Azure
Dutch Azure Meetup 
Marco Mansi 15 Apr, 2016
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Looking to save costs and optimize your Azure cloud spending? Azure provides various tools and strategies that can help you achieve this goal. Explore some of the key strategies and tools that you can use to maximize your Azure cost savings.
Mature Azure Cost Management
The first step to optimizing your Azure costs is to have a mature Azure cost strategy in place. By using best practices like architecting for cost, setting up budgets, and monitoring costs with Azure tools, you can save money and optimize your Azure costs. Additionally, using dev/test subscriptions and combining resources like app service plans can further help you save on costs.
Insight into Spend
To manage your Azure costs effectively, you need to have insight into your cloud spending. You can use the cost management + billing feature in the Azure Portal to monitor your cloud spending. Azure Advisor also provides cost optimization recommendations that can reduce your overall Azure spend. Azure Policies and Azure Tagging can be used to manage cloud resources and enforce policies to stay within your budget.
License Benefits
Taking advantage of the license benefits available on Azure can be one of the most effective ways to save money. Azure offers four main types of license benefits: Azure Hybrid Benefit, Reserved Instances, Azure Dev/Test pricing, and Azure Saving Plans. By using these benefits, you can save up to 80% on Azure Virtual Machines and up to 55% on Azure SQL Database.
Hidden Azure Costs
It’s essential to be mindful of hidden Azure costs, including underutilized VM scale sets, unattached disks, orphaned public IPs, and underutilized Azure SQL databases. By staying on top of these hidden costs, you can save money and optimize your Azure costs.
Azure Serverless Computing
Using serverless computing services like Azure Functions and CosmosDB’s serverless variant can also help you save money on resource costs. By using serverless computing, you can scale your applications automatically based on demand and pay only for the resources you use.
Conclusion
By following these strategies and utilizing the available tools, you can optimize your Azure costs and achieve long-term cost savings. Regularly reviewing your Azure costs and adjusting your strategy as needed is crucial. With the right approach and tools, you can effectively manage your cloud spending, achieve cost savings, and get the most value from your cloud investment.
