The most important steps in achieving cost optimization on Azure are less of a checklist and more of a series of evolving decisions. Even refactoring to cloud-native architecture entails your team making several adjustments to how it thinks about its systems.
On-premise infrastructure may not consider cost control. It’s possible that acquiring and setting up new servers is sufficient to block progress. In practice, though, you can potentially access any amount of compute and storage resources in infinite combinations on Azure. You just don’t want to pay for all of those limitless resources. Costs change when risks increase and vary, necessitating the need to consider cost optimization where risk mitigation was previously only an option.
We’re always evolving and changing to anticipate and meet business demands before they’ve been expressed. As a result, your Azure cloud strategies must also be expanding and changing on a regular basis. It’s not a simple one-time procedure. Creating best practices and minimizing costs require careful planning and experimentation to maintain what is important versus what is cost-effective.
To reduce cloud expenditures, you must alter your mentality.
You can shift the set-it-and-forget-it mentality, and you might begin to notice other viewpoints. Instead of stifling inventive ideation, cloud cost optimization may provide the appropriate limitation to get things going again.
Cost optimization is both an art and a science. Setting up Azure in the most cost-effective manner for your systems entails examining several factors from many angles. It’s a balancing act of business needs versus economical effectiveness. The most costly solution isn’t always the greatest for you, and the cheapest isn’t necessarily the best. The objective of any Azure implementation is to find that balance between those two extremes.
Here’s how to achieve it:
- Embracing the cloud to achieve cost management in Azure
- The best practices for reducing Azure costs begin with setting up
- Selecting the appropriate resource types and tiers for cost reduction
- In time of elasticity, Azure cost management flourishes
- How to Keep Azure Costs Down When It’s Time To Scale Up
- Reservations give you more options when it comes to using Azure
- Software licensing is the hidden Azure savings
- When re-architecting, keep Azure cost management on the top of mind
Embracing the cloud to achieve cost management in Azure
When considering Azure services, the closer you get to a pure cloud solution, the more cost-effective it will be. When your infrastructure is entirely handled by a cloud partner, using a Software as a Service technique — where your costs are reduced thanks to lower operating expenses and fewer resources needs — can result in significant savings. You’re restricting what cloud may do for you if you’re running hybrid infrastructure, with some on-premises and some in the cloud.
Managed infrastructure eliminates the risks of human error while automatically shifting resources to the most efficient and cost-effective configuration. In reality, if you choose to go fully managed with your infrastructure, Microsoft will handle the installation and tuning of the automation to increase your efficiency — which means you can skip much of this article.
For organizations somewhere between IaaS and SaaS, there’s still a lot you can do to get your Azure cloud optimized and expanding. Let’s take a look at the stages, hurdles, and forks in the road to creating a cost-optimized Azure system.
The best practices for reducing Azure costs begin with setting up
On-premise IT systems used to be a bottleneck. Only the IT staff had the authority to add new resources, giving them significant control over any unusual demands. Even self-service infrastructure is more accessible in the cloud.
It’s wonderful for innovation — now any team can chase down thoughts and build testing environments — but it may be terrible news for money, since anybody can create resources. The answer is governance. Even a policy as code may set the guardrails that control risk and cost without requiring any person to play traffic cop or slow things down.
Policy may also influence the discussion about what is kept — not simply created. In the beginning of your project, identify underutilized or unused assets. It will assist you in determining what does not need to move into the cloud and could show developments in how much capacity you have amassed over time. It’s not entirely dissimilar to a pre-move cleanse for your household goods.
You’ll get a sense of what’s used often in the process of determining which components aren’t being utilized. This will allow you to grasp how your company performs and develops over time, as well as any workload patterns or trends that are required for day-to-day operations. To get the complete picture, you’ll need to use configuration tools to analyze and measure system statistics, after which question workload owners to understand context and take into account seasonality. Usage may rise and fall over time, or be significant in one period of the year but not another.
