I'm trying to get a handle on the costs associated with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). My company is looking into the cost per cluster by using the billing API and mapping it against namespace expenditures from downloaded files via the Azure cost portal. I'm a bit confused about whether the total cost for each cluster should align with the total costs attributed to all the Kubernetes namespaces within that cluster. If these figures don't match, what other costs might I need to consider? Any help would be appreciated as I have little guidance internally.
3 Answers
By the way, Azure just launched something new regarding Azure Container Storage, which you might find useful! It's now open-source and claims to be the fastest storage option on Azure for AKS. Plus, it allows you to pull storage from your pre-purchased VMs. Check it out to see if it fits your needs!
Keep in mind that calculating cost per namespace misses shared expenses like daemonsets and traffic between zones or regions. There's also overhead—when you're running, say, a 16GB instance with 4 CPUs while your pods only use 10GB and 2.5 CPUs, how do you account for that extra cost? It adds up!
Just to clarify, though, daemonsets are actually namespace-scoped, so why would those counts as shared costs?
You should definitely check out AKS cost analysis. It's a built-in feature that might give you the insights you need. Here’s a link to get you started: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/cost-analysis.
Thanks for the insight! I hadn’t considered the API servers or the storage costs for persistent volumes. I’ll also keep an eye out for the private link costs for private clusters. Traffic costs, especially egress to the internet, is something I need to factor in as well.