Azure offers diverse cloud resources that empower businesses, but managing costs can be challenging without a clear view of expenses per resource. For organizations, understanding Azure costs per resource is essential to optimize spending, predict expenses, and make data-driven decisions.
This blog will guide you through calculating and monitoring costs for individual Azure resources, using native tools like Azure Cost Management, and providing tips on reducing unnecessary expenses. By mastering these insights, you can maintain a well-budgeted, efficient cloud environment that aligns with your business goals.
Importance of Analyzing Azure Cost per Resource
When managing Azure expenses, viewing costs at the subscription level gives a broad overview and helps set an overall budget. However, analyzing costs at the resource level provides more granular insights.
This level of detail allows you to see not only what each resource is costing but also its purpose and current relevance. For instance, resources may be created by the development team and later left unused after the project is completed. Such “orphaned” resources continue to accumulate charges, resulting in unnecessary costs.
Beyond this, organizations often use Azure for different purposes, such as development, testing, and production. Analyzing costs per resource can help allocate expenses accurately across these categories, allowing teams to better control spending and prevent budget overruns. It also helps identify high-cost resources, which can then be right-sized or optimized to reduce costs further.
Analyzing costs at the resource level also helps maintain cost transparency within teams and departments, as they can quickly see where their budgets are being spent and make adjustments to improve efficiency. Without this granular visibility, budgeting at the subscription level often lacks the actionable insights needed to fine-tune spending and maximize cost-effectiveness in the cloud environment.
Is It Possible to Analyze Azure Cost Based on Cost per Resource Using Native Tools?
Yes, Azure provides native tools that allow you to analyze costs at the resource level, helping you break down spending and manage budgets effectively. The primary feature for this is Azure Cost Management + Billing, which offers robust features for tracking, analyzing, and optimizing cloud expenses directly within the Azure portal.
To analyze costs per resource, you can follow these steps:
- Navigate to Azure Cost Management: In the Azure portal, go to Cost Management + Billing and select the Cost Analysis feature. Here, you can view a detailed breakdown of costs by resource.
- Filter and Group Costs by Resource: Use filters and grouping options to segment costs by specific resources, such as virtual machines, storage accounts, or databases. Grouping by tags (e.g., “Development” or “Production”) also helps associate costs with particular projects or departments.
- Set Budgets and Alerts: With Cost Management, you can set budget thresholds and enable alerts. This allows teams to monitor spending proactively and receive notifications when approaching set budgets, helping to manage costs in real time.
How to Analyze Azure Costs per Resource Using Turbo360
Turbo360 Azure cost management tool offers powerful tools for granular cost analysis, helping organizations monitor Azure expenses down to each individual resource across multiple subscriptions in a single view. With features specifically designed for detailed financial insight, Turbo360 can provide deeper visibility and control over cloud spending. Here’s a guide on how to use Turbo360 to effectively analyze costs per resource in your Azure environment.
Navigate to Turbo360’s Cost Analyzer
Start by logging into Turbo360 and navigating to the Cost Analyzer section which has been created by using FinOps best practice. Cost Analyzer’s Analysis helps dive into each Azure resource’s costs, allowing you to see exactly how expenses are allocated across various services, such as virtual machines, storage accounts etc. This level of detail makes it easier to understand and manage the costs associated with specific services.
Detailed Resource-Level Cost Analysis
Turbo360’s Resource Insights feature allows for a clear, resource-level breakdown of costs. Use the filters to organize data by specific projects, departments, or tags, refining your view based on organizational needs. In the Analysis section of the Cost Analyzer, costs are displayed in a color-coded view, highlighting expenses by resource.
This intuitive visualization not only aids in identifying high-cost items but also allows for grouping and filtering of resources, even across multiple Azure subscriptions. This capability simplifies analysis, enabling you to aggregate and compare resource costs across various departments or projects within your organization based on specific needs.
Cost Comparison
Turbo360 offers the ability to compare the costs for each and every individual resource over two different time frames, which is essential for recognizing spending trends and fluctuations. For instance, you can compare a specific Virtual Machine’s (VM) costs from last quarter to this quarter or any custom time intervals.
If you observe a cost increase, you can drill down further to understand the reasons—such as a scaling event, changes in usage patterns, or additional configuration adjustments that may have impacted expenses. This feature enables proactive cost management by identifying resource behavior that impacts costs over time.
Budgets and Reporting
Turbo360 enables users to set custom budgets and monitor them effectively using Group Budgets and Automatic Anomaly Detection. Group budgets can be customized based on different unit levels such as Application levels, Project levels, department levels or any preferred grouping. Automatic anomaly detection notifies users of sudden cost spikes, which are customizable by percentage, helping to identify and address unexpected charges in real-time.
One of the key value propositions however when viewing costs with Turbo360 is that we can group the costs into manageable chunks depending on the teams who look after the resources. Remember the best way to be cost-efficient is to let the teams who run the application take ownership for the costs. In Turbo360 you are not bound by the constraints of the subscription/resource group model. Your team can create groupings that are appropriate for them and then manage those costs together without needing to be an Azure expert.
Conclusion
Effectively managing Azure costs requires detailed visibility, especially at the resource levels. While Azure’s native Cost Management tools provide solid functionality for tracking and optimizing expenses, Turbo360 offers enhanced capabilities, especially for organizations managing multiple subscriptions cost in a single pane or needing advanced comparisons and insights.
Turbo360’s Cost Analyzer being a FinOps solution, makes it a powerful complement to Azure’s tools. By leveraging Cost Analyzer, businesses can identify costly resources seamlessly by reducing manual efforts, optimize usage patterns, and set up proactive alerts, ensuring cloud budgets are maintained efficiently.
