Cloud costs can spiral quickly without proper governance. After reviewing dozens of Azure environments, I've identified patterns that consistently reduce spend by 30-40%.
Reserved Instances
For predictable workloads, reserved instances offer significant savings:
| Commitment | Savings |
|---|---|
| 1 Year | ~30% |
| 3 Year | ~50% |
Right-sizing
Most VMs are over-provisioned. Use Azure Advisor recommendations and actual metrics:
Perf
| where ObjectName == "Processor" and CounterName == "% Processor Time"
| summarize avg(CounterValue) by Computer, bin(TimeGenerated, 1h)
Auto-shutdown
Development environments don't need to run 24/7. Implement auto-shutdown policies and save 65% on non-production costs.
Tags and Accountability
You can't optimize what you can't measure. Implement a tagging strategy that assigns costs to business owners.