How to understand and deal with the cost of Azure? [closed]

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How to understand and deal with the cost of Azure? [closed]

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I've known Azure for a long time, I read a lot and I saw several videos but I never used it. What I know about payment is that you only pay for what you use.

It turns out that recently an acquaintance talked to me about a project he wants to develop, but he wanted to host a dedicated server that his company owns. When I heard the project I saw that Azure would be more appropriate for resources, then he said he saw the calculator and realized that "it easily comes at a cost of 10,000 a month."

This worries me a bit, because if so, only larger companies would be able to use the platform, and it would be unfeasible for smaller companies and developers starting a project.

At the same time, I find it impractical to actually develop a hosting project on a single dedicated server, due to the high coupling this will generate between the various parts of the application.

What struck me, however, was that the high price he realized was that he had little idea of what to include in the price calculator. In fact, even though I understand how to program using Azure resources, I do not know how to estimate with that calculator.

What I want to know is: Do you really get to the Azure at such a high cost? Is it in fact impractical for an application that is starting and therefore will not have much revenue for a long time?

Given that Azure clearly meets the needs of the application, how could I handle the cost problem if it is really high? An alternative I thought was to build everything using Docker, to host the same dedicated server, and when it does not support more, migrate to Azure. Would this be a viable alternative, or would it have another within the same Azure?

asp.net-core windows-azure

asked by anonymous 22.08.2017 / 16:50

3 answers

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score 4 · Answer 1

The main question is what resources do you want to consume from Azure? For each service offered there are several "service levels". Some features have up to free levels . For example, for the Web Application service, there are levels:

Free and Shared
Basic Service Plan
Standard service plan
Premium service plan
Premium v2 service plan
Isolated service plan

What will vary for each plane is the number of cores, ram, storage, load balance, backups & restore, dedicated server availability.

So price varies greatly from the first to the last level. The purpose of this is to serve all types of company and not just large companies.

score 3 · Answer 2

Do you really come up with such high costs on Azure?

Yes, you can achieve high costs if you do not properly configure the features you really need. The Elastic Cloud proposal is exactly scalar as it is needed, that is, you can use Azure at absolutely zero cost or at very high cost, this goes from configuration.

Is it really unfeasible for an app that is starting and therefore will not have much revenue for a long time?

It is not impractical, on the contrary, I think it is totally feasible since you can start using features that have no cost, such as Free and Shared layers, there are services in Azure that even in the free layer the limit is more than sufficient for a pilot project, or that is starting.

To get an idea, the Azure Push Notification service has a free 1,000,000 message layer. The Application Service (SITE HOSTING) has a FREE layer with 1GB of Ram and 1GB of Disk. 1 SQL Server database in the most in-account layer, is around $ 20.00. These are just a few examples that I quoted, that is, if everything is used correctly, I believe its cost will not be high. I believe that when your product requires a high cost of Azure you can be sure that you will be invoicing with it.

score 3 · Answer 3

What I want to know is: Do you really get to the Azure at such a high cost?

Yes, quite easily, as it is very easy to scale any service on it - there is instance of Azure SQL that cost USD 22K / month.

Is it really impractical for an app that's starting and therefore will not have much revenue for a long time?

No, of course not, if you consume little, you will pay little. However, it is important to remember that Azure, especially if you use PaaS, you virtually replace employees. There are companies that only have developers, and no IT Pro guys, because they only use PaaS. And if you transfer the cost of an IT Pro employee to an infra-cloud, the cloud is much more advantageous.

Given that Azure clearly meets the needs of the application, how could I handle the cost problem if it is really high? An alternative I thought was to build everything using Docker, to host the same dedicated server, and when it does not support more, migrate to Azure. Would this be a viable alternative, or would it have another within the same Azure?

In a first contact, it is normal for laypeople to create hosting by imagining it as a server. When you provision a PaaS, you choose the processing power that will be dedicated to the application and not to every server. Example: If I am hosting a SQL Server on a Windows Server, I will need a 16GB RAM - that memory will be shared between the operating system, SQL Server, and to host the data swap that my application will consume. Already with PaaS, I only select this one, the memory dedicated to my application . So I can, for example, only use 4GB RAM, because my app is starting, and does not need more than that in swap.

The same goes for WebApp hosting, many put 8Gb, 16Gb and 8 colors. But they do think that this feature will be shared with the VM, and it is not the case, if it is WebApp, it is PaaS, so you choose what will be dedicated to your application. I have apps running at a minimum - Standard A1, the minimum recommended for production - which has only 1 core and 1.75Gb RAM, but that's the one dedicated to my app.