Public Cloud Platforms (under review) comparison & reviews

Summary
Rank
5th 1st 5th
Score
0%
0%
User Reviews
Question?
Not Enabled Not Enabled Not Enabled
Analysis expand by Ronald van Vugt
 		by
Select All
General expand
0%
0%
0%
  • Fully Supported
  • Limitation
  • Not Supported
  • Information Only
Pros
  • + Good range of hybrid capabilities (including VMware partnership)
  • + Baremetal Server options with cloud characteristics (hourly consumption)
  • + Cloud leader with the most extensive range of services
  • + Mature services with good compliance coverage
  • + Huge number of 3rd party integrations
  • + Competitive priced fully featured IAAS offerings
  • + Good datacentre coverage across Asia Pacific
Cons
  • - High performance networking, but limited capabilities
  • - Evolving hybrid strategy based around VMware partnership
  • - Limited European and US datacentre footprint
  Content  
  •  
Content Creator
WhatMatrix
Ronald van Vugt
Ephraim Baron
  •  
Overview
Bluemix delivers virtual machines running in IBM Cloud data centers backed by a global private fiber network.
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale cloud computing easier for developers. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change. Amazon EC2 changes the economics of computing by allowing you to pay only for capacity that you actually use.
Alibaba Cloud Elastic Compute Service (ECS) provides fast memory and the latest Intel CPUs to help you achieve faster results with low latency to power your cloud applications.
Management expand
0%
0%
0%
  Interfaces  
  •  
UI / API / CL / SDK
Single UI : Various APIs / CLIs native to services. Differences between IAAS & PaaS environment
Webbased UI, API Available, CLI Available for Windows/Mac/Linux, SDK Available for different platforms
UI, API, CLI, SDK
  •  
Common API service keys
Multiple API service keys
AWS Users can create their own API Access keys; these keys can be shared
Each Alibaba Cloud user can create multiple access key/secret key pairs
  Monitoring  
  •  
General Service monitoring
Available, but inconsistent IAAS & PAAS service monitoring
Every EC2 instance includes the following service quality services with a frequency of 1 minute: StatusCheckFailed, StatusCheckFailed_Instance, StatusCheckFailed_System
Cloud Monitor
  •  
VM Service monitoring
Guest OS agent based (Nimsoft)
Every EC2 instance sends basic metrics to CloudWatch every five-minutes. More metrics and one-minute monitoring are available at cost.
The OSS monitoring service details metric data, including basic system operation statuses, performance, and metering. It also provides a custom alarm service to track requests, analyze usage, collect statistics on business trends, and promptly discover and diagnose system problems.
  •  
Actions / Event logging
Limited capability (agent based)
Logging for EC2 instances is possible with the service CloudWatch Logs
The alarm rule page is where you can view, modify, activate, deactivate, and delete alarm rules related to OSS monitoring alarms.
  Admin  
  •  
Identity & Access Management
Centralised IAM
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Alibaba Cloud Resource Access Management (RAM) is an identity and access control service which enables you to centrally manage your users (including employees, systems or applications) and securely control their access to your resources through permission levels.
  •  
Multi factor authentication support
Only for IAAS
Supported
Users can create, bind, unbind, and delete virtual multi-factor authentication devices.
  •  
Granular Access Control
Configurable access control to IAAS
Using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) a very granular access control is possible. The default for every user and role is no access; you have to define every access control.
Supports role-based access control
  Control  
  •  
VM Billing per min / hr
Hourly / Monthly / Subscription
Pay-as-you-go, reserved instances for one or three years, scheduled instances for one year, spot instances
On-demand pricing by the hour and by the month
Compute VM expand
0%
0%
0%
  VM  
  •  
VM micro (below 1 vCPU)
1vCPU minimum
EC2 instances nano, micro, small
ecs.n1.tiny
  •  
VM Small (up to 8 vCPU)
Available : Configurable mem up to 64GB
EC2 instances medium, large, xlarge,
ecs.c1.large and ecs.n1.xlarge series
  •  
VM Medium (up to 16 vCPU)
Available : Configurable mem up to 128GB
EC2 instances 2xlarge
ecs.c2.large and ecs.n1.3xlarge
  •  
VM Large (up to 32 vCPU)
Available : Configurable mem up to 242GB
EC2 instances 4xlarge
ecs.n1.7xlarge and ecs.sn1.7xlarge
  •  
VM XLarge (up to 64 vCPU 128GB RAM)
Max 56 core with mem up to 242GB
EC2 instances 10xlarge
largest instance is 56 vCPU
  •  
VM XXLarge (up to 128 vCPU 2TB RAM)
Not available as VM (Baremetal option : per Month)
EC2 instance 32xlarge
No
  •  
GPU VM Large (up to 32 vCPU)
Not available as VM (Baremetal option : per Hr / Month)
It is possible to add a GPU to every current generation EC2 instance
ecs.gn5-c28g1.14xlarge
  •  
GPU VM XLarge (up to 64 vCPU 128GB RAM)
Not available as VM (Baremetal option : per Hr / Month)
It is possible to add a GPU to every current generation EC2 instance
largest instance is 56 vCPU
  •  
GPU VM XXLarge (up to 128 vCPU 2TB RAM)
No generally available Baremetal option
It is possible to add a GPU to every current generation EC2 instance
No
  •  
GPU types
Nvidia Tesla P100, M60, K80, Grid K2 (monthly & hourly options)
Yes, with up to 16 NVIDIA Tesla® K80 GPUs, 192GB of total video memory, 40 thousand parallel processing cores yielding 70 teraflops of single precision floating point performance and over 23 teraflops of double precision floating point performance using P2 EC2 instances
Nvidia Tesla P100 GPU
  •  
Custom VM size
Standard config types for public VMs. Private host VMs can be configured
