Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) are both cloud-based infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings that allow you to deploy and manage virtual servers in the cloud. Here’s a comparison of AWS EC2 and Azure VMs:

1. Provider:

• AWS EC2 is provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS).
• Azure VMs are provided by Microsoft Azure.

2. Service Offerings:

• Both AWS EC2 and Azure VMs offer a wide range of virtual machine types, including general-purpose, compute-optimized, memory-optimized, and storage-optimized instances.

3. Operating Systems:

• Both platforms support various operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and others.

4. Instance Types:

• AWS EC2 has a vast selection of instance types, each optimized for specific workloads.
• Azure VMs offer a variety of instance series, such as D-series, F-series, and more, designed for different use cases.

5. Pricing Models:

• Both providers offer pay-as-you-go pricing, where you pay for the compute capacity by the hour.
• AWS EC2 has Reserved Instances and Spot Instances for cost optimization.
• Azure VMs offer Reserved VM Instances for discounts and Low-Priority VMs for cost savings.

6. Region and Availability Zones:

• Both AWS and Azure have multiple data center regions worldwide, allowing you to deploy VMs in regions closest to your users.
• Both providers offer availability zones for high availability and fault tolerance.

7. Networking:

• AWS provides Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) for network isolation and security.
• Azure offers Azure Virtual Network (VNet) for similar networking capabilities.
• Both platforms support features like load balancers, VPN gateways, and network security groups.

8. Integration:

• Azure VMs have tight integration with other Azure services like Azure Active Directory, Azure Blob Storage, and Azure SQL Database.
• AWS EC2 integrates well with other AWS services, including Amazon S3, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), and AWS Lambda.

9. Marketplace:

• Both providers have marketplaces where you can find and deploy pre-configured virtual machine images with various software and applications.

10. Management Tools: – AWS EC2 can be managed using the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), and SDKs. – Azure VMs can be managed through the Azure Portal, Azure PowerShell, Azure CLI, and SDKs.

11. Hybrid Cloud: – Azure has a strong focus on hybrid cloud solutions, making it easier to integrate on-premises resources with Azure VMs. – AWS also offers hybrid cloud solutions but is known for its cloud-native approach.

12. Ecosystem: – AWS has a vast ecosystem of services and third-party integrations. – Azure benefits from Microsoft’s extensive enterprise software and services ecosystem.

13. Support and Documentation: – Both providers offer extensive documentation and support plans to assist customers with their VM deployments.