Module 12 Flashcards
What is mechanism is used for MS to monitor how much of a resource is consumed and thus how much to charge
Usage Meters
Meters and pricing vary per products, what happens with the usage meter detail at the end of each billing period
Usage values, aggregated, charged to payment method and meters reset
Where to get summary for current usage and past invoices
Billing page in Azure portal
If you deallocate a VM what will be and not be charged for
Charged for Storage costs. Not Charged for Compute Hrs, IO Reads and Writes, Private IP Address
True or False, 1st and 3rd Party services on the Azure Market place have the SAME billing structure
False
Azure usage rates and billing periods differ between….
Enterpise, Web Direct and Cloud Service Provider
Why do usage costs vary between location
Due to Popularity, Demand and Local Infrastructure costs
From purely a cost point of view; Why should you be careful over always choosing the lowest cost region to host your resources
The cost savings may be offset by the cost of data egress between locations
What does BANDWIDTH refer to
Data moving in and out of Azure data centers
Is Inbound or Outbound Data transfer free (most of the time) and what is the one that is costed based on
Inbound in free most of the time. Outbound costs are based on billing zones
What is a zone
Geographical group of Azure regions for billing purposes
Which regions make up Zone 1
US, US Govt, Europe, Canada, UK, France, Switzerland
Which regions make up Zone 2
East Asia, South East Asia, Japan, Austrailia, India, Korea
Which regions make up Zone 3
Brazil, South Africa, UAE
Which regions make up DE Zone 1
Germany
In most zones how much outbound data is Free? And How is it charged there after
5GB per Month is normally free thereafter is a fixed price per GB
How to differentiate between Billing Zones and Availability Zones
The Term ZONE is for billing purposes, the full term Availability Zone refers to data center failure protection
What is the Azure Pricing Calculator and What is it’s purpose
Free web based tools making it easy to create estimates for Azure Solutions
What are the options that most items have on the Azure Pricing calculator
Region, Tier, Billing Options, Support Options, Programs/Offers, Azure Dev/Test Pricing
What are the 4 tabs that make up the Azure Pricing Calculator
Products: - Choose products and options here
Example Scenerios: - Load multiple components used for common infrastructure setups
Saved Estimates:
FAQs:
Once you have generated an estimate how can you share and save it
Export to Excel
Share via “public” URL
If logged in Save estimate for later
What is the Azure Advisor and what does it make recommendations based on
Free Service for making recommendations on:
High Availability. Security, Performance, Operational Excellence, Cost
How does Azure advisor make recommendations
Analyzes deployed services and looks for ways to improve within the areas it works in
What 3 key areas does Advisor make recommendations in
Eliminating unprovisioned Express Routes.
Buying Reserved Instances
Right Sizing or Shutting down VMs
How long does an express route need be unprovisioned before Advisor will recommend action, and what action will be recommended
If express route is unprovisioned for over a Month Advisor will recommended deleting it IF it is not going to be used
How VM usage is reviewed by Advisor to determine if you could save with reserved instances
30 days, will show regions/sizes where you have the most savings
When advisor recommends Right Sizing or Shutting Down VMs what metrics does it use and what are they adjustabled
14 days usage review
Average CPU less than 5% (adjustable to 20%)
Network usage less than 7MB for 4 or more days
Where can Azure advisor be found
Azure Portal > All Services > Management and Governance
Azure Cost Management costs how much?
Nothing, it’s Free
What does Azure Cost Management do
Gives historical breakdown of what you have spent money on and how that tracks against set budgets
What tools allows scheduling of reports, setting of budgets and analysing of cost areas
Azure Cost Management
If you want to migrate to the cloud what tool can you use to gain predicted cost savings as a result of the migration
Total Cost of Ownership Calculator (TCO)
What workload groups does TCO encompass
Servers,
Databases,
Storage,
Networking
What areas does TCO make assumptions about and can these be adjusted
These categories can be adjusted and are made up of VM Costs Elec Costs Storage Costs Labour Costs HW Costs SW Costs Virtualisation Costs Data Center Costs Networking Costs Database Costs
Visual Studio subscribers can activate what monthly benefit in Azure
Credits against a separate Azure Subscription for Dev and Test only
What is the credit amount for the Visual Studio Dev/Test subscription
$50 - Pro
$150 - Enterprise
What restrictions come with the Visual studio Dev/Test Subscription
No financially backed SLA
Only for Dev and Test
Cannot run a service for more than 120 hours, it will also be suspended if determined as production use.
Provided as best efforts.
By default subscriptions associated with credits have spending limits, what does this do
Ensures there is no charge once credits are used
Spending limits are useful for Dev teams exploring new solution architectures, these are not the same as Subscription, Service or Resource Group limits or quotas, what are they designed to do, and what will happen once all credits are used
Spending limits prevent exhausting credit on account within a billing period.
Once credits are used up, services deployed will turn off for the rest of the billing period (will be turned on next period if sufficient credits)
Email notification will be sent and Azure Portal includes notifications on credit spend (can adjust or turn off)
What types of subscriptions are spending limits specific to.
Those with Monthly Azure Credits (i.e. not PAYG)
What VMs are good candidates for reserved instances
Those with predictable workloads
What is the savings landscape over PAYG for reserved instances
70-80% over PAYG costs, savings based on VM Size and duration machine runs
What sort of savings could you expect if you combine Reserved instances with Azure Hybrid Benefit
Up to 80%
What is the commitment term of Reserved instances and how can you pay
Commitment term of 1 - 3 years, either pay in full or pay monthly.
