I am really confused by the terminology included in calculating the price for Azure AD, and even calculating what pricing tiers are fulfilling my needs. Since i can not find good explanation of some terms like User forest, and what does the hours for that user forest represent.
I would like to purchase Azure AD for test automation purposes for my app. Since i do not want (or better said i am not allowed) to use production AD from my client. So i would not have a lot of users, and groups inside my AD but there may be a lot of traffic for those users.
So what would be recommended pricing tiers?
Is free tier with standard pricing tier with 750 hours be enough for 5 to 10 users and taking into calculation the fact that i would probably have test automation started a few times a day? And the test scope is only going to get bigger.
Thank you! Cheers!
Nikola
Azure Active Directory comes in four editions—Free, Office 365 apps, Premium P1, and Premium P2. I think the free edition (has a 5,00,000 Object Limit) would be enough for you if you do not need features like Identity Protection, Conditional Access, Hybrid Identities, and other premium features.
If you are looking at deploying Virtual Machines as well, A-Series VMs are good for entry-level workloads like development and test.
Related
I need to devise a pricing strategy for a SaaS product I plan to go live with, as tricky a task as that is.
Putting product 'value' and things like RoI aside (since they're off-topic here), I'm looking for some assurances against a situation whereby my competitively priced product incurs losses because of increasing blob storage/SQL costs in Azure.
In a nutshell, this web app will allow users to create tasks, to which they may attach any number of hi-res images, documents etc.
So, in order to keep this question specific and technical, what services does the Azure platform offer that helps mitigate against escalating costs of data/blob storage? Or which services lend itself to managing these losses/costs?
For example, I think a DTU option for my SQL Server will be a flat rate as opposed to a dynamically priced VCore alternative. So I could opt for DTU so I at least know where I stand.
Question/s
Does Azure offer flat rate services for storage? Would IaaS instead of PaaS give me this?
Does Azure ofer flat rate for SQL Server? (Is my understanding of DTU correct?)
I found that with VS2017 it is available 50$/per month Azure credit. I have never worked with Azure before, but have a little experience with CloudFoundry. It seems a good chance for me to try Azure now. So, my question is what I can obtain with 50$/month? Is it enough for small ASP .NET Core web-site, database, some services into docker containers, just to play with these?
Thanks
Yes. You can play around these services.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/member-offers/credit-for-visual-studio-subscribers/
Credit for use on a wide range of Azure services. Virtual Machines, Storage, SQL Databases, Containers, Cognitive Services, Functions, Data Lake, and much more.
Azure dev/test pricing helps your credit last longer.
Exclusive access to Windows 10 virtual machine images.
Easy sign-up. No credit card required.
No surprises. A spending limit protects you from overage charges. You can remove the spending limit when you’re ready.
I have an Azure Cloud Service published at Microsoft and it's draining all my credit!
Payment
Pay as you go
Service resource
Minimal resource, 1 SMALL web role and 1 SMALL worker role.
I knew Azure wasn't cheap, but this is just too much. Currently my monthly cost is just under 80 USD. The only person that use this service is me, noone else, and I barely use it. So the cost is just for the upkeep.
Is this normal?
70 bucks a month!?
How much does it cost for YOU?
What Microsoft support told me
I am afraid the Cloud Services has a fixed price, and I am not aware
how it could be lowered. Maybe you want to check on how the service
itself could be tweaked to get it working as per your needs. You may
want to go through the Community Forum for that.
Community = Stackoverflow, so here I am!
If I look at my Azure subscription page I can see that it's the:
CALCULATING HOURS - Europe, Western
That is taking all my hard earned money. My service also uses SQL, storage and cache but, if I understand it correctly, these are not the cause for my expensive bill.
Before I leave you to it I just want to say that I can't use a simple web app because of my requirements. I know web apps are super cheap, but in this case I must use a cloud service..
Thank you
Update
I found out I was using A1 (small) and not A0 (extra small). The instance type for a cloudservice can be set in the servicedefinition file.
It's sad that not even Microsoft themselves could inform me about this.
Web and worker roles are like dedicated VMs if they are on, they will cost you money.
You can do one of two things
1) Stop the machines when no one is using them ( say in the off business hours). I am not sure if this is possible to do or not in your case. But if it is possible, you can run a small script to start/ stop the roles. You can even do so via apps on your phone. For example - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/azure-management/id826446897?mt=8
2) Move to Azure Web Apps and Azure Web Jobs - Both these services are "multi-tenant" and cost much less and in fact offer a free tier. If and when you need to scale, you can always scale as your need
Hope this helps
Our company has until bought a lot VS Pro/Premium and Ultimate Licenses, and each includes a free Azure Account.
At the Azure Info day we have been told the best way would be to bundle them into one big account
(there is just too much overhead if every developer here would register that account on his own).
Do you know how to do this ?
Is there a special account manager we should contact ?
Thanks in advance,
Mathias Held
Each MSDN subscription has its own Windows Azure subscription with a given number of resources allocated per month. Those resources cannot be combined. For example, if you have 10 developers with MSDN Ultimate subscriptions, each with 1,500 Compute hours per month, you can NOT combine them into a single account with 15,000 Compute hours.
Regarding too much overhead: The task of enabling Windows Azure resources is incredibly simple. In fact, if you go to the new Windows Azure portal and sign in with the Live ID associated with your MSDN account, the portal will recognize that there's an associated Windows Azure subscription.
If your concern is that an individual dev won't have enough Windows Azure Compute resources monthly, this is more of an educational issue. At 1,500 monthly Compute hours (and Extra Small instances running at 1/3 Compute Hour), you have enough resources to run 2 Small instances 24x7 (or 6 Extra Small). The prudent advice is to delete all deployments when not in use (e.g. after work hours or between test deployments). This will give you much more breathing room and let you run much larger VM sizes without risk of going over allotted resources.
I'm considering to join the Windows Azure Platform Introductory Special, but I'm a little bit afraid of losing money with it. I don't wanna develop any fancy large scale application, I want to join just to learn Azure and do my experiments, what should I be afraid of?
In the transference, it says: "Data Transfers (per region)", what does that mean?
Can I put limits to stop the app if it goes over this plan in order to avoid get charged?
Can it be "pre pay" instead "bill pay"?
Would it be enough for a blog?
Any experiencie so far?
Kind regards.
As ligget pointed out, Azure isn't cost affect as a host for an application that can be easily deployed to a traditional shared hosting provider. Azure's target market are those that want dedicated resources without the need to micro-manage the infrasture and the capability to easily scale up/down based on demand.
That said, here's the answers to the questions you posted:
Data Transfers are based on bandwidth in and out of the hosting data center. bandwidth for communication occuring within components (SQL Azure, Windows Azure, Azure Storage, etc...) in the same datacenter are not billable.
Your usage is not currently capped when the free quotas are used up. However, you will recieved warning emails when those items approach their usage threadsholds.
There is the option to pay your subscription using a PO, but the minimum threshold for most of these operations is $500/month. So as a hobbyist, its unlikely you're wanting that route.
The introductory special does not provide enough resources for hosting a 24x7 personal blog. That level includes only 25hrs of compute resources. Each hour a single instance of your application is deployed will count against this, even if the application received no traffic. Think of it like renting office space. You still pay rent on the office even if there are no customers there.
All this said, there's still much to be learned with the introductory special. The azure development tools allows you to work with Windows Azure and Azure storage locally and get a feel for how they work. The introductory special then lets you deploy those solutions so you can see what works and what doesn't (not everything that works locally works hosted).
I would recommend you host your blog somewhere else - it's a waste of resources running it on Azure and you'll find much cheaper options. A recently introduced extra small instance would be a better choice in this case, but AFAIK it is charged separately as of now, e.g. even when you have an MSDN subscription those extra small instance hours do not count towards free Azure hours that come with the subscription.
There is no pre-pay option I know of and it's not possible to stop the app automatically. It'll be running until the deployment is deleted (beware! even if suspended/stopped the deployment will continue to accrue charges). I believe you will be sent a notification shortly before reaching your free hours threshold.
Be aware that when launching more than 1 instance you are charged for every hour of every instance combined. This can happen for example when you have more than one role in your Azure project (1 web role + 1 worker role - a separate instance will be started for each role).
Data trasfer means your entire data trasfer: blobs/Table storage/queues (transfers between your hosted service and storage account inside the same data center are free) + whatever data is transfered in/out of your hosted application, e.g. when somebody visits your pages. When you create storage accounts and hosted services in Azure you will specify a region that will be hosting your account/app - hosting in Asia is slightly more expensive than in Europe/U.S.
Your best bet would be to contact Microsoft with these questions.