Cost

As you would expect, almost everything in the cloud costs money. Several pricing models exist:

• Per-Resource - e.g. a Virtual Macing.
• Per-Consumption - e.g. Function Apps.
• Reservations - i.e. We pay up front for a resource (great if we know the future usage), and get a discount on the price as a result.

A resource cost should always be checked before provisioning (like anything you buy), check for more cost-effective alternatives for your use-case, and look for reservations to bring down the cost when available and relevant to your situation.

The prime way for calculating the cost of a service is by using the Azure Calculator.

Cost Management

This is a central hub for managing costs in Azure.

The Budgets tab can be used to set up a notification when we are approaching a defined limit for our budget over a selectable period (e.g. Monthly or annually). This is also configurable by the amount (%, £), actual limit, notification type, etc.

Multiple budget alerts can be defined.