Migrating Azure VM to make use of 12 months free services [closed] - azure

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My Azure 200$ free credits are expiring in 3 days , so i am trying to move my VM's & App Services to free to avoid incurring any charges. I dont want to delete my VM since it has all my code configured in Visual Studio and my environment is set up there.
I used below link to see what all services are free for 12 months , the list i see includes 750 hours of VM compute for B1S VM.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/free/free-account-faq/
I have already downsized my VM from DSv2 to B1S VM's. My question is regarding the VM Disk i am using , how to make sure it is using from the free quota . I see the link mentions that we have for 12 months free 128 GB of Managed Disks as a combination of two 64 GB (P6) SSD storage, plus 1 GB snapshot and 2 million I/O operations​ .
I am currently using a premium 128 GB LRS managed disk . However i could not find if i am using a P6 disk.

Thank You, I have sucessfull convert the original images of 128GB (P10) to 64GB (P6) to get REAL ACCESS to the free tier. I want to mention that I am new to Azure, so most of the terms are new to me (even the P6 and P10 thing) and after much research I can conclude that there is no such thing as free tier out of the box, there is no single image suitable for P6 disk on marketplace, thus is imposible to get real free tier just by sing in. The only way to get access to free tier is following the complex tuturial of this link:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/premier_developer/2018/01/26/how-to-shrink-a-managed-disk/
Is not an easy task because there are a lot of steps that are not mentioned and also a lot of terms that someone new to azure like me don't know, but it's work and i am the proof of it.
In the tutorial the most important things missing are:
-You got to run the first part in PowerShell on the VM that you want to convert (but this only works in some OS like Win10 but not in Win7) if you want to resize in an OS that dont support the Resize-Partition command you got to use a Partition software to do it. (there are a lot of freeware available for this)
-The second part must run in the PowerShell available in Azure Portal (you enter to this clicking the ">" next to notifications, and then select PowerShell intead Batch mode)
-Finally, tune up the variables is the main problem, because you got to create a lot of resources before use it, but the tutorial dont show this. Then you got to figure out how/where get and grant access, keys, and so on.
Most of the resources needed are charged (not included in free tier), so you got to do this in the first 30 days of the free tier (when you still got some credit of the initial $200)
BTW delete all the resources used to acomplish this is a must if you want free tier, because StorageBlobs are not part of the free tier.
Regards

128 GB premium is P10, therefore not eligible for the free tier. I suggest starting fresh with a new VM and migrate the content as there's no easy way to shrink a managed disk. If you want to give it a try, see this article:
How to shrink a managed disk

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Cost comparison of running computationally intensive function on Azure Function vs Azure Virtual Machines? [closed]

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If I look at the pricing examples of running an Azure functions, versus running a virtual machine running those same functions, here is what I see on the Azure pricing site:
Running 3M functions each which takes one second and required 500MB of memory: $18.00 (invocations cost + computer cost)
Running 3M seconds on Azures cheapest virtual machine with at least 500MB of memory:
(B1S instance, $0.008/hour): $6.67
I'm wondering if that comparison is fair in the simplest cases (where the functions are don't perform a lot of i/o, or use other Azure services) -- particularly whether whatever machine Azure uses to run Azure functions will run those same 3M functions at the same speed per function as the B1S Virutual machine instance? In other words, is the B1S instance as efficient per unit time as the Azure function running machines given the same memory requirements?
You must look at your usage profile. Do the request come constantly at a steady rate? Or are they spread out?
With a virtual machine you pay for the time it is running, it is not dependent on what it is doing.
With an Azure function consumption plan you pay per request. So when there are no requests there is no charge.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/functions/ (Your 18 USD comes from this page?)
When a function has 500 MB to use, your code can use all the memory. When a VM has 500 MB of RAM a significant portion is used by the operating system.
Edit:
As Ken mentioned in the comment with a VM you need to look after the server, so you also need to take that cost into consideration.
The compute capacity is the same given a steady constant continuous use where you turn off the VM when the 3M calls are finished. But the VM has additional costs that also need to be taken into consideration.
Note when you turn the VM off you still pay for the storage of the disks.

Installing a small footprint windows server 2008 on Azure

I want to install a w2k8 on windows azure on a disk of 25Gb.
If I choose an image from the VMs galery, it installs on a disk of 127Gb (five times my need).
So I guess I must install localy, run sysprep and upload it to azure (I have detalis of how to do this from my googles). But I do not own w2k8. My questions are:
Can I use a 180 days traial of w2k8 to make my setup on a 25Gb VHD?
Will it work after the 180 days period? //becouse it is on Azure???
Is this process "licence-compliant"?
Is there other way to obtanin the same I want?
(edit) I am offering a bounty becouse I am having partial anwsers to my four questions. Thanks
Maarten Balliauw wrote a nice blog post on how to resize a VHD on Windows Azure. It was focused on extending a virtual disk, not on shrinking one, but it might also works (I only tested the extend, not the shrink).
This way of work would at least save you hours of upload and sysprepping, so I would say it's worth a try by creating a new virtual machine from the gallery, shut down the machine, delete it and the disk (not the VHD) and then apply the resize.
The blog post is here: http://blog.maartenballiauw.be/post/2013/01/07/Tales-from-the-trenches-resizing-a-Windows-Azure-virtual-disk-the-smooth-way.aspx
Hope it works
Why do you want a smaller disk? You only pay for the amount of storage you are actually using, so for the 127 GB image galleries you are only paying storage costs for the amount of data you have written to the disk.

Issue with scale option in windows azure websites (WAWS) [duplicate]

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Azure WebSites - Can't Scale Sites Individually (New Web Hosting Plan Groups)
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Closed 8 years ago.
I have multiple websites in my windows azure account, all are required to run in FREE mode. for one website i need to change scale option from Free to Reserved however all my websites will get affected with same scaling.
Why this happens?
Is there any specific reason for this type of behavior?
If so then how it would be charged for 5 websites when only 1 requires to run in Reserved Mode?
Thanks.
The way it works today: When you change from free to reserved, all of your web sites are converted to reserved. They will also all run on the same set of VM instances. So: If you go with a single Small VM reserved, you're paying for one Small VM, even though all web sites are now running in your reserved VM. And... if you convert back to free mode, all your sites convert back to free mode.
There's also a shared tier. ScottGu blogged about this a while back.

Windows Azure, MSDN offer, 750 small compute hours

I'm an msdn subscriber and I'm looking at Azure as a possible platform for a new website that will test the water of a new service. This website is expecting low to very low traffic at the time of launch. I've heard that this kind of traffic levels is very expensive for Azure but since they have this msdn offer, I thought I'd finally take a look at Azure.
In the offer, I'm looking at getting "750 small compute hours per month". From the reading I've done, this seems that, if I purchase nothing more than what's given (although the subscription itself is thousands of dollars of course), that an entire month would be covered. Since 24 (hours) x 31 (max days in a month) = 744 I'm still below my allotted 750 for the month.
Am I missing something else from this simple equation? Is there further aspects that could cause the site to be "turned off" temporarily that should be considered?
Yes, you can indeed run a small instance during a whole month. Or you can have 2 extra-small instances instead (having 2 instances means you're covered by the SLA).
There are 2 other things you need to consider:
Depending on your subscription you can have maximum 45GB of storage (blob/table/queue). If you use Virtual Machines you need to know that the system disk (and additional data disks) are persisted as blobs, so make sure not to reach the limit here.
There are also other limits active, but the most important one besides storage is the data transfer limit which is also very limited (max 35GB out).
If you're expecting very low traffic, did you ever consider Windows Azure Web Sites? You get 10 of those for free during 12 months. The free ones run on shared instances, but they are perfect to host the first low-traffic version of your app.

Do Azure VM pricing include storage in the VHD? [closed]

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So i'm looking for a cost affective way to host a website in a linux vm. The pricing only states the VM's cpu and RAM. What about the space used up by the OS and apps in the VM as well as the ongoing disk usage? is this an added cost? Whats the size of the disk?
I get tired of going round in circles and getting confused every time (twice now) I set up a new VM. So here's what I've found:
Let's say I choose the DS1_V2 virtual machine, which supports premium (SSD) storage. (This just means the physical azure node with your VM on it allows use of SSD as an drive. I assume all new configurations support SSD and it's just legacy hardware that doesn't but I'm not 100% sure on this.)
The monthly price is currently about $100 for this VM. You only get included what you see here:
So the 7GB local SSD disk size here is included in the $98.95, but you get no other storage. This 7GB vanishes when you reboot anyway so you can't use it for real storage.
When you create a VM you have a choice between HDD and SSD. The 'new VM wizard' encourages you to select SSD but doesn't tell you what pricing that will incur. This I think is very misleading and a source of confusion and probably why you are now reading this.
Anyway - let's say you picked SSD (which I did). You'll get a 127GB drive as your C:\ and the temporary storage in addition as your D:\
In your account portal you will see two items created
To confirm how this drive is configured you must click on it and you'll see something like this :
When you choose an SSD for your operating system it will default to 127GB but you will always pay for the full drive. Note that you can switch between HDD and SSD, but you need to reboot the VM.
The current pricing for 128GB (which is what they call a P10 disk) is $19.97 a month. So the total price for your VM will be fixed at $98.95 + $19.97 a month as long as you use SSD. To put it another way you're paying for a P10 disk that just happens to be used as your VM's operating system.
SSD Drive Pricing
As a comparison for HDD you only pay for what you use. If you used up the whole 127GB you'd be paying around $2.94 extra instead of $19.97. So SSD is really a minor expense but not negligible and certainly NOT included..
HDD Drive Pricing
And then in your billing you will see it listed as P10
I have two VMs set up with SSD so they are charging me $39.47/2 = $19.74 for each one.
EDIT June 27, 2014 - updated pricing to be current (this answer was two years old).
Your Virtual Machines are each stored in blob storage. So, if your machine image takes up, say, 20GB, you are now paying for 20GB of storage (actually, you only pay for storage used within that 20GB disk, as Azure's vhd's are stored in a sparse format).
At 12.5 around 2.4 cents per GB (locally-redundant storage, which you'd use with vhd's), and you actually used all 20GB, you're talking less than 50 cents monthly. You'll also pay a penny half-penny per 100,000 storage transactions. even though your VM disk volume looks like a formatted drive, its underlying storage is Blob Storage; gets and puts result in metered transactions.
More details on storage costs are here.
This has changed with Premium Storage, which gives you SSD disks. You pay for the full SSD disk regardless of how much data is on said disk. SSD disks come in 3 sizes, 128GB, 256GB, 512GB.
I`ve created a tool http://azureprice.net to compare azure VMs and bunch other stuff that can help choose the cheapest VM, region, and currency. Probably somebody finds it helpful.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee814754.aspx
Lists how much storage you get for the instance size selected. I beleive your OS does take up that number. So an extra small instance gives you 20GB of space. and if you OS is 5GB you will have 15GB for app useage.

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