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Microsoft Azure Optimisation: Expert Tips and Tricks for Optimising the Cloud

Boost your cloud computing performance and save costs across IT spend

Microsoft Azure Optimisation from Valto

Microsoft Azure is the preferred cloud services provider for countless digital first businesses around the world. Moving to the cloud means greater reliability, lowered risk, enhanced cyber security, minimised infrastructure costs and countless other benefits that help save budget and resource.

Identifying the cost savings available to cloud users is one of the key Azure services our team provides. Valto is an official Microsoft Gold Partner, and our Azure optimisation services will enhance your cloud services, cut down on cost and free up opportunities for your team.

We can provide an Azure health check as part of a managed service where we will focus on your Azure environments and reserve instances to ensure minimal overspend and optimisation. Your Valto Azure advisor will get to know your business, goals, budget and resources to create a personalised optimisation plan that works for you.

Our team of Azure consultants will take all the hassle out of streamlining and optimising your Microsoft Azure cloud environments. We’ll make sure everything is running smoothly, identify areas to save, and compute resources so you and your team can perform at your best.

Give our team a call for a quote and overview of our optimisation and cost saving services

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The Azure Optimisation Process

Analysis of existing structure and spend

The first process in identifying any cost savings within your Azure services is to first find where the majority of spend within your Azure subscription is going. There are a number of ways to do this depending on how your subscription is setup.

Pay as you go – Using the out of the box tools your Azure advisor can show you how to export your organisation’s existing usage into an Excel spreadsheet for easy analysis. Azure settings has a billing tab which can give a breakdown of your existing usage so you can see where your budget goes.

Cloud Service Provider – Companies like Valto (an official Microsoft Gold Partner) can provide a breakdown of the costs in a CSV format.

Enterprise Agreement – Microsoft Azure Enterprise Agreement subscribers have the ability to connect directly to PowerBI using the Microsoft Azure Enterprise content pack. You can read more details here, or give one of our team a call for a quick overview.

Once you’ve downloaded or viewed the information it’s best to take a snapshot of the last full month or an average of the last three months for a complete picture, accounting for any discrepancies in output or seasonality. Breaking this down into the core Azure Type (for example Virtual Machine, Azure SQL Server, App Service, etc) is a key method for identifying opportunities to cut costs. A simple pie chart can illustrate the monthly spend, as below (this can be automated in a monthly report in Excel or PowerBI which helps with management going forward). With Valto, our team will provide a full report detailing your usage.

Azure Optimisation - Sample Spend

This simple overview clearly identifies where the biggest spend is within your subscription and where the biggest cost savings can be achieved from the Azure Optimisation process.

From here, your Azure advisor can analyse the data and help with cost optimisation, using the below tips and tricks on identifying cost savings.

Identify cost savings within Azure subscriptions

Effective Azure Optimisation involves looking at all parts of the Azure environment including how the subscriptions are currently being paid for.

Different payment methods work best for different businesses. At Valto we’ve worked with countless business in dozens of industries, and have seen how different Azure payment plans and subscriptions can benefit different teams.

For most enterprises, Azure pay as you go pricing can end up being more costly, depending on usage and cloud services. Two possible alternatives are:

Cloud Solution Provider – You can purchase an Azure subscription directly through CSP Provider such as Valto and benefit from cost savings of around 3-10% on your existing spend.

Enterprise Agreement – If you’re spending a considerable amount through Microsoft, including all of your licensing for various users, an EA can help you identify up to 30% cost saving for some services.

Virtual Machine sizing optimisation

Virtual Machines within Azure should be optimised so they are only running with the resources they require. For example, a machine running with 4 Cores and 14GB RAM that is showing only 25% utilisation on CPU and RAM indicates that the machine has 75% of the resources not being utilised. It’s important that when analysing the environment, you make sure you’re checking the following:

Average Run Time
Peak Run Time

Using the built-in reporting from Azure we can pull off different measures for example CPU usage, as shown below.

The graph above shows the average utilisation for this Microsoft Azure account is around 4-5% with a peak up to 65%. With our customised cloud cost optimisation services, our team would identify why there was a peak and if this is likely to reoccur.

Another example can be found below. This example indicates that only 4-5% of the CPU is being utilised. Therefore, this account is a good candidate for reducing the virtual machine size.

Of course, we need to compute resources and check other factors including memory utilisation and disc usage. If this analysis showed similar results to the above, the machine size could be lowered for potential cost savings.

When our specialists carry out a health check like this, they’re looking for machines that have anything from 1% to 35% peak usage. This is because this means that lowering the size of the machine by half would effectively double the usage from 30% to 60%, as an example.