How does MS charge against reserved instances
MS Matches reservation against running instances and decrements hours from your reservation
How and against what can reserved instances be purchased
Purchase via Azure portal for both Windows and Linux
Some locations and regions cost more than others, it is possible to use lower cost regions for some services however what should you be aware of when doing this from purely a cost perspective
Some resources are billed on outgoing network bandwidth (egress) so you should provision connected resources that are bandwidth metered in same region
How can you keep up to date and switch to offers providing cost savings
Check Azure updates page for info on products/services/features + Roadmap of announcemen
What is Right Sizing a VM
Right size is the process of resizing a VM to the proper size
A VM that is 90% idle could be resized down, costs are linear and double for each size larger, how could save even more when right sizing
Not only changing to a smaller size but also to another series.
What does resizing require and how long will it take
Stop, Resize, Start
May take minutes or seconds so you should plan for outage or traffic shift
When can deallocating a VM be used to save costs
Deallocate a VM when you are running it for more hours than you really need to. Azure can automate this
What should you do if you are not using a service
Shut it down to save infrastructure and licence costs
Natural migration to cloud starts with IaaS then goes on to…
PaaS in iterations
Where does PaaS typically offer savings
Resource and operational costs
Migration to PaaS can be easy or difficult, can you give examples
Easy: SQL > Azure SQL DB
Difficult: Multi-Tier App to container or serverless
True or False: PaaS is usually a quick journey so is good for quick Cost savings
False: PaaS is typically a longer journey and thus not so useful for quick cost savings
Which service is a good starting point to transform your app for details on best practices and a wide array or architectures and services
Azure Architecture Center.
Cost can vary based on OS, what and when should you compare when deploying a new app
Compare Linux vs Windows licensing costs, when the underlying application is agnostic
What does Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows server allow
Repurpose exisiting licesncing investment in Azure, giving you the right to use these licesnses for VMs on Azure
What requirement is there for using a Windows licence with Azure Hybrid benefit in Azure
It must be covered by Software Assurance
Each Processor licence or set of 16-core licenses is entitled to what…
2 instances of up to 8 cores or one instance of 16 cores
Where can Standard edition Windows licences be used with Azure Hybrid Benefit
Either on-prem OR in Azure
Where can Data center edition windows licenses be used with Azure Hybrid Benefit
Both on Prem AND in Azure as the license will cover 2 running windows machines
What model do most customers typically license by
Core - use this for your calculation
How and When can Azure Hybrid benefit for Windows licenses be applied
Either at deployment of New VM or turned on/off for an existing VM
What can Azure Hybrid Benefit be combined with to provide even more savings
Reserved Instances
What does Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server do
Helps maximize value from current SQL License investment. And Accelerates migration to cloud
What stipulation is there for using your SQL Licence with Azure Hybrid Benefit
It must be covered by Software Assurance
Can you apply Azure Hybrid Benefit to already running resources in Azure
Yes, although you will get no retrospective credit
What does SQL standard edition, per core licenses with active software assurance get with Azure Hybrid Benefit
Get one vCore in General Purpose service Tier for every one licence core you own on prem
What does SQL enterprise edition per core licenses with active software assurance get with Azure Hybrid Benfit
Get one vCore in the business critical service tier forr every one licence core you own on prem
What do Highly virtualised SQL enterprise edition per core licesnses with active software assurance get with Azure Hybrid Benefit
4 vCores in General purpose service tier for every one licesnce core you own on prem vCore benefit is unique virtualization benefit only for Azure SQL DB
When using SQL Server in an Azure VM what does Enterprise edition per core license with active software assurance get?
One core of SQL Server Enterprise edition in Azure VM for every one license core you own on prem
When using SQL Server in an Azure VM what does tandard Edition per core licenses with software assurance get?
One core of SQL Server standard edition in Azure VM for everyone license copy you own on prem.
True or False: License arrangement can make dramatic impact on your Azure spending with SQL Server workloads.
True
What is the notable discount for Dev/Test subscription offers (available in both Enterprise and PAYG)
Notably eliminating licences charges for Windows workloads billing you at the Linux rates, SQL + Other software covered under Visual Studio subscription formerly MSDB (also included)
What requirements are there when using Dev/Test Subscription offers
Only non prod workloads, any users of these environments (excl testers) must be covered under Visual studio subscription.
How can Enterprise Agreement customers, with SQL licences free’d up due to cloud migrations save money.
Save money on Azure VM cost by utilising a BYOL Instance from the Azure Market place.
You have always been able to manually do this but with these MS Certified images it is even easier
How can you save money on you dev and test SQL workloads on a VM in Azure
Utilising SQL Developer Edition, it is free with the same features as Enterprise.
Look for SQL Developer Edition in the Marketplace
How can constrained instance sizes help for Database workloads
Because products like SQL and oracle are licensed per CPU, customers can reduce licensing costs by up to 75% and still maintain the high performance their DB requires.
What are constrained instances (for database workloads)
Customers may have high requirements for memory, storage and IO Bandwidth, but often have lesser requirements for CPU.
Due to popular request MS have made popular VM sizes available with either 1/2 or 1/4 the vCPU count, but maintaining the same Memory, Storage and IO bandwidth
Which Popular VM sizes have MS made available in constrained VM sizes
DS, ES, GS, MS
