Tools And Software.
Reduce your Azure spend with the right tools and software
Azure Cloud Cost Optimization Tools
Use Azure Cost Management Tools to Forecast and Optimize the Environment
An early-stage best practice is setting up the right budgets within the cost management console on Azure, including thresholds, time-frames and associated stakeholders. You can create as many budgets as you need, and then assign each budget to a selected scope. For example, you can assign a budget threshold to a specific resource group, a certain tag, or even a tenant level, depending on your business need.
This budget then gets named, and is given its own monetary value and frequency, such as monthly or quarterly. Not only will your budget immediately be reflected on your reporting dashboard, you can also attach alerts for a particular budget.
Let’s say, for example, that an Azure customer sets a $50,000 threshold on a certain resource group. The customer can then set up an alert for when 80% of this particular budget threshold has been reached. The environment cost will be tracked automatically, and an alert will be sent via email to a predefined member of staff when the threshold has been reached.
As Azure consulting and support experts, US Cloud can support our customers in going even deeper. While by default, customers will get an alert when a threshold is exceeded, this can be adapted intelligently by using action groups.
Use the Azure API Tool to Share Costs Across Business Units
Shared Services are great for cost savings, but how do you push those costs down to the business units that use the shared service? Again, this is part of the cloud maturity, but Azure API can be used to create tools to tag and track use of share services in order to perform a chargeback as part of the normal billing process.
The idled Azure instances mentioned in the cost optimization section above can be addressed in a variety of ways. The first issue is identifying those idle Azure instances. An often-used rule of thumb for determining if an Azure instance is “idled” is to check if CPU, Disk IO, and Network IO are less than 2% over eight hours (2% is to allow for usual health checks and other idle system activity).
This is a point where Azure governance overlaps with both operations and cost management. As part of the Azure governance plan, an enterprise must proactively audit the provisioned Azure resources to identify instances that are not compliant with established Azure governance policies.
High-density leads to better utilization of Azure resources. While Kubernetes and other orchestrators offer many functions, success derives from improving utilization of virtual machines. Why pay for 100% of an Azure resource if you are only using 10%?
Isn’t this the cost-reduction promise of Azure cloud? Once an established bin-packing algorithm is in use, an orchestrator can allow you to run more applications with fewer Azure resources and lower costs.
Azure Cost Management and Billing
Azure Cost Management and Billing is a comprehensive tool that allows you to track and manage your Azure spending. It provides detailed reports and insights into your cloud expenses, helping you understand spending patterns and identify cost drivers.
With Azure Cost Management and Billing, you can set budgets and monitor your spending against these budgets, ensuring you stay within your financial limits. This tool also enables you to analyze cost trends over time, helping you forecast future expenses and make informed budgeting decisions.
Azure Optimizer
The Azure Optimizer LINK cost optimization tool will identify and prioritizing key opportunities to reduce cost across your entire Azure environment. From rebuilding and downscaling resources to eliminating unused or underutilized assets, apply reserved instances, and leveraging Azure Hybrid Benefit, we ensure you maximize your investment.
With Azure Optimizer, you can quickly realize savings up to 30% of your total annual Azure spend while enhancing the performance and efficiency of your cloud infrastructure. Take control of your Azure costs today and drive your business forward with optimized cloud spending.
Azure Advisor
Azure Advisor is a personalized cloud consultant that provides best practices and recommendations to help you optimize your Azure resources. It analyzes your configurations and usage patterns to identify opportunities for cost savings, performance improvements, and enhanced security.
Azure Advisor helps you make informed decisions to optimize your cloud environment. For example, it might recommend resizing or shutting down underutilized virtual machines, enabling you to cut unnecessary costs while maintaining performance.
Azure Pricing Calculator
The Azure Pricing Calculator is a powerful tool that allows you to estimate the cost of Azure services based on your specific usage scenarios. By inputting details about your anticipated usage, you can get an accurate estimate of your monthly costs.
This tool helps you plan your budget and choose the most cost-effective solutions for your needs. It also allows you to compare different configurations and pricing options, ensuring you select the best fit for your organization’s requirements.
