Whether you’re a new student, a thriving startup, or the largest enterprise, you have financial constraints, and you need to know what you’re spending, where it’s being spent, and how to plan for the future. Nobody wants a surprise when it comes to the bill, and this is where Microsoft Cost Management comes in.
We’re always looking for ways to learn more about your challenges and how Microsoft Cost Management can help you better understand where you’re accruing costs in the cloud, identify and prevent bad spending patterns, and optimize costs to empower you to do more with less. Here are a few of the latest improvements and updates based on your feedback:
Optimizing AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service) costs
Running your applications on AKS clusters can significantly reduce costs by optimizing resource utilization, enabling autoscaling, and facilitating shared infrastructure. AKS allows you to set resource limits, ensuring efficient use of resources and preventing over-provisioning. Its autoscaling features adjust the number of pods and nodes based on demand, so you only pay for what you need. By managing data transfer and inter-cluster communication efficiently, AKS helps lower networking costs. Additionally, you can run multiple applications on the same cluster, reducing the need for separate infrastructure.
In Cost analysis, you can use Kubernetes views to get visibility into the granular costs of your AKS clusters. The views provide you with visibility into the costs of namespaces running on your clusters and an aggregated view of costs of all resources running in your clusters. You simply need to install the cost analysis add-on to your cluster to enable this experience for your Azure subscriptions.
These views also provide you with visibility into the Idle costs of your clusters. Idle costs, in simple terms, imply that you are not fully utilizing the capacity of your resources, resulting in under-utilization.
Assets view showing Idle costs per asset:
Namespaces view showing Idle charges for the cluster:
The good news is that Azure provides you with different tools to minimize your Idle costs, and I strongly recommend you use the rich toolset for optimizing your AKS costs. You can set up your clusters and applications for autoscaling to minimize waste, use node auto provisioning for deciding the optimal VM configuration, and use Azure Monitor managed service for Prometheus to monitor utilization metrics. You can also optimize your VM costs by leveraging Spot VMs and taking advantage of savings instruments like Reservations and Savings Plans.
All the options available to you for optimizing AKS costs are explained very well in the article below:
AWS (Azure Web Services) connector deprecation
The Connector for AWS, once built to consolidate Microsoft Azure and AWS cloud cost data in Microsoft Cost Management, will be retired on March 31st, 2025. You will lose access to the connector, and AWS cost and usage data stored in the cost management service, including historical data, will be removed. Please note that we won’t be deleting the Cost and Usage Report (CUR) files you stored in your S3 bucket in the AWS console as part of the connector setup.
Please transition to your choice of cost management reporting for AWS and follow our instructions to delete your Connector to AWS in the Azure Portal.
As covered in one of our previous blogs, exporting data in standard FOCUS (FinOps Cost and Usage Specification) format and using an analytics and reporting solution like Microsoft Fabric is a great way to analyze and report on costs from different sources.
Exchange of Azure OpenAI Service Provisioned Reservations
As you perhaps already know, you can enjoy substantial discounts with Azure OpenAI provisioned reservations compared to standard pay-as-you-go pricing. You can lock in lower rates for dedicated capacity, ensuring you have the resources needed to run your powerful AI models. Last month (February 2025), for added flexibility to manage your reservations, we enabled exchange for provisioned reservations directly in the Azure portal. You still have the option to request a refund. To learn more about managing your reservations, please refer to this article.
Help shape the future of cost reporting
If you optimize cloud costs in your day-to-day work, from monitoring costs to managing commitments, we would love to hear from you. (All experience levels welcome!) Please take a few moments to complete this short, 5–10-minute survey to help us understand your roles, responsibilities, and what’s most important to you when optimizing in the cloud. Your feedback will help us improve our products and services to better meet your needs.
Documentation updates
- Here are a few documentation updates you might be interested in:
- New: Shared billing meter regions.
- New: Microsoft Entra ID free.
- Updated: View your usage summary details and download reports for EA enrollments.
- Updated: Save costs with Microsoft Fabric Capacity reservations.
- Want to keep an eye on all documentation updates? Check out the change history of the Cost Management and Billing documentation in the Azure Docs repository on GitHub. If you see something missing, select Edit at the top of the document and submit a quick pull request. You can also submit a GitHub issue. We welcome and appreciate all contributions!
What’s next for Cost Management?
These are just a few of the big updates from last month. Don’t forget to check out the previous Microsoft Cost Management updates. We’re always listening and making constant improvements based on your feedback, so please keep the feedback coming.
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