What is the Azure Advisor Cost Optimization workbook?
The Azure Cost Optimization workbook is a powerful tool that helps you monitor and optimize your Azure costs. It provides you with a comprehensive overview of your Azure environment and offers actionable insights and recommendations based on the Well-Architected Framework Cost Optimization pillar.
This workbook is natively available on Azure Advisor for all customers, and an editable version is also available as part of the FinOps toolkit.
Getting started
If you haven't used it already, the workbook template is offered in Advisor gallery and does not require any setup.
Here is how you can get started:
1) Navigate to Workbooks gallery in Azure Advisor.
2) Open Cost Optimization workbook template.
3) Select an area to explore.
Overview
The workbook provides a comprehensive and interactive view of your Azure costs across different dimensions, such as subscription, resource group, location, service, and tag. You can use the filters and selectors to customize the scope and time range of your analysis. You can also drill down into specific charts and tables to explore the details of your cost data. The workbook helps you identify and track your spending trends, anomalies, and opportunities for optimization. It also enables you to compare your current costs with your budgets and forecasts and monitor your savings progress over time.
Rate Optimization
The Rate Optimization tab focuses on strategies to optimize your Azure costs by addressing rate-related factors. It includes insights from Advisor cost recommendations, guidance on the utilization of Azure Hybrid Benefit options for Windows, Linux, and SQL databases, and more. It also includes recommendations for commitment-based discounts, such as Reservations and Azure Savings Plans. Rate optimization is critical for reducing the hourly or monthly cost of your resources.
- Azure Hybrid Benefit: This subtab shows you how much you can save by using Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHB) for your Windows, Linux, and SQL databases. You can see the eligible and ineligible resources, the current and potential savings, and the steps to enable AHB for your resources.
- Azure Reservations: This subtab shows you how much you can save by using Azure Reservations for your compute, storage, and SQL resources. You can see the reservation recommendations, the current and potential savings, and the steps to purchase or modify reservations.
- Azure Savings Plan for Compute: This subtab shows you how much you can save by using Azure Savings Plan for Compute for your virtual machines and app services. You can see the savings plan recommendations, the current and potential savings, and the steps to purchase or modify savings plans.
Usage Optimization
The Usage Optimization tab focuses on ensuring that your Azure resources are used efficiently. This tab provides guidance to identify idle resources, manage improperly deallocated virtual machines, and implement recommendations to enhance resource efficiency. Focus on usage optimization to maximize your resource utilization and minimize costs.
- Compute: This subtab shows you how to optimize your compute costs by using the best practices for virtual machines and Virtual Machine Scale Sets(VMSS) .
- Storage: This subtab shows you how to optimize your storage costs by using the best practices for storage accounts, disks, and backups.
- Networking: This subtab shows you how to optimize your networking costs by using the best practices for virtual networks, load balancers, VPN gateways, ExpressRoute circuits and more.
- Databases: This subtab shows you how to optimize your database costs by using the best practices for SQL databases and Cosmos DB.
- Sustainability: This subtab shows you how to optimize your Azure costs while reducing your environmental impact. You can see the carbon emissions of your Azure resources and the steps to lower them by using more efficient or renewable resources.
- Other popular Azure services: This subtab shows you how to optimize your costs for other popular Azure services, such as Log Analytics, Azure Kubernetes Services, Web Applications and more.
Are you looking for more?
This was a high-level overview of the workbook tabs, however if you want to know in more details what each tab can do, we have it documented. This page explains the purpose and functionality of each tab and query, as well as the parameters and filters that you can use to customize them. You can also find links to other resources and documentation that can help you optimize your costs on Azure.
Edit your copy of the workbook
If you want to customize the Azure Cost Optimization workbook to suit your specific needs, you can make an editable copy of it from the FinOps toolkit. The FinOps toolkit is a collection of resources and tools that help you implement best practices for cost optimization on Azure. To edit your copy of the workbook, refer to this link.
Feedback
We hope that you find the Azure Cost Optimization workbook useful and that it helps you optimize your Azure spending. We are constantly working to improve the workbook and add new features and enhancements. We welcome your feedback and suggestions on how we can make it better. Please feel free to submit any suggestions through the FinOps Toolkit GitHub repository.
You can also find me on LinkedIn where I share some shorter posts about Azure cost optimization, feel free to connect with me there also.
Thanks again for your support and I'll see you in the next one!