Azure Monitor
Azure Monitor provides full-stack monitoring for your applications and infrastructure. It collects and analyzes telemetry data from your Azure environment, helping you identify issues and optimize performance. By providing insights into resource utilization, Azure Monitor enables you to make data-driven decisions to reduce costs and improve efficiency.
For instance, you can monitor the performance of your virtual machines and scale them based on real-time demand, preventing over-provisioning and reducing wastage.
Azure Resource Graph
Azure Resource Graph is a powerful query tool that allows you to explore and analyze your Azure resources. It helps you understand the relationships and dependencies between your resources, providing insights into how they are being used.
By leveraging Azure Resource Graph, you can identify underutilized resources and take action to optimize your environment. This tool is particularly useful for large organizations with complex Azure deployments, as it provides a clear and comprehensive view of resource usage and allocation.
Azure Cloud Cost Optimization Software
ServiceNow Cloud Cost Manager for Azure
- Optimize Azure spend, compute, storage, and databases
Only Cloud Cost Management offers actionable recommendations with out-of-the box workflows to optimize Azure cloud infrastructure costs, including compute, storage, and databases. It ensures you only pay for what you need and make the most of your Azure resources, especially those that are discounted, but will expire without a watchful eye.
- Create and manage Azure budgets with accountability
Say goodbye to Azure budget black holes or alerts that go off when it’s too late! With Cloud Cost Management, you can create detailed Azure budgets, forecast spending trends, and monitor Azure usage to stay on track every month, quarter, and year. The accountability comes when departments see what they’re spending and automate actions to adjust how they’re using their Azure budgets.
- Hybrid Azure cloud visibility and action with Cloud Cost Management workspace
Get a top-level overview of your Azure cloud infrastructure spend, covering both IaaS and PaaS. The cloud cost management workspace provides essential information on Azure cloud spend, optimizations, budgeting, usage, and accountability.
- Enterprise FinOps integration
Elevate your FinOps practices to an enterprise level by integrating Azure Cloud Cost Management as part of the ServiceNow Platform. FinOps and ITAM practices are already converging. Plus, you’ll be able to experience the benefits of integrated ITSM, Risk Management, and Azure Security Operations for a seamless FinOps experience that drives accountability throughout your organization.
IBM Azure Cloud Cost Management and Optimization (CCMO)
IBM® Azure cost management and optimization continuously generates actions that optimize Azure VMs, databases and disks based on real-time demand. Its prescribed actions help ensure performance while minimizing cost. Additionally, the platform manages your reserved instances (RIs) inventory and directs actions that maximize RI utilization and coverage through the lens of application performance.
RI management
IBM® Azure cost management and optimization offers a comprehensive, end-to-end view of your applications and infrastructure stack in the public cloud and the data center. You gain real-time insights into the health and performance of applications to identify underutilized resources. This approach helps you right size instances and use RIs to facilitate application performance while minimizing costs.
Azure VM workload
The IBM® Azure cost management and optimization platform integrates with Microsoft Azure through an Azure service principal and uses Azure Resource Manager to gather data for instant analysis. IBM® Azure cost management and optimization then uses AI-based insights to continuously generate actions that optimize Azure VMs, databases and disks based on real-time demand. Its prescribed actions help ensure performance while minimizing cost.
Migration planning
IBM® Azure cost management and optimization helps model and compare the performance and cost implications of both lift-and-shift and optimized migration plans. It maps existing workloads to fit Azure VMs and disk types, which are then optimized. This method accelerates workloads onto Azure through scalable, repeatable processes for future workload migrations and cloud consolidations.
Kubernetes performance and cost
IBM® Azure cost management and optimization automatically discovers and maps interdependencies between Azure Kubernetes Service, containers, specs, pods, workload controllers, namespaces, clusters and virtual machines. It also continuously optimizes Kubernetes performance and cost.
Hosting your business applications on Microsoft’s public cloud can come with distinct financial advantages, like the shift from CapEx to OpEx. But it’s important to remember that the monthly Azure invoice you receive from Microsoft vendor represents only part of the cost story. Most common indirect costs include the fees paid for observability solutions that help ensure the operational and security integrity across a fleet of Azure cloud VMs.
