The SQL Database rightsizing insights were not evident in Azure to save cost

This customer has been using Azure for many years and it had not been identified that the databases were not utilized in a way which matches their configuration and also that the configuration was probably incorrect.

Turbo360 Uncovers $50k Monthly Savings on Azure SQL Database

One of our customers begun using Turbo360 and democratized management of cost out to their engineering and operation teams with a layer of governance provided by the FinOps team. While one application team was analysing their costs it became evident that there were a number of SQL databases used by applications the team looks after that were over provisioned.

You can see below that the Turbo360 rightsizing feature is showing up a number or resources that could be reconfigured to a different SKU.

In this case the most notable one was the top SQL database. We can use Turbo360 to open up the database usage overview and see that it is not heavily used at all.

This particular database had shown a saving of approximately $4000 per month.

Upon investigation we could see that this database is configured as a Business Mission Critical SQL Azure Database.

This database was used for non-production purposes in the UAT environment.

Immediately it was clear that the database and application setup for this database had followed a cookie cutter approach without consideration for the context of how the application would be used. With this being a UAT database its highly unlikely you would want a Business Critical plan and we could change that and reconfigure the database to suit its usage pattern.

Configuration Changes

The changes we took followed the pattern below.

• Step 1 – Reconfigure

The first thing we did was to change the database from Business Critical to General Purpose. This almost halves the cost.

• Step 2 – Rightsize

We then change the database to 4 vCores which better matches the usage requirements in line with the Turbo360 rightsizing recommendations.

• Step 3 – Optimize Workload

We then used the Turbo360 scheduler feature to reconfigure the database on a time schedule so that when everyone goes home we reduce the size of the database to 2 vCores and we scale it up when people are in the office.

A summary of these changes are below:

	Before	After – Up	After – Out of hours
Tier	Business Critical	General Purpose	General Purpose
vCores	16	4	2
Cost p/m	$4399	$700	$350
Duration	24h	8h	16h
Time window	24h	9am – 5pm	5pm – 9am

Conclusion

As result of these changes, this one database had a significant cost reduction from approximately $49,000 per month.

The customer was also able to action other cost recommendations in rightsizing which resulted in about $9,000 per month worth of cost savings.