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

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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.

Related

What are the data disks used for?

I need to know the difference between the SSD disk and the data disk. According to this capture, this virtual machine has a hard disk ssd 16gb, and 4 disks data. But these 4 disks, how much do they have? Are they ssd? what are they for?
enter image description here
data disks can be ssd or not, depending on how you set them up. they are used to store data :)
amount of data disks you can attach depends on the vm sku. you dont always have to attach 4 data disks (or whatever vm supports, you can have 0 - VM SKU maximum data disks).
The 16gb ssd is local ssd (local to the host machine hosting your vm) attached to the VM (not OS disk). its a temporary drive - meaning it can go away when you reboot vm, so content will be lost and you will get a new temporary drive. it can be used to store throw away logs, for example, or temporary files. IO operations on this disk do not count towards IO limit and this drive is completely free (you pay for the VM SKU and it is part of that cost).
you can learn about data disk prices here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/managed-disks/. Storage prices do not take into account os or data disks. they just bill you for storage.
reference:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/attach-managed-disk-portal
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/attach-disk-ps
It means in addition to the OS disk, you can connect 4 data disks to the VM.
It does not mean there are 4 disks, just that you can add 4 if you want.
You should discuss the VM requirements with your client. Maybe he needs an additional data disk, maybe not.
The capture you posted, specifies that this VM can take up to 4 data disks. The price does not include them. Also, you should check the Azure price calculator to generate more accurate offers.

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

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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

Azure Disk Data Lost [closed]

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I am new to Azure. I have created a VM. and stored some very important files on temp storage, but after few days the temp disk is formatted. is there any option I can get my data back ??
Eshant
Just wanted to provide you with clear guidance regarding the disks and why you lost data. There are 3 Disks with in Azure VM, the are as follows
C Drive 127 GB Dedicated for OS will persist after reboot. This disk is dedicated for OS and shouldn't be used for any other purpose.
D Drive is Temporary Drive is only intended for storing temporary data. As you notice it only has page file on it and is not recommended for storing data because it is wiped clean on Stop and start, resize of VM , un/planned maintenance, and service healing. One key benefit of this disk is performance. I/O performance for temporary disks is higher than the IO permanence to OS disks, Data Disks. The size of the disk varies with VM Size. In your case the data is lost and cannot be recovered.
Data Disk. You need to add Data disks for any type of custom storage that needs to be persisted. Another point being ,the difference between OS and data disks is that, while both reside in blob storage, the host caching settings are different by default - OS disk is Read/Write host caching by default, data disks are None host caching by default.
One key point is , the C:\ and D:\ cost is included in the VM Price , Data disk will be charged on actual usage. Say if you allocate 100 GB and use only 10 GB. Then you be charged only for the 10 GB.
Regards
Krishna
No, there's no way to recover your data.
From this Microsoft article: Understanding the temporary drive on Windows Azure Virtual Machines
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/wats/archive/2013/12/07/understanding-the-temporary-drive-on-windows-azure-virtual-machines.aspx
Is there a way to recover data from the temporary drive?
There is no way to recover any data from the temporary drive.

How do I reclaim unused blob space for my Azure VHD

Maybe I don't fully understand how Azure charges for VHD storage.
When I started out, I had a 120gb VHD with only ~30gb used. I was only getting charged for roughly 1gb per day for Azure. As I filled up the hard drive, the daily usage grew as expected. I ended up using 100gb of the drive and was getting hit with roughly 3.6gb per day from Azure. That makes perfect sense to me.
The other day, I free'd up a lot of space on the VHD and now I only use 30gb again where the other 90gb is free space. However, it seems that I'm still getting charged for roughly 3.6gb per day.
Could someone help explain this to me? Do I need to do something to reclaim the free space? If so, how?
Thanks
It's now possible to manually reclaim unused space by executing the following PowerShell command (starting from Windows Server 2012 / R2):
Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter F -ReTrim
More information: Release unused space from your Windows Azure Virtual Hard Disks to reduce their billable size
Even though the files on the VHD may be deleted, you still pay for the space they once consumed. Check out this post by the Windows Azure storage team - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazurestorage/archive/2012/06/28/exploring-windows-azure-drives-disks-and-images.aspx.
In the "Storage Capacity" section -
"It is also important to note that when you delete files within the file system used by the VHD, most operating systems do not clear or zero these ranges, so you can still be paying capacity charges within a blob for the data that you deleted via a disk/drive."

Increase Azure Data Disk size [closed]

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I currently attached a data disk of 1 GB to Windows Extra Small VM running on Azure.
How do I increase the size of data disk without losing data?
Is it possible to attach many more disks to Extra Small VM especially from other storage accounts?
It is possible to attach more disks into an Extra Small VM.
It isn't possible to increase the size of data disk in Disk Management. But with some extra steps you can accomplish that by downloading the VHD into a larger disk attached to a different VM, mount it and extend it, then put it back where it was and attach it again to the original VM.
Please check Drew's description here
How do I increase the size of data disk without losing data?
I don't think you can increase the size of the data disk.
Is it possible to attach many more disks to Extra Small VM especially
from other storage accounts?
You can attach another data disk. You can attach up to 16 data disks to a VM. Since the data disk is essentially a page blob, you are only charged for the space you occupy and not the actual size of the disk thus it is advisable to attach a larger size data disk so that you don't run out of disk space. Though I have not tried attaching data disks from different storage accounts but I can't see a reason why it should not be possible (they should be in same data center though). However you may want to keep all your OS and Data Disks in the same storage account for improved latency purposes. HTH.

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