Reservations

Introduction

Reservations help reduce the cost of Azure services by discounting pay-as-you-go pricing with 1- or 3-year purchasing commitments.

Service Principal Access

Reservation Reader access must be provided to the Service Principal to view reservations and reservation-based recommendations.

Follow the below steps to provide Reservation Reader access to the Service Principal:

1. Navigate to the Reservations section in Azure Portal by searching Reservations in the search bar

2. Select the Role assignment option
   

3. Select Add role assignment -> Reservation Reader from the available Job function roles
   

4. Click Next and Select the required service principal by clicking the Select members option
   

5. Click Select and complete the process by selecting the Review + assign option

Reservations in Cost groups

Reservation recommendations can be viewed in two types based on user preference: advisor or custom recommendation

Navigate to the following path to view Reservation recommendations: Cost management group -> Optimization -> Reservation recommendations.

Azure Advisor cost recommendations

Reservation recommendations from the advisor typically involve suggestions for purchasing Reserved Instances (RIs) or other similar commitment-based pricing options. These recommendations are aimed at optimizing costs by committing to a certain level of usage over a defined period.

Turbo360's Cost Analyzer module incorporates Azure Advisor cost recommendations in the reservation section, enabling users to view these recommendations within cost groups for their chosen subscription.

The impacted resources are classified into three recommendation types: high, medium, and low, each with recommended actions to be taken.

Custom Recommendations

• Cost Analyzer provides detailed information about the resources for which reservations have been purchased and provides recommendations based on reservations to optimize cost and improve performance.

• The subscriptions having access to the cost group will be used to fetch the information on Azure resources and their current SKU values.

• You can view detailed information about reservations in the Summary, where the list of resources utilizing purchased reservations can be accessed by clicking View in Purchased reservation details card.

Recommendations

Recommendations are currently only available for the following resource types and are provided based on their SKU:

• App service plan
• SQL Database
• SQL Managed instance
• Virtual Machine

Cost Analyzer provides four different types of recommendations for the supported resources:

1. Consider Reservation

Recommendations of this type show that you can optimize your cost utilization by purchasing a reservation with a one-year (or) three-year pricing commitment.

2. Change SKU and Consider Reservation

Recommendations of this type indicate that the resource's SKU should be changed to a SKU compatible with reservations and reservation can be purchased.

3. Change SKU and Use Existing Reservation

Recommendations of this type indicates that the resource's SKU should be changed to one that is compatible with reservations and can leverage the unused reservations.

4. Already with Reservation

Recommendations of this type indicates that the resources are already using the purchased reservations.

5. Partially Reserved

Recommendation of this type indicates that the SQL database resources have a purchased reservation and their current Vcore count is more than what they purchased.

Visualizing resource usage

The usage patterns of resources listed in custom rightsizing recommendations can be accessible by clicking it, with time range customizable through the Time settings option to focus on a specific interval.

This widget will also provide information on recommendations, including both the current and recommended SKUs.

Resource usage by status

The resource usage option accessible when clicking a custom reservation recommendation provides a calendar view that depicts the status of users' Azure resources over time. Multiple toggle modes are available for better accessibility.

The resource status considered here are:

• Active
• Idle

These status are determined based on specific metric values for the respective resource types:

• App service plan - CPU Percentage
• SQL Database - CPU Percentage
• SQL Managed instance - CPU Percentage
• Virtual Machine - CPU Percentage

The Agenda view displays a day's active and idle hours in a grid format.

Recommendation update

• Cost group reservation recommendations are updated every 24 hours from the time the cost group is created.

• You can also perform a manual refresh within Right sizing recommendations at the root cost group to view recommendations instantly.

Recommendation settings

• Advisor recommendations are automatically enabled for the groups by default. To access custom recommendations, click on settings to open the recommended settings and enable the custom recommendation toggle. This will provide custom recommendations for the subscriptions within the groups.

• Resource recommendations can also be customized by currency or resource usage based on a specified time.

• Click the settings to open the recommended settings and specify your preferred currency value and time interval based on resource usage calculations.

Ignoring recommendations

• Recommendations can be ignored if you agree to use the resource using the current SKU.

• Select the required recommendations and click Actions -> Ignore to ignore recommendations.

• The ignored ones are accessible in Actions -> View ignored recommendations.
  

Recommendation notification

A reservation recommendation can be notified as a recommendation report, allowing a specific team (or) team member to prioritize actions for a particular resource.

1. Select a reservation recommendation

2. Click Actions -> Trigger notification
   

3. Choose the desired channels (or) configure recipient mail address

4. Click Send
   

The recommendation data will be sent