Selecting the appropriate resource types and tiers for cost reduction
Your findings will influence the architecture of your system. Azure has a wide range of resource types and tiers, which makes choosing the correct ones for your needs one of the quickest methods to reduce cloud expenses. When it comes to virtual machines, we can illustrate it best:
- What should I use? Should I go with general-purpose or memory-optimized?
- Is it possible to use burstable VMs to save money?
- Why would I want to use a vCPU-constrained size?
- Is it possible for my app’s architecture to support virtual machines?
There are many different factors to consider when determining the best compute platform for your needs. Each of these choices has its own set of benefits and drawbacks. If you just focus on the cheapest option, you’ll be using burstable compute for everything. It appears like a fantastic bargain, but any Azure expert will tell you that it can cause issues if not utilized correctly.
The first question to answer is: What type of workload are you running?
If it’s something that needs a lot of CPU power for short periods, like compiling code, then burstable VMs could be the way to go. The same applies if your application is waiting on user input or API calls most of the time. The CPU isn’t doing anything useful, so you can borrow power from the host machine and save some money in the process.
However, if your workload is I/O- or memory-intensive, then general-purpose VMs will be a better fit. They provide more consistent performance and allow for growth if your needs change in the future.
It’s also important to consider the type of application you’re running. If it can be containerized, then you have a few different options available to you. Azure Container Instances are the easiest way to get started, but they’re not suitable for every workload. You can also use Azure Kubernetes Service or Service Fabric if you need more control over your environment.
Finally, you need to decide which size and series of VMs to use. The size is determined by the amount of CPU and memory you need, as well as the number of data disks required. The series is determined by the workload you’re running. For example, if you’re using SQL Server, you’ll need to select the VM series that is best suited for SQL Server.
On the one hand, a high-end vCPU configuration with multiple cores and hyperthreads offers comparable performance to a processor with more physical cores. However, system resources are CPU-constrained. On the surface, it may appear to be a poor bargain: pay the same amount but eliminate some of the vCPUs/cores in the process.
However, for some workloads it may be the best choice. These are workloads that don’t scale well with more cores and can actually perform better on fewer cores. For these types of applications, vCPU-constrained sizes may provide a better value.
The takeaway is that there is no one-size-fits-all answer for reducing Azure costs. You need to take a holistic view of your system and make changes in perspective to find the best solution. With the right tooling and knowledge, it’s possible to save a lot of money without sacrificing performance or functionality. In this instance, licensing strategy may help you save money in the long run. You may also require a custom configuration if you have a memory-hungry application and don’t want to use one of the Azure VMs (such as 128 GB of RAM without the 16 or 32 cores that are standard with it). You may reduce your licensing costs by using a vCPU constrained size.
There are a variety of techniques that can assist you in achieving this. Spot Virtual Machines has the potential to save you a lot of money, but it should only be used for low-priority, interruptible tasks.
In time of elasticity, Azure cost management flourishes
It’s a shift in mentality to embrace all that cloud has to offer, but it comes with significant benefits. When all of your storage is on site in physical hardware, you must exceed your storage demands and capacity restrictions. It takes time to scale up; you’ll need new servers and people to set them up manually. For any expansion, you must shell out more money upfront.
In Azure, you can autoscale your application up or down as needed. If you’re only using 10% of your database’s capacity during off-peak hours but see a huge spike during the holidays, you can easily adjust to meet those demands without any downtime. Not only does this save you money on hardware and maintenance costs, but it also means that you can serve your customers better by ensuring that they always have access to the resources they need.
To take full advantage of this, you need to be able to monitor your application’s usage and make changes accordingly. This is where Azure Monitor comes in. It provides you with comprehensive data about your application’s performance, so you can make informed decisions about how to optimize it.
Azure Monitor is a critical tool for cost optimization, but it’s just one piece of the puzzle. To really get the most out of Azure, you need to be able to understand and manage your costs on a granular level. This requires tools like Azure Cost Management, which gives you insights into your spending and lets you compare your costs with industry averages.
