Recently the Azure Advisor Cost Optimization Workbook was made available in Public Preview. This workbook aims to provide a centralised location that enables a number of common methods for identifying cost optimization opportunities, aligned to the Well Architected Framework Cost Optimization Pillar. It is a great place to start a cost optimization journey and make effective changes to ensure optimal cloud costs.
✅ For this post, I’ll be testing this with a demo environment to highlight what the Workbook can do!
You can read more about this workbook here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/updates/public-preview-assess-cost-optimization-opportunities-using-new-workbook-template-in-azure-advisor/
Creating an inefficient environment for testing
For my own test, I’ve chosen to deploy and tweak an existing Terraform environment, from my own Library. To do this, I’ve created a new version of my Single Region Azure Baselab V2 – but a version that is inefficient and has a number of great opportunities to save cost. For example, the adjusted version has:
- Unattached Public IPs
- Unattached Disks
- Storage Accounts that are not V2
- A Virtual Network Gateway – which I’ve not connected to anything.
You can download a copy of this version within my GitHub Repo here: https://github.com/jakewalsh90/Terraform-Azure/tree/main/Cost-Optimization-Example-Lab
If you require a guide on deploying this environment, please check out my “Terraform Getting Started” Guide – here.
Once the environment is deployed, you will see lots of Azure Resources like the below:
We can now start testing out the Workbook!
Testing out the Workbook
To test this Workbook, browse to Azure Advisor, and then Workbooks, and click on “Cost Optimization (Preview)”:
Once the Workbook is loaded, we can then start using the main tabs – where we will explore recommendations:
Within these Tabs we can now start to explore Cost Optimization opportunities. These will vary based on your environment and Resources – so the samples below are based on my demo environment.
Storage – Storage Accounts that are not V2:
Storage – Unattached Disks:
As you can see – Unattached disks also provides a workflow to remove these disks from within the Workbook:
Networking – Unattached Public IPs:
Networking – Idle Virtual Network Gateways:
As you can see, this Workbook provides a great way to identify many common Cost Optimization opportunities within Azure Environments. Whilst there are many more options and opportunities available for cost optimization, this is a great place to start with many of the common opportunities covered and easily identifiable.
Until next time – thanks for reading!
Resources and Additional Reading
- https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/updates/public-preview-assess-cost-optimization-opportunities-using-new-workbook-template-in-azure-advisor/
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/advisor/advisor-cost-optimization-workbook
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/well-architected/cost/principles
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/finops/overview-finops
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/costs/cost-mgt-alerts-monitor-usage-spending?source=recommendations