Follow these Ways to know how to Optimize your cost in azure.

1.Shut down unused resources.

2.Right-size underused resources.

3.Reserve instances for consistent workloads.

4.Take advantage of the Azure Hybrid Benefit.

5.Configure Auto Scaling.

6.Set up budgets and allocate costs to teams and projects.

7.Choose the right Azure compute service.

1. Shut down unused resources

Although certain application scenarios can result in low utilization by design, you can often save money by managing the size and number of the recommended actions are shut down, specific to the resource being evaluated your virtual machines.

2. Right-size underused resources

• Consider resizing virtual machines when it is possible to fit the current load in a smaller SKU (within the same SKU family) or a smaller number of instances such that:
• The current load does not go above 80% utilization for workloads that are not user
• The load does not go above 40% for user-facing workloads.

3. Azure Reserved VM Instances: Overview

Azure Reserved VM Instances (RIs) is a new offer that will allow Microsoft customers to reserve capacity for an offering (say D1 series VMs) in a region for a predefined period. In exchange for this commitment, customers will receive a discount and prioritized capacity.

Attributes of a Reservation: Region, VM-SKU, Quantity, Term (1 vs. 3 years) , Paid External customers, floating at Azure enrollment or tied to subscription ID

Key Benefits: 

1. Save up to 72% over pay-as-you-go pricing (M-series instance).
2. Save up to 82% with the Azure Hybrid Use Benefit (AHUB) for Windows Server.
3. Prioritized compute capacity
4. Use existing Monetary Commitment to purchase RI

4.Take advantage of the Azure Hybrid Benefit

Azure Hybrid Benefit is a licensing benefit that helps you to significantly reduce the costs of running your workloads in the cloud. It works by letting you use your on-premises Software Assurance-enabled Windows Server and SQL Server licenses on Azure.

And now, this benefit applies to RedHat and SUSE Linux subscriptions, too.

5.Configure Auto Scaling:

• Auto scale is a built-in feature of Cloud Services, Mobile Services, Virtual Machines and Websites that helps applications perform their best when demand changes

• Do not pay for machines you’ are not using. Does most of your development and testing happen weekdays from 9 to 5? Use Auto Scaling to scale down all of your virtual machines at night or on the weekend when nobody is around and then having them ready to go Monday morning when you come in to work. The cloud is built to be elastic so you can be as cost-effective as possible.

• Do not wait for a traffic spike to take down your app or With scheduled auto scale, you can respond before anything ever happens. Say you run a retail shopping site and Black Friday is coming. Simply tell autoscale to add 10x more virtual machines in advance to handle the load. Or maybe your traffic always skyrockets at 9am Monday through Friday. No problem.

6.Set up budgets and allocate costs to teams and projects:

• Take advantage of the tools included in your Azure subscription to get more value out of the cloud and implement financial governance in your

• Implement governance policies for effective enterprise cloud cost management and increase accountability with cost allocation and charge backs.

• Azure Cost Management and Billing for Azure is available at no additional cost. Azure Cost Management for AWS is charged at 1 percent of the total AWS managed spend at general availability and free during preview.

7.Choose the right Azure compute service

Each VM type is built to run a different workload. For example, the GPU type VM is designed for heavy graphics, rendering and video editing workloads.

Currently, Microsoft offers six virtual machine types:

• General Purpose – Balanced CPU-to-memory ratio
• Compute Optimized – High CPU-to-memory ratio
• Memory Optimized – High memory-to-CPU ratio
• Storage Optimized – High disk throughput and IO
• GPU –Virtual machines for heavy graphics rendering
• High Performance Compute – Fastest, most powerful CPU with optional high-throughput network interfaces (RDMA).

Optimization Review Process

	Before	During Gather, Analyze and Propose
People
Business	Buy-in of Business Application Owners and Business SMEs to review high consuming applications to optimize	Access to validate assumptions and proposals with Application SMEs and Business Owners
Internal IT	Support of IT decision makers to potentially balance cost and performance and make available resources (internal and supplier)	Priority access to Cloud Technical Administrators, Application SMEs / Developers as required.
Supplier/External IT Provider (if outsourced)	Engagement of any external suppliers that manage your Azure Cloud and / or applications on behalf of your company.	Access to Cloud Administrator to provide technical access to gather data, validate any proposals and give time estimates/costs for implementation of changes.

Your Current Azure Usage – Azure Health Report Data

• Insight and Analytics
• Azure App Service Standard Plan
• Azure Cosmos DB
• Log Analytics
• Azure Cosmos DB
• Virtual Machines Dv3 Series
• Azure Search
• SQL Database Single/Elastic Pool General Purpose – Compute Gen5

Data collected

Data Collected	Tool Used
Azure Usage	Consumption API (Consumption API)
Right Sizing	Azure Advisor API (Advisor API)
RI Recommendations	Consumption API RI per workload (Consumption RI API)
Subscription/Management Group Organization	Customer, Usage Data (Example Structure)
Charge/Show Back Model	Customer (CAF Examples)
VM Optimization Workbook	Customer
Tagging Taxonomy	Customer (Metadata Tag Example)

Example Visualizations

Visuals are used to allow the Customer and aligned CSA/Specialist make well informed recommendations for Cost Optimizations.

Reach out to cloud@proarch.com to fix an appointment to discuss your detailed requirement.