Get The Most Out of Your Microsoft Azure Cloud Investment
If you’re using on-premises servers, you’re probably only using a small percentage of your total server cores most of the time. Still, you’re compelled to over-provision to accommodate peak traffic. By “rightsizing” server capacity as needed, moving specific workloads to the cloud can save a lot of money.
Rightsizing is one of the most significant levers you have for cutting costs and maximizing resources. By understanding cloud economics and utilizing what Azure has to offer, you can find the lowest virtual server instances that support your requirements and save money right now by reducing wasted capacity.
Server utilization spikes occur in a variety of sectors. You are no longer obligated to buy and supply capacity based on peak demand.
For example, a company we worked with discovered that its servers were used the most during specific year periods, such as tax season. Keeping pricey on-premises infrastructure all year was pushing up expenses. After migrating the first 20% of its apps and platforms to Azure, the tax preparer realized how the cloud’s variable cost model differed from the fixed cost model of on-premises data centers and reevaluated its design.
Different organizations will interpret cloud rightsizing differently. To gain a notion of savings based on the reduction in footprint, one of the first questions is how much your environment is elastic vs. static. In the case below, static utilization never exceeded 30% of capacity, indicating a significant cost-cutting opportunity.
What Does Rightsizing Involve?
Turning off workloads will, of course, have an immediate financial impact. However, how aggressively should you trim? Do you always know what motivates your customers to buy? Are there any occasions where you can’t rightsize right away? What can be done to optimize resources for workloads that are still required?
This optimization can take a number of different forms:
Resizing virtual machines
Because business and application requirements change over time, committing to a virtual machine size in advance might be restrictive.
Shutting down underused instances
With cloud workloads, use Azure Advisor to identify underutilized resources and receive resource optimization recommendations. This tool can also help determine how much money can be saved by downsizing or shutting down central processing units (CPUs).
Using Azure Spot Virtual Machines to disrupt workloads: You can save a lot of money on interruptible workloads that don’t have to be completed in a certain amount of time.
Identify workloads that require additional capacity
It is easy to satisfy consumer expectations with Azure. In reality, the procedure can be automated to a significant extent.
When transferring workloads to Azure, don’t think of it as a one-to-one server core migration. The cloud is infinitely more adaptable, allowing for unforeseen workloads and just paying for what you need. Plan for the pinnacle, but remember that you don’t have to stay at that level. When predicting baseline costs, consumption-based pricing can be less economical than supplied pricing when utilization is continuously high.
Consider the tradeoffs between cost-cutting and other design features like security, scalability, resilience, and operability. Understand that products such as Azure Advisor can only provide a snapshot of consumption during their discovery period. If your company has a lot of seasonal variations, you can save money on provisioning your base workloads, such as line-of-business apps, by reserving discounted virtual machine instances and capacity. Pay-as-you-go pricing kicks in when seasonal patterns and bursts of demand drive up usage.
Computer Solutions East can assist businesses in swiftly and efficiently lowering their Azure cloud platform expenditures. Azure deployment, integration, and cost optimization took only minutes, saving millions of dollars in cloud computing costs. As a Microsoft Azure cloud service partner, CSE is dedicated to helping you get the most out of your Azure investment by ensuring uninterrupted workflow, lowering IT expenses, accelerating time to market, and other desired business results.
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