Why my Azure cosmo DB is expensive?

Question

We are a startup and got accepted into Microsoft Founders hub for startups? We are in ideate stage and got a credit of 1000 USD. We were surprised to see we got charged 639 USD with 5 Active subscriptions. We haven't launched our app yet; we are testing in Production now and we barely used the app but 639$ sounds scary.

There are three systems Dev, test and PROD environments.

Can someone advise how we can keep the cost control? if not, I would have to look for another alternative.

Answer 1

Hi Pramod Tunikipati •,

Thanks for your question.

Azure Cosmos DB bills for NoSQL database operations, consumed storage and optional dedicated gateways, across all selected Azure regions enabled on your Azure Cosmos DB account.

The cost of all database operations is normalized and expressed as either request units (RU) or vCore (compute and memory). Azure Cosmos DB offers three database operations models:

Configuring your Azure Cosmos DB databases and containers with the right amount of provisioned throughput, or Request Units (RU/s), for your workload is essential to optimizing cost and performance. 

To control the cost you may need to adjust the RUs.

Here is the pricing calculator and explained how the cost getting calculated

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/cosmos-db/autoscale-provisioned/

Here is document on how to Plan and manage costs for Azure Cosmos DB

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/plan-manage-costs

Please let us know if you have any further questions or need additional information.

Thank you!

Answer 2

Hello @Pramod Tunikipati ,

Good day!

As a startup, it's important to keep an eye on your costs to ensure that you don't exceed your budget. Azure provides several tools to help you manage your costs

First, you can use the Azure pricing calculator to estimate the costs of your resources before you deploy them. This can help you plan your budget and avoid any surprises.

Second, you can use Azure Cost Management and Billing to monitor your costs and set budgets. This tool allows you to view your usage and costs across all your Azure subscriptions, set budgets, and get alerts when you exceed your budget.

Third, you can use Azure Advisor to get recommendations on how to optimize your costs. Azure Advisor analyzes your usage and provides recommendations on how to reduce your costs.

In addition to these tools, you can also consider using Azure DevTest Labs to create and manage your dev and test environments. DevTest Labs allows you to create and manage environments, set quotas, and automate the creation and deletion of environments. This can help you save costs by only running your environment when you need them.

Please accept answer and upvote if the above information is helpful for the benefit of the community.

Answer 3

Thank you Rahul and Das.

We would like to understand on what basis RU being calculated? And why we cannot decrease or set the limits?

Situation: : We are trying to set RU usage to 1000 but it is not letting me to set the limits. It says that my current consumption is 8000RU and need to be the same or above but not less than 8000.

How can we set limits ? And , why my account is not letting me to do so ?

Please advise.

Answer 4

Hi,@Pramod Tunikipati Where do you see this message? are you trying to change the limit as shown in the below screenshot?

Please find this document on how to lower maximum RU

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/autoscale-faq#how-do-i-lower-the-maximum-ru-s-

Regards

Geetha

Answer 5

Consider using the CosmosDb emulator for local development scenarios : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/local-emulator?tabs=ssl-netstd21

For non production Azure environments, use throughput throttling to limit the RU's. Be aware that this feature is not available on Serverless accounts. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/limit-total-account-throughput