How to reduce storage cost on development server on microsoft and the IO cost

Question

How to reduce storage cost on development server on microsoft and the IO cost

Mohit Gupta 60

Hi,

I have deployed a wordpress as an app with mysql database. The site is still under development phase, but the database cost and IO cost is huge, when only couple of developers are working on it.

How can I optimize of find issues in my deployment to be able to reduce cost ?

I am using this config for databases

Burstable, B1ms, 1 vCores, 2 GiB RAM, 20 storage, 360 IOPS on a public network.

Silvia Wibowo 6,041 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Volunteer Moderator

2025-04-14T03:59:47.49+00:00
Hi @Mohit Gupta , Azure Database for MySQL has several components of pricing (All pricing uses public pricing for East US region):

Compute: B1ms (1 vCore, 2GiB RAM). This costs USD 12.41/month.

Storage: 20GiB. This costs 20 x 0.115 = USD 2.3/month.

Additional IOPS: Storage includes 3 IOPS/GB, additional IOPS beyond the provisioned amount will incur charges. Your storage is 20GB, it includes 3 x 20 = 60 IOPS. You configured 360 IOPS, which means you pay for additional 300 IOPS. This costs 300 x 0.05 = USD 15/month.

Your additional IOPS is costing you more than your Compute. Do you need 360 IOPS?

A more cost-efficient way: provision more storage capacity to get your required IOPS. Let's say you really need 360 IOPS, you provision 120GiB of storage, that includes 360 IOPS without additional charge. You'll pay 120 x 0.115 = USD 13.8/month instead of 2.3 + 15 = USD 17.3/month (for 20GiB of storage + additional IOPS). Instant 20% savings on your storage and IOPS cost.
Mohit Gupta 60 Reputation points

2025-04-14T06:04:36.5133333+00:00

Thanks for that insight. As a next step, I am not able to provision the IOPS below 360, it does not allow me to(pre-provisioned has lower threshold of 360 and max is 640). Will keeping 20GB storage and auto scale IOPS save cost, or is it still better to increase storage to 120GB and keep it predictable ?
Siva Nair 2,340 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-04-14T07:05:56.76+00:00
Hi Mohit Gupta,

Unfortunately, Azure doesn't allow provisioning below 360 IOPS with this model, and these IOPS are billed separately - which means we’re incurring costs even when they’re underutilized. concepts-service-tiers-storage#iops

To better manage costs and gain more flexibility, we're planning to increase the storage to 120GB and switch to autoscaling IOPS. Here’s why:

With 120GB storage, Azure includes 360 IOPS baseline as part of the storage cost — no separate IOPS billing.

IOPS will scale automatically when needed, which is great for unpredictable dev workloads.

This approach will reduce waste and provide more predictable billing, even if our actual usage stays low.

So, while storage cost will increase slightly, the total cost will likely decrease due to the elimination of standalone IOPS charges.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/mysql/flexible-server/concepts-storage-iops

Provides detailed pricing information, including costs associated with storage and IOPS--https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/mysql/

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/mysql/flexible-server/overview

If you have any further assistant, do let me know.
Mohit Gupta 60 Reputation points

2025-04-14T07:40:29.7666667+00:00

That seem workable unless the minimum IOPS(with auto scaling) remains same(360) with increase in storage. But currently it seems that if I increase storage to 120 GB, the minimum IOPS increases to 64. Will this then mean that there is no way out even with auto scaling ? or can I change the model somehow to something totally different to have a lower cost ?
Mohit Gupta 60 Reputation points

2025-04-14T13:16:45.5066667+00:00

@Silvia Wibowo Looks like increasing storage to 120Gb also increases the minimum IOPS to 640 . So increasing storage may not be the solution ? can you please confirm or am I missing anything ?

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Silvia Wibowo 6,041 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Volunteer Moderator

2025-04-14T03:59:47.49+00:00

Hi @Mohit Gupta , Azure Database for MySQL has several components of pricing (All pricing uses public pricing for East US region):

Compute: B1ms (1 vCore, 2GiB RAM). This costs USD 12.41/month.

