Cost analysis is key to understanding resource usage and spending across your environment. Azure Cost Analysis is a free tool that provides visibility into your Azure cloud spending patterns. This information is critical to properly controlling and optimizing Azure costs. You can learn how much money each service costs, and how it serves your overall environment.
Cost Analysis can help you explore and analyze your cloud spending. Once the analysis is complete, you can view aggregated costs, learn where costs are accrued and identify Azure spending trends. You can also see accumulated costs over time and use this information to estimate quarterly, monthly or yearly cost trends against a certain budget.
This is part of our series of articles about Azure cost management.
In this article:
Here are some typical applications for Azure Cost Analysis.
You can view forecasted costs in the cost analysis area, using the stacked column view. Each forecast is based on historical resource use. This means that any changes to resource use will affect the predicted costs.
The default view includes a top chart with the Actual/Amortized cost section and a forecasted cost section. In the chart, the solid color shows the Actual/Amortized cost, while shaded colors show your predicted cost.
You can view costs for each Azure service you use. This can help you understand which parts of the infrastructure cost the most. For example, your virtual machine (VM) costs may be small. However, you can accumulate significant networking costs due to the amount of information emitted from your VMs. By understanding your primary cost drivers of each Azure service, you can adjust service usage and optimize costs.
Azure resources are used to build services. You can review costs according to resources and quickly identify the primary cost contributors. This view can help you learn if a service has expensive resources. You can then consider what changes to do to reduce your costs.
Related content: Read our guide to Azure cost optimization
The following is an outline of how you can use Azure Cost Analysis.
To access the Azure Cost analysis interface:
Note that the scope you choose will be used across the Cost Management interface. It is not possible to select multiple scopes. However, you can choose a larger scope that others can roll up to. You can then filter down to the required nested scopes.
Here are key areas included in the initial cost analysis view:
Here is an example of a graph displaying Azure costs for the current month:
By default, cost analysis displays the Actual cost, which includes all accumulated purchase and usage costs. The actual cost will be shown on your invoice, which is why this view is ideal for reconciling the invoice.
You might find purchase spikes, as displayed in the actual cost, alarming when monitoring spending anomalies and changes in cost. You can flatten spikes that are caused by reservation purchase costs. To do this, switch to Amortized cost.
The Amortized cost view breaks down your reservation purchases into several daily components, and then spreads these parts over the duration set for the reservation term. For example, instead of displaying a $1200 purchase on January 1, it displays a $100 purchase every day starting from January 1 and until December 31.
This view provides more than basic amortization. It reallocates costs and associates them by using the resources that made use of the reservation. For example, if the $100 daily charge was split between 2 VMs, the view displays two $50 charges per day. If the reservation was not used during the day, the view displays one $50 charge, which is associated with the relevant VM. In this case, it also displays another $50 charge, which is categorized as UnusedReservation. You can see unused reservations only when viewing your amortized costs.
Since costs are represented differently, your actual cost view and amortized cost view will display different totals. The total cost of months using a reservation purchase typically decreases when you view amortized costs. Months following a reservation purchase typically increase. You can use amortization only for reservation purchases. This option is currently not available for Azure Marketplace purchases.
You can easily customize views in cost analysis. Here is a quick rundown:
You can share the dashboard and allow other users to track costs from one place. Alternatively, you can share a direct link to a customized view. Users can then copy and personalize the view. You can share a link to a view by selecting Share.
Here are several important aspects to note:
Here is how to create a daily export of your usage and cost data:
In addition to subscriptions, you can also create exports on accounts, resource groups, enrollments and departments.
When done, a new export will appear in your list of exports. New exports are enabled by default. You can disable or delete your scheduled export by choosing any item from the list, and then selecting Disable or Delete.
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