We are small company running Epicor 10.2.400.5 with 15 default user licenses and 7 MES licenses. Our IT manager priced out the costs to host our servers in Azure and said we would be looking at about $500/month per server(we have an app server, DB server, and a web store) to meet the hardware sizing requirement guide. Just looking to see if we are in the right ballpark compared to what others are paying?
I don’t recall what we paid at a previous employer but some things to note:
- VMs are one the most expensive products in the cloud.
- People tend to over provision in the cloud because on-prem we have to think about the future. Forget about the hardware guide and go ahead and spin up an instance and see what the performance is like. Test MES, run, MRP, etc. Shut it down when you’re done testing - I mean immediately. Seeing is believing but there’s no commitment for trying.
- Consider Reserved Pricing. It can drastically reduce costs.
- If you’re using Enterprise licenses for Windows or SQL Server, you can bring those licenses to Azure and save some money.
- If the Web Store can be moved to Azure App Service instead of a VM, you can also save money.
Are you trying to keep your VMWare images and run those in Azure?
As usual @Mark_Wonsil really appreciate the thoughtful response. The IT Manager didn’t share any specifics just $500/month per server(I asked for the details), one of our developers looked into it and came back at about 1/4 the cost(hence this post as I’m getting very different estimates).
We use VMs on prem as they simplify backups, and disaster recovery(Veeam makes both really easy). But if we are in the cloud I’m guessing Azure might have tools to address both issues, that is I assume we could probably schedule a backup policy and don’t have to worry about disaster recovery if we host in Azure or AWS so don’t really need a VM? Would you recommend no VM given the higher costs?
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I did a little cloud thingy awhile back but the tl;dr is: the more control you want, the more expensive it will be. If you want a bare-metal machine, you will pay dearly for it. If you share that machine with other VMs it’s cheaper. If you use their platform (like SalesForce) it gets cheaper, if you can utilize app service or functions, it can be very inexpensive. But in the case of Kinetic today, you have no choice but to run in a VM. I’m not sure about your web store. Is it the Epicor eCommerce solution or your own?
The interesting bit coming down the road is when Kinetic is running in containers (K2024?). There could be some savings there depending how it’s architected. Azure has AKS but also other less expensive container services. We just don’t know what Epicor will support yet and what the performance would be like in those other services. 
Oh, by this I meant Azure has a service that will run VMWare images directly or you can use Hyper-V. The former is a steppingstone and I imagine more expensive, but you may want to check that out.
One more interesting tid-bit for the on-prem folks, Azure also has the ability to run AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service) on-prem but still utilize the Azure control plane.
Again, not sure how or if this is a supportable configuration from an Epicor point of view, but it could be an interesting potential solution for some.
Wow that article you linked to is really helpful! There were a lot of things in that post we know we should be doing and we’re not(lots of risk). I’m new to managing our IT team and really don’t like the idea of not doing something really important on our critical infrastructure, so looking to mitigate those risks. Moving to the cloud seems to address a lot of different issues, but as you say moving to the cloud will cost us more money. Can’t thank you enough for all the thoughtful information!
In terms of our webstore, it was developed by Advancedware. As far as I know they create Epicor bpms for the “hooks” which then call the webstore REST endpoints which is implemented in .Net I believe, and the webstore calls the Epicor REST endpoints to create orders etc. Would this be a candidate for the Azure App Service?
Make sure you’re comparing appropriately. You are getting a lot more from the cloud than just a VM. Will you have a redundant data center at least 100 miles away? You won’t be paying for offsite storage since that comes with the backup solution. You won’t be paying for HVAC, electricity, fire suppression, physical security, etc.
That is a question (and a possible marketing opportunity) for the good folks at Advancedware.
Note, having all the resources running under the Azure umbrella negates the need to poke holes in firewalls to get to your on-prem network.
I’d make the argument that you’re in a good position to evaluate options such as SaaS Kinetic versus on-prem (regardless of where those resources live) or consider a third party hosted option.
Why? I have firmly come to believe most money and effort spent on administering the IT environment to support this is wasted and does not add value. Instead, it leaves your admittedly small IT team to carry ALL of the risk and responsibility.
I think the model of a small IT team managing the entire network, infrastructure, and applications within it worked in the old days when there were fewer options, but now there are very compelling reasons to offload the risks and management of these resources to someone else in exchange for money. You’ll still have the control over the things that matter (customization, business logic implementation, etc.) while offloading the big risk items (security, compliance, redundancy, etc.) to a group that handles that exclusively.
This can free your team up to work on value-add tasks and projects and you’ll look like the hero because of good up-front planning. Additionally, you can control your costs much better with an MSP of SaaS offering with a known monthly rate. It’s not uncommon like Mark said to over-build your Azure or AWS or whatever resources and then costs run wild.
I’ve been on both sides of this equation, and I really would encourage more SMBs to consider where they can offload this kind of administrative stuff to a trusted partner. Just my 2 cents.
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