Azure Virtual machine pricing
How to save Maximum on Azure VM pricing?
What is an Azure VM?
Azure Virtual Machines (VM) is a scalable, on-demand computing resource offered by Azure. There are several reasons cloud users use virtual machines when they need direct control over their computing environment on the cloud.
The most common use of Azure virtual machines is
The Azure Virtual Machine (VM) service creates a computing resource with all the configurations required to run an application during development and testing.
As the demand for applications in the cloud can vary, you may save costs by running the application in a virtual machine and adding more virtual machines to it, or shutting down instances that are no longer needed, depending on the actual demand for the application.
Azure pricing for VMs is typically calculated per second of usage. However, there are several other ways to pay for a VM. The Azure free tier, for instance, offers you free access to a specific type of virtual machine for a period of 12 months. Reserved instances allow you to commit to a VM for a long period of time and to receive a discount, while spot VMs allow you to purchase unused capacity at a deeply discounted price in Azure when it is still available.
Region wise Virtual machine pricing
It is possible to optimize costs by using different regions since different regions have different pricing, so using Azure regions can be a good way to optimize costs.
Azure VM Pricing Models
Below is a detailed explanation of the different pricing models that are available when buying Azure virtual machines.
Azure offers a free credit trial, like other cloud services. Azure offers a free tier of $200 in Azure credits for the first 30 days and additional free services for 12 months. Any region that supports Azure can be used to develop services. In addition, you can create multiple instances, provided the total does not exceed the specified limits. You can receive 750 hours per month for 12 months for B1s burstable virtual machines.
With Azure VMs, Microsoft charges you for each second a VM resource is active, so you pay only for actual use.
This option is regarded as the most flexible choice and is suitable for instances that cannot be interrupted or short-lived workloads.
You don’t need to make a long-term commitment or pay upfront. You can decrease or increase your computing capacity according to your application’s needs and only pay the hourly rate for the instances you use. Yet, prices are typically higher than the other pricing models.
If you want to save money and know a VM will be needed for more than a year, you can reserve a virtual machine instance and save up to 72%. Reserving a VM puts a specific region in place for a term of 1 or 3 years.
You can return and exchange reserved instances. You can also cancel a reserved instance with an early cancellation fee, up to the yearly cap.
On the other hand, you can also use a reserved instance for other VMs such as pay-as-you-go VMs in the same resource region and group.
With the reserved VM instances model you can do the following:
- Cancel or exchange reservations as you grow
- Forecast and budget with upfront payment for a one or three-year period
- Receive prioritized compute capacity in Azure regions
- Gain automated control of Azure RIs via instance size flexibility
- Pay for reserved VMs monthly, instead of upfront, at no additional cost
Azure Savings Options
Beyond the discounts granted by reserved instances and spot instances, Azure provides several additional options for saving cloud costs.
Azure Hybrid Benefit
The Azure Hybrid Benefit program is intended for organizations that own Microsoft licenses in their on-premise data centers. When you own licenses for Windows Server and SQL Server and are using them locally, you can bring those licenses to the cloud without purchasing additional licenses. This is known as bring your own license (BYOL).
It is important to bear in mind that the cost of an Azure Virtual Machine running Windows or SQL Server includes the cost of Microsoft software licensing, which means that if you already have a license, you will receive a discount on the cost of the VM per hour. Azure Hybrid Benefit applies to Windows Server VMs, SQL Server VMs, and the Azure SQL Database service.
Combined with reserved instances, Azure Hybrid Benefit offers up to 85% discount.
Additionally, for some versions of Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server to Azure, you get 3 years of free security updates, without needing to extend the license.
Azure Dev/Test Pricing
There are substantial discounts available to you if you use Azure services for development and testing, including the following:
- Running Windows VMs at the same cost of Linux VMs (essentially, you get the Microsoft license for free)
- Save up to 55% on Azure SQL Database
- Save up to 50% on Logic Apps (BizTalk server processing in the cloud)
Microsoft offers a variety of virtual machine sizes, divided into six categories for different use cases.
1 General Purpose VMs
- Provide a balanced ratio of CPU and memory. Suitable for medium and low-traffic servers, databases, and test environments.
- Pricing starts from $0.096/hour
2 Compute Optimized
- Provides strong CPU capabilities. Suitable for medium-traffic servers, batch processing, and network services.
- Pricing starts from $0.0846/hour
3 Memory Optimized
- Provides a larger amount of RAM and faster RAM hardware. Suitable for in-memory analytics, caching services, or relational databases.
- Pricing Starts from $0.126/hour
4 Storage Optimized
- Provides high storage throughput and I/O. Suitable for data warehouses, big data analytics, transactional SQL/NoSQL databases.
- Pricing starts from $0.624/hour
5 Graphical Processing Units (GPU)
- Provides GPU resources as part of the virtual machine. Suitable for deep learning, machine learning, video editing or graphics rendering.
- Pricing starts from $0.90/hour
6 High performance computing (HPC)
- Provides high-powered distributed CPU resources, with support for high-throughput networking such as RDMA. Suitable for massively parallel HPC workloads.
- Pricing starts from $0.796/hour
1) Shut down unused resources
Identify idle virtual machines (VMs), ExpressRoute circuits, and other resources with Azure Advisor. We will provide you with recommendations on which resources to shut down, as well as how much you could save by doing so.
2) Right-size underused resources
With Azure Advisor you are able to find underutilized resources and get recommendations on how to reduce your spending by reconfiguring or consolidating them in order to reduce costs.
3) Reserve instances for consistent workloads
If you choose to prepay for a one-year or three-year term with reservation pricing, you will receive a discount of up to 72 percent over pay-as-you-go pricing on Azure services.
4) Take advantage of the Azure Hybrid Benefit
AWS is up to five times more expensive than Azure for Windows Server and SQL Server. You can save a lot of money by migrating your on-premises workloads over to Azure.
5) Configure autoscaling
You can save money by dynamically allocating and de-allocating resources according to the performance requirements you have.
6) Set up budgets and allocate costs to teams and projects
With Microsoft Cost Management, you can create and manage budgets for the Azure services you use or subscribe to as well as monitor the cloud expenditures of your organization.
7) Choose the right Azure compute service
Azure offers many ways to host your code. With the right compute service for your application, you can run your business more efficiently and at a lower cost.