Azure Rightsizing Made Easy

Good financial stewardship of your Azure environment requires that your resources – most notably VMs and Azure SQL databases – are appropriately sized for your ever-evolving business needs. But how do you know if you’ve chosen the right tier or are getting the best rate for a given resource? We have updated our rightsizing feature within the Cloud Management Portal to take advantage of new inputs from the most up-to-date APIs allowing us to determine if your resources are oversized and, if needed, make a recommendation to get you rightsized.

Don’t leave money on the table. Our new rightsizing algorithm is showing potential savings of more than 20% for most customers. If you have enabled Rightsizing within the CMP, log in today and check out the updated recommendations.

If you haven’t enabled Rightsizing, what are you waiting for?

Rightsizing recommendations are not limited to companies with an Azure EA. Customers who purchase Azure from New Signature via the Cloud Solutions Provider (CSP) Program have access to the same great insight.

How Does It Work?

For each resource, we simply answer the question, “Is there a less expensive way to do the same amount of work”? We do this by:

1. Identifying the currently assigned meter
2. Assessing the capacity and utilization of the resource
3. Comparing these results against a list of available SKUs to identify the least expensive meter that can handle work in the same region.

For virtual machines, we look at the hourly average CPU utilization over 30 days, remove 5% of the most extreme (high) readings, and then use the maximum value remaining. Factoring in the CPU type on the virtual machine, we select the cheapest meter that has the required compute capacity. The selected meter must meet certain requirements, for example:

• it must be cheaper than the current one
• it must be available in the same Azure datacenter
• it must offer the same Windows licensing terms
• it must support at least the number of data disks currently assigned and of the same kind (i.e. premium vs standard)
• it must have the same RAM capacity, and so on.

If you’re into details, here’s what’s new:

Expanded and Improved VM Support

• Our recommendations consider all new VM tiers (i.e. A_v2, Am_v2, D_v3, Ds_v3, Fs, Es_v3, E_v3, Ls, M, H)) excluding NVIDIA GPU-based NV and NC.
• We present Classic and ARM VMs in the same solution.
• Our updated logic factors in Windows license, premium storage, number of disks, total RAM, CPU utilization, region, subscription type, and meter cost.

Improved Automation and Discovery

We’ve gone to great lengths to ensure that our analysis logic deals with the ever-changing Azure landscape in a way that is more reliable and transparent. You now see:

• When your recommendations were generated
• How recently we connected to obtain your performance data
• What errors (if any) we encountered

We’ve made many improvements to the code to make it more indifferent to numerous naming inconsistencies and shortcomings in the APIs we work with.

Azure SQL Databases

• Rightsizing for Azure SQL databases rightsizing is now offered in its first version, utilizing DTU consumption and database size to make recommendations.

Improved User Interface

• The updated interface provides more detailed visualizations of data patterns which include hourly data points.
• Our recommendations display all relevant details on which the recommendation is made – putting you in control of the decision-making.
• You can choose to ignore recommendations that don’t meet your needs so that they don’t impact aggregate assessments of potential savings.
• You will notice improved performance (faster load times) and the site is more enjoyable to look at.

If you haven’t enabled Rightsizing yet, turn it on. If you have any questions about the recommendations you are receiving or need help getting Rightsizing enabled, drop us a line at portal@newsignature.com.

We’re very excited to offer this improved version of Rightsizing. We hope you enjoy it!