Real-Life Examples of Azure Cloud Cost Optimization

We've learned a lot by simply doing the basics right. Here are some key strategies we adopted:

- **Tagging Cleanup**: We enforced cost center and environment tags on all resources using Azure Policy. This took a couple of weeks but now we have clear visibility on expenditures.

- **Reservation Analysis**: By analyzing 90 days of compute usage, we identified many underutilized VMs and switched 60% to reserved instances, cutting costs by 35%.

- **Storage Management**: We migrated unused data from hot to cool/archive tiers using scripts, which significantly reduced costs.

- **Tools We Use**: Azure cost management for basics, Vantage for cross-cloud insights, and custom scripts for identifying orphaned resources. We also do regular anomaly detection and monthly reservation reviews.

Investing in visibility and setting guardrails were the most impactful steps we took. Once we could see what was happening, optimizing became much clearer.

While I don’t have a full case study, here are some actionable steps we've implemented to reduce costs by about 20-30% across different organizations:

1. **VM/AVD Auto Shutdown**: We set up monitoring to determine active hours and created automation scripts to shut down VMs during off-hours. This helped a lot, especially in environments with numerous reckless developers.

2. **Environment Management Portal**: For one application, we built a management portal that backs up necessary data automatically and integrates with Slack/Teams so developers can quickly provision infrastructure when needed. It took some effort, but it paid off.

3. **Spot VMs for Non-Prod**: For databricks in non-production, we made extensive use of spot VMs, which saved a lot on costs.

4. **Container Apps**: Instead of just sticking to AKS, we found that using heavy container apps with a few tweaks worked effectively.

5. **Performance Audits**: We audited all applications to monitor for any performance issues. Many applications were running inefficiently, and after optimizing them, resource usage improved significantly.

This last point is critical; teams need to be educated on optimal app development, as many don’t care about costs during the development phase.

Most of the Azure cost optimization efforts revolve around basic principles: rightsizing VMs and turning off unnecessary resources. What really saved us was focusing on tracking actual waste and its impact on the bill. Using tools like Pointfive helped us identify misconfigured storage tiers, orphaned disks, and the infamous 24/7 dev environments. We also emphasized the importance of cost awareness among developers, incentivizing teams to minimize waste.