In this Azure Essentials Show episode, Thomas Maurer and Priyanshi Mittal discuss optimizing Azure cloud costs using Reserved Virtual Machine Instances, sharing strategies and best practices.

Optimize Azure Costs with Reserved VM Instances

Presented by: Thomas Maurer and Priyanshi Mittal, Microsoft Azure

Overview

In this episode of the #AzureEssentialsShow, hosts Thomas Maurer and Priyanshi Mittal explain how organizations can better manage and optimize their Azure cloud spending by effectively utilizing Azure Reserved Virtual Machine (VM) Instances.

Key Topics Covered

  • How Azure Reserved VM Instances Work
    Reserved Instances let you pre-pay for virtual machine usage, giving you a discount compared to pay-as-you-go pricing. They provide significant savings for predictable, stable workloads. Reservations apply only to the compute cost for Windows VMs.

  • Using Azure Advisor and Historical Usage Data
    Learn how to leverage Azure Advisor and analyze historical usage to identify which VM reservations fit your environment, improving your overall spend efficiency.

  • Best Practices & Common Pitfalls
    Key recommendations include:
    • Scoping reservations correctly (single subscription, resource group, or shared scope).
    • Setting up utilization alerts to ensure cost effectiveness.
    • Using auto-renewal to maintain ongoing reservation benefits.
  • Maintaining Performance and Scalability
    Discover strategies for optimizing reservations while ensuring your infrastructure can scale according to your business needs.

Suggested Next Steps

  • Review VM usage: Check your organization’s VM consumption in Azure Portal.
  • Explore reservation recommendations: Use Azure Advisor or the purchase flow in the portal to see tailored suggestions.
  • Implement utilization alerts and auto-renewal: Proactively monitor and manage your reserved instance benefits.
  • Learn more:

Notable Resources

Episode Chapters

  • 0:00 In this episode…
  • 0:25 Introduction
  • 0:55 What are Reserved Instances
  • 1:43 Strictly a billing benefit
  • 2:04 Discount applies to any VM in scope
  • 2:20 Only covers compute cost on Windows VMs
  • 3:00 What about scaling?
  • 4:00 Recommendations based on usage
  • 4:35 Quick demo
  • 5:15 Best practices
  • 6:11 Things to keep in mind
  • 6:51 Get started

Connect with the Presenters