Seeking tips for managing personal PAYG Azure subscription

Question

Hello,

Greetings of the day !

I need to have Pay As You Go Azure subscription for personal uses. At times Azure Advisor takes time to reflect the cost of Azure resources, I am bit concerned about spending too much inadvertently. Could you please help me with following questions?

Q1. Is there a way for me to define hard limit on my subscription? I am pretty good if my resources are deleted in case cost exceed defined threshold.

**Q2.**Another question is how you do manage your personal subscription ? Looking for best practices and learn from your experiences.

Applicate your Response. Thank you!!

Answer 1

Hello @anil kumar Thank you for reaching out to us with your question. As I understand, you want to manage your Pay-As-You-Go subscription by defining hard limit to save cost. Azure Budget in combination with Azure policy might help you achieve your goal.

Azure Budgets can help you manage your costs and stay within your budget by providing you with alerts when your spending exceeds a certain threshold. However, Azure Budgets do not provide a way to define a hard limit on your Azure subscription.

Azure Budgets allow you to set spending limits on your Azure subscription, resource group, or resource. You can create a budget that specifies the amount you want to spend on your subscription, and then set up alerts to notify you when your spending exceeds a certain percentage of the budget. You can also set up alerts to notify you when your spending is forecasted to exceed the budget in the future.

While Azure Budgets can help you manage your costs and avoid unexpected charges, they do not provide a way to enforce a hard limit on your Azure subscription. To enforce a hard limit, you would need to use Azure Policy.

To define a hard limit on an Azure subscription using Azure Policy, you can create a policy that specifies the maximum number of resources that can be deployed in the subscription. You can then assign this policy to the subscription.

Here are the high-level steps to create and assign a policy to define a hard limit on an Azure subscription:

1. Create a policy definition that specifies the maximum number of resources that can be deployed in the subscription.
2. Assign the policy definition to a policy assignment.
3. Assign the policy assignment to the subscription.

For example, you can create a policy definition that specifies that no more than 100 virtual machines can be deployed in the subscription. You can then assign this policy definition to a policy assignment, and assign the policy assignment to the subscription.

To create and assign a policy in Azure, you can use the Azure Policy service in the Azure portal. Here are the detailed steps:

1. In the Azure portal, search for "Policy" in the search bar, and select "Policy" from the results.
2. Click on "Definitions" in the left-hand menu, and then click on "Add".
3. Enter a name and description for the policy definition.
4. Under "Policy rule", enter the JSON code that specifies the maximum number of resources that can be deployed in the subscription. For example, you can use the following JSON code to specify that no more than 100 virtual machines can be deployed in the subscription:

{
    "if": {
        "allOf": [
            {
                "field": "type",
                "equals": "Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines"
            },
            {
                "not": {
                    "field": "location",
                    "equals": "eastus"
                }
            }
        ]
    },
    "then": {
        "effect": "deny",
        "details": {
            "type": "Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines",
            "existenceCondition": {
                "allOf": [
                    {
                        "field": "location",
                        "equals": "eastus"
                    },

Hope this helps. Let us know if you need anything else.

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Answer 2

Hello @anil kumar,

the hard limit you want is a 'spending limit'.

Microsoft offers only in a few cases a spending limit, mostly related to temporary, time-limited, (free) accounts or as part of another subscription like an MSDN subscription.

What normally is done to prevent overspending is setting cost alerts per month.

You can get an email alert when you spend more than a certain amount of money per month.

Say, you expect to spend 1000 dollars per month. Th that case, you set actual spending alerts at eg. 500, 600, 700, 800, 900 dollars.

It can also be a forecast which you set at 1000 dollars.

So, if you get a warning, you check the spending amount and how many days are gone past that month.

In general, it's always wise to design and program with cost savings in mind. Next to that, research how much your solution spends every few days to learn about it. Performing a load test also takes away many surprises.

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Answer 3

Hi https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/users/na/?userid=c52eb23d-e4f9-424f-91ab-84b5f44bb9e9> Q1. Is there a way for me to define hard limit on my subscription? I am pretty good if my resources are deleted in case cost exceed defined threshold.

The Above answers must have satisfied your Q2 well. for Q1 for Hard limit on your subscription you can provision a setup that does that for you every time you reach the spending limit with the help of Azure Automation and Budget .

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/manage/cost-management-budget-scenario#create-an-azure-automation-runbook

This is something that comes handy for the subscription like this.

Please "Accept as Answer" or Upvote if this helps.