Optimize Your Azure Costs with the Cost Optimization Workbook
The Azure Cost Optimization workbook is a powerful tool designed to help you understand and optimize the costs of your Azure environment. This comprehensive guide will walk you through the features and capabilities of the workbook, empowering you to make informed decisions and drive cost savings in your Azure deployments.
Overview
The Azure Cost Optimization workbook serves as a centralized hub for some of the most commonly used tools that can help you drive utilization and efficiency goals. It offers a range of recommendations, including Azure Advisor cost recommendations, identification of idle resources, and management of improperly deallocated Virtual Machines. Additionally, it provides recommendations for applying Azure Reservations and Savings Plan for Compute, as well as insights into using Azure Hybrid Benefit options.
To get started, navigate to the Workbooks gallery in Azure Advisor and open the Cost Optimization (Preview) workbook template.
The workbook is organized into different tabs and subtabs, each focusing on a specific area to help you reduce the cost of your Azure environment:
- Overview: Provides a high-level view of your resource distribution, security, and reliability recommendations.
- Rate Optimization: Focuses on potential savings related to the rate optimization of your Azure services, including Azure Hybrid Benefit, Azure Reservations, and Azure Savings Plan for Compute.
- Usage Optimization: Examines potential savings related to the usage optimization of your Azure services, covering Compute, Storage, Networking, and other popular Azure resources.
Each tab offers powerful features, such as filters to focus on specific workloads, the ability to export recommendations for collaboration, and quick fix options to streamline the optimization process.
Rate Optimization
The Rate Optimization tab is a crucial section of the workbook, as it delves into opportunities to save on the underlying costs of your Azure services.
Azure Hybrid Benefit
Azure Hybrid Benefit represents an excellent opportunity to save on Virtual Machines (VMs) operating system costs. The workbook helps you identify opportunities to use the Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows and Linux VMs, SQL Server, and Azure Stack HCI.
Azure Reservations
Review Azure Azure Reservations cost-saving opportunities using filters for subscriptions, look-back periods, terms, and resource types. This section guides you on understanding the potential savings you can achieve with Azure Reservations.
Azure Savings Plan for Compute
Explore the cost-saving potential of Azure Savings Plan for Compute, which provides flexibility and automated cost optimization by committing to a fixed hourly spend on select compute services.
Usage Optimization
The Usage Optimization tab focuses on reviewing potential savings related to the usage of your Azure services, covering areas such as Compute, Storage, Networking, and other popular resources.
Compute
Optimize your compute resources by identifying Virtual Machines in a stopped state, deallocated VMs, and opportunities within Virtual Machine Scale Sets, such as leveraging Azure Spot VMs.
Storage
Optimize your storage costs by identifying underutilized storage accounts, unattached managed disks, outdated disk snapshots, and opportunities to optimize backup storage redundancy settings.
Networking
Streamline your networking resources by reviewing Azure Firewall usage, identifying idle Application Gateways and Load Balancers, and managing unattached Public IPs and Virtual Network Gateways.
Other Popular Services
Dive into cost optimization opportunities for Web Apps, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Synapse, and Azure Monitor Logs.
By leveraging the insights and recommendations provided in the Azure Cost Optimization workbook, you can unlock significant cost savings and drive greater efficiency in your Azure environment. Remember, the workbook serves as a guide, and the actual cost reductions may vary based on your specific usage patterns and requirements.
For additional resources and best practices, refer to the Well-Architected cost optimization design principles, the Cloud Adoption Framework for managing cloud costs, and the Azure FinOps principles.