Azure Cost Management and Billing updates – November 2020 | Azure Blog and Updates

Whether or not you’re a brand new pupil, a thriving startup, or the most important enterprise, you have got monetary constraints, and that you must know what you’re spending, the place, and tips on how to plan for the long run. No one needs a shock with regards to the invoice, and that is the place Azure Value Administration and Billing is available in.

We’re all the time in search of methods to study extra about your challenges and the way Azure Value Administration and Billing may help you higher perceive the place you’re accruing prices within the cloud, establish and stop dangerous spending patterns, and optimize prices to empower you to do extra with much less. Listed below are a number of of the most recent enhancements and updates based mostly in your suggestions:

Let’s dig into the main points.

Customise language in price range alerts

Budgets let you get notified as you breach predefined thresholds. You possibly can arrange budgets for your self or for others inside your group to drive accountability and proactively notify groups about doubtlessly extreme spending patterns. When a threshold is exceeded, an e mail alert is shipped to the configured recipients to inform them concerning the price range standing. E mail alerts are despatched utilizing the identical language because the billing account for comfort, however in some instances, like for a world or multilingual group, chances are you’ll need to ship emails utilizing a unique language. Now you’ll be able to! Merely choose one of many 21 supported languages when configuring your alerts.

Preview new views optimized for resources and reservations

We receive a ton of great feedback in Cost Management. Thank you for that! We’re constantly looking for ways to improve your experience based on this feedback and that’s exactly what you’ll see with the latest cost analysis preview and the new Resources and Reservations views. These new views will be the basis for all new views going forward and we’d love to get your feedback before they’re released more broadly.

Identifying your most expensive resources and understanding what makes up those costs is critical. You may be familiar with the Cost by resource view today. We’re taking a fresh look at this view with a focus on performance and usability in the new Resources view.

We also get a lot of questions about reservations today. The new Reservations view shows what reservations you’re using and which resources are using them, facilitating internal chargeback. Billing account admins can also see how much of these reservations is unused, helping you identify opportunity to save even more.

These are just the beginning, but we’d love to get your thoughts! Any feedback you share here will impact all new built-in views, so this is a great opportunity to make a big impact! To see the preview, please fill out this quick, 5- to 10-minute survey:

Take the survey (the preview link is on page two of the survey).

What’s new in Cost Management Labs

With Cost Management Labs, you get a sneak peek at what’s coming in Azure Cost Management and can engage directly with us to share feedback and help us better understand how you use the service, so we can deliver more tuned and optimized experiences. Here are a few features you can see in Cost Management Labs:

Improved getting started – Now available in the public portal

Expanded getting started experience covering more options across Cost Management and Billing.

New cost analysis views for resources and reservations

Introducing new, faster cost views that break costs down by resource and reservation. We’re still working on these. You can opt into the new views using Try Preview from Cost Management Labs.

NEW: Change scope from the menu

Allow changing scope from the menu for quicker navigation. You can opt-in using Try Preview from Cost Management Labs.

NEW: Open configuration items in the main menu

Experimental option to show the selected configuration screen as a nested menu item in the Cost Management menu. You can opt-in using Try Preview from Cost Management Labs.

NEW: Streamlined Cost Management menu

Only show settings in Configuration. Remove Cloudyn, Exports, and Connectors for AWS from the Cost Management menu. You can opt-in using Try Preview from Cost Management Labs.

Of course, that’s not all. Every change in Azure Cost Management is available in Cost Management Labs a week before it’s in the full Azure portal. We’re eager to hear your thoughts and understand what you’d like to see next. What are you waiting for? Try Cost Management Labs today.

New ways to save money with Azure

Lots of cost optimization improvements over the past month! Here are a few you might be interested in:

Looking for more? Check out How to optimize Azure workload costs for tips on where to start.

Upcoming changes to Azure usage data

Many organizations use the full Azure usage and charges to understand what’s being used, identify what charges should be internally billed to which teams, and/or to look for opportunities to optimize costs with Azure reservations and Azure Hybrid Benefit, just to name a few. If you’re doing any analysis or have setup integration based on product details in the usage data, please update your logic for the following.

Effective December 1, 2020, Azure Backup price and meter IDs in South Africa will change:

South Africa North

LRS Data Stored
- Old: fa185be7-f94a-4b13-9d13-a28f14355341
- New: 2d8d338-7922-4eee-9b00-0365c76cfdb5

GRS Data Stored
- Old: 9ddbc061-ffa0-4ccc-bf20-3919502f70e5
- New: 86a2bc4c-1095-586f-b1cc-dc292b43bd8d

South Africa West
- GRS Data Stored
  - Old: 13cb3789-91a1-4ac6-9825-bbe4ed7df110
  - New: d237c29f-8845-5404-8ea5-28078fae1686

Also, remember the key-based Enterprise Agreement (EA) billing APIs have been replaced by new Azure Resource Manager APIs. The key-based APIs will still work through the end of your enrollment, but will no longer be available when you renew and transition into Microsoft Customer Agreement. Please plan your migration to the latest version of the UsageDetails API to ease your transition to Microsoft Customer Agreement at your next renewal.

New videos and learning opportunities

For those visual learners, here are 7 new videos you might be interested in:

Follow the Azure Cost Management and Billing YouTube channel to stay in the loop with new videos as they’re released and let us know what you’d like to see next.

Want a more guided experience? Start with Control Azure spending and manage bills with Azure Cost Management and Billing.

Documentation updates

This month we have a few great updates to help you troubleshoot common issues with reservations:

Want to keep an eye on all of the documentation updates? Check out the Cost Management and Billing doc change history in the azure-docs repository on GitHub. If you see something missing, select Edit at the top of the document and submit a quick pull request.

What’s next?

These are just a few of the big updates from last month. Don’t forget to check out the previous Azure Cost Management and Billing updates. We’re always listening and making constant improvements based on your feedback, so please keep the feedback coming.

Follow @AzureCostMgmt on Twitter and subscribe to the YouTube channel for updates, suggestions, and tips. And, as all the time, share your concepts and vote up others within the Value Administration suggestions discussion board.

We all know these try instances for everybody. Greatest needs from the Azure Value Administration and Billing staff. Keep secure and keep wholesome!

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