Digital transformation is the need of the hour, and all the businesses are digitizing by moving their systems and processes onto cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure. Microsoft Azure, the leading cloud platform, serves 95% of the Fortune 500 companies. It helps organizations meet their business challenges through its extensive cloud service offerings.
One of the most significant advantages of Azure cloud migration is cost-effectiveness. However, if not managed correctly, there are chances that you may end up spending more. When it comes to Microsoft Azure, businesses can optimize their spending and keep their IT expenditure under control. In this blog, We have list down the following tips that can help enterprises reduce their Microsoft Azure cost.
It is a good practice to audit your cloud environment periodically and identify unused or underutilized resources. It is to be done either manually or by using the Azure Advisor feature, which is accessible from the cost tab of the Advisor dashboard. It recommends you shut down or resize resources after analyzing the resource utilization patterns.
It helps you manage the size and number of virtual machines being used. It will also analyze the spending for your MariaDB, MySQL, or PostgreSQL database server resources and recommend actions according to its usage. It also helps you identify the non-provisioned Azure Express Route circuits so that you can delete the ones that are not being used. It will also help you reduce your costs by deleting or reconfiguring idle virtual network gateways. These are billed on an hourly basis, so reconfiguring them or deleting them can help you optimize your costs significantly.
The Advisor dashboard displays the estimated monies saved if you shut down or resize the resources based on the recommendation.
Azure offers a wide range of Virtual Machines to choose from, based on your specific hardware and performance requirements. Test different VMs according to your workload and then finalize the one that suits your specifications. Ideally, you can get optimal cost benefits if you are using 100% of your VM. Depending on the requirements, you can also add or remove machines through auto-scaling or similar methods.
If you are sure about the capacity you require, you can purchase an Azure reservation instance. It will allow you to pre-purchase VMs for a period of 1 to 3 years. Microsoft provides discounts of up to 72% in such cases. you save a lot of money compared to the pay-as-you-go pricing model.
Microsoft allows businesses to bring their on-premise Windows Server, SQL Server license, RedHat, and SUSE Linux subscriptions on the Azure cloud. Depending on your licenses, you can estimate your savings by using the Azure Benefit Calculator across all your VMs and databases.
Azure has in-built mechanisms and capabilities to allocate resources dynamically, as per performance requirements. If there is a sudden surge, additional resources are allocated to match the desired performance levels. In case of reduced utilization, resources are de-allocated to minimize costs.
It also allows users to build a custom auto-scaling implementation that will monitor systems, analyze requirements, and change resource allocation on per need basis.
Enable the Azure Cost management and use it to manage costs. It provides you with reports of your past usage and estimates of the future expenses you may incur. You can view the projections for a weekly, monthly, or yearly time-frame.
You can also set alerts that will notify you if you are around the budgeted spending threshold, enabling you to take timely measures to manage your costs.
You can host your application’s code on Azure in several ways. Azure compute service helps you identify your application’s workload once hosted on the Azure cloud. In the case of multiple workloads for an application, you must evaluate each workload individually.
Based on this outcome, you should choose the right Azure service out of the 3 cloud services, namely, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), or Functions-as-a-Service (FaaS), depending upon your requirements.
One of the components of Azure costs is virtual disks. If you have any unused virtual disks, you can save monies by identifying them and deleting them. However, note that the virtual disk is not deleted when you delete a virtual machine. One has to locate it and delete it through the Azure portal disk screen feature.
These steps will ensure that you can effectively monitor your budgetary requirements and efficiently control Azure costs.
If you are looking to reduce costs for your Microsoft Azure instance or migrate to Microsoft Azure Cloud, connect with experts at CCIT We are a trusted Microsoft Azure partner.
We help businesses in their digital transformation journey by delivering Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Power BI, Microsoft Business Automation tools, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, and other technology solutions services and support.
CCIT Cloud (CocoonIT Services) is an expert Microsoft Cloud Solutions and Implementation Partner. Organisations around the globe, partner with CCIT to harness the full potential of Microsoft Dynamics, Azure Cloud and Power Platform.
