One of the most common reasons for migrating to the cloud is reducing costs. However, simply switching to a cloud environment does not accomplish this. There are additional steps that must be taken in order to maximize your investment, regardless of the cloud provider that you choose.
Let’s take a look at some of the ideal ways to optimize costs and avoid unnecessary expenses on Microsoft Azure.
Resize Virtual Machines (VMs)
Azure pricing depends on how much compute power and memory each VM offers. To optimize costs for VMs, they need to run at nearly full capacity most of the time. Usage fluctuates throughout the day, so checking Azure Monitor metrics can help you easily identify usage patterns.
Additionally, leveraging Autoscaling is the best way to keep pace with traffic demand and ensure accessibility. This Azure feature automatically scales the number of virtual machines up or down according to traffic and demand. It is advisable to continue monitoring how the system is scaling to avoid issues, but Autoscaling works to ensure system availability during peak traffic and conserves resources during low traffic hours.
Shift Workloads to Containers
With the rise in cloud services adoption, organizations increasingly look to utilize microservices, such as containers, to build modern applications. Containers are more lightweight than VMs and provide lower costs because of the smaller footprint and faster operability they provide.
Kubernetes is an open-source orchestration software for deploying, managing and scaling container apps faster. Due to the complexity of installing, updating, and maintaining a Kubernetes instance, Microsoft offers Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), which is a fully managed hosting platform for managing cloud infrastructure that helps to reduce management overhead by simplifying resource management, update deployment, monitoring, and integration.
Go Serverless
Serverless computing is growing by leaps and bounds due to the need for simplified resource management. Azure Functions is an event-driven serverless computing solution that lets you run code as functions without the need to provision or manage any servers.
In situations where resources are needed for burst workloads, Azure Functions is ideal. In these cases, Azure Functions helps to prevent over-allocation of resources like a VM, which is unnecessary because of its footprint. You need only to define how much compute, memory, and storage your code needs to run and Azure Functions does the rest.
Additionally, you are only paying for the resources that you use, which helps avoid costs of renting or reserving VMs. Serverless requires the least maintenance overhead and allows you to deliver applications and features more quickly.
Archive Data and Utilize Long-Term Storage
In addition to compute, Azure Storage is a vital service that is used to store application data. Within it, there is scope for optimization if you can identify data that can be moved to the cheaper storage options that are available within Azure.
Azure Blob Storage has options to store data as premium, hot, cold or archive. The pricing of these is based upon the access frequency; the more often it is accessed, the more the storage tier costs, so savings can certainly be realized by moving data to the cold or archive options, but careful thought should be given to the usage of the specific data to not offset those savings.
Partner with an Experienced Managed Services Provider
Partnering with a Managed Services Provider who has deep Azure experience may be one of the best investments that you can make. They will be able to review your Azure usage and recommend cost optimizations via deep dive sessions to identify opportunities to reduce app footprint, optimize storage usage, identify security vulnerabilities, gain visibility into unused instances and maximize your Azure investment.
Wellforce is providing a free cybersecurity review and workshop for up to ten customers in December. The workshop is funded by Microsoft and Wellforce to help your organizations secure your environment and deliver compliance.
If interested in this free cybersecurity review and workshop, please email us your contact information at info@wellforceit.com.
コメント