Azure Automation Service Charges

Aryaa Kotian 85 Reputation points
2024-11-28T04:11:18.71+00:00

I have automation set up in 2 different tenant, both are for database scale up and scale down i.e. between S2 and S4 which is scheduled at 7 AM to scale up and 7 PM to scale down., but still the execution time is very different for both of them, 1 takes 2-5 mins which also includes app service plan scale up/down but the other takes 15 mins to only scale up/down the database. This becomes the reason my cost also increases.
Also I am only using automation service to scale up or scale down and nothing else, powershell is used, and usually job runtime is less than 500 mins but still i am getting charged for automation service, currently for NOV period its almost INR. 40 only for database scale up and down.
whereas, DB + App service scaled up and scale down took only INR 11 up till now for the NOV period.
I really didn't understand Y am i being charged as i have only 2 runbooks in each tenant and 2 schedules.
how can i reduce or not get charged for automating scale up and down process?

Azure Automation
Azure Automation
An Azure service that is used to automate, configure, and install updates across hybrid environments.
1,368 questions
Windows for business | Windows Server | User experience | PowerShell
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  1. Nandan Hegde 36,151 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2024-11-28T04:41:21.66+00:00

    Below is the costing for Azure automation :

    User's image

    Can you definitely confirm that throughout your month, your overall time across all automations didnt exceed 500 mins?

    Also, scaling of database is impacted based on factors :

    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/603284/slow-database-performance-slow-scaling

    So the time might vary for the same


  2. SadiqhAhmed-MSFT 49,326 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator
    2024-11-28T14:53:26.3566667+00:00

    @Aryaa Kotian We do not control the script duration, it completely depends on the code written in the runbook. You would have to look for ways to optimize your script code for it to run faster and look at the time taken by other resources to scale up/down.

    FYI: 500 mins free is per subscription and not per account.

    EDIT: Thanks for sharing the details. Regarding your concern about the charges you noticed in Tenant A, you can reach out to Azure support for further clarification. Here is the link - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-portal/supportability/how-to-create-azure-support-request to create support case.

    Please see the response to your questions below:

    Am i being charged for schedules? There are no charges for schedules themselves. Charges are incurred based on the job run time minutes used by the runbooks.

    am i being charged for some logs? You are only charged for the log data stored in the Azure Log Analytics service. There are no additional charges for the service itself

    am i being charged for something or anything else when using the runbook to only scale up or scale down? Charges for process automation are based on the number of job run time minutes used in the month. The first 500 minutes are free, and beyond that, the cost is $0.002 per minute.

    Hope this answered your questions!


    If the response helped, do "Accept Answer" and up-vote it

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