Azure charges for node scaling

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Azure charges for node scaling

Gitesh Shah 20

Hey Azure experts,

We have a scenario and need to see what your thoughts are. We have a AKS windows Node running for our containers. Min Node value and Max node value is set to 3 & 5 (check screenshot). We always use only 3 Nodes. Autoscaling might scale up to 5 Nodes under high traffic but has almost never happened in last 1 year. Do you know if we are getting charged for the 2 nodes that have not scaled up. Out hosting provider is saying that Microsoft will charge you a small amount for reserving those 2 nodes even if they are not spinned up.

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Thanks

Gitesh Shah

Carlos Villagomez 1,106 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2023-10-06T22:43:54.13+00:00

Hello @Gitesh Shah

If the answer has been helpful, please consider accepting the answer to help increase visibility of this question for other members of the Microsoft Q&A community. If not, please let us know what is still needed in the comments so the question can be answered. Thank you for helping to improve Microsoft Q&A!

Hope above answers your question.

Thanks!

Carlos V.

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Carlos Villagomez 1,106 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2023-10-06T22:43:54.13+00:00

Hello @Gitesh Shah

If the answer has been helpful, please consider accepting the answer to help increase visibility of this question for other members of the Microsoft Q&A community. If not, please let us know what is still needed in the comments so the question can be answered. Thank you for helping to improve Microsoft Q&A!

Hope above answers your question.

Thanks!

Carlos V.

Answer 1

Mutaz Nassar 2,361 Microsoft Employee

Hi Gitesh Shah,

You will only be charged on the VMs in the node resource group; The node resource group contains all the cluster infrastructure resources and is the one that shows charges to your subscription. see the details here.
Also, If you use on-demand scaling or the cluster autoscaler, account for the added VMs. see the details here

Gitesh Shah 20 Reputation points

2023-10-04T22:19:12.9033333+00:00

Hi Mutaz,

Thanks for answering so quickly.

Still a bit unclear. So let's take an example if I have Auto scaling max node set as 5 and I change the max node value to 7. But my AKS is always using 3 nodes only. Will my cost be different if I change the setting for max node from 5 to 7?

If yes, how much will it be charged?

Thanks

Gitesh Shah
Gitesh Shah 20 Reputation points

2023-10-04T23:45:41.9066667+00:00
Mutaz Nassar 2,361 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2023-10-04T23:50:47.1366667+00:00

You will be charged only for the 3 active nodes
Gitesh Shah 20 Reputation points

2023-10-04T23:59:23.5766667+00:00

thanks for confirming Mutaz. Appreciate your quick response.
Olan de Boer 0 Reputation points

2023-10-05T02:29:03.9866667+00:00

Hey Mutaz, so what are the underlying service/consumption costs for having the other 4 nodes on standby?
Olan de Boer 0 Reputation points

2023-10-05T02:30:34.9966667+00:00

So, what are the additional underlying Azure service costs for having the 4 nodes on standby.
Mutaz Nassar 2,361 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2023-10-05T08:26:22.0333333+00:00

@Olan de Boer There will be additional cost on them only in case you used scale-down mode to deallocate so in case one of these nodes scaled up and scaled down then it will be deallocated and you will be charged only on the OS managed disk and data disk if exist as explained here.

@Gitesh Shah can you verify if your cluster has scale mode delete or deallocate ( default mode is delete), you can use this command:
az aks nodepool show --cluster-name {AKSname} -g {RGname} -n {NodepoolName} -o json --query "scaleDownMode"

If you got empty result then it is default to delete and there will be no additional cost.
Carlos Villagomez 1,106 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2023-10-05T21:51:35.3466667+00:00

Hello @Gitesh Shah

Thank you for your question!

If the answer has been helpful, please consider accepting the answer to help increase visibility of this question for other members of the Microsoft Q&A community. If not, please let us know what is still needed in the comments so the question can be answered. Thank you for helping to improve Microsoft Q&A!

Hope above answers your question.

Thanks!

Carlos V.
Gitesh Shah 20 Reputation points

2023-10-08T20:09:40.37+00:00

Hi @Mutaz Nassar ,

Thanks for your answer. We have ran the command you provided. And it came back with empty response. So we are using the default DELETE mode when nodes are scaled down.

Thanks
Gitesh Shah
Mutaz Nassar 2,361 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2023-10-09T08:53:37.45+00:00

Hi Gitesh Shah,
Thank you for your confirmation.

Please "Accept as Answer" if it helped, so that it can help others in the community looking for help on similar topics.

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Azure charges for node scaling

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