Azure: The Cost Factor

Subscriptions all include Billing + subscription support, and various forms of documentation.

There are 4 kinds of subscriptions.

Free;

• 200$ Credits for your first 30 Days
• Access to popular programs is free for 12 mo.
• 25 products are always free.
• No spending limit bc there are credits.

Student:

• 100$ in credits for a year.
• Select Free Services
• No spending limit bc there are credits.
• Verify you're a student. 

Pay As You Go:

• Billed monthly for services used.

Enterprise:

• An agreement that you'll spend X amount upfront. It's not quite like Azure Reservations, which have 1 and 3 year terms.
• You can get customized pricing
• Pay annually.
• If you are an account owner, you can make more subcriptions.

What makes the things cost money?



The type of resources you're using. They all vary in cost. Depends on location and services.
Services include Enterprise (See above) and

Web Direct

•  What the general public uses
• Pay through the site

Cloud Solutions Provider (CSP):

• MS Partner companies hired to build the solutions
• They do the client billing. 

How can we make it cost less money?

Azure Cost Management

Visibility, Accountability, and Optimization

•  Pricing calculator gives estimates.
• Azure Migrate - Can we transfer your stuff from on-prem? Here's a recommended VM sizing. And here's a cost estimate.
• Advisor - Best practices for deployments and improvement of other things. 
• You can see a breakdown of who is spending what on which resource.

Minimize Spending:

Azure Reservations: For things like Cosmos DB, SQL DBs, VMs, App Services, and other. (But who can buy them? Everyone?)

Add tags and quotas. Quotas depend on the region.


Spending Limit (see above).