No
No
  •  
Defined disk IOPS
Not available as local disc (available with SAN)
EBS Optimized instances provided dediated storage network
Users can choose SSD storage, but they cannot specify IOPS
  •  
SR-IOV support
Not supported
Supported on some instance types
No native SR-IOV support
  •  
Network speeds
1 x public / 1 x private : Can add 1 private but no ability to add additional
Low, moderate, high, 10Gbps, 20Gbps.
Depending of the instance type from 450 Mbit until 20 Gbit
Based on selected network bandwidth peak between
  •  
Add virtual NIC
No ability to add vNIC
All instances in a VPC can add 1 until 14 virtual NICs, depending of the instance type (this is not possible in the EC2-Classic platform, but this platform is not recommended)
No. Can add multi-queue for NICs
  •  
Attached / detach block storage
Limited ability with portable storage
It is possible to detach block storage from an unmounted volume on a EC2 instance and attach block storage to an EC2 instance
Yes, including Shared Block Storage
  •  
Virtual dedicated cloud
Virtual network created at L2 VLAN level.
Every EC2 instance will be part of a VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)
Alibaba Cloud Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is an isolated cloud network built for private usage.
  •  
IP reassignment
Can assign portable public / private IPs
Possible with Elastic IP Addresses
Only Elastic Ips
  Image  
  •  
Manual snapshots image
Supported
Can create Amazon Machine Image (AMI) from EC2 instance
Can create system image
  •  
Scheduled snapshot image
Not available as native service (could script through API)
Not available as native service
Scheduled tasks are supported, but not for VM image
  •  
API / CLI Snapshot image
Supported
Available
Scheduled tasks are supported, but not for VM image
  •  
Make image public / marketplace
Supported
AWS Marketplace is available to publish and sell application images
Only through Marketplace
  •  
VM import
ISO & VHD imports supported
You can import Windows and Linux VMs that use VMware ESX or Workstation, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix Xen virtualization formats.
Supports RAW and VHD format
  •  
VM export
VHD image export
you can export previously imported EC2 instances to VMware ESX, Microsoft Hyper-V or Citrix Xen formats.
Must request for export function to be whitelisted
  O/S  
  •  
Windows
Windows Server 2012, 2012R2, 2016 Standard edition
Amazon EC2 currently supports a variety of operating systems including: Amazon Linux, Ubuntu, Windows Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Fedora, Debian, CentOS, Gentoo Linux, Oracle Linux, and FreeBSD. 
Windows Server 2008 and 2012, Standard, Data Center, and Enteprise, English and Chinese
  •  
Linux
Redhat, Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Cloudlinux, CoreOS
Amazon EC2 currently supports a variety of operating systems including: Amazon Linux, Ubuntu, Windows Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Fedora, Debian, CentOS, Gentoo Linux, Oracle Linux, and FreeBSD.
CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, FreeBSD, SUSE, and Alibaba Linux as well as CoreOS
  •  
Bring your own OS
Supported (at own risk)
Yes, you can bring your own Microsoft license
No
  Control  
  •  
Resize existing VM
Resize vCPU, memory, network speed
Resizing of a VM which is EBS backed supported
No
  •  
VM Live Migration
Recovery processes not clearly defined. SLA for recovery defined (in hrs)
If a host fails and the EC2 instance uses EBS, it is possible to start the EC2 instance on another host manually or automatically with monitoring and scripting; if an EC2 instance is installed on instance store and de host fails, the EC2 instance is lost
No
  •  
metadata
Supported
Accomplished using tags
Limited to pre-defined metadata types
  •  
Parking
Powering off VM does not stop billing
Yes
No
  •  
Provision in less than 5 mins
Variable - often more than 5 mins
Yes
Yes
  •  
Provision consistent spec
Although host performance is up to date, there is limited view of host specification
Consistent VM configs available 
Instance generation types include specific CPU information
  •  
Reserved instances
Not available
Available
Monthly subscription option only
  •  
Spot instances
Not available
Available
No
  •  
Dedicated host (Single tenant)
Dedicated host & dedicated Instances (pay per VM) available
Available
No
  •  
VM to host affinity (network optimised)
Available on didicated hosts
Available using a placement group
Only for containers
  •  
VM to host anti-affinity
Available on didicated hosts
Manual
No
  •  
Autoscaling VMs (within AZ)
Supported (within DC)
Available using an auto scaling group
Yes
  •  
Autoscaling across AZs/Regions
Not available
Autoscaling is possible across AZs, but not across Regions
Using Server Load Balancing
  Block storage  
  •  
Local HDD
Available (25GB & 100GB primary drive)
Available (instance store on magnetic disks and for some instance types on SSD disks)
Basic Cloud Disk
  •  
SSD HDD
Yes ability to define local storage (as SSD) 
Available (instance store on magnetic disks and for some instance types on SSD disks)
SSD Cloud Disk
  •  
SAN HDD
Available (25GB & 100GB primary drive)
AWS offers Elastic Block Storage (EBS) as SAN-style block storage
SSD Cloud Server
  •  
Encryption at rest
Not available on VM drives (only on additional attached storage)
Available for both instance store and EBS volumes
For object storage

Matrix Score

  •  
  •  
  • Alibaba
  • Amazon
  • Alibaba
  •  
  • 5 th
  • 1 st
  • 5 th
X
Login to access your personal profile

Forgot your Password?
X
Signup with linkedin
X

Registered, but not activated? click here (resend activation link)

Login to access your personal profile

Receive new comparison alerts

Show me as community member

I agree to your Terms of services

GDPR