Top 3 automations to improve Azure efficiencies – and drive down cloud costs

Here, CloudWize’s experienced Microsoft leader Lee Thatcher shares his top 3 shortcuts to drive down bills...

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With business spend under increasing scrutiny – in the face of economic pressures and rising costs – the “do more with less” phrase has perhaps never been so widely used. But the cloud is not somewhere organisations want to cut corners.

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The good news is that there are a number of quick and easy steps firms can take to stamp out both bad habits and avoidable spend.  

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1. Auto-shutdown virtual machines

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We all know the importance of uptime to ensure business operations run without interruption. But does everything need to be running, all of the time?

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With tools like Azure Automation Runbooks, DevTest Labs and Logic Apps, you can automatically power off non-production virtual machines outside of business hours. And the result? Achieve 30-60% on VM costs and reduce your energy consumption – therefore being more environmentally conscious too.

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2. Right-size your VMs  

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Investing in a scalable cloud infrastructure is an important consideration for many businesses, but what about when you’re paying for more than you need?

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Azure Advisor is a brilliant ‘go to’ here. You can use it to analyse resource configuration and – if you’re not maximising your capacity – create automated workflows to automatically resize underused VMs. Again, this can reduce waste and lower VM spend by typically 20-40%.  

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3. Auto-scale when you need to

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The flip side is that sometimes you need to scale up. But to prevent over-provisioning during low usage periods, consider something like Azure Autoscale or AKS Horizontal Pod Autoscaler to dynamically scale app services and Kubernetes nodes, based on demand.

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In truth, the list goes on. The modern pace of change means organisations often find themselves paying for:  

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• Legacy resources such as redundant IP addresses and former test VMs that are just sitting idle.

• Unused storage disks that could be archived in lower-cost storage if not permanently deleted.

• Premium storage that has grown to become used for low-priority systems and tasks, as default.

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In simple terms, you can cut cloud costs without cutting corners. In fact, I can often find five-figure savings within the first 30 minutes of speaking to a 100-person organisation.

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From simple licence adjustments to complex cloud migration projects, I’m happy to help with all of the above and more. I block several slots in my diary each week, for no-obligation consultations  – bookable here.

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If you’re not sure where to start, why not take our cloud readiness assessment.

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