Azure Monitor Cost Structure and Optimization

Azure Monitor can help you optimize your costs by providing visibility into your resource utilization.

You can monitor your costs in real-time with Azure Monitor, allowing you to identify areas where you can reduce expenses.

Azure Monitor's cost structure is based on a pay-as-you-go model, meaning you only pay for what you use.

This model can help you save money by avoiding unnecessary costs associated with over-provisioning resources.

Azure Monitor also offers a free tier, which allows you to monitor 500 metrics and 100,000 data points per day, making it a great option for small to medium-sized businesses.

Azure Monitor Pricing can be a bit tricky to understand, but don't worry, I've got the lowdown.

Azure Monitor uses a consumption-based pricing model, also known as pay-as-you-go, which means you only pay for what you use. This is a great feature because it allows you to scale up or down as needed without breaking the bank.

Features like collection and alerting on the Activity log and collection and analysis of platform metrics are enabled by default and don't incur any charge. This is a nice perk, especially if you're just starting out with Azure Monitor.

Several other features don't have a direct cost, but you pay for the ingestion and retention of data that they collect. This includes things like Logs, Platform Logs, Metrics, Prometheus Metrics, Alerts, and Web tests.

Let's take a closer look at each of these features and how they're charged:

It's worth noting that some features, like Basic and Auxiliary logs or data in long-term retention, may incur additional charges. Be sure to check the Azure Monitor pricing page for the most up-to-date information.

To get started with cost management in Azure Monitor, open Cost Management + Billing in the Azure portal. This tool includes several built-in dashboards for deep cost analysis.

You can create a Daily Costs view and change the Group by to show costs by Meter, allowing you to see each cost from each feature. The meter names for each Azure Monitor feature are listed here.

To limit the view to Azure Monitor charges, create a filter for the following Service names: Azure MonitorLog AnalyticsInsight and AnalyticsApplication Insights This will help you focus on the costs associated with these services.

Azure Cost Management is a powerful tool that allows you to analyze your Azure Monitor charges. To get started, you'll need to open Cost Management + Billing in the Azure portal.

Cost Management + Billing includes several built-in dashboards for deep cost analysis, such as cost by resource and invoice details. Access policies are described in the Azure portal.

To see costs by meter, create a Daily Costs view and change the Group by to show costs by Meter. This will help you see each cost from each feature. The meter names for each Azure Monitor feature are listed in the Azure portal.

You might need additional access to use Cost Management data, so be sure to check out Assign access to Cost Management data.

To limit your view to Azure Monitor charges, create a filter for the following Service names: Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Insight and Analytics, and Application Insights. See the Azure portal for a list of all Azure Monitor billing meters included in each of these services.

Alternatively, you can go to the Overview page of a Log Analytics workspace or Application Insights resource and click View Cost in the upper right corner of the Essentials section. This will launch the Cost Analysis from Azure Cost Management + Billing already scoped to the workspace or application.

Data Transfer Charges can add up quickly, but there's a silver lining. Data transfer between Azure services located in two regions is charged as outbound data transfer at the normal rate.

Inbound data transfer is free, which is a nice perk. You should focus more on your ingested data volume to control your costs, as data transfer charges are typically very small compared to the costs for data ingestion and retention.

Data sent to a different region using Diagnostic Settings doesn't incur data transfer charges, which can be a significant cost saver. Just be aware that this only applies to data sent to a different region, not within the same region.

To view and export your Azure Monitor usage, you can use two primary tools: Azure Cost Management + Billing and Usage and Estimated Costs. Azure Cost Management + Billing gives you powerful capabilities to understand your billed costs, including options to analyze your charges for different Azure Monitor features and their projected cost over time.

You can use Azure Cost Management + Billing to analyze your charges for different Azure Monitor features and their projected cost over time.

To gain a deeper understanding of your usage and costs, you can create exports using Cost Analysis. These exports are in CSV format and contain a list of daily usage (billed quantity and cost) by resource, billing meter, and several other fields such as AdditionalInfo.

You can use Microsoft Excel to do rich analyses of your usage not possible in the Cost Analytics experiences in the portal.

Here are the steps to filter usage from Log Analytics in a usage export:

The usage is shown in the Consumed Quantity column, with the unit for each entry shown in the Unit of Measure column.

To view benefits in a usage export, filter the Instance ID column to your workspace, and then filter on the Meter to either of the following meters:

You can process logs ingested into Azure Monitor with powerful, customer-defined data collection transformations. This feature is included in the pricing, unless more than 50% of the data is modified or filtered out by data collection transformations.

There is no charge for data ingestion and transformation if emitted to at least one Log Analytics workspace, unless more than 50% of the data is modified or filtered out. This is also true if the data is emitted to a Log Analytics workspace that has Azure Sentinel.

You can view your usage trends and optimize your costs using the most cost-effective commitment tier for your Log Analytics workspace. This is done by selecting Usage and Estimated Costs from the Log Analytics workspace menu in the Azure portal.

To explore the data in more detail, select the icon in the upper-right corner of the chart to work with the query in Log Analytics.

Notifications can be sent based on when an Alert rule triggers, and you're billed based on the type and number of notifications you choose to send.

You get 1,000 ITSM connector create or update events, 1,000 emails, and 1,000 push notifications for free per month. Beyond that, you're charged $0.00001 per event, email, or notification.

Emails and push notifications are charged at a rate of $0.00001 per 1,000 events, with a maximum charge of $1,000,000 for 100,000,000 events, emails, or notifications.

Secure web hooks are charged at a rate of $1,000,000 per 1,000,000 web hooks, and web hooks are charged at a rate of $0.001 per 1,000 web hooks, with a maximum charge of $1,000,000 for 1,000,000 web hooks.

Here's a breakdown of the free units included for each notification feature:

To estimate your costs, you'll need to calculate the number of different types of notifications that will be sent beyond the number included for free.

Azure Monitor's metrics play a vital role in managing costs and performance.

You get a certain number of free API calls per subscription per month, with 1 million calls provided. Any additional calls beyond that are billed according to the pricing page.

Azure Platform Metrics store data for 93 days, but you can retain data for longer by using Diagnostic Settings to export it to an LA workspace, Event Hub, or Storage account.

Azure Monitor Workspace metrics, on the other hand, store data for 18 months.

To make the most of your Azure investments, you can use AI-powered storage and compute recommendations to reduce costs and balance utilization. This feature is currently in beta.

Here's a quick comparison of Azure Monitor's metric data storage options: