Microsoft provide a few options to save money in Azure. Reserved Instances, Hybrid Benefits, Spot Instances and now Azure Savings Plan for Compute. This video goes over Azure Savings Plan for Compute, what it is and how it compares to existing cost reduction options. Then we review details of the Savings Plan and some considerations you should know before implementing Azure Savings Plan for Compute.
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Ever wonder why there are two virtual hardware versions for Azure VM’s, Generation 1 and Generation 2? This video goes over the difference between them and when to us one over the other. It goes on to demonstrate the differences when provisioning and changing the OS disk size on a VM.
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In this post and accompanying video, we go over the benefits and considerations of using ephemeral disks with Azure Windows Virtual Desktop Session Hosts. We review the performance improvements as well as limitations that come with ephemeral disks, including the inability to deallocate Session Hosts. Next, we examine Azure Reserved Instances and how they can be used to keep the cost of Session Hosts down without using an auto scale solution.
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This video goes over two Azure IP addresses used for Azure VM’s. The WireServer IP of 168.63.129.16 and the Azure Instance Metadata Service (IMDS) IP address 169.254.169.254. In the video, I go over what each is used for and then give a demonstration on using the WireServer IP address to query DNS. After that, I use the IMDS REST Endpoint to pull metadata including the Azure environment and scheduled events.
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Azure Spot Virtual Machines are an IaaS server option offered at a deep discount compared to pay-as-you-go and Reserved Instance pricing. This video walks through deploying the new Azure Spot VM’s with the Azure Portal. The video also gives an overview of what Azure Spot VM instances are and some considerations to using them.
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