data stored within Physical Security
Amazon S3 is not encrypted at limited number of Microsoft
rest by AWS. However, users can personnel may access customer
encrypt their data before it is information to respond to support
uploaded to Amazon S3 so that requests and as part of incident
the data cannot be accessed or response
tampered with by unauthorized
parties. Windows Azure compute
provides optional sandboxing
SimpleDB APIs provide domain- technology and mandatory
level controls that only permit sandboxing features that attempts
authenticated access by domain to limit the harm to the
creator, therefore the customer infrastructure and all other
maintains full control over who customers from such bugs.
has access to their
Windows Azure provides virtual
data.SimpleDB access can be machines to customers, giving
granted based on an AWS them access to most of the same
Account ID.SimpleDB is security options available in
accessible via SSL-encrypted Windows Server. Updates to the
endpoints. software and configuration are
Industry SAS70 Type II US Safe Harbor US Safe Harbor US Safe Harbor US Safe Harbor SAS Type II
regulatory HIPAA SAS 70 Type II and SysTrust Safe Harbor Policy
compliance Certified
SOX
ISO 27001 Certified
Amazon AWS Google App Engine Window Azure Force.com Rack Space Go Grid
Others
Virtualizat- EC2 uses modified Xen Not available Modified Hyper-V hypervisor Not available Xen virtualization Xen virtualization
virtualization
ion platform
Control Web based Interface Web based Interface Web based Interface Web based Interface Control panel is custom built Multiserver hosting control
by and for the Rackspace panel to manage
Panel Cloud service.management servers,scale Web
interfaces for the Cloud applications and networks
Sites, Cloud Servers and
Cloud Files services as well
as a web based file manager.
Age of Since early 2006 Since July 2008 Since October 2008 Since 2007 Since 2006 March 2008
Service
Disclaimer
The comparison table has been compiled based on latest information available on the websites of cloud providers. The contents are subject to
change with time, as and when the cloud providers come up with new innovations and features.