Storage: 20GiB. This costs 20 x 0.115 = USD 2.3/month.

Additional IOPS: Storage includes 3 IOPS/GB, additional IOPS beyond the provisioned amount will incur charges. Your storage is 20GB, it includes 3 x 20 = 60 IOPS. You configured 360 IOPS, which means you pay for additional 300 IOPS. This costs 300 x 0.05 = USD 15/month.

Your additional IOPS is costing you more than your Compute. Do you need 360 IOPS?

A more cost-efficient way: provision more storage capacity to get your required IOPS. Let's say you really need 360 IOPS, you provision 120GiB of storage, that includes 360 IOPS without additional charge. You'll pay 120 x 0.115 = USD 13.8/month instead of 2.3 + 15 = USD 17.3/month (for 20GiB of storage + additional IOPS). Instant 20% savings on your storage and IOPS cost.
Mohit Gupta 60 Reputation points

2025-04-14T06:04:36.5133333+00:00

Thanks for that insight. As a next step, I am not able to provision the IOPS below 360, it does not allow me to(pre-provisioned has lower threshold of 360 and max is 640). Will keeping 20GB storage and auto scale IOPS save cost, or is it still better to increase storage to 120GB and keep it predictable ?
Siva Nair 2,340 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-04-14T07:05:56.76+00:00

Hi Mohit Gupta,

Unfortunately, Azure doesn't allow provisioning below 360 IOPS with this model, and these IOPS are billed separately - which means we’re incurring costs even when they’re underutilized. concepts-service-tiers-storage#iops

To better manage costs and gain more flexibility, we're planning to increase the storage to 120GB and switch to autoscaling IOPS. Here’s why:

With 120GB storage, Azure includes 360 IOPS baseline as part of the storage cost — no separate IOPS billing.

IOPS will scale automatically when needed, which is great for unpredictable dev workloads.

This approach will reduce waste and provide more predictable billing, even if our actual usage stays low.

So, while storage cost will increase slightly, the total cost will likely decrease due to the elimination of standalone IOPS charges.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/mysql/flexible-server/concepts-storage-iops

Provides detailed pricing information, including costs associated with storage and IOPS--https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/mysql/

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/mysql/flexible-server/overview

If you have any further assistant, do let me know.
Mohit Gupta 60 Reputation points

2025-04-14T07:40:29.7666667+00:00

That seem workable unless the minimum IOPS(with auto scaling) remains same(360) with increase in storage. But currently it seems that if I increase storage to 120 GB, the minimum IOPS increases to 64. Will this then mean that there is no way out even with auto scaling ? or can I change the model somehow to something totally different to have a lower cost ?
Mohit Gupta 60 Reputation points

2025-04-14T13:16:45.5066667+00:00

@Silvia Wibowo Looks like increasing storage to 120Gb also increases the minimum IOPS to 640 . So increasing storage may not be the solution ? can you please confirm or am I missing anything ?

Answer 1

TP 124.7K Volunteer Moderator

Hi Mohit,

To start I recommend you immediately switch to Pre-provisioned IOPS set to 360 so you are not paying for each IO that you use. Auto-scale only makes sense from cost perspective in very limited scenarios.

The effect of the above will be to have a stable price for your database. For example, for East US 2 your price for Provisioned 360, 20GB, B1ms would be approximately:

$12.41 for Compute B1ms (assuming you never stop server)
$2.30 for 20 GB storage
$14.71 TOTAL/month (based on 730 hours average month)

Notice in the above pricing there is no charge for IOPS since 360 is included.

User's image

The above Pre-provisioned settings result in two billing entries (not including potential charges for backup retention or excess bandwidth):

User's image

First entry in above Cost Analysis screenshot is for Compute (B1ms) and second is for the 20GiB storage. Notice there are no extra charges for "LRS Paid IO" like you are paying now.

Once you have made the change to Pre-provisioned: 360, monitor over a period of time to see if you are happy with performance. If you are noticing frequent slowdowns, you may increase the provisioned IOPS (e.g. in increments of 40), use it again for some period of time, and increase again if needed.

