Requesting help to understand short-running ADF activity billing

Question

We are trying to compare pricing for AzureIR and for SHIR and got a few issues with the pricing related information.

Pricing page(https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/data-factory/data-pipeline/) mentions following Integration runtime charges are prorated by the minute and rounded up. but is kind of missing the information about which duration is used to calculate used DIU-hours or hours for data movement activities.

Our logs states that usedDataIntegrationUnits = 4 therefore the minimum billable amount should be 4 DIU * 1/60 hours = 0.066.... According to our logs we have huge number of data movement activities that are marked to have used only 0,016666 hours.

Kusto query:

ADFActivityRun
| where Status == "Succeeded" or Status == "Failed"
| extend Output_ = parse_json(Output)
| extend activityType = Output_.billingReference.activityType, billableDuration = Output_.billingReference.billableDuration, meterType = Output_.billingReference.billableDuration[0].meterType, unit = Output_.billingReference.billableDuration[0].unit, sessionType = Output_.billingReference.billableDuration[0].sessionType, duration = Output_.billingReference.billableDuration[0].duration, usedDataIntegrationUnits = Output_.usedDataIntegrationUnits, ex_usedDataIntegrationUnits = Output_.executionDetails[0].usedDataIntegrationUnits, ex_usedParallelCopies = Output_.executionDetails[0].usedParallelCopies, ex_duration = Output_.executionDetails[0].duration, ex_transferDuration = toint(Output_.executionDetails[0].detailedDurations.transferDuration), ex_queuingDuration = toint(Output_.executionDetails[0].detailedDurations.queuingDuration), ex_preCopyScriptDuration = toint(Output_.executionDetails[0].detailedDurations.preCopyScriptDuration), ex_timeToFirstByte = toint(Output_.executionDetails[0].detailedDurations.timeToFirstByte)
| project-reorder activityType, meterType, unit, duration, usedDataIntegrationUnits, ex_usedDataIntegrationUnits, ex_duration, ex_transferDuration, ex_queuingDuration, ex_preCopyScriptDuration, ex_timeToFirstByte, ex_usedParallelCopies, *
| where activityType == 'DataMovement'
| summarize count() by tostring(duration)

returns following information

We did some calculations and simply summing Output.billingReference.billableDuration[0].duration and multiplying with price given in the pricing table gives a same sum than in the cost management. Using

max_of(toint(Output_.billingReference.billableDuration[0].duration), 0.06666)

to simulate round up to 4*1/60 almost doubles calculated cost and the the result does not match with cost management anymore.

So the question is: What is the minimum amount of billable DIU-hours?

Answer 1

Hi @Janne Kujanpää ,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum and thanks for reaching out here.

What is the minimum amount of billable DIU-hours?
The minimum amount of billable Data Integration Unit (DIU)-hours for short-running activities in Azure Data Factory is 1/60th of an hour, or 0.0166667 hours. This means that if an activity runs for less than 1 minute, it will be billed for 0.0166667 hours of DIU usage.

Kindly go through this document which demonstrates the Azure Data Factory pricing model with detailed examples and do a comparison with your numbers and use the Azure pricing calculator for analysis. Here is the document: Understanding Azure Data Factory pricing through examples

If you still have questions, I recommend reaching out to billing department so that one of representative can walk you through a sample calculation based on your usage or you can open a support ticket as it is free for billing related questions.

1. Get one-on-one guidance on Azure pricing
   
2. Azure provides unlimited support for subscription management, which includes billing, quota adjustments, and account transfers. Please feel free to file a free billing support request following this document: Create an Azure support request
   

Hope this info helps.

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