Module 6aa - Plan and Manage Azure Costs - Calculators and Cost Factors Flashcards
Define “Total Cost of Ownership”
Financial term that describes the discovery of all hidden costs related to ownership. In this case, our case it’s the additional or hidden costs for operating tech like Licensing, hardward costs, etc.
What five (5) Categories contribute to your total TCO?
5 Categories contribute to cost:
- Compute (cpu, meters)
- Datacenter (hosting)
- Networking (bandwidth)
- Storage (data residency)
- IT Labor (people)
Note that certain cost categories completely go away in the Cloud…
What is the TCO Calculator?
Total Cost of Ownership Calculator
Given implementation/setup details you provide, you compare the average On-Prem industry costs to running the same workload in Azure Cloud
This includes things like electricity, network maintenance, IT Labor, etc.
TCO Calculator Requires an Azure Subscription (T/F)?
False. Anyone can use it
TCO Calculator Step 1 - What does it contain?
Define your workloads. Basically all the stuff you currently have On- Prem that runs your system, plus its total consumption lol
- Servers, including OS, Virtualization methods, CPU Cores and Memory
- DBs, including the expected max concurrent user sign-ins
- Storage, includes capacity requirements, backup and archiving
- Networking, including bandwidth consumption
TCO Calculator Step 2 - What does it contain?
Assumption adjustments and considerations for moving On-Prem workloads to Cloud.
- Are your On-Prem licenses enrolled in Software Assurance (program that allows for recycling licenses)
- Do you need storage redundancy?
- Adjust electricity costs (per Kilowatt hour KWh)
- IT administration pay rates
- Network Maintenance cost == % of network hardware and software costs
Adjust all the above to match your current On-Prem solution
TCO Calculator Step 3 - What does it contain?
View the report! Choose timeframe for your system’s lifecycle to see the cost comparison.
What are the three (3) Subscription Types (i.e. Payment and Costs models)?
Free Trial, Pay-As-You-Go, and Member Offers
Free Trial
- 12 months of popular free services
- Credit to explore Azure for 30 days
- 25 services ALWAYS free
- Suspended when trial ends or credit card expires
Pay-As-You-Go
- You attach a credit or debit card to your account
- Orgs can apply for Volume Discounts and Prepaid Subscriptions
Member Offers
- Subscribers to other Microsoft Products may provide you credits to an Azure account and/or reduced rates to Azure Services. Ex. my VS Account through work provides me with a $50 recurring monthly credit
Through what three (3) means can you purchase Azure Services?
Three means to purchase services:
Enterprise Agreement
- Large orgs commit to spending over a 3 year period
- Paid annually
- Customized pricing based on Services used and usage
Direct from the Web “Web Direct”
- Purchase through the Azure Market place, you’ll get billed monthly for it
Through a Cloud Solution Provider (CSP)
- A Microsoft Partner who helps build your solutions on top of Azure
- CSPs bill you for your Azure usage at a price THEY determine (since they are the ones building your solution)
- They handle your support issues or escalate to Microsoft
What are four (4) Common Cost Factors to consider when planning and calculating your Azure usage?
Usage Meters - ie pay per execution or cpu privileged time. Meters are created per provisioned resource in order to track usage. Similar to an electrical or water meter. Final bill is based on total consumption
Azure has meters for EVERYTHING … CPU cycles, RAM usage, ingress/egress network traffic, etc.
Cost == Sum(billable unit of usage * cost per unit)
Resource Usage - ie the time you have your recourse provisioned, regardless of usage. You’ll want to deallocate/deactivate Resources that are not being used. This way they don’t incur costs. Keep in mind there may be other dependent resources that are kept around and still active, so you’ll still get billed for those (eg. a deallocated VM still has a living disk and data storage. So you won’t get charged for CPU cycles and network, but you will get dinged on disk and storage)
Azure Subscription Types - You got dinged on this. Your subscription has a $50 per month limit. When you went over, your entire subscription got deactivated LOL
Azure Marketplace - Vendors set price points and billing structures for their 3rd party apps/extensions on Azure Marketplace. Keep these in mind when selecting one
Describe what Location (Region) Cost Factors are.
Regions may geographically be in an area that has certain network traffic compliance, which influences cost.
You could put your Resources in the cheapest Region possible, but then if you require data and Services to run in a more expensive or an international region, you may incur additional Networking Usage costs for data transfer (i.e. may have been better to put it in a geographically neutral region…)
Also, some Services have different costs per Region, when available.
What are the four (4) Billing Zones?
Zone 1 - all Regions in North America including Gov, all European Regions except Germany
Zone 2 - all Regions in Asia and Southeast Pacific (Australia)
Zone 3 - Brazil South only
DE Zone 1 - Germany Central and Germany Northeast
What are Billing Zones wrt network traffic/bandwidth?
Azure charges for Bandwidth usage - data moving to and from data centers. Into data centers is sometimes free. Outbound data leaving Azure data centers will have cost depending on Zone.
Zones are only a factor in some Azure Services
What is the Azure Pricing Calculator?
This calculator displays Azure product by Category. You then add Categories to your estimate and configure them according to your requirements.
A detailed cost breakdown for each resource added to your solution can be exported or shared or saved for later
Only provides ESTIMATES, and NOT the actual cost.
Azure Pricing Calculator - What are its Configuration Options?
Region* - Where you want to provision the Service (create the Resource)
(Service) Tier* - Free, Basic, etc. different Tiers have different features and thus different cost
Billing Options - Based on your Customer type, Subscription Type, etc.
Support Options - Options for selecting additional support pricing option on certain Services
Programs and Offers - Depending on Customer or Subscription Type, you may be enabled for specific licensing programs or other offers
Azure Dev/Test - Pricing for Dev and Test workloads (based on a Dev/Test offer)
