Compute power
Both Azure and AWS EC2 allow their users to configure virtual machines and specify the amount of processing power and amount of memory, along with the locality of the VM. Azure users can spin up a clean VM, or can optionally provide their own VHD or choose one which has been pre-configured by Microsoft.
Storage
AWS’s cloud object storage solution offers high availability and automatic replication across regions. Temporary storage in AWS starts functioning when an instance starts and stops when an instance terminates also provides block storage that is similar to hard disks and can be attached to any EC2 instance or kept separate.
Azure uses temporary storage and page blobs for VM based volumes. Azure’s Block Storage option is similar to S3 in AWS. There are two classes of storage offered by Azure -Hot and Cool. Cool storage is comparatively less pricey than Hot but one has to incur additional read and write costs.
Pricing
The main difference in pricing between AWS and Azure is that the Amazon service offers a pay-as-you-go service which calculates operational costs by the hour, whereas Azure offers a similar PAYG model but breaks costs down to the minute, which can add up to quite a difference in the development stages of a project.
Certifications
Azure has gained over 90 compliance certifications, more than 50 of which are specific to global regions and countries. The most comprehensive set of compliance offerings of any cloud service provider.