With the right approach, it’s possible to save a lot of money on Azure while still enjoying all of its benefits. It takes some effort, but the payoff can be significant. By taking a holistic view of your system and making changes in perspective, you can find the best way to optimize your costs. With the right tooling and knowledge, you can save a lot of money without sacrificing performance or functionality. In this instance, licensing strategy may help you save money in the long run.
You don’t have to worry about running out of storage or slowing down users if you use Azure infrastructure. You won’t be charged for unused storage or restricted users when you reach the bounds of what you currently have. This lowers your initial expenditures because large quantities of hardware (as well as space to keep and perhaps expand that hardware) aren’t required.
The ability to increase and decrease in the cloud is one of the most significant advantages. Elastic cloud capacity allows many businesses to migrate from an on-premises system because it satisfies their need for growth when system usage rises and reduction when usage falls. Azure’s capacity to endure extreme traffic loads allows your apps and software to keep up even if the amount of traffic surprises you in a short amount of time. It also means that you may end up spending far more money on computing power than anticipated.
How to Keep Azure Costs Down When It’s Time To Scale Up
You must decide when to use horizontal vs. vertical scaling in order to handle unexpected increases in workloads. Vertical scaling keeps your VMs, but adds more or less computing power behind them to manage the load, whereas horizontal scaling spreads your workload across many VMs.
Vertical scaling may be less difficult, but each shift up or down entails downtime. If your ecommerce site experiences a sudden increase in popularity, the last thing you want to do is abruptly eject all of your users while you restart it.
The costs of vertical expansion can be significant, even when compared to scaling horizontally. Because Azure’s VM sizes incrementally rise linearly, the cost difference between 16 GB and 17 or 18 may not be minor, but it will certainly double if you must move to the next size up with 32 GB RAM.
Horizontal scaling allows you to more effectively match capacity to demand by increasing the degree of parallelism. If users triple, I can add a few VM instances to calm the rise, then remove them when they’re not needed. Horizontal scaling may be used in order to double the number of VMs with 4 GB RAM from four to five — resulting in a 50 percent increase in capacity while adding only 25 percent to the monthly bill.
Remember that you pay for Azure resources whether you use them all of the time or not, so it’s important to understand your appliaction’s usage patterns. If you have a web app that only spikes during certain hours of the day, you can scale down your resources during off-peak hours to save on costs.
Azure is a great platform for businesses that are ready for growth, and its features can be tailored to meet your specific needs. With the right approach, it’s possible to save a lot of money on Azure while still enjoying all of its benefits. By taking a holistic view of your system and making changes in perspective, you can find the best way to optimize your costs. With the right tooling and knowledge, you can save a lot of money without sacrificing performance or functionality. In this instance, licensing strategy may help you save money in the long run.
The ability to increase and decrease in the cloud is one of the most significant advantages. Elastic cloud capacity allows many businesses to migrate from an on-premises system because it satisfies their need for growth when system usage rises and reduction when usage falls. Azure’s capacity to endure extreme traffic loads allows your apps and software to keep up even if the amount of traffic surprises you in a short amount of time. It also means that you may end up spending far more money on computing power than anticipated.
However, if you know that your demands will vary somewhat frequently, autoscaling allows you to build out logic to acquire and spin down resources without human assistance based on events like:
Timeframes/Scheduling
This will account for seasonal increases in workload, as well as one-time occurrences that call for more cloud capacity than usual.
Performance metrics
You control the guardrails by selecting metrics and enabling autoscaling, which controls how many instances are running in a given time period.
Custom metrics
You may also control autoscaling by defining the user experience you want customers to have. Focusing on app-specific needs such as wait time or other factors will ensure that you have adequate backend resources to deliver your desired outcomes.
