Azure-in-bullet-points

Subscriptions

Resource tagging

• 💡Always tag!
• Tags are additional metadata that can be assigned to resources/resource groups.
  • ❗ Child resources do not inherit resource groups tags
  • ❗ Max 15 tag name/value pairs.
• E.g. CostCenter = YHZ
• Why?
  • Organize
  • Search
  • View
  • Billing & cost managements
• On Portal
  • You can search for Tags and see filtered lists.
  • ❗ Resources are tagged after resource is created as opposed to PowerShell/CLI.

Resource Tagging and Cost Center Spending Limits

Spending Limits

• Applies to free trial subcriptions, MSDN and Visual Studio subscriptions.
  • If spending limit is exceeded:
    1. Email message is sent
    2. Deployed resources are disabled in next billing cycle.
    3. Databases and storage accounts become read-only
  • Free trials can be upgraded to Pay-as-you-go
• Do not apply to support plans, pay-as-you-go, Enterprise Dev/Test

ARM Consumption API

• Returns usage details
• ❗ Supported only in Enterprise enrollments and Web Direct subscriptions
• Available through CLI and different SDK’s.
• Consumption APIs
  • Enterprise customers only: Price Sheet, Budgets, Balance
  • Reserved VM’s: Reservation Summaries API, Reservation Details API, Reservation recommendations API
  • Others: Marketplace charges, usage details

Azure Pricing Calculator

• Estimates monthly costs
• See online

Azure Advisor Cost Recomendations

• Identifies wastage
• E.g. idle VM’s, SQL’s.
  • Can configure automatic shutdown
  • Auto-shutdown option in VM.
• Recommendations about:
  • High availability
  • Security
  • Performance
  • Cost recommendations, e.g.:
    • Virtual machine reserved instances to reduce costs.
    • VM resizing: Scale up / down
    • Remove unprovisioned ExpressRoute circuits.
• Configure rule:
  • E.g. Average CPU Utilization < 5%

Subscription blade

• In Cost analysis you can filter by Tags.
• Invoices
• Manage in Subscription blade
  • Manage payment methods
    • 💡 Adding one allows you to remove subscription limits.
  • Download usage details
  • Transfer/cancel subscription
  • Set-up billing alerts
    • E.g. e-mail if billing total is $150

Optimizing VM costs

• 📝 Use VM Reserved Instances
  • You can create one in Reservations blade
• 📝 Set-up auto shutdown in VM’s
  • Auto-shutdown blade in VM.

Microsoft Azure Resource Providers

• Enables Azure features.
• Many are registered automatically
  • E.g. Microsoft.Compute that handles VM’s, Microsoft.Network, Microsoft.Sql, Microsoft.Storage
• Some are not registered automatically
  • E.g. Microsoft.PolicyInsights, Microsoft.AzureActiveDirectory, Microsoft.AzureStack, Microsoft.Botservice
  • Custom providers can be registered with subscription.
    • Requires the Contributor or Owner roles.
    • In most cases providers are registered automatically when you deploy resources that uses the providers.
• You can register, unregister, re-register through Subscription -> Resource providers in Portal

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