There can be huge cost savings optimising the usage of virtual machines in Azure, given that the architecture and way money is spent is vastly different from traditional infrastructure (where resources can often be over allocated with no impact).

Additionally, SQL server environments should be checked for potential cost savings. The core licensing means businesses can often make a double saving on computer and ongoing licenses costs by reducing the sizes. The memory for an SQL server is often programmed to consume everything it has available to it as a default. So, a more detailed analysis and checks can identify areas to cut back on and unlock cost savings.

Once an optimised machine size has been identified, our Azure specialists will implement the fix and monitor and test over a period of time to ensure that no negative performance impact has been made.

Azure SQL Optimisation

If you’re making use of Azure SQL server within your environment (not to be confused with SQL running on virtual machines) and not making use of elastic pools, often a cost saving can be made here. If you’re not sure which type of SQL server you’re currently using, give one of our team a quick call for help.

With Azure SQL, each database is given its own server environment. For small and low usage environments, this is often overkill and an easy way to overspend. An elastic pool can best be described as a shared database server to which you can transfer all of your databases and into which you can share all of the resources (CPU, memory, etc.).

Changing over to Elastic Pools can be a relatively simple process, and your Valto Azure advisor can assist with this as part of your managed service. More details can be found here.

Azure App Service Consolidation

App Service Plans allow you to create a shared server for all of your web applications and split the resources across them. If you’re taking advantage of Azure App Service, ensure you’re combining them where you can, especially for the lower utilised web apps.

Azure Hybrid Use

Azure Hybrid Use allows you to utilise your existing Software Assurance licenses when you transition into Azure. This stops you from double paying for the Windows Server licenses which are included in the cost of Azure by default.

This is an interesting option if you’re planning on moving to Azure in the middle of an existing agreement, with the potential to save around 40% and only pay for the compute costs.

Auto Scaling

If you’re using Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets, App Services or Cloud Services, you can automatically scale the compute available on pre-defined or automatic rules. This means if your environment isn’t needed during quiet periods (such as the middle of the night or weekends) it can automatically deallocate the available resources, or even completely turn the environment off.

For environments, such as large remote Desktop Services or VDI type environments, Azure cost savings can be found by deploying the environment in a way that will scale up and down easily. For example, having many Remote Desktop Session Hosts that can be powered off during low usage periods (like out of office hours) or even having them automatically power on during a busy period (such as month end or reporting weeks).

With Azure, when deploying the environment these factors such as busy times, peak periods should all be factored in and auto scaling/shutdowns be implemented to ensure money is not being wasted. As part of our optimisation service and Azure health check, our team will analyse your organisation’s usage to identify key areas for cost savings.

Azure Advisor

Azure Advisor analyses your organisation’s resource configuration and usage, and then recommends solutions that can help you improve high availability, security, performance, and cost-effectiveness of your Azure resources. It’s an intuitive and intelligent tool that can compute resources and reserve instances, identifying cost optimisation opportunities.

To start using Azure Advisor, all you need to do is click the below icon and run it on each of your subscriptions.

More details can be found here, or ask your Valto Azure consultant to take care of this for you.

Start saving with Valto and Azure Cost Optimisation

As part of our Azure health check managed service, your business could save up to 75% of your existing costs with our Azure Optimisation Report. Our dedicated Azure consultants will take care of the entire assessment, so it’s completely hassle-free for your team.

If you’re currently migrating to Azure and would like to ensure that you are building the environment with the best cost saving practices in mind, our team can help design your environment and ensure the costs will be predictable and sustainable.

If you’re already utilising Azure and want to identify cost saving opportunities, we can provide an Azure Optimisation Workshop and report with recommendations.

Ready to save on Azure with Valto? Get started with a simple chat

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Microsoft Azure Optimisation: Expert Tips and Tricks for Optimising the Cloud

Microsoft Azure Optimisation from Valto

The Azure Optimisation Process

Analysis of existing structure and spend

Identify cost savings within Azure subscriptions

Virtual Machine sizing optimisation

Azure SQL Optimisation

Azure App Service Consolidation

Auto Scaling

Azure Advisor

Start saving with Valto and Azure Cost Optimisation

Our Core IT Services

Terms & Conditions

UK Offices

US Office

Microsoft Azure Optimisation: Expert Tips and Tricks for Optimising the Cloud

Microsoft Azure Optimisation from Valto

The Azure Optimisation Process

Analysis of existing structure and spend

Identify cost savings within Azure subscriptions

Virtual Machine sizing optimisation

Azure SQL Optimisation

Azure App Service Consolidation

Auto Scaling

Azure Advisor

Start saving with Valto and Azure Cost Optimisation

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Our Core IT Services

Terms & Conditions

UK Offices

US Office