With Azure Virtual Machines, and the support for Linux, Windows Server, Oracle, SQL Server, IBM, SAP, you get the ultimate virtualization flexibility for a huge variety of computing solutions. Load balancing and auto-scaling are included free of charge with all current-generation Virtual Machines. You are recommended to use Managed Disks with your Virtual Machines for maximum performance. Egress charges are standard.
You have the option of paying for Virtual Machines in the following ways. You may save even more money by combining any choice with the Azure Hybrid Benefit on the platform.
Pay as you go
For compute capacity, pay by the second has neither long-term commitment nor upfront expenditures. On-demand, you can increase or reduce computational capability. It enables you to start and stop whenever you want, and you only have to pay for what you use.
It’s ideal for:
- Users that like Azure Virtual Machines because of their low cost and versatility.
- Applications that have uninterruptible short-term, spiky, or unpredictable demands.
- Applications that are being developed or tested on Azure Virtual Machines for the first time.
Reserved Virtual Machine Instances
An Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instance is a one- or three-year advance purchase of a Virtual Machine in a certain region. An upfront commitment is made in exchange for a price reduction of up to 72% as compared to the pay-as-you-go pricing model. Virtual Machine Instances that have been reserved are flexible and can be simply exchanged or returned.
It’s ideal for:
- Applications that rely on steady-state behavior.
- Customers who want to know how much money they’ll have at the end of the month.
- Customers who are willing to commit to utilizing a virtual machine (VM) for a year or three years to save money on computing.
Spot Pricing
The platform provides you with an option to purchase unused compute capacity at a significant discount which is up to 90% off – pay-as-you-go costs.
Spot VMs can drastically reduce the cost of operating your workload in Azure if your job can tolerate interruptions and has a flexible execution time. Use Virtual Machines or Virtual Machine Scale Sets to run your workloads.
However, the actual discounts will vary depending on the region, VM type, and available Azure compute capacity when the workload is launched.
It’s ideal for:
- Customers that desire to drastically reduce their expenses.
- Applications that can face interruptions. Before your application is evicted, you can receive a notification 30 seconds in advance.
- Workloads that do not require completion within a set deadline or a service level agreement (SLA).
Virtual Machines Pricing
Starting with their cost-effective Bs-series to the newest GPU VMs optimized for machine learning, Azure Virtual Machines are suited for all budgets and workloads.
Payment Options –
- General-purpose
- Compute-optimized
- Memory-optimized
- Storage optimized
- GPU
- High performance compute
Pricing a Windows Virtual Machine
- Choose a region (where the Azure data center is physically located), an operating system, and a kind (if you want to add BizTalk or SQL). Just keep in mind that the operating system license is included in the virtual machine price.
- The next step requires you to choose a tier i.e., Basic, Low Priority, or Standard. The standard tier is the most expensive category out of all three. Whereas Basic & Low Priority is the most affordable one. However, this cost reduction factor comes at the expense of some of the functionalities.
- Next, you need to choose an Instance. Instances are grouped in a Series, and their common combinations are packaged together as an instance. As an example, a D2 v3 machine setup will have 2 vCPUs, 8GB of RAM, and 50GB of temporary storage.
Billing options
Unless you have an Enterprise Agreement or purchase through a Cloud Solutions Provider, Pay as you Go will be your default billing option. In this option, the monthly spending gets deducted from your credit card.
Managed OS Disks
You’ll need to add one managed operating system disc and decide if a normal disc will suffice or if a Solid State Drive would provide more performance (SSD). Your storage transactions will be charged as actuals, although they are estimated. When data is submitted, accessed, or removed, a transaction is created.
Support
Although Microsoft will provide you with support for the Cloud infrastructure, it also offers additional assistance which can be purchased.
Dev/Test Pricing
If you wish to build or test a concept in Azure, Microsoft offers its users a few price options. Toggle this on to change the pricing based on one of the current deals.
Final Words
Whether you’re setting up a short-term testing workload or wanting to shift production capabilities longer-term, accurate estimating of your Cloud budget and effectively using Azure is a valuable skill to master. Explore how Cloud computing works and build your career with robust Azure training.
After AWS, Microsoft is currently the world’s second most popular cloud platform. To keep up with the increased demand for Azure and Microsoft cloud services, Microsoft is constantly increasing cloud capacity. It has been rapidly closing the market share gap between itself and AWS. Microsoft Azure is in high demand in the worldwide public cloud industry, and it is increasing.
This states that the global public cloud market has a bright future ahead of it, and cloud demand is growing by the day. This means this is the right time to gain the right skills to uplift your career.
The Microsoft Azure training course offered by Cognixia prepares learners for the Microsoft AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator certification exam.
With this course, IT professionals will learn how to manage their Azure subscriptions, secure identities, administer the infrastructure, configure virtual networking, connect Azure & on-premises sites, implement storage solutions, manage network traffic, create & scale virtual machines, implement web apps & containers, back up and share data, as well as monitor their solution in this course.
In this AZ-104 training, you will learn the following –
- Module 1: Identity
- Module 2: Governance and Compliance
- Module 3: Azure Administration
- Module 4: Virtual Networking
- Module 5: Intersite Connectivity
- Module 6: Network Traffic Management
- Module 7: Azure Storage
- Module 8: Azure Virtual Machines
- Module 9: Serverless Computing
- Module 10: Data Protection
- Module 11: Monitoring
