Deploying Projects on EC2 vs. Windows Azure

Question

I've been working with Windows Azure and Amazon Web Services EC2 for a good many months now (almost getting to the years range) and I've seen something over and over that seems troubling.

When I deploy a .NET build into Windows Azure into a web role (or service role) it takes usually 6-15 minute for it to startup. In AWS's EC2 it takes about the same to startup the image and then a minute or two to deploy the app to IIS (pending of course its setup).

However when I boot up an AWS instance with SUSE Linux & Mono to run .NET, I get one of these booted and deploy code to it in about 2-3 minutes (again, pending it is setup).

What is going on with Windows OS images that cause them to take soooo long to boot up in the cloud? I don't want FUD, I'm curious about the specific details of what goes on that causes this. Any specific technical information regarding this would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

Answer 1

I don't think the EC2 behavior is specific to the cloud. Just compare boot times of Windows and Linux on a local system - in my experience, Linux just boots faster. Typically, this is because the number of services/demons launched is smaller, as is the number of disk accesses that each of them needs to make during startup.

As for Azure launch times: it's difficult to tell, and not comparable to machine boots (IMO). Nobody knows what Azure does when launching an application. It might be that they need to assemble the VM image first, or that a lot of logging/reporting happens that slows down things.