Solution recommendation for optimizing costs

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In this, we will discuss the optimizing cost for viewing potential usage inefficiencies with resizing a virtual machine to a more cost-effective option. Moreover, verifying the action to ensure that the virtual machine was successfully resized. So, let’s understand this.

Role of Azure in Cost Optimization

Azure Cost Management works with Azure Advisor so that it gets recommendations for optimizing cost. However, the Azure Advisor helps you optimize and improve efficiency by identifying idle and underutilized resources.

Prerequisites

Recommendations for cost optimizations are available for a variety of scopes and Azure account types. However, for viewing the full list of supported account types, check understand Cost Management data. You must have at least read access to one or more of the following scopes to view cost data.

Viewing cost optimization recommendations

For viewing cost optimizing recommendations for a subscription, open the desired scope in the Azure portal. There just select Advisor recommendations.
In order to view recommendations for a management group, open the desired scope in the Azure portal. There you have to select Cost analysis on the menu. After that, select Advisor recommendations on the menu.
However, the list of recommendations identifies usage inefficiencies or shows purchase recommendations can help in saving additional money. Moreover, the totaled Potential yearly savings explain the total amount that you can save if you shut down all of your VMs meeting recommendation rules. And, if you don’t want to shut them down then, you should consider resizing them to a less expensive VM SKU.

What is the Impact Category?

The Impact category was designed to help in identifying recommendations, along with the Potential yearly savings that have the potential to save as much as possible.

High impact recommendations include:

Firstly, buying reserved virtual machine instances for saving money over pay-as-you-go costs
Then, optimizing virtual machine spend by resizing or shutting down underutilized instances
After that, using the Standard Storage to store Managed Disks snapshots

Medium impact recommendations include:

Firstly, deleting failed Azure Data Factory pipelines
Secondly, reducing costs by eliminating un-provisioned ExpressRoute circuits
Lastly, reducing costs by deleting or reconfiguring idle virtual network gateways

Recommendation Act

Azure Advisor monitors your virtual machine usage for seven days and after that, it identifies underutilized virtual machines. And, the virtual machines with CPU utilization of five percent or less, and network usage of seven MB or less for four or more days are low-utilization virtual machines. Not to mention, the 5% or less CPU utilization setting is the default, but it can be adjusted in the settings.

Although some scenarios can result in low utilization by design in which you can save money by changing the size of virtual machines to less expensive sizes. However, the actual savings might vary if you choose a resize action. Let’s understand it with an example of resizing a virtual machine.

Resizing the Virtual Machine

In the list of recommendations, click on the Right-size or shutdown underutilized virtual machines recommendation. And, in the list of virtual machine candidates, choose a virtual machine to resize and then click the virtual machine. However, the virtual machine’s details are shown in order to verify the utilization metrics. Resizing a VM will probably save you money, but you won’t save the full amount of the potential yearly savings.

In the VM details, first check the utilization of the virtual machine to confirm that it’s a suitable resize candidate.
Then, note the current virtual machine’s size. After you’ve verified that the virtual machine should be resized just close the VM details to see the list of virtual machines.
After that, in the list of candidates to shut down or resize, select Resize <FromVirtualMachineSKU> to <ToVirtualMachineSKU>.
Then, you’re presented with a list of available resize options. There you have to choose the one that will give the best performance and cost-effectiveness for your scenario. In the below picture, the option chosen resizes from Standard_D8s_v3 to Standard_D2s_v3.

resizing standard for optimizing cost — Image Source: Microsoft

After choosing a suitable size, click Resize to start the resize action. However, resizing requires an actively running virtual machine to restart. And, if the virtual machine is in a production environment, we recommend that you run the resize operation after business hours. Scheduling the restart can result in reducing disruptions caused by unavailability.