Maximize Your Savings with Azure Advisor's Cost Optimization Workbook

The Azure Cost Optimization workbook is an invaluable tool designed to help you efficiently manage and optimise your Azure spending. By providing a detailed overview of your Azure environment, it offers actionable insights and recommendations grounded in the Well-Architected Framework's Cost Optimization pillar.

This workbook is readily available FREE to all Azure users, and there's an editable version as part of the FinOps toolkit for more tailored needs.

Getting Started

If you haven't yet explored this feature, getting started is a breeze. The workbook template is available in the Azure Advisor gallery and requires no initial setup. Here's how to begin:

• Navigate to the Azure Advisor blade within the Azure Portal
• Down the left-hand side menu find “Workbooks” and click on it

• You will find the “Cost Optimization” workbook under the Azure Advisor workbook list

• If you click on that workbook, it will be available for you to view and interact with. 

Cost Optimization Workbook

This workbook provides a dynamic view of your Azure costs across various dimensions. You can slice it down by subscription, resource group, location, service, and tag.

There are several sections to the workbook for you to explore and use:

• Overview: This includes an Overview section, Rate Optimization section, and Workload Optimization section.
• Additional Sections: These include Welcome, Resources Overview, Security Recommendations, and Reliability Recommendations.

Let’s break down these sections and why you’d want to use each of them.

Rate Optimization

The Rate Optimization tab offers strategies to reduce your Azure costs by addressing rate-related factors. This includes:

- Azure Hybrid Benefit: Learn how much you can save with Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHB) for Windows, Linux, and SQL databases, and how to enable it.

- Azure Reservations: Discover potential savings with Azure Reservations for compute, storage, and SQL resources, along with steps to purchase or modify reservations.

- Azure Savings Plan for Compute: Find out how to save using the Azure Savings Plan for Compute for virtual machines and app services, with guidance on purchasing or modifying savings plans.

Workload Optimization 

The Workload Optimization tab focuses on maximising resource efficiency. It provides tips to identify idle resources, manage improperly deallocated virtual machines, and implement other efficiency recommendations. 

This section covers:

• Compute: Best practices for optimising virtual machines and Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS).
• Storage: Strategies to optimise costs for storage accounts, disks, and backups.
• Networking: Tips for reducing costs associated with virtual networks, load balancers, VPN gateways, ExpressRoute circuits, and more.
• Databases: Optimization techniques for SQL databases and Cosmos DB.
• Sustainability: Insights on reducing your environmental impact by lowering carbon emissions of your Azure resources.
• Top 10 services: Cost-saving strategies for popular Azure services like Azure App Service, Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure Synapse and Monitoring. 

Resources overview

This is a map view of where your resources are located, it’s a great simple view to understand where your resources are located and concentrated. 

Security recommendations

This section will surface any of the security recommendations that Azure Advisor has collected and help you view them and action them accordingly. 

Reliability recommendations 

This section will surface any of the reliability recommendations that Azure Advisor has collected and help you view them and action them accordingly. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Azure Cost Optimization workbook is an essential resource for any Azure user looking to manage and reduce their cloud expenditure effectively. 

This free resource can be a great way of viewing and analysing what cost savings you can make.