Cost-saving in Azure is a major concern for SREs and DevOps teams, especially at leadership levels. Here are some real-time, practical scenarios and strategies to reduce cost effectively:
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1. Right-size Virtual Machines (VMs)
Scenario: Your Dev environment uses D-series VMs but is idle most of the day. Action:
Downsize to B-series (burstable) or auto-scale down in off-hours.
Use Azure Advisor to get right-sizing recommendations.
Savings: 30–50% on compute costs.
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2. Use Reserved Instances (RIs) or Savings Plans
Scenario: Long-term production workloads running 24/7. Action:
Buy 1 or 3-year Reserved VM Instances or Azure Savings Plan.
Apply to VMs, App Service Plans, SQL Databases.
Savings: Up to 72% over pay-as-you-go pricing.
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3. Auto-shutdown for Dev/Test Environments
Scenario: Dev/test VMs run overnight when no one is using them. Action:
Use auto-shutdown policies for VMs (via Azure DevTest Labs or automation scripts).
Savings: Up to 60–70% in non-production environments.
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4. Use Azure Spot Instances for Batch/Non-critical Jobs
Scenario: Running CI/CD builds or batch processing. Action:
Use Spot VMs where interruptions are tolerable.
Savings: 60–90% cheaper than regular VMs.
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5. Move to PaaS or Serverless where possible
Scenario: Hosting a website on VMs. Action:
Migrate to App Services or Azure Functions.
Eliminate OS patching, scaling, and reduce compute costs.
Savings: Varies, but generally 40–60% cost reduction + operational simplicity.
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6. Containerize & Use AKS with Scaling
Scenario: Static services running in VMs. Action:
Containerize apps, deploy in AKS, and use Horizontal Pod Autoscaler + Cluster Autoscaler.
Savings: Pay only for active workloads, reduce idle capacity cost.
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7. Optimize Storage Tiering
Scenario: All data stored in Premium SSD, including old logs. Action:
Move infrequently accessed data to Cool or Archive tiers.
Savings: Archive blob storage is ~90% cheaper than hot storage.
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8. Use Azure Cost Management + Budgets
Scenario: No visibility into spend. Action:
Set up budgets, alerts, and cost analysis dashboards.
Group by resource group, department, or tags.
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9. Eliminate Unused Resources
Scenario: Orphaned disks, public IPs, unused VMs. Action:
Use Azure Advisor or Cost Analysis to identify and clean up.
Savings: Immediate.
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10. Networking Optimizations
Scenario: Large data egress between services. Action:
Use VNet Peering instead of VPN Gateway for internal comms.
Avoid unnecessary inter-region traffic.
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