💰 Azure Cost Optimization

Introduction

Azure Cost Management helps track, analyze, and optimize cloud spending.

Key Learning Outcomes

By the end of this lesson, you'll understand:

• Cost Management tools

• Budget creation and alerts

• Pricing models for services

• Reserved Instances (RIs)

• Spot VMs for savings

• Resource tagging and allocation

Cost Management Setup

# Enable cost management
az costmanagement export create \
  --name myexport \
  --scope /subscriptions/{subscription-id} \
  --storage-account mystorageaccount \
  --storage-container costdata \
  --timeframe MonthToDate \
  --recurrence Monthly

Creating Budgets

# Create budget
az consumption budget create \
  --budget-name "monthly-budget" \
  --amount 1000 \
  --time-grain monthly \
  --category cost \
  --start-date 2024-01-01

# Set alert threshold
az consumption budget create \
  --budget-name "monthly-budget" \
  --threshold 80 \
  --contact-emails admin@example.com

Reserved Instances

# Purchase RI
az reservations purchase \
  --sku Standard_B2s \
  --scope Single \
  --term P1Y \
  --billing-scope /subscriptions/{subscription-id}

Spot VMs

# Create Spot VM (up to 90% discount)
az vm create \
  --resource-group myResourceGroup \
  --name mySpotVM \
  --image UbuntuLTS \
  --priority Spot \
  --eviction-policy Deallocate

Resource Tagging

# Tag resource
az resource tag \
  --ids /subscriptions/.../myVM \
  --tags environment=production project=myproject

# View costs by tag
az costmanagement query create \
  --scope /subscriptions/{subscription-id} \
  --filter "tags/environment eq 'production'"

Key Takeaways

• **Cost Management** tracks spending

• **Budgets** control spending limits

• **RIs** provide discounts for predictable workloads

• **Spot VMs** reduce costs for fault-tolerant workloads

• **Tagging** enables cost allocation

Next Steps

Explore advanced optimization strategies, or learn about Azure Policy for governance.