Azure Cost Optimisation Blogging Series Part 2 — Non-disruptive Ways to Cut Azure Costs
Azure consumption charges often captures Finance and IT’s attention when spending patterns are trending upwards or spiralling out of control. Many organisations may struggle to comprehend what simple and rapid actions can be taken to reduce and manage costs, with some not realising there is a massive overspend … for months.
This 4-part blogging series aims to highlight 4 key areas of invaluable Azure cost optimisation strategies that should be adopted by those looking to stem unnecessary Azure consumption and manage spend ongoing.
In part-1, my colleague Karl O’Doherty provided an in-depth overview of Azure budgeting and forecasting. In this blog, I’ll continue on with the theme and offer an overview of non-disruptive ways to cut your Azure costs.
You can also watch my accompanying video below.
What Does Non-Disruptive Mean?
But first, what do we mean by non-disruptive optimisation? Non-disruptive optimisation reduces same-use costs but does not change the current-state configuration or functionality of resources or cause any interruption to the availability of those resources. This is achieved using billing mechanisms for the resources not the technical configuration.
For example, BYOL to the cloud mitigates the ‘license-included’ rental cost of software running in the cloud or committing to a set of resources for a period-of-time to obtain a lower unit cost, when compared to a PAYG no commitment pricing level.
Non-disruptive Cost Optimisation in Azure
Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHB) is a benefit that’s associated with licenses with Software Assurance as well as service subscription licenses through CSP and volume licensing models. The key benefit of AHB is that it essentially mitigates the rental cost of Windows Server and SQL Server licenses in Azure on a per VM basis.
· When AHB is fully optimised, it can help to create savings greater than the cost of the service subscription or the Software Assurance, so can deliver an impressive return on investment. It’s important to remember that the compute, storage and backup still needs to be paid for.
· As it’s a trust-based mechanism (it is literally a ‘flip the switch’ process within Azure) this necessitates ongoing management and governance to ensure you don’t fall foul of the licensing rules.
· This also includes dual use rights on some licenses, for example, Windows Server Data Centre. If you have Windows Server Data Centre on-premises with Software Assurance or as a subscription, you can run this on-premises and in Azure at the same time.
· There’s also limited time dual use rights for Windows Server Standard and SQL Server, both again with software assurance or a subscription for 180 days for migrating from on-premises into Azure.
· Another AHB benefit is for Linux. So, if you have a support subscription for applicable Red Hat licenses, for example, they could be used in Azure to mitigate their rental costs.
· Reserved instances are where a customer commits to one or three years, paid monthly, to reduce the cost of the same specification resources. This is a commitment to, for example, a virtual machine or Kubernetes or SQL Managed Services for which the monthly cost that you’re running those resources at, is reduced.
· Savings plan disperses your costs across more resources without specifying exactly which resources it’s going to. This is comparable to a discount scheme for a whole collection of resources in Azure for a prepaid commitment.
· If you’re running Exchange or Share Point services in Azure and you already have a Microsoft 365 E5 license under an Enterprise Agreement, that entitles you to run as many server instances of Exchange or Share Point that you wish in Azure without having to pay for those licenses again.
· If you have Dynamics 365 Enterprise Subscriptions, then you can run an unlimited number of server instances in Azure without incurring additional Dynamics 365 server licensing costs. That applies to both CSP and Enterprise Agreement licensing scheme.
In Conclusion
By amending the billing mechanisms of your Azure resources, you can materially impact your consumption (and therefore spend) without any interruption to the availability of those resources.
In Part 3 of this series, my colleague Richard Ojo will consider effective ways of licensing Azure using nonproduction licensing models and how this can save Azure spend.
If you have any questions on Azure cost optimisation techniques, feel free to contact us and start optimising.
About the Author
William Nelson is a Sales Specialist/License Management Practice as part of the SAM & Licence Management Team at Version 1.
