Azure Pricing and Support Options Flashcards
What is an Azure Subscription
a logical container and grouping of Azure resources and administration
What is an Azure Account
An account is used for contact information and billing details
Azure Subscription Elements
IT is a Legal Agreement
It is a a billing Unit
It is a Logical Boundary of scale
It is a First container created and administrative boundary
Azure Subscriptions and Azure Active Directory (AAD)
A subscription has a trust relationship with at least one AAD
An AAD directory can have trusts with multiple subscriptions, but each subscription can only trust a single AAD directory.
When to add a new subscription?
Concern of exceeding subscription limits? YES -> new subscription
Are the subscription owners trusted? NO -> new subscription
Resource provider scope restrains? YES -> new subscription
Can administrative delegation be managed though RBAC? NO -> new subscription
Azure Management Groups
Apply governance conditions (Access & policies) a level of scope above subscriptions
Azure Management Container (Not Docker!) Hierarchy
Management Group -> Subscription -> Resource Group -> Resources
Purchasing Azure Products and Services - Enterprise Agreement
Designed for very large organizations
Premiere support and dedicated Azure resources
Annual Azure spend commit
Purchasing Azure Products and Services - Direct
Bill from Microsoft
Support via Microsoft Support Plan
Self manage or use partner for Azure provisioning, deployment and usage management
Purchasing Azure Products and Services - Cloud Solution Provider (CSP)
Bill from CSP
Support through CSP
Work with CSP for Azure provisioning, deployment, and usage management
Azure Free Account
30 day $200 Credit
25+ Free services forever
Many popular services free for first 12 months
Factors affecting Azure Cost : Location
Costs vary between regions for the same Azure resources.
Depending on level of popularity, demand, local costs to Microsoft for infra, connectivity, cooling, staff etc.
Factors affecting Azure Costs: Resource Type
Costs are specific to each resource.
The usage that meter tracks and the number of meters depends on resource type
Factors affecting Azure Cost: Service Type
Azure usage rates and billing periods can be different across Enterprise Agreements, Direct & CSP which affect overall costs.
Factors affecting Azure Costs: Egress traffic
Sending data into Azure ingress (inbound) is always free.
Pulling data out of Azure egress (outbound) always has a cost.
Azure Zones for Billing
An Azure Zone is a geographical grouping of Azure Regions for billing purposes
Data transfer pricing is based on the Zones
Best Practices for Minimizing Azure Costs: Reserved Instances
Pre-pay for resources if you know exactly what you are going to consume in advance.
Best Practices for Minimizing Azure Costs: Azure Cost Management
Use the Azure Cost Management Tools.
Best Practices for Minimizing Azure Costs: Quotas
Place Quotas around the resources and the amount of resources that are being used.
Best Practices for Minimizing Azure Costs: Spending Limits
Put spending limits in place. If you approach a spending limit you can not provision and use any more resources.
Best Practices for Minimizing Azure Costs: Azure Hybrid Benefit
If you have software assurance and you’re brining servers from on-premises up to Azure.
You get deep discounts on the licensing for running in Azure.
Best Practices for Minimizing Azure Costs: Tags
When you deploy resource you will want to tag them.
Can be used as a tool for showback or chargeback.
Just useful to know what resources are and what they are for.
Azure Pricing Calculator
Estimate the costs of Azure products.
Web based, you add the services, their tiers and estimated consumption
Total Cost of Ownership Calculator (TCO)
Should be used when planning to migrate to Azure.
Help estimate the cost saving realized by migrating workloads to Azure vs running on-premises.
Azure Support Plans - Basic
Free and available to all Azure accounts.
24x7 access to billing and subscription support
Online self-help
Azure products and services docs/whitepapers
Support forums
Azure Support Plans - Developer
Scope : Non-Production
Tech Support : Business Hours (emails)
Response Times : (< 8 business Hours)
Azure Support Plans : Standard
Scope : Production
Tech Support : 24x7 (email + phone)
Response Times : (< 1 Hours)
Azure Support Plans : Professional Direct
Scope : Business Critical
Tech Support : 24x7 (email + phone)
Response Times : (< 1 Hours)
Azure Support Plan Comparison : Premier
Scope : Substantial Dependence
Tech Support : 24x7 (email + phone)
Response Times : (< 1 Hours)
Azure Knowledge Center
Q&A covering common questions about Azure Products
Search, browse or filter by product
Service Level Agreement (SLA)
An SLA is a commitment between a service provider and its internal or external customers.
Outlines what the service provider will provide to its customers and the standards the provider will meet
Azure SLA
Details the commitments for uptime and connectivity Microsoft has for its services.
Different services will have different SLAs
Composite SLA
Will involve more than one Azure service supporting an application.
Each service will have different levels of availability and connectivity.
E.g. Azure App Service (99.95%) for frontend and Azure SQL Database (99.99%) on backend.
Composite SLA = (99.95% * 99.99% = 99.94%)
Azure Spot Instances
Azure spot instances (VMs) are allocated form Azure’s excess compute capacity and enable workloads to run for significantly reduced costs.
No SLA for Spot VMs
Termination can occur with only a 30-second warning
Terminations are based on capacity availability and your configured price maximum
Azure Previews
These previews are for evaluation while features, products, services, software and regions are in beta or pre-release
Public Preview
Any customer with an Azure subscription can access features in public preview.
Resource/tool is still in beta.
Private Preview
Specific Azure customers only, are able to access features in Private Preview
