How to understand and deal with the cost of Azure?

Question

I’ve known Azure for a long time, read a lot and watched several videos but never used it. What I know about payment is that you only pay for what you use.

It turns out that recently an acquaintance talked to me about a project he’s looking to develop, but he wanted to host on a dedicated server that his company owns. When I heard the project I saw that in fact Azure would be more suitable for resources, then he said he saw the calculator and that he realized that "easily you get to a cost of 10,000 per month".

This worries me a little, because if so, only larger companies would be able to use the platform, and it would be unviable for smaller companies and developers who are starting a project.

At the same time, I find it currently impossible to develop a project hosting on a single dedicated server, due to the high coupling that this will generate between the various parts of the application.

What seemed to me, however, was that this high price he realized was because he didn’t have much sense of what to include in the price calculator. In fact, even though I understand how to program using Azure resources, I can’t estimate with that calculator.

What I want to know is: is it really easy to arrive at such high costs in Azure? It is in fact unviable for an app that is starting and therefore will not get much revenue for a long time?

Taking into account that clearly Azure better meets the needs of the app, how could I handle the cost issue if it is in fact high? An alternative I thought was to build everything using Docker, host on the same dedicated server, and when it no longer supports, migrate to Azure. That would be a viable alternative, or one within Azure?

Answer 1

The main question is what resources do you want to consume from Azure? Because for each service offered there are several "Levels of service". Some features have levels up to free. For example, for the Web App service, there are levels:

• Free and Shared
• Basic Service Plan
• Standard service plan
• Premium service plan
• Premium service plan v2
• Isolated service plan

What will vary for each plan is the number of cores, ram memory, storage, load balance, backups & Restore, dedicated server availability.

That is why the price varies a lot from the first to the last level. The purpose of this is to serve all kinds of companies and not just large companies.

Answer 2

What I want to know is: it really comes easily at such high costs in Azure?

Yes, very easily, as it is very easy to scale any service on it - there is Azure SQL instance that cost USD 22K/month.

It is in fact unviable for an app that is starting and therefore will not get much revenue for a long time?

No, of course not, if you consume little, you will pay little. However, it is important to remember that Azure, especially if you use Paas, you practically replace employees. There are companies that have only developers, and no IT Pro guy, because they only use Paas. And if you transfer the cost of an IT Pro employee to a cloud infrastructure, the cloud is far more advantageous.

Taking into account that clearly Azure better meets the needs of the app, how could I handle the cost issue if it is in fact high? An alternative I thought was to build everything using Docker, host on the same dedicated server, and when it no longer supports, migrate to Azure. That would be a viable alternative, or one within Azure?

At first contact, it is normal for laymen to create hosting imagining it as a server. When provisioning a Paas, you choose the power of processing that will be dedicated to the application and not to every server. Example: If I am going to host an SQL Server on a Windows Server, I will need some 16GB RAM - that memory will be shared between the operating system, SQL Server, and to host the data swap that my application will consume. With Paas, I just select the last one, the memory dedicated to my application. So I can, for example, use only 4GB RAM, because my app is starting, and does not need more than that in swap.

The same occurs for hosting Webapp, many put 8Gb, 16gb and 8 colors. But they do thinking that this feature will be shared with the VM, and that’s not the case, if it’s Webapp, it’s Paas, then you choose what will be dedicated to your application. I have apps running at least - Standard A1, the recommended minimum for production - which has only 1 core and 1.75Gb RAM, but this is the dedicated one for my app.

Answer 3

It is really easy to arrive at such high costs in Azure?

Yes, you can reach high costs if you don’t properly configure the resources you really need. The purpose of Elastic Cloud is to scale exactly as needed, IE, you can use Azure paying absolutely 0 or having the highest cost, this all goes from configuration.

It is in fact unviable for an app that is starting and therefore will not get much revenue for a long time?

It is not impractical, on the contrary, I think it is totally feasible since you can start using features that have no cost, such as the Free and Shared layers, there are services in Azure that even in the free layer the limit is more than enough for a pilot project, or who is initiating.

To give you an idea, Azure’s Push Notification service has a free layer of 1,000,000 messages. The Application Service (WEBSITE HOSTING) has a FREE layer with 1GB of Ram and 1GB of Disk. 1 SQL Server Database in the most account layer, is around R $ 20,00. These are just a few examples that I mentioned, that is, if everything is used correctly, I believe that its cost will not be high. I believe that when your product demands a high cost from Azure you can be sure that you will be billing with the same.