Understanding Azure Reservations and Savings Plans

 

For bootstrapped startups, every dollar counts. Wasting money on cloud resources can stifle your growth. But fear not, cloud ninjas! This post dives into two powerful tools – Azure Reservations and Savings Plans – that can help you slash your Azure bill and optimize your cloud spending.

Imagine getting a discount on your favorite takeout app… but only if you order the same thing every week from the same location. That's kind of like Azure Reservations. You commit to using a specific amount of Azure resources for a set period (think virtual machines) and get a sweet discount (up to 72% off!).

Azure Savings Plans are more flexible. It's like a pre-paid gift card for your cloud resources. You commit to spending a certain amount per hour for one or three years, and you get discounts (up to 65% off!) on eligible compute costs across different regions and instance types.

Choosing the Right Option

Here's a breakdown of the advantages, drawbacks, ideal use cases, and penalties for each option to help you decide which is best for you:

 

Azure Reservations (Learn more about Azure Reservations)

• Advantages:

  • Cost Savings: Up to 72% off compared to pay-as-you-go pricing.
  • Predictable Billing: Provides a predictable expenditure model.
  • Automatic Application: Discounts automatically apply to matching resources.

• Drawbacks:

  • Limited Flexibility: Best for stable, predictable workloads.
  • Resource Specificity: Tied to specific regions and instance families.
  • Penalties: "Use-it-or-lose-it" - unused resources are forfeited. Limited cancellation and exchange options (Azure Reservations Exchange Policy).

• Ideal Use Cases:

  • Consistent, uninterrupted workloads with minimal variation (e.g., core web server).

Azure Savings Plans (Learn more about Azure Savings Plans)

 

• Advantages:

  • Flexible Savings: Applies across a wide range of compute resources.
  • Global Application: Works across different regions and instance families.

• Drawbacks:

  • Limited Scope: Discounts only apply to compute costs, not storage, network, or licensing.
  • Non-Cancellable Commitment: Purchases are final, with no cancellation or exchange options (Canceling Azure Savings Plans).

• Ideal Use Cases:

  • Fluctuating workloads, varied instance families, or workloads spanning multiple regions.

Bonus Tip: Don't forget the Free Tier!

 

Azure has a generous free tier with a ton of services that are perfect for getting started. Check it out before you dive into Reservations or Savings Plans.

 

By leveraging these tools and the free tier, you can build a scalable and cost-efficient cloud infrastructure that fuels your startup's growth. Ready to explore? Check out Microsoft's cost calculators to see how much you can save!

 

Here are some additional resources:

• Microsoft Azure Reservations: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/reservations
• Microsoft Azure Savings Plans: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/savings-plan/
• Microsoft Azure Pricing Calculator: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/cost

Microsoft's edge-computing strategy has been shifting in some subtle and not-so-subtle ways. In the evolving AI era, edge computing will become even more central for customers, partners and Microsoft itself. Directions analyst Barry Briggs and Mary Jo Foley dissect Microsoft's evolving edge-computing plans and tactics in this episode.



Download audio: https://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/members/sites/default/files/audio/2024/05/season3ep8briggs.mp3

Ori Saporta, co-founder and Systems Architect at vFunction, joins host Jeff Doolittle for a conversation about the role of the software architect. The episode begins with Ori’s thoughts on what is typically missed or overlooked regarding this role. The conversation then explores aspects of both hard and soft skills required of software architects. Other topics include the relationship of the software architect to other roles, to design and process, and to quality. The show concludes by addressing the importance of dependency management by software architects. Brought to you by IEEE Software magazine and IEEE Computer Society.

Download audio: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/seradio/616_ori_saporta_software_architect_role.mp3?dest-id=23379

Following up on our blog post on Plans for jQuery UI 1.14, it is our pleasure to announce the first beta for jQuery UI 1.14.0.

This release doesn’t offer any new features, only the following breaking changes:

• Only the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari & Edge are officially supported; there is no support for any version of IE and Edge Legacy. Contrary to what was done in past releases, code supporting unsupported browsers has been deleted.
• Only the latest jQuery version within each major version of jQuery Core is supported. This beta was tested against jQuery 1.12.4, 2.2.4 & 3.7.1, plus two development versions: 3.x & 4.x.
• Backwards compatibility with the 1.11 API is disabled by default. To re-enable it (restoring the default 1.13 behavior) set the jQuery.uiBackCompat flag to true.

This beta is not integrated into the jQuery UI Download Builder; support for jQuery UI 1.14 will be added before the final release. Because of that, zip bundles are not available for this beta.

We’d also like to remind you that beginning in June 2024, the Download Builder will only support jQuery UI 1.12 or newer. For more information, please read the Plans for jQuery UI 1.14 blog post.

Please remember jQuery UI is in a maintenance state. We’ll make sure the library is compatible with new jQuery releases and that security issues are fixed but no new significant feature work is planned. We’ll also try to fix important regressions from jQuery UI 1.12.1; older long-standing bugs may not get fixed. Note that this does not affect jQuery Core, which is still actively maintained.

Download

Git (contains source files, with @VERSION replaced with 1.14.0-beta.1, base theme only)

• Tag: https://github.com/jquery/jquery-ui/tree/1.14.0-beta.1

Install via npm

• npm install jquery-ui@1.14.0-beta.1

Install via bower

• bower install jquery/jquery-ui#1.14.0-beta.1

jQuery CDN

• Uncompressed: https://code.jquery.com/ui/1.14.0-beta.1/jquery-ui.js
• Compressed: https://code.jquery.com/ui/1.14.0-beta.1/jquery-ui.min.js
• Themes: black-tie, blitzer, cupertino, dark-hive, dot-luv, eggplant, excite-bike, flick, hot-sneaks, humanity, le-frog, mint-choc, overcast, pepper-grinder, redmond, smoothness, south-street, start, sunny, swanky-purse, trontastic, ui-darkness, ui-lightness, and vader.

Changelog

For full details on what’s included in this release see the 1.14.0-beta.1 Changelog. The 1.14 Upgrade Guide will be available later.

Thanks

Thanks to all who helped with this release, specifically: Michał Gołębiowski-Owczarek, Timmy Willison, Felix Nagel.

Comments

Note: Please report bugs to the jQuery UI Bug Tracker. Support questions should be posted on Stack Overflow with the jquery-ui tag.

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