One of our major problems was quickly delivering our website content to end users in different regions. After researching, we found Azure CDN, which helped us with solving this problem by caching our website content on various servers globally. Additionally, they have been helping us with handling more concurrent users.
Pros
Web Caching
Scalability
Website Security Related Functions
Cons
It should add more security features.
Likelihood to Recommend
We love its content delivery network, making our website load faster.
This is a platform that provides a better work balance to my entire work operation, Azure CDN is created to take advantage of digital benefits and implement them in the business environment to be a faster path to solutions and better manage the flow and loads of work, the advantages for each of the users increases considerably when this software reinforces each of the skills and mastery of the files and documents that are handled by this means.
Pros
This problem is a space that provides the administrative capacity to each of its users to have a quality and one hundred percent professional operational management.
Azure CDN allows you to have a better management of all your documents as well as preserve them in the best way in its cloud-based storage support.
Cons
The large number of options and shortcuts that this program shows and manifests requires prior training for new and interested users.
There are some small bugs in the interface to make clear the function of each tool, this aspect can be improved in a future update.
Likelihood to Recommend
Azure CDN has at hand an infinity of applications and tools to implement in your system and have better control of your data in a clean and secure platform on the web, we recommend this program since the percentage of solutions provided by this program is very high and find a way to make each user's job easier.
We started using Azure CDN when we developed a new version of our corporate website, which included an architectural cloud shift. The new PaaS-based architecture requested that the website images and documents be hosted on a dedicated CDN server.
As our cloud partner is Microsoft, we decided to use Azure CDN, and at the same time, try the Azure capabilities (including CDN) on a limited use case.
Pros
New websites can be boosted up quickly
Easily scalable according to our performance requirements
Easy integration with other Azure services
You only pay for what you need
Cons
Tough learning curve--you have to be comfortable with the Azure Cloud logic and UI to use it easily
Special or uncommon use cases' pricing can be hard to forecast/follow
Can be expensive for simple use cases
Likelihood to Recommend
Azure CDN service integrates very well in a full or hybrid cloud architecture that is basically based on Azure services. In that scenario, the learning curve is shared among the different Azure services you need.
VU
Verified User
Manager in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)
Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) lets us reduce load times and It saves on managing and optimizing our websites bandwidth. Simple and user-friendly settings as well as personalization of resources. Our company is always launching new startups IT web based projects and we have to buy as many services as we need. That's why Azure helps us to buy and pay for server resources according to the project we have.
Pros
Easy to use and customizable settings.
You pay according to your resources usage.
High speed and security CDN with great support team.
Cons
Tutorials, guides in English should be more easy to understand.
Prices can be lower.
Likelihood to Recommend
When you want to start a web startup project, you do not know how much resources you need and in the testing phase it may be low, but in the pilot launch phase, you may need more resources at any time, which is through Microsoft Azure CDN. You only pay for the resources you use, which means unlimited quality, security and savings.
Great solution to deliver content of high bandwidth. Few departments within organization have used it to develop apps and websites which have been very beneficial for the whole organization. Deep integration with services provided by Azure. Very intuitive and develop friendly. Security is of utmost importance and is very well catered by Azure CDN.
Pros
Developing apps and websites.
Advanced analytics.
Cons
Pricing.
New infrastructure cost could be minimized.
Likelihood to Recommend
Very appropriate for developing apps and websites and sharing content instantly. Security is top notch and makes sure data is not compromised. Very good integration with Azure services. Also, platform is developer friendly which makes it easy for a newbie to develop websites and apps. Advanced analytics help to generate value to a great extent.
Azure CDN is Microsoft's cloud content distribution network custom-built for Azure. It shines for its ability to distribute static data easily to thousands -- or millions -- of clients while reducing the load to your origin servers. Azure CDN, like other CDN options, also speeds up client query times, by increasing the likelihood that file requests can be served quickly from a resource already available in the region nearest the request.
Pros
Cost-competitive: Azure CDN is very similar to other options from Amazon and Google, as well as smaller third-parties, and is priced to compete with those other PaaS vendors.
Like any solid CDN, helps alleviate load at origin nodes for static files.
A large number of points of presence means that many queries are already available close to end users, reducing the amount of time required to load most files as compared to loading them directly from the origin.
Cons
Unlike Cloudfront, Azure CDN does not yet support WebSockets.
Limited options for deploying endpoints that support authentication.
Likelihood to Recommend
Azure CDN is well suited to the CDN layer of traditional applications that are deployed to Azure's computer services. As it is very similar to other options from Google, Amazon, and smaller companies like Fastly, we traditionally choose it when the decision to deploy to Azure has already been made, and a CDN is required for client architecture criteria.
Azure CDN backs global distribution of all client-side code (JavaScript & CSS) plus supporting assets (images) for LiveTiles. It accelerates load times for every product (originally clocked in as 3x faster than raw storage) and allows for an evergreen deployment model for our SharePoint add-in solutions that can only use client-side code.
Pros
Global reach - we have customers around the world and they all get excellent performance.
Global availability - we've never had down time on Azure CDN.
Easy management - you can do everything easily from the portal connecting things to a storage container and from there it's zero management except purging on new content.
Cons
For the longest time they didn't have a robust SDK. They have one now, but it could be better.
The different flavors of Azure CDN (Akamai, Verizon, etc) have different costs, but not well differentiated features. Might be confusing to new users.
I'm not overly familiar with it, but AWS does have a programmability in their CDN offering (Lambda @ Edge) and Azure doesn't seem to have an equivalent (Azure Functions is region-specific).
Likelihood to Recommend
Global deployment of client-side code or assets. Does NOT have a programmability aspect, so it can't do serverless functions like AWS.
Our Marketing and Communications department was the primary user of the Azure CDN. In a small capacity, our HR and Training departments used it to host materials distributed throughout the company. In all cases, the material hosted within the CDN was distributed throughout the entire US for consumption. The primary reason we went with a CDN, instead of just serving content from a single Azure VM working as a file server, is because it allowed content to be delivered to remote users more quickly.
Pros
I found the CDN very easy to setup and configure within the Azure Portal.
Being Azure, there are plenty of free tools that allow you to manage the CDN from a UI that is not the portal. This was especially handy when I trained end users how to manage content within their specific realm.
Cons
The primary complaint I had with the CDN was expiring content once it was distributed. I realize it doesn't make sense for each endpoint to refresh content frequently, however if you upload something and need to make a tweak and then upload it again, you are kinda stuck. The only option at that point is to rename the content, which doesn't help if you've already distributed a link. It would be nice if you could upload new content to the source and force a refresh.
I would like to see more granular folder permissions. For instance, if I only wanted a single CDN but wanted to have folders for different divisions (marketing, hr, training, etc...) it would be nice to be able to get an access key at the folder level instead of the CDN level.
Content cannot be stored at the root of the CDN, you must have it inside a folder. This isn't a huge deal on a brand new setup but if you are moving from a prior CDN to Azure and already have content at the root, it makes that transition more difficult.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you are looking for a secure, easy to manage, solution to store and distribute your content around the US and/or world, the Azure CDN may be the right solution. The only thing I would caution users on is that once your content is published and distributed it cannot be easily refreshed on the endpoints. Instead, you are at the mercy of the default time to live when the content was first uploaded.
