Predict costs and optimise spending for Azure Flashcards
NB: Factors affecting costs (5)
Resource type - The rate per billable unit depends on the resource type you are using. Those units are charged to your account for each billing period.
Services - Azure usage rates and billing periods can differ between Enterprise, Web Direct, and Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) customers. Some subscription types also include usage allowances, which affect costs.
Location - Azure has datacenters all over the world. Usage costs vary between locations that offer particular Azure products, services, and resources based on popularity, demand, and local infrastructure costs.
Azure billing zones
Bandwidth refers to data moving in and out of Azure datacenters. Most of the time inbound data transfers (data going into Azure datacenters) are free. For outbound data transfers (data going out of Azure datacenters), the data transfer pricing is based on Billing Zones.
Billing zones aren’t the same as an Availability Zone. In Azure, the term zone is for billing purposes only, and the full term Availability Zone refers to the failure protection that Azure provides for datacenters.
NB: Describe zones for billing purposes
Azure billing zones
Bandwidth refers to data moving in and out of Azure datacenters. Most of the time inbound data transfers (data going into Azure datacenters) are free. For outbound data transfers (data going out of Azure datacenters), the data transfer pricing is based on Billing Zones.
NB: Azure Advisor
Provides recommendation across Security, Cost, Operational Excellence, Performance and HA
EG: such as resizing virtual machines to reduce spending.
NB: Azure Cost Management
free, built-in Azure tool that can be used to gain greater insights into where your cloud money is going. You can see historical breakdowns of what services you are spending your money on and how it is tracking against budgets that you have set. You can set budgets, schedule reports, and analyze your cost areas.
- Azure Advisor provides recommendations for _________.
Costs only
High availability, security, performance, operational excellence, and cost
High availability, performance, and cost
High availability, security, performance, operational excellence, and cost
- Azure Cost Management allows you to _________.
See historical breakdowns of what services you are spending your money on.
See estimates of what your services might cost if you make a change.
See historical breakdowns of what services you are spending your money on.
NB: Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculator
If you are starting to migrate to the cloud, a useful tool you can use to predict your cost savings
Use Azure credits
Visual Studio subscribers can activate a monthly credit benefit that allows you to experiment with, develop, and test new solutions on Azure. (non-prod only)
NB: Save on infrastructure costs
Use Azure credits
Use spending limits
Use reserved instances
Choose low-cost locations and regions
Research available cost-saving offers
Right-size underutilized virtual machines
Deallocate virtual machines in off hours (dev for dev)
Delete unused virtual machines
Migrate to PaaS or SaaS services
Use spending limits
y default, Azure subscriptions that have associated monthly credits (which includes trial accounts) have a spending limit to ensure you aren’t charged once you have used up your credits.
Use reserved instances
If you have virtual machine workloads that are static and predictable, using reserved instances is a fantastic way to potentially save up to 70 to 80 percent off the pay-as-you-go cost.
ou commit to reserved instances in one-year or three-year terms. Payment can be made in full for the entire commitment period, or the commitment can be billed monthly.
Choose low-cost locations and regions
Some resources are metered and billed according to how much outgoing network bandwidth they consume (egress). You should provision connected resources that are bandwidth metered in the same region to reduce egress traffic between them.
Right-size underutilized virtual machines
Right-sizing a virtual machine is the process of resizing it to a proper size.
Let’s imagine you have a server running as a domain controller that is sized as a Standard_D4sv3, but your VM is sitting at 90 percent idle the vast majority of the time. By resizing this VM to a Standard_D2sv3, you reduce your compute cost by 50 percent.
Migrate to PaaS or SaaS services
PaaS services typically provide substantial savings in both resource and operational costs. The challenge is that depending on the type of service, varying levels of effort will be required to move to these services, from both a time and resource perspective.
- Which one of these approaches is not a cost-saving solution?
Deallocate virtual machines during off hours.
Use Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances.
Load balance your virtual machines for incoming messages.
Right-size underutilized virtual machines.
Load balance your virtual machines for incoming messages.
