ADF is billing high

Using manual triggers in Azure Data Factory (ADF) or Azure Synapse Pipelines will still incur costs because billing is based on several factors, not only the type of trigger (manual vs. scheduled). Here’s a breakdown of the cost factors and potential workarounds:

1. Pipeline Execution Costs: Costs are incurred based on the activities within your pipelines (e.g., copy activities, data flow executions, lookups). Manual execution still consumes resources for each activity that runs.
2. Data Movement and Transformation: If your pipelines use data movement (like Azure Blob to SQL) or data transformation (Data Flows), these activities incur costs based on volume, time, and data integration unit (DIU) usage. Manually running pipelines doesn’t change these costs, as they’re based on usage rather than the trigger type.
3. Pipeline Run Thresholds: While there’s no explicit free tier or threshold for manual triggers in ADF, managing the number of pipeline runs (especially during testing) helps control costs. Azure does offer a limited free tier for data movement in the first 5 GB per month but does not apply broadly to full pipelines.
4. Cost-Saving Workarounds:
   • Limit Activity Usage: During testing, isolate critical activities or run minimal pipelines with lightweight activities (e.g., log only runs or sample data) to control DIU usage.
   • Use Debug Runs in Data Flows: In ADF Data Flow, debug mode is more economical for testing purposes as it uses temporary clusters.
   • Use Azure Cost Management Alerts: Set up cost alerts or budgets to monitor and restrict spending in real-time, notifying teams when approaching limits.
   • Leverage Azure Pricing Calculator: Estimate costs for activities to understand the impact of each pipeline run better, which helps optimize design choices.
5. Testing Alternatives:
   • Disabled Trigger Testing: Temporarily disabling automated triggers for pipelines helps avoid unintentional executions. For testing, use smaller test datasets or sampling within manual triggers.
   • Reduce Redundant Testing: Where possible, limit the number of pipeline versions and focus on selective scenarios rather than broad full-pipeline tests.

To fully optimize costs, monitor pipeline activity logs and Azure Cost Management for granular insights into usage patterns, and communicate usage thresholds to your team to ensure efficient resource management.

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hth

Marcin