The Show - EP 88 - Windows 11, Surface Event, 365 Prices - An Everything Show!
The Architects sit down in the virtual studio to have a mish-mash show! Today we throw anything at the wall including a Windows 11 update, past episodes, and more!
Cloud Cost Control
I do not have the urge like many who are Consultant Architects to overly complicate this topic. It is very clear and public that Microsoft sees cost management as something that is native to having services and should not be an additional charge. I agree with this approach.
ALL IT PROJECTS HAVE SOME SORT OF ECONOMICS AROUND IT. SOMETIMES SIMPLE BUDGET APPROVAL IS ENOUGH, OTHER TIMES A FULL ANALYSIS OF THE SERVICE COST + CONSULTING RESOURCES + INTERNAL RESOURCES + OVERHEAD CHARGES NEEDS FULLY FLUSHED OUT. REGARDLESS OF THE APPROVAL TYPE, THERE IS ONE COMMON TONE TO LEVERAGING CLOUD OR SAAS SERVICES, COST, AND COST OVER-RUN.
So how does one easily get your arms around costs in the cloud and importantly how do you keep things from spiraling out of control? The answer seems obvious, buy a tool. It is not that simple. Let’s break it down.
Use Case #1 - All In Azure
You have a cloud tenant in Azure and your CFO is asking you to provide forecasting on what the spend will be per month and quarter in Azure. You have several virtual machines, storage, networking, many web apps, and a couple of Microsoft SQLDBs. You have a couple of developers in house but rely on external teams to assist with your cloud needs.
THE TOOLING
Azure Cost Management in your tenant will report on usage and the associated costs. The good news is that since all of your cloud footprint is in Azure, you can TAG all of the resources you have deployed so you can further breakdown what is consuming your budget.
Since we mentioned budget, you can create budgets for items and subscriptions where alerts on budget thresholds will fire as well as create actions that can act on these alerts.
Azure Advisor will also make recommendations to scale your resources down or up based on use. We always recommend that a full review with one who knows how this will react should be consulted.
THE COST
I love giving good news! If all of your resources are in Azure there is no additional cost. this is included in with your tenant/subscription.
Enhancements
The detail you will get is fantastic and aligne with the need. If wanted to go next level you can add additional Azure services to assist with getting deep insights that may assist with obtaining additional budget or justify the spend. Azure Monitor will add more telemetry about your deployed workloads and provide operational alerting. If you have a committed spend or Azure is on your EA you can have a Development designated subscription that will allow for a lower cost (as long as you do not make the service a production service).
Use Case #2 - Hybrid Cloud or AWS
You have a hybrid cloud that has resources in both Azure and AWS. You were an early adopter of cloud and AWS but since have deployed all new workloads to Azure. You have to maintain the workloads that are in AWS until a migration plan is approved and a migration project’s budget is approved. You need to provide a comprehensive report-out of all cloud spend to finance as well as for future budgeting purposes.
THE TOOLING
Azure Cost Management will provide the same functionality as we discussed in Use Case #1. Where there is a departure is the AWS workload. This tooling can reach into your AWS instances and aggregate the spend, as well as take imports of any budget you may have. The departure between the free cost for all in Azure and the AWS workload will be described below.
THE COST
Cost Management, at the time of publishing, for AWS workloads is a percentage of the AWS spend of any resource under management. Please refer to the below link to obtain up to date pricing.
Final Thoughts
I do not have the urge like many who are Consultant Architects to overly complicate this topic. It is very clear and public that Microsoft sees cost management as something that is native to having services and should not be an additional charge. I agree with this approach. Microsoft needs this data to know what to bill you and having the transparency of what those numbers are and actually make the recommendation to lower a resource costs them money. But it gains them confidence in their customers. Yes we have projects around this very topic, but not to sell a solution, but rather fine tune the service and make sense of what the data means to them.
Personally I love the service. It keeps everyone in check. You can even create wonderful PowerBI dashboards and reports to make it pleasing to look at. Once it is all said and done by leveraging Cost Management you will be armed with information to chargeback, justify, budget, and remove the mystery.
-Michael Askins - Technology Architect
#Azure #costmanagement #AzureMonitor #cloudyn