1. Azure pricing calculator
In this video, we’ll walk through using Azure’s pricing calculator, an essential tool for estimating your Azure costs. Understanding how to accurately forecast cloud spending is essential for financial planning and budgeting within any organization.
First, we’ll navigate to the pricing calculator. You can access this tool whether you’re logged into your Azure account. By logging in, you can save your estimates for future reference, which can be handy when planning a project. However, for this demonstration, we’ll proceed with the logged-out version.
The pricing calculator offers various example scenarios, demonstrating how it can tailor estimates to specific use cases.
For our purpose, we’ll be looking at estimating the cost of individual products. We’re looking to get an estimated monthly cost for one virtual machine.
For our estimate, we’ll select Europe as the region and choose Linux Ubuntu as the operating system. Selecting the correct region and operating system is crucial, as costs can vary significantly based on these choices.
The virtual machine we require will need to run continuously every month for roughly 730 hours (aka 30 days) per month. This setup reflects a common scenario for projects needing around-the-clock availability.
Since we’ll be working on a long-term project, let’s commit to a 3-year savings plan. After entering all of our specifications, the calculator provides an estimated monthly cost. This is a starting point for budgeting, but actual costs can vary based on usage, additional services, and price changes. Continue to review your costs and estimates as the project evolves.
Now it’s your turn to forecast your cloud spend!
2. Let's practice!