Azure terminology confusing or is it just me?
azure
Solution
Think of it like this:
VMs: They're VMs. You are in charge of the OS, including licensing, Windows Updates, etc.
Web Sites: You get a "Web Site" in a multi-tenant IIS hosting environment. You have no access to alter the operating system and as such, are limited if you need to do "special" things (like adding DLLs to the GAC or other system-level alterations).
Cloud Services: These are VMs where Microsoft manages the OS for you but you have the power to make OS-level alterations. Now, granted, these alterations may go away so you have to manage these alterations intelligently, but you do have access to do such things. If, for example, you wanted to install an FTP client on a server, it would be possible to do it here if you were very clever but a VM might be a better option. If, however, you needed the Windows install to remotely join your Domain (for example), this very much can be done with Cloud Services.
Does this help? Perhaps another way to think of it is this:
VM: You administer the OS and everything else.
Web Site: You administer a web site and NOT the server.
Cloud Service: Microsoft always gives you a standard VM snapshot to start from and you tweak the OS (and everything in it) from there every time your application starts up.
Problem
I have been reading up on Azure for a little while now and I am still spinning as to what exactly the differences are between the three main routes in Azure; Website, VM, and Cloud Services. Now I get that Cloud Services is Paas and that it provides you with a prebuilt VM that they take care of, you just add your web/worker roles on top. And their VM service counts as Iaas which lets you upload your own VM image and they dont update or anything for you. Then finally their website service is Saas, where you essentially just upload a .aspx and they do everything else for you. Where I get confused though is, aren't all three (Websites, VMs, and Cloud Services) on the cloud, and all three running on VMs, and all three running or capable of running websites. Then you still run into talk of VM Roles on Cloud Services which is a whole new confusion but I believe they are deprecated now. Then in terms of Web Roles and Worker Roles, do these run on just the Cloud Services "VM" or the Virtual Machine VM, or both? So I just need a little clarification, it seems maybe just the terminology they used is confusing, maybe if they just titled them IaaS, Paas, Saas it would be less confusing, or am I missing something? EDIT: actually Im reading some places that Websites arent necissarily Saas but more Paas, can someone carify that as well?