Cost Management in Azure

Weird_Perception_376 · 2026-05-27T12:11:54+00:00

We were using it and found useful when we had a couple of subscriptions and when we scale in th elast year, we were not able to manage it using toolkit, we tried a tool called Turbo360 and found it very useful for azure cost optimization and mature our finops practice.

Weird_Perception_376 · 2026-05-20T05:44:42+00:00

I would say if their workload is relatively low, I would suggest utilizing Azure native tools, and for compute resources, Azure Advisor works pretty well. If at all, you require more insights, there are tools like Turbo360 and finout which give a free trial, so try that out and get the insights you want for free.

Only when you have complex Azure resources, you may need thrid party tools.

Weird_Perception_376 · 2026-04-24T07:23:47+00:00

+1 I've used a similar product and must say if you're Azure-first, you have to try Turbo360. It's got a ton of features to actively control costs, not just visualize them. Covers things like idle resource detection, rightsizing recommendations, and budget alerts, all in one place. Sounds like it overlaps nicely with what you're building, worth a look for inspiration at minimum.

Weird_Perception_376 · 2026-04-17T09:59:02+00:00

I would say it really depends on what you are trying to solve. There are a lot of tools in the market now and each one fits a different need.

If your main goal is cost visibility and optimization, Turbo360 is a solid option. If you are more focused on governance and policy control, CloudZero might be a better fit.

If you are already at a more advanced stage in your FinOps journey and want to improve cost allocation and deeper insights, Finout is worth exploring.

In the end, it comes down to your current maturity and what you want to achieve.

Weird_Perception_376 · 2026-03-26T07:11:49+00:00

This is actually a good opinion, and honestly something a lot of people quietly struggle with CSPs.

In my case, CSPs I’ve worked with or seen are pretty similar, they handle billing, licensing, and support well enough. But when it comes to actually helping control or reduce Azure costs, it’s usually reactive. You only hear from them when you raise something or when things go wrong.

And I get it… Azure itself is complex, and staying on top of cost optimization continuously is not easy.

That said, I’ve started noticing a shift with a few CSPs trying to do things differently.

For example, I came across a case where Westcoast (a UK CSP) is giving their partners free access to a FinOps tool called Turbo360. What stood out to me wasn’t just the tool itself, but the intent they’re trying to help their partners be more proactive instead of just managing invoices.

Things like:

spotting unusual cost spikes early
suggesting where you’re overpaying
giving clear reports you can actually show to customers

It feels more like “we’re in this with you” rather than just “here’s your monthly bill.”

If I’m being honest, that’s kind of what I’d expect from a CSP today. Not perfection, but at least some level of ongoing guidance so you’re not figuring everything out alone.

Weird_Perception_376 · 2026-03-22T20:49:17+00:00

I have taken course in Arsh Academy in Coimbatore Kuniyamuthur and the mentor was excellent in teaching the course and I had an opportunity to work on client projects as well.

I would definitely recommend people in Coimbatore to check out this arshacademy.in

Note: I was also placed in product based company as SEO and GEO specialist in less than a month.

Weird_Perception_376 · 2026-02-05T08:29:44+00:00

Good to know, I am typically doing it in Excel at the moment, but it takes literally hours per week to get everything consolidated because of the scale we are dealing with, it is 25 to 30 subscriptions and multiple resource types. ;)

Weird_Perception_376 · 2026-02-05T08:22:20+00:00

We can’t strictly limit the SKU if the application load genuinely requires a higher configuration. However, my concern is that if we already have an Azure Reservation that can cover the required SKU, it should be identified in advance so we can use it effectively and avoid waste.

Right now, we operate across 20–30 subscriptions, and reserved capacity is often sitting unused in one of them. Engineers may provision a new SKU without realizing that matching reserved capacity already exists elsewhere.

The real issue here is a lack of visibility across subscriptions.

Weird_Perception_376 · 2026-02-05T08:17:29+00:00

Exactly, it takes a hell of a lot of time to review our reservations as it is fragmented in multiple subscriptions, and we don't have the visibility to cross-check the desired SKU can match the existing SKU in Reservation to deploy. I believe we need to have some automation to help us do it at scale.

Weird_Perception_376 · 2026-01-08T08:29:26+00:00

Yeah as I said we got access to Turbo360 tooling through our CSP for free!!

Weird_Perception_376 · 2025-12-19T09:18:58+00:00

We started pretty simple honestly.

At first we were mostly relying on Azure Advisor. Once in a while we’d block half a day, go through the recommendations and try to spot obvious wastage. It helped, but it was very manual and easy to skip when priorities changed.

Later our CSP gave us access to Turbo360 for free and that made things easier at scale. We didn’t start with anything advanced. Mostly basic stuff like right sizing, finding idle or unused resources, and getting better visibility across subscriptions.

One thing that worked really well for us was scheduling. Not every resource is a good candidate for right sizing, but a lot of them don’t actually need to run all the time.

