Azure Cost Management: Control Cloud Spending

Azure Cost Management provides visibility into cloud spending. Analyze costs, set budgets, optimize resources—before the bill surprises you.

Cost Analysis

# Get current month costs
az consumption usage list \
    --start-date 2020-11-01 \
    --end-date 2020-11-07 \
    --query "[].{Name:instanceName, Cost:pretaxCost}" \
    --output table

Budgets

# Create budget with alerts
az consumption budget create \
    --budget-name "Monthly-Limit" \
    --amount 10000 \
    --category Cost \
    --time-grain Monthly \
    --start-date 2020-11-01 \
    --end-date 2021-10-31 \
    --notifications '{
        "Actual_GreaterThan_80_Percent": {
            "enabled": true,
            "operator": "GreaterThan",
            "threshold": 80,
            "contactEmails": ["finance@company.com"],
            "contactRoles": ["Owner"]
        },
        "Forecasted_GreaterThan_100_Percent": {
            "enabled": true,
            "operator": "GreaterThan",
            "threshold": 100,
            "thresholdType": "Forecasted",
            "contactEmails": ["alerts@company.com"]
        }
    }'

Cost Allocation Tags

# Tag resources for cost allocation
az tag create --resource-id /subscriptions/.../resourceGroups/myRG \
    --tags CostCenter=Engineering Project=Alpha Environment=Production

# Query costs by tag
az consumption usage list \
    --query "[?tags.CostCenter=='Engineering'].{Resource:instanceName, Cost:pretaxCost}"

Azure Advisor Recommendations

# Get cost recommendations
az advisor recommendation list \
    --category Cost \
    --output table

Common recommendations:

• Right-size underutilized VMs
• Delete unattached disks
• Purchase reserved instances
• Use spot VMs for batch workloads

Reserved Instances

Save up to 72% with 1-3 year commitments:

# View reservation recommendations
az consumption reservation recommendation list \
    --scope subscription \
    --look-back-period Last30Days

# Purchase reservation (via portal recommended)

Term	Savings
1 Year	~35%
3 Year	~60%

Spot VMs

# Create spot VM (up to 90% savings)
az vm create \
    --name mySpotVM \
    --resource-group myRG \
    --priority Spot \
    --eviction-policy Deallocate \
    --max-price 0.05 \
    --image UbuntuLTS

Auto-Shutdown

# Schedule VM shutdown
az vm auto-shutdown \
    --resource-group myRG \
    --name myVM \
    --time 1800 \
    --timezone "Pacific Standard Time"

Cost Export

# Export daily costs to storage
az costmanagement export create \
    --name DailyCostExport \
    --scope "/subscriptions/{sub-id}" \
    --storage-account mystorageaccount \
    --storage-container exports \
    --timeframe MonthToDate \
    --recurrence Daily \
    --schedule-status Active

Power BI Integration

// Connect to Cost Management API
let
    Source = AzureCostManagement.Contents(
        "subscriptions/{subscription-id}",
        [
            Granularity = "Daily",
            GroupBy = {"ResourceGroup", "ServiceName"}
        ]
    )
in
    Source

Cost-Saving Checklist

• Right-size VMs based on utilization
• Use reserved instances for steady workloads
• Use spot VMs for batch processing
• Auto-shutdown dev/test resources
• Delete unused resources
• Use appropriate storage tiers
• Implement resource lifecycle policies
• Set up budget alerts

Cost Management: visibility is the first step to optimization.