Optimizing Azure Costs with Recommendation-Driven Actions

Managing cloud costs effectively is a critical concern for organizations leveraging Azure services. This comprehensive guide takes you through the process of identifying and acting on cost optimization recommendations provided by Azure Advisor, helping you reduce your Azure spending.

Unlock Savings with Azure Advisor Recommendations

Azure Advisor is a powerful tool that works in tandem with Azure Cost Management to provide tailored cost optimization recommendations. These recommendations identify underutilized or idle resources, allowing you to resize or shut down virtual machines, optimize storage, and more.

To get started, navigate to the Azure portal and open the desired scope, whether it’s a subscription or management group. Under the “Advisor recommendations” section, you’ll find a list of recommendations categorized by their potential impact. High-impact recommendations include:

  • Buying Azure Savings Plans: Leveraging Savings Plans can provide significant cost savings compared to pay-as-you-go pricing.
  • Purchasing Reserved Virtual Machine Instances: Reserving VM instances upfront can lead to substantial discounts over time.
  • Resizing or Shutting Down Underutilized VMs: Identifying and right-sizing or decommissioning low-utilization VMs is a key way to optimize costs.
  • Using Standard Storage for Managed Disk Snapshots: Storing managed disk snapshots on Standard Storage can reduce storage costs.

Medium-impact recommendations focus on optimizing network resources, such as eliminating un-provisioned ExpressRoute circuits and deleting or reconfiguring idle virtual network gateways.

Resizing Virtual Machines for Cost Savings

One of the most impactful recommendations is the ability to resize underutilized virtual machines. Azure Advisor monitors your VM usage over a 7-day period and identifies low-utilization VMs, defined as those with CPU utilization of 5% or less and network usage of 7MB or less for 4 or more days.

To act on this recommendation, follow these steps:

  1. In the list of recommendations, select the “Right-size or shutdown underutilized virtual machines” option.
  2. Review the list of candidate VMs and choose one to resize.
  3. Examine the VM details, including its current size and utilization metrics, to confirm it’s a suitable candidate for resizing.
  4. In the list of VMs, select the “Resize to ” option.
  5. Choose the new, more cost-effective VM size that best fits your workload requirements.
  6. Click “Resize” to initiate the resizing process.

Keep in mind that resizing a VM requires it to restart, so plan accordingly if the VM is in a production environment.

Verify the Resizing Action

Once the VM resizing is complete, you’ll receive an Azure notification confirming the successful resize operation. This allows you to validate that the recommended action has been implemented and the expected cost savings have been realized.

Ongoing Cost Management Best Practices

To build on the cost optimization recommendations, be sure to review the Cost Management best practices article. It provides high-level guidance and principles to help you continuously manage and optimize your Azure spending.

By leveraging Azure Advisor’s cost optimization recommendations and taking action to resize underutilized resources, you can significantly reduce your Azure costs and ensure your cloud investments are optimized for maximum efficiency and value.

[Source: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MicrosoftDocs/azure-docs/master/articles/cost-management-billing/costs/tutorial-acm-opt-recommendations.md]