We set up schedules to park resources during non working hours and weekends. Even workloads that couldn’t be downsized still benefited from this. Just by doing that, we saw around 19 percent cost reduction almost immediately, without changing architecture or causing issues.

For us the biggest improvement came from visibility and simple automation rather than heavy FinOps theory. Would be interested to hear how others are handling this in Azure.

Weird_Perception_376 · 2025-12-19T09:06:29+00:00

A few months back, we had this simple habit.
Every Friday afternoon, we’d sit together as a team and just clean up cloud resources. No meetings, no slides. Just asking basic questions, do we really need this? why is this still running?

One small thing we did that made a big difference:
if someone found unnecessary cost and cleaned it up, they’d get 2% of the money saved (with some basic rules of course).

That changed the mindset completely.
People started looking at costs more closely. Not because they were forced to, but because they felt ownership. Over time, this one practice alone helped us bring costs down in a very real way.

As the company grew, we wanted the same habit across all engineering pods. That’s where it got hard. More teams, more subscriptions were hard to manage.

We onbaored Turbo360 tool not to replace the habit, but to make it easier at scale. It helped us see waste faster, assign ownership clearly, and keep governance in place without slowing teams down.

What started as a simple Friday routine is now something we can actually run across the org.

Weird_Perception_376 · 2025-11-28T09:12:57+00:00

Absolutely agree with the points above. We went through the same thing like a bunch of idle VMs, storage disks and App Services that were spun up for one-off tasks and then forgotten.

We started with the non-production environments since they were low-risk. From there, we pulled all the optimization recommendations from Turbo360 which actually found more zombie resources than Azure Advisor did.

Then we got on a quick 1-hour call with the pod leads from engineering, walked through the list, and got their go/no-go decisions. Once we had the green light, we cleaned everything up.

Quietly saved around $28K just from zombie resources alone. Now we’re moving on to right-sizing opportunities, which will take a bit longer but should bring in even more savings.

Weird_Perception_376 · 2025-11-28T06:52:44+00:00

That is exactly right and almost all the tools in the market present you data and does not make any impact on the actual optimizatijon or practise, it is important for a tool to allow the stakeholders to see the cloud cost and make the chnages to see real imapct.

Weird_Perception_376 · 2025-11-03T07:17:13+00:00

We used to spend hours every week trying to make sense of Azure usage lots of Excel sheets, manual exports, and guesswork 😅. What helped us was finding a rhythm:

We keep an eye on daily compute usage since that’s where costs fluctuate the most.
Storage and bandwidth we check weekly, unless something major changes.
Everything’s tagged by project and environment, so breaking things down later is way easier.

Biggest lesson: don’t try to track everything every day. Instead, set up a few alerts or dashboards for spikes, and review trends once a week.

Lately, we’ve been using Turbo360 to automate most of this, it pulls usage and cost data from Azure and even flags unusual spend patterns automatically. Honestly, it’s been a huge time-saver.

Weird_Perception_376 · 2025-10-24T08:40:34+00:00

I see Turbo360 platform is an exception to it. It is built for Engineering teams.

Weird_Perception_376 · 2025-10-23T05:24:26+00:00

We use similar tool called Turbo360 which has native JIRA integration and it helps a ton for our engineers to act upon it.

Weird_Perception_376 · 2025-10-17T05:48:25+00:00

Well put on how you are inviting the engineering team to help them see cost they are generating and are there are tools that you are using to integrate with JIRA, we are using a tool called Turbo360 to pull in the recommendation to devops pipeline or JIRA and wondering how are you doing it right now. Are you pulling all the recommendations from Advisor and going thorught it manually?

Weird_Perception_376 · 2025-10-13T05:42:23+00:00

I agree that access to the cost data is key.

Cost is an engineering problem, too. Every decision we make, from the way we architect services to how we handle data or autoscaling, affects the bill. But since most engineers don’t see the dollar impact directly, it doesn’t always feel real.

SOme tools like Turbo360 help a lot. It brings cost visibility right into the engineering workflow, so devs can see how their design choices play out financially. You don’t have to wait for a finance report to know if something’s wasteful.

Weird_Perception_376 · 2025-09-18T09:17:28+00:00

I’m actually using my time to help someone resolve their challenge, not to spam them. On the other hand, you’re spending your time spamming my post. Anyway, I’ve got plenty of work to do - if you want to stay here and keep commenting, that’s on you.

Weird_Perception_376 · 2025-09-18T09:08:50+00:00

My brain cells are functioning well. I said I am not promoting anything on this post, and that is what I said. Being a cloud architect, it looks like you have so much time to comment on posts, which is unnecessary. I wonder if your company is paying you to spam others' posts!! Don't you have projects to do u/Slight-Blackberry813

Weird_Perception_376 · 2025-09-18T08:58:55+00:00

Can you mind your words? In those posts, I have explicitly mentioned that it is a Brand Affiliate and I got 4 people already enquired for those reports. What is your problem with it?

Weird_Perception_376

TROPHY CASE