Azure Vs. AWS terminology
Through my study of AWS and Azure, I have found that one challenge is in understanding the terminology difference, particularly as my own background is in VMware technologies. So, I have created this little chart that compares the three.
Obviously, there is no direct one-to-one mapping of the product offerings, but there are some common areas, at a conceptual level.
So, here is a table, that roughly equates the concepts to each other;
| Physical concept | VMware concept | AWS concept | Azure concept |
|---|---|---|---|
| Network | vSwitch Port Group | VPC | Virtual Network |
| VPN | NSX Edge IPSEC tunnel | VPC | SSTP or OpenVPN |
| Subnet | Virtual Machine Port Group | Subnet | Dynamic IP (DIP) |
| Drive | Drive Mapping | Volume | Disk |
| Disk | vmdk | EBS Volume | VHD |
| Server | Virtual Machine | EC2 Instance | Virtual Machine |
| DNS | NSX Edge DNS | Route 53 | Azure DNS |
| DDoS protection | NSX Edge Firewall | AWS Shield | (built-in) |
| Firewall | NSX Edge Firewall virtual appliance | Security Groups, ACLs | Network Security Group (NSG) |
| Layer 7 WAF | Third party solution needed | AWS WAF Firewall Manager | Application Gateway |
| WAN | VXLAN, NSX SD-WAN (VeloCloud) | AWS Direct Connect (L2 VPN) | ExpressRoute (L3 routed, also MPLS) |
| Multi Factor Authentication | Workspace ONE and third party | AWS MFA | Azure Active Directory |
| Load Balancing | NSX Load Balancer | AWS Elastic Load Balancer | Azure Load Balancer, Traffic Manager |
| Centralised Logging | vRealize Log Insight, etc. | use an S3 bucket or CloudWatch | Azure Audit Logs |
| Vulnerability Assessment | vRealize Operations | AWS Guard Duty, Amazon Inspector, AWS Trusted Advisor | Azure Security Center |
| Power off immediately | Power off | Not Available | Not Available |
| Request Shut Down OS | Shut Down OS | Stop | Stop |
| Reset Power | Reset | Not Available | Not Available |
| Request OS reboot | Reboot OS | Reboot | Restart |
| Sleep / Hibernate | Suspend | Not Available (except Amazon Linux) | Not Available |
| Delete server | Delete from disk (when powered off) | Terminate | Deallocate |
| Create identical duplicate | Clone (when powered off) | Create Image | Create Image |
| Create deployable image | Convert to Template (when VM powered off) | Create Image | Generalise, then Create Image |
| Unknown server or disk | Orphan | ? | Unattached |
There may be some questions about my opinion of these comparative conceptual terms – if so, post a comment below. Please let me know if I have made an error.
