When you think about placing resources in the cloud, one of the key issues is how to calculate the cost of resources in the cloud, understand cost management principles, and how to save money.
In this article you will find a few tips on how to deal with cloud resources cost calculation before migration and how to manage the costs after the migration.
Before migration - wisely calculate the budget and select the resources
Audit your IT assets
We highly recommend to start any cloud quotations from infrastructure assessment and auditing of what IT assets you have, its performance and state. Automated assessment analyses on-premise, hybrid, cloud resources and provides robust analysis of current performance, interconnections and relevant sizing of the resources ( CPU, memory etc).
Based on the results you can select right-sizing machines in cloud (exactly what you need) and simulate cost scenarios for 3 public clouds: Azure, AWS, Google. That will give you wide landscape of financial options of public cloud.
Prepare quote
Before migration it is important to compare total cost of ownership of cloud with existing on-premise estate. Use free of charge online tool Azure TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) Calculator For any other inquiries on Azure services cost use Azure Price Calculator.
Explore Microsoft Programs
If you consider big migration first check available support programs for customer pilots and migrations to Azure. Those programs will help you to get high quality technical support, architectural consultancy and managerial workaround for your migration project. That will help you save money, speed up migration process and find relevant partner for migration. Read more about Programs.
After the migration - govern costs with confidence
With Azure products and services you only pay for what you use. As you create and use Azure resources, you are charged for the resources.
Budget control and Cost Management are crucial for successful cloud adoption.
Cost management includes management and monitoring of your costs in Azure, continuous optimisation, reservations, updates in sizing machines etc. Watch the video how to review costs in Cost Analysis.
Using advanced tooling, you can perform a detailed analysis of your Azure environment to help you really understand where and when you spend money.
Watch the video about 5 tips to help you save money and manage costs in Azure.
Budget monitoring and alerting
Use resource tagging, budget allocation and monitoring tools available in Azure to track your spendings and be immediately notified when your budget is overrun. Get to know more about that here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/costs/tutorial-acm-create-budgets
Resources Reservations
If you are already using Azure resources check offers for Reservations regularly. You may do this though your cloud provider Partner. Significant savings through reservations might be achieved up to 60% discount out of market prices. Read more about Reservations.
Resource scheduling
You may consider using scheduling of working hours for some machines which you do not need 24 hours a day. It will help you to save costs when you don't use them or during low-load hours.
Cloud Services - experienced Azure managed services partner - provides consultancy and optimisation the costs on IT infrastructure and cloud spendings.
Make a request and we will analyse your current cloud costs and propose optimisation for you.