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Nick warned for all kind of unexpected options which caused the monthly Azure costs to be much higher then expected.

I have created an Azure Server 2016 which was estimated at 75 euro a month which is 10 euro below the included Azure credits in Action Pack. I found out that you can de-allocate the server e.g. in the weekend of at night and according to Azure support the costs should than be 0. Also I created a static IP address because otherwise you have to change the RD every time to a new IP address after re-allocating the server again.

What I found is that there's no bit of logic in the charged costs. I made a note of the remaining credit every time I log in portal.azure.com, write down if I have the server open or de-allocated and then calculate it back to 24 hours (it should be charged by the minute). The off line price which should be 0 according to Microsoft varies from 3,60 (!) per day to 1,00. I once refreshed the page with the server de-allocated within the next 3 hours and saw no change (so that seems 0) but the next day the credit went down and calculated back to 1,20/24 hours. The on line prices from 1,58 to 3,10. I see no difference in average use (or de-allocating) and it seems the costs are calculated with a random generator.

Does Azure cost calculations make sense to any of you using it?

Dick

Wow Dick, I have real difficulty understanding your logic at times!

Why on earth would you spin down a server to save 2.5 euros/day? I've haven't used the options of a static IP and de-allocation, but my guess would be that you're paying a fixed price for the static IP, and that is independent of the cost of the server (obviously) and if you de-allocate the server I presume you're saving some sort of image of it (to recreate it later), so that is going to generate a cost as well.

Just leave the thing running (which will leave you with a static IP) and forget about the IP address and allocating/de-allocating.

If you really want to keep doing it like this, look at the detailed usage report. It shows exactly how many hours each service is being used for and how much it costs, so you should be able to work out where the costs are coming from.

Nick

Hello Nick,

Wow Dick, I have real difficulty understanding your logic at times
Why on earth would you spin down a server to save 2.5 euros/day? I

Because I have no intention of paying Microsoft for Azure. When I configured the server it said it would cost 75 euro/month. The static IP address is supposed to be free (5 actually it says) and it also kept costing money before I had this address.

The cost analysis says the Virtual machine costs 2,53 for the virtual machine and 0,81 for the storage in the period which began today midnight. The full period shows a small amount (1,53) for the IP address being 1,22 for the public IP adress and 0.31 for the Reserved IP. Today I get this for free apparently because it's not in the detailed costs....

I just wonder if it is too much asked to expect some logic in the price. And the only reason I shut it down is that it will cost me more than the 85 euro Azure credits with the maximum day rate I saw.

If it exceeds that 85 euro more than 10-20 euro a month it's quickly less expensive to buy a Pc instead. And for the 75 euro (or more) a month real costs for Azure you can buy a decent server with more disk storage in about 1,5 year of Azure fees.

Dick

Dick,
Like I said before: we have a build machine in Azure.
I never take it down. It runs all the time.
The bill in the last 5 months has always been around EUR 85 which was fully covered by the VS Partner subscription. The estimate in the Azure control panel was Eur 85.

Most of the bill is for the 30 (31) * 24 hours processing time (81).
The rest is the IP address and data transfer. Our machine is a D2V2 (2 CPU / 7 Gb)

Robert

Hello Robert,

A Azure support guy from India explained me this morning that the costs of the disk (128 Gb around 18 euro per month and still counting when deallocated) is separate from the virtual machine (around 75 euro per month, zero when deallocated). This is the first thing which surprises me, because when I configured the Azure machine I selected 128 Gb and it says 75 per month. Apparently this guy found it logical that it was not included while I don't. Only the static IP address, 3 euro per month, is 3 euro/month extra. Even though I could prove him that using the remaining credit amounts differences divided by the time difference leads to different 24 hour costs he ignored the figures. In the end he showed me were to download a CSV file with costs & usages and that may be helpful. I think the remaining credit amounts in the portal are wrong (he only said these were a few hours behind). I'll check further.

Dick