A blog about Azure Cost Management and Related Stuff
If you follow this blog, you know that my focus is on using my cloud architectural skills, informed by FinOps principles, to analyze, understand and educate about the sources of cloud costs - specifically on the Azure platform but the concepts apply to any public cloud. Because of the writing, speaking and video creation I …
In a previous post, I discussed Azure’s AI and ML offerings: their types and purpose and presented a simplified decision workflow. In this post, I’ll apply these concepts to a typical example, showing the importance of using an informed methodology – resistant to hype – to help you make good choices for your organization. Understanding Azure Cognitive Services …
Continue reading "Azure AI and ML – Cost Factors and Decision Doctrine"
On the Azure platform, Microsoft offers 31 services under the umbrella of ‘AI and machine learning’. There’s a lot of promotion of AI generally and machine learning specifically as meeting a variety of business needs but it’s often not clear what service should be used and what the sensible use-cases are. This adds another layer …
Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics combines data warehousing with analytics, machine learning and visualization. It brings together services which, in the past, were separate, under one umbrella. For example, Azure SQL pools (warehousing) and Apache Spark pools (analytics and machine learning) are bundled and made available as part of a unified service (or perhaps we could …
Continue reading "Azure Synapse Analytics: Do Your Homework!"
I haven't seen your Azure environment (yet!) but I'm sure there's a good chance databases are the second biggest source of costs - right after virtual machines (which I suggest you minimize as much as possible). Database migration is a critical part of cloud modernization projects and, alongside VMs, databases are often created without much …
Yesterday, while writing about the difference between cloud cost optimization (observability) and cost cutting (accounting) on Twitter, I mentioned the importance of tagging as a key element of a spending observability strategy. Let's dive into this using a real-world example. Angry Chocolates International (ACI) [real company, actual name obscured] has a deep investment in Azure …
Continue reading "Tag Your Azure Assets for Business Insight"
Although it sometimes feels as if the cloud era is as old as the Pharaohs we're still in early days. A sure indication of this is the often haphazard way some of the largest Azure projects are conducted from a cost governance POV. Consider the graphic below, which shows some of the key areas of …
Continue reading "Why aren’t you using Azure Budgets and Budget Alerts?"
Let's face it, the Azure cost management skillset is a bit immature (I think this is also true for AWS but there's Duckbill and Corey Quinn providing solid leadership in that space). Why? My experience leads me to define four reasons: One.) Cloud is viewed as an IT task and not a cross-functional business driver …
Continue reading "Azure Cost Management: An Immature Skillset"
The Azure Cost Metrics Project is what I'm calling my effort to better understand Azure costs by setting a budget, building common Azure solutions such as web apps, virtual machines and platform databases (to name a few) and tracking real-world costs, or as close as I can get to them. This time, we're taking a …
Continue reading "Azure Cost Metrics: Learning About Web App Costs"
There's a good amount of information available about managing Azure costs (and it's a good idea to start here to learn how to maximize the use of the Azure Cost Management tool). What's missing, as far as I can see, is a detailed walkthrough of the lifecycle of a solution built on Azure from a …
Azure FinOps 