Microsoft Azure
Cost Management & the Well-Architected Framework
Cut spend without cutting capability, and name the five pillars an architecture review scores against.
The Azure Well-Architected Framework has five pillars, and they do get asked by name.
A household bill. The savings are not in a cheaper kettle but in the immersion heater nobody remembered was on and the subscription nobody cancelled.
Key Concepts
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Reliability recover from failure, meet demand
Security identity, data protection, detection
Cost Optimisation avoid unnecessary spend
Operational Excellence deploy and monitor well
Performance Efficiency use the right resources2
Pricing levers, roughly in order of saving.
pay-as-you-go no commitment, highest rate
Reserved Instances 1 or 3 years, up to ~72% off
Savings Plans commit $/hour, flexible across services
Spot VMs spare capacity, deep discount, evictable
Azure Hybrid Benefit reuse existing Windows Server and SQL
licences -- often the single largest saving
and uniquely Azure3
Hybrid Benefit is the Azure-specific answer and worth leading with: organisations moving from on-premises frequently already own the licences, and applying them can cut Windows and SQL compute cost by half.
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Where money actually leaks.
oversized VMs Advisor rightsizing
unattached managed disks VM deleted, disk kept
orphaned public IPs and NICs
non-production running overnight and at weekends
premium storage tiers for cold data
egress and cross-zone traffic
old snapshots nobody owns5
Blob lifecycle rules are the easiest large saving. Hot to Cool at 30 days, Archive at 90, delete at a retention limit.
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Tag everything and enforce it with Policy. Without team, env and costCenter tags, Cost Management cannot attribute spend, and nothing improves while nobody owns the number.
teamenvcostCenter
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Budgets and alerts fire at thresholds and can trigger automation. Azure Advisor gives concrete rightsizing and reservation recommendations — a sensible first pass before any manual review.
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Measure before optimising. Compute is usually the biggest line, but egress, premium disks and forgotten non-production environments are where the surprises hide.
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What the interviewer is probing.1. "Name the Azure Well-Architected pillars." Probing: the framework. Stalls: "Cost and
performance." Moves up: reliability, security, cost optimisation, operational excellence and
performance efficiency.
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2. "What is the largest Azure-specific saving for a migrating organisation?" Probing: Hybrid
Benefit. Stalls: "Reserved instances." Moves up: Azure Hybrid Benefit — applying Windows Server
and SQL licences they already own, which often halves that compute cost.
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3. "Where does spend leak?" Probing: the unglamorous items. Stalls: "Oversized VMs." *Moves
up:* unattached disks, orphaned public IPs, premium storage for cold data, non-production running
overnight, and egress and cross-zone traffic.
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4. "How do you make spend visible per team?" Probing: tagging. Stalls: "Look at the bill."
Moves up: enforced tags via Azure Policy, so Cost Management can attribute it and someone owns the
number.