What are Subscriptions
Every resource in Azure uses a Subscription.
- A subscription represents a grouping of Azure resources.
- invoice is generated at the subscription scope level
- Azure accounts can have multiple subscriptions.
- There is a billing admin role to separate responsibility.
- Payment cycles are monthly and are due within 30days.
How is costing Structured in Azure?
1) You pay for the number of hours used.
2) Pay more for resource consumption.
3) Pay more for higher tiered services.
4) Location can also affect cost.
What are Management Groups?
Management groups target subscriptions and consist of 1 or more subscriptions.
They allow for bulk administration.
Logic can be applied from a billing perspective.
Management groups support Nesting. (supports hierarchy)
What are Free Accounts?
Designed to attract new customers, and provides always free services, and additional services with compute or cost limit.
You need a credit card to obtain this account type.
What is the Azure Cost Management Tool?
A cross-platform (AWS) tool that provides a detailed view of current and projected costs.
- You can create detailed spending costs.
- You can receive cost and resource optimisation recommendations.
What are Spot VMs?
A low-cost type of VM.
- Can save up to 90% of the cost.
- You aren’t guaranteed any run time.
- Uses Azure Scale sets, and you can set a cost ceiling.
- Don’t run critical processes on spot VMs.
Azure pricing Factors
The following can influence the price of a service:
- Resource size (more == more)
- Resource type
- Location
- Bandwidth usage
- Billing Zones (can contains multiple regions)
Costs for Data Transfer in Billing Zones.
Data that is transferred within a billing zone is free.
Data that is transferred outside of a billing zone is paid for.
- Ingress Data writes always free.
- Egress Data is sometimes free.
- Costs can be calculated via the Azure Calculator.
TCO Calculator?
The is the Total Cost of Ownership Calculator.
- Designed to calculate cost savings from moving from on-premise to Azure.
- Provides costs over 5 years.
What are Quotas?
Quotas are limits that are designed to ensure Azure can maintain its high service level.
- They are assigned at an azure service property level.
- Can be increased by contacting Microsoft.
What are tags?
A simple resource management tool.
- It is non-functional
- It is searchable and can be used to ease management.
- No tag limits.
- Attach to a resource or a resource group.
Tags - Best Practises:
Identify which Roles can access what.
Group related resources logically together.
Use for filtering
Create Meta Data - description, business, owner, value.
What is Pay as you go?
A payment solution for only paying for what you use, with no commitment on usage.
- This is the most expensive option.
What are reserved Instances?
Reserved Instances are VMs that you have committed to using for a certain period of time.
- 1 or 3 Years. Provide 70% savings.
- They save you quite a bit of money in the long run.
What is reserved capacity?
Reserved storage which you commit to for a period of 1 to 3 years.
* There is a 70% saving vs pay as you go.
What is the Azure Pricing Calculator?
The pricing calculator for Azure is a comprehensive tool you can use to estimate any combination of services on Azure.
What are Azure Spending Limits?
Azure spending limits are the recommended way to manage the total spend on your Azure subscription.
- When your usage results in charges that exhaust your spending limit, the services you deployed are disabled for the rest of that billing period.