If you want a faster approach to finding your "ideal" provisioned IOPS you could set it to the maximum 640, monitor metrics in portal over say, 1 week, and then reduce the number based on usage data over the week. You don't necessarily need to set it to observed peak recorded number—setting to say, 70% (or even less) of observed peak may be "good enough". Depends on the data and how often you are okay with brief slowdown.

If you have any questions please add a comment below.

Please click Accept Answer and upvote if the above was helpful.

Thanks.

-TP

Mohit Gupta 60 Reputation points

2025-04-14T07:43:33.33+00:00

ok, thanks, will try that
TP 124.7K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator

2025-04-14T07:56:22.5866667+00:00

@Mohit Gupta I added screenshot to my answer above. Please let me know if something in my answer is unclear.

Thank you.
Mohit Gupta 60 Reputation points

2025-04-14T13:11:01.5533333+00:00

I am not sure if 360 IOPS charge is included in this ? as per previous answers it is only 3 IOPS/GB, i.e., 60 that in included, it looks like it will be a hidden cost , just because it is not showing in the screenshot , does it mean it is not being added as per usage later ? My actual billing is also adding huge additional IOPS cost which is more than that storage. so seems like 360 IOPS is not included in 14.71 / month shown in screenshot
TP 124.7K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator

2025-04-14T15:37:12.4866667+00:00
I am not sure if 360 IOPS charge is included in this ? as per previous answers it is only 3 IOPS/GB, i.e., 60 that in included, it looks like it will be a hidden cost , just because it is not showing in the screenshot , does it mean it is not being added as per usage later ? My actual billing is also adding huge additional IOPS cost which is more than that storage. so seems like 360 IOPS is not included in 14.71 / month shown in screenshot

Under Pre-provisioned, 300 IOPS are included per server, plus 3 IOPS per GiB, up to the max supported IOPS for the compute size. 300 + (20 x 3) = 360 IOPS included.

The reason it isn't included for you is because you have your server set to Autoscale, which means your your IO is Paid IO. Under Paid IO, you pay $.20 per million LRS IOs. From pricing page:

"...which charges only for what the workload consumes." sounds appealing, until you run some numbers for typical use cases. For instance, say your database uses an average of 50 IOPS over the course of month:

2,628,000 seconds x 50 IOPS = 131,400,000 total IOs/month

Pre-provisioned 360: $12.41 compute + $2.30 storage = $14.71 TOTAL

Autoscale: (132 million * 0.20 = $26.40) + $12.41 compute + $2.30 storage = $41.11 TOTAL

The sample I gave you in my answer with Pre-provisioned set to 360, generates two billing entries (screenshot below):

First entry in above screenshot is for Compute (B1ms) and second is for the 20GiB storage. Notice there are no extra charges for IOPS.

Next sample is B1ms 20 GiB with Pre-provisioned set to 510 (please see the IOPS section on right in below screenshot showing 150 additional):

This generates three billing entries as shown below:

First is Compute, second is for the Additional IOPS, third is the 20GiB storage.

The above samples are from actual databases. The charges in Cost Analysis are as expected. Nothing hidden/additional. This is why I'm recommending you switch to Pre-provisioned.
TP 124.7K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator

2025-04-15T13:00:37.7933333+00:00

@Mohit Gupta Any update? I added additional sample with screenshots showing actual billing entries to my comment above. Switching to Pre-provisioned will result in much lower cost with stability.
Mohit Gupta 60 Reputation points

2025-04-15T13:16:48.7+00:00

Thanks for going lengths in explaining the solution! Switching to pre-provisioned immediately.
TP 124.7K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator

2025-04-15T14:20:20.6466667+00:00

Thanks for going lengths in explaining the solution! Switching to pre-provisioned immediately.

You are welcome.

Please note there is a lag in billing data. What this means is your LRS Paid IO charges in Cost Analysis will continue to increase for several hours and then should stop. Let's say, sometime in next 8-24 hours the LRS Paid IO amount should freeze because you switched to Pre-Provisioned.

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How to reduce storage cost on development server on microsoft and the IO cost

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