My 2 cents on Reserved Instance Billing and Savings
If you are using Azure Virtual Machines (VMs), you have an option of using Azure Reserved Instance (RI) VMs instead. Microsoft (MS) claims these can help save up to 72% of your spend. While this may be true on the surface, but it will be good to get a deeper view to understand what benefits you really stand to make, if at all. Yes, using reserved instances, doesn’t automatically means cost saving. It is hence important to understand how this works and plan accordingly to get the right kind of benefit. I will try and point out key things to keep in mind when planning and using RIs. The reservation cost that is paid upfront, covers the cost of running the reserved VM instance. If you are using additional software on it like Linux or Windows OS, or SQL Database, then these are charged on regular rates as per their consumption units. If a reserved VM consumes more than reserved hours, then the additional hours are charged on regular VM pay-as-you-go rates. You can read up more ab...