Virtual Server Hosting: AWS, Azure, and IBM Bluemix Comparison

This report provides a comparative analysis of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and IBM Bluemix, focusing on their virtual Linux server hosting capabilities. It details the use of Amazon EC2, Azure Virtual Machines, and IBM Virtual/Bare Metal Servers, along with Amazon Lightsail and Azure App Service. The report compares storage options, including virtual machine storage, object storage (S3, Blob storage, Bluemix Object storage), and archival storage (Glacier, Cool Storage). Database and analytics tools, such as Redshift, dashDB, and Azure SQL, are also compared. Furthermore, the report examines virtual machine management, including management consoles and command-line interfaces, along with additional tools like CloudWatch, Log Analytics, and Application Insights. The report also explores IPv4 and IPv6 addressing support and details the redundancy, backup, and disaster recovery solutions offered by each provider, including conventional backup, Pilot Light, Warm Standby, Multi-site solutions, and Zerto Virtual Replication technology.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and IBM Bluemix
Virtual Linux server hosting is provided by an instance of Amazon EC2 on AWS, while on
Azure it is provided by use of Azure Virtual Machine (Cloud, 2014). IBM Bluemix provides the
Linux virtual hosting by use of a Virtual Server and Bare Metal Server. The virtual Linux servers
are also provided by use of Amazon Lightsail on AWS, Azure App Service on Azure and by use
of a Virtual Server on Bluemix (Varia & Mathew, 2016).
Storage for the three cloud computing providers’ covers; Virtual machine storage, object storage,
Gateways, archival and file storage (Rimal, Choi & Lumb, 2009). On Amazon, Object storage is
enabled by use of Simple Storage Service (S3), while Azure Blob storage handles objects on
Azure platform, and Bluemix Object storage on IBM cloud (Rimal, Choi & Lumb, 2009). For
virtual Machine Disk Storage, Amazon uses Elastic Block Storage (EBS), while Azure uses
Blobs and IBM uses Block Storage. Cold Vault technology is used by IBM Bluemix for long
term archival storage, while AWS uses Glacier storage, and Azure uses Cool Storage (Cloud,
2014). All the three service provides storage on relational, NoSQL databases, In-memory data
store and data warehousing (Furht & Escalante, 2010). For analytics purposes, Amazon uses
Redshift data warehousing, while IBM uses dashDB and Azure uses Azure SQL.
For virtual machine management, all the three platforms use management consoles and a
Command Line management interface (Furht & Escalante, 2010). Amazon provides additional
management tools such as Service Catalog and OpsWorks for managing server automation.
Other management tools include CloudWatch and CloudTrail used by AWS for logging and
monitoring, Azure's Log Analytics and Application Insights (Varia & Mathew, 2016).

Azure AWS IBM Bluemix
Ubuntu
Open SUSE
SUSE Linux Enterprise
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Oracle Linux
Debian
CoreOS
CentOS
Ubuntu
SUSE
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Amazon Linux
Kali Linux
Debian
CentOS
Ubuntu
SUSE Linux Enterprise
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
IPv4 and IPv6 addressing
The three cloud service providers under review; Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and IBM
Bluemix all support both IPv4 and IPv6 addressing protocols. The default setting on Amazon’s
EC2 is to use IPv4 addressing protocol (Cloud, 2014). IPv6 is optional on Amazon AWS, but
when assigned the address is reachable from the internet, as all IPv6 are all public (Cloud, 2014).
For an instance configured to use IPv6, it contains both IPv4 and IPv6, which can be used in a
dual-stack mode, but require security configuration for each IP type (Cloud, 2014). AWS does
not support elastic IPv6, but supports elastic IPv4 (Cloud, 2014).
On the other hand, Azure requires that a single IPv6 to be configured and assigned to a given
VM’s network interface (Wilder, 2012). However, the IPv6 can only be private; a public IPv6
can only be assigned to a load balancer; the DNS on Azure contains both IPv4 and IPv6 (Wilder,
2012).
Redundancy and Backup
The three cloud computing providers under review provides extensive redundancy, backup and
disaster recovery. On Amazon AWS, redundancy and backup is implemented using convectional
backup and restore mechanisms, Pilot Light solution which provides redundancy and simple

recovery solution, as well as Warm Standby Solution and Multi-site solutions, which ensures
business continuity and recover in case of outage of the primary virtual machines (Cloud, 2014).
The AWS Storage Gateway provides means of having snapshots of the live system to be backed
up on Amazon S3, which provides near-real-time backup solution (Cloud, 2014).
On Azure platform, redundancy is provided by having data backed up in many regions, as
datacenters are placed in different locations around the globe (Wilder, 2012). Data and virtual
machines are replicated on secondary locations, with the option of having automatic replication
of virtual machines, based on policies set by the client (Wilder, 2012). Such backup enables
seamless continuity of a business even in case of a region-specific system failure (Wilder, 2012).
Like the case of AWS and Azure platforms, IBM Bluemix provides a wide range of redundancy,
backup and recovery options. The Zerto Virtual Replication technology on Bluemix enables the
backup and redundancy of virtual machines, which facilitates disaster recovery in case of a
failure (Gheith, 2016). Other solutions and technologies used by Bluemix include EVault Backup
and Veeam technology with provides both automatic backup, replication and restoration
capabilities (Gheith, 2016).

References
Cloud, A. E. C. (2014). Amazon web services. Retrieved Sept, 9, 2017..
Furht, B., & Escalante, A. (2010). Handbook of cloud computing (Vol. 3). New York: springer.
Gheith, A. (2016). IBM bluemix mobile cloud services. IBM Journal of Research and
Development, 60(2-3), 7-1.
Rimal, B. P., Choi, E., & Lumb, I. (2009). A Taxonomy and Survey of Cloud Computing
Systems. NCM, 9, 44-51.
Wilder, B. (2012). Cloud architecture patterns: using microsoft azure. " O'Reilly Media, Inc.".
Varia, J., & Mathew, S. (2016). Overview of amazon web services. Amazon Web Services.