In this article, you will get to know the principles of Azure cloud cost optimization, best practices and strategies, and the tools you can use to achieve Azure cloud cost optimization.
You can achieve cloud cost optimization by using optimized processes, well designed architecture, tools and automation that enable efficient resource utilization in the cloud. You should also be aware of the areas of resource wastage resulting from cloud sprawl. On Azure Cloud you can further monitor and prevent wastage, by leveraging tools including Azure Cost Management (ACM) along with Azure Advisor and thereby achieve effective and efficient cost optimization.
In order to achieve cloud cost optimization for your business, Azure Cost Management’s architecture is built on the following principles:
To derive full potential from ACM architecture principles, consider making a comprehensive and upfront plan to select your cloud resources that are tailor made to suit your business needs and challenges. In turn, this will help you determine infrastructure use and maximize Azure efficiency.
Azure Cost Management and Azure Advisor are tools that you can use to optimize cloud cost for your organization.
Let us take a brief look about Azure Cost Management and Azure Advisor and their roles in cost optimization.
ACM is designed for you to gain complete visibility and thereby control your organization’s cloud spend on both Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS). It allows your team to plan and create budgets, manage funds, enforce compliance in governance, and develop and test builds on Azure or AWS.
ACM helps you to gain visibility into your resources that helps you to gain knowledge about the resources that are responsible for cloud spend. It makes your team accountable for the budget allocated for the respective team. It helps in optimizing the cost by identifying wastage, optimizing resource utilization, and taking advantage of Microsoft’s specific benefits such as reserved instances. For more information, see Understand Cost Management Data.
The Cost Analysis functionality of ACM allows you to explore, analyze, and review your cloud cost across parameters such as accumulated cost, actual cost, forecast, budget and accumulated granularity. You can view the total cost in pivot charts as well as customize your cost views according to your needs. For more information, see Cost Analysis.
Cost optimization is a continuous process. It must be an integral part of your organization if you utilize cloud resources. ACM makes use of the Azure Advisor service to provide cost optimization recommendations. This is achieved by monitoring key cost metrics within the selected scope. Based on the subscription scope selected for cost optimization, you can view relevant cost optimization selections. The recommendations then allow you to select a cost-effective option and verify actions thereby ensuring resource optimization. Azure Advisor also helps you to optimize and improve efficiency by identifying idle and underutilized resources.
You can view the cost optimization recommendations in Advisor recommendations from your subscription for a desired scope. It helps you to take the desired action based on the recommendations given in the Advisor recommendations. For more information, see Optimize costs from recommendations.
Azure Cost Management along with Azure Advisor equips you with options to optimally plan and utilize required resources, and allocate them to specific teams as required. Additionally, ACM helps optimize resource utilization on the cloud by monitoring and suggesting to remove, modify, or turn off the idle or underutilized resources. It also helps you to plan budget and spending goals for your respective teams to bring about accountability in your organization. Thus, ACM along with Azure Advisor provides cloud cost optimization to reduce your cloud spend.