Creeping Cloud Costs: Five Tips to Manage Azure Cloud Spend

Here’s what you already know about moving to the cloud: With the promise of reduced hardware, maintenance, facility and labor costs, cloud adoption can save your business a significant amount of money in operating and IT costs.

The reality, however, is that the cloud isn’t a silver bullet. Simply moving workloads to a cloud environment won’t automatically result in cost savings, and many IT teams struggle to fully get their rising cloud spend under control. In fact, on average, 30% of all cloud spend is actually wasted—and it’s money that most organizations can’t afford to throw away.

So, how can businesses take control of—and lower—creeping cloud costs? The key is to stay on top of your environment.

Navisite’s Director of Cloud Product Management Tom Monk and CTO of Cloud Technologies Peter Berry recently mapped out the key tips to helping companies reduce their cloud costs—especially when it comes to optimizing workloads on Azure. In this blog, we put together their top recommendations—and it’s a must read for both companies already up and running in Azure as well as those in the planning stages.

5 Tips for Reducing Azure Cloud Costs

1. Evaluate and eliminate resources that aren’t being used. Cloud waste is a common contributor to escalating cloud costs. For example, if a developer spins up a test environment but never removes it when testing is done, that instance is still running and incurring costs. It’s also possible that someone on the business team spun up resources to complete a project, but never deleted them once the project was finished. These resources are accruing monthly hidden costs that can really add up over time. Keeping track of resource usage on Azure starts by taking inventory—and making sure to end projects when they’re completed.

2. Appropriately size resources. In the rush to the cloud, it’s not uncommon for organizations to “lift and shift” workloads without taking time to do the upfront work to optimize infrastructure for the cloud and appropriately size resources. This could result in things like oversized instances because the actual compute power needed once you’ve migrated to Azure wasn’t evaluated. Even if you’re not using all of the available compute power, you’re still paying for it!

Bonus: You can “right-type” your Azure instances to ensure they are optimized for the specific function they are performing. For example, if you purchased a CPU-optimized instance that needs memory, make sure you’re paying for a memory-optimized instance, rather than a compute-intensive one. Otherwise, you’re paying for that compute power when your money could be better spent on a memory-optimized instance.

3. Use configurable test gaining. Work with a cloud service provider like Navisite to build scale sets that ensure you are only using the resources you need today. Azure provides the ability to easily and quickly scale up and down based on demand, so you no longer need to worry about future capacity requirements.

4. Turn off resources when they’re not in use. Just like you should turn off a light when you leave a room to save money, turning resources off that aren’t being used 24/7 will help you save on Azure cloud costs. This could mean overnight or on weekends when employees aren’t in the office. Note: this is separate from deleting resources that aren’t being used at all.

5. Consider refactoring your entire Azure workload with native tooling. If you completed a “lift-and-shift” to Azure, consider taking the next step to becoming cloud-native by refactoring your workloads. It may take time, resources and budget upfront, but it’s one of the only ways to truly experience all of the cloud-native benefits that can transform your business.

Are you ready to discover the full list of recommendations for achieving cloud savings on Azure? Watch Navisite’s webinar, “Tips and Tricks for Managing Your Azure Cloud Costs,” to learn more.  

Navisite is Here to Help You Get Your Cloud Costs Under Control

Navisite is a Gold Microsoft Partner and Azure Expert MSP, and our cloud experts are standing by to help you optimize your cloud deployment. To find out how Navisite can help you get started on your cloud journey or optimize cloud costs, contact us today. To learn about our Azure Cost Optimization Service, check out our data sheet.