cost savings

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A look at Azure costs based on a real solution

I’ve used and worked with Microsoft Azure for a decade now. Often I’m working in customer subscriptions, and don’t have to worry about the cost that much. Obviously many times customers are querying about long-term cost, and what operating expenses they should plan and budget for. My own Azure subscriptions are financed by myself, and I get some credits through the Microsoft MVP program also. I try to minimize services that cost more, and often use free tiers or shutdown and destroy instances I don’t need for a few weeks. I wrote about tracking and working with AKA.MS URLs in March this year. In essence, it’s a small solution that triggers whenever someone tweets anything that matches http[s]://aka.ms, resolves the… Read More »A look at Azure costs based on a real solution
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Migrating SQL Server 2008 databases to Azure SQL

“This is a quick one”, I thought. A customer asked me to have a look at their old CRM environment, that was running in a local physical server in their datacenter. The plan was to decommission the server, but rescue the CRM database. I knew I could lift-and-shift the database or databases to Azure SQL quite easily. This post walks through my experience and some of the challenges I encountered. Provisioning Azure SQL I received the source database as a traditional SQL Server backup, a .BAK file. It was compressed but still considerable big at 11,6 GB. I provisioned a new managed SQL Server in Azure. Not the Managed Instance, as I feared it would be too expensive to maintain… Read More »Migrating SQL Server 2008 databases to Azure SQL

Managing your costs in Microsoft Azure with Sharegate’s Overcast

  • Azure
I started using Microsoft Azure in the very early days in 2008, when the whole idea with cloud computing was something very different than it is today. During recent years I’ve found myself working mostly with Azure-related architectures, deployments and governance projects as the platform has matured to fit any type of customer need. One recurring challenge I find many organizations facing is the shift from capital expenditures (CAPEX) to operational expenditures (OPEX). Traditional IT has always relied on a 12-36-month investment cycle, and one the decision for investment has been made, it’s mostly a sunken cost. Afterwards the cost is something that is rarely revisited. With Azure, and similarly with other cloud providers, the shift to operational costs brings… Read More »Managing your costs in Microsoft Azure with Sharegate’s Overcast