Moving closer to a SaaS model, as you embrace autoscaling and infrastructure as code, you’ll notice a change in how you think about your servers. Instead of treating your virtual machines like pets — having specific identities and requiring regular care — you’ll be able to treat them more like cattle – capable of giving an excellent result for the group
The cattle have to be managed in a way that doesn’t break the bank. Automation is necessary for this, so you can’t take it lightly: any change in requirements necessitates updates to automated code, which must then be propagated across the “herd” and replaced with today’s configuration of servers still set to last night’s settings.
Both immutable and changeable infrastructures, where servers respond to changing demands in a more hands-on way, have their uses. Immutable infrastructure will generally be cheaper, although it may not be the best option in every case. Having a collaborator who understands your objectives and end goals can assist you choose what’s best for your company while also keeping an eye on the Azure bottom line.
The best way to save money on Azure is by understanding your application’s usage patterns and making changes in perspective. With the right tooling and knowledge, you can save a lot of money without sacrificing performance or functionality.
Reservations give you more options when it comes to using Azure
Reservations are a very simple way to save money on Azure expenses: They allow you to lock in long-term usage of certain workloads and therefore save money. By reserving Virtual Machine compute for one- or three-year terms, Microsoft can provide substantial savings.
Azure reservations can be used for families. You may cover more capacity with your reservations by not committing to a particular VM, even if you have a shorter-lived resource. Many reservations are flexible enough to allow for exchanges or refunds if you don’t use them — though this is not always the case.
In general, reservations will allow firms to cover their baseline usage patterns for a cheaper cost while still utilizing pay-as-you-go resources for peaks. When comparing scheduling versus reserving, an Azure specialist can assist you in determining when and how much each resource should be used.
Software licensing is the hidden Azure savings
There are many compelling reasons to choose Azure over AWS, and plenty of reasons to choose AWS over Azure. The decision is never simpler than when you already have Microsoft licenses. Maybe you’re moving from on-premises Microsoft servers to the cloud or simply deciding to purchase your own licenses. In any case, if you bring a license rather than paying per-hour for an Azure VM, you’re going to save money.
You’ll need to account for the software licensing cost in your overall Azure strategy, but it’s a one-time fee that can save you a lot of money in the long run. The more workloads you move to the cloud, the more you’ll save.
There’s a break-even point where purchasing an Azure Hybrid Benefit-friendly license will save you money over paying as you go throughout the course of a long lifecycle, much like with reservations. Term-based licenses may also be useful in situations other than migration, such as refactoring or updating an application, because they can be used to both speed up the process and save money in the long run.
Azure offers a lot of features to save money
Auto-shutdown is an Azure cost optimization feature that allows you to schedule when your VMs will power down. You can use this to turn off development or testing environments during non-working hours, weekends, or holidays.
When re-architecting, keep Azure cost management on the top of mind
Whether you’re just getting started with Azure or want to assess and improve existing applications, cost optimization should be on your to-do list. Even if saving money isn’t a top priority compared to lowering risk, considering cost-optimization provides a constraint that can make your whole architecture more robust.
It’s also a method to provide enough of the right kinds of constraints to encourage creativity. When anything is allowed, nothing ever gets done. Creating some boundaries may motivate your staff to consider more innovatively.
The key is not to focus too much on the side of standards and templates. You might inadvertently restrict your testing’s functionality, keeping your staff from fully utilizing Azure’s capabilities if you stick closely to off-the-shelf products.
There’s a lot to think about when it comes to establishing the correct Azure architecture, from your workflows to your availability needs to your regulatory requirements to your risk tolerance. Cost optimization is another element to consider, ensuring that you receive all you need without overpaying for what you don’t.
It’s not easy to get cost savings from Azure, and it’s never finished. What works best for keeping Azure costs down will change as your company grows and changes. We can assist you in moving closer to a fully managed, fully automated, and fully optimized architecture if you need assistance navigating Azure and making it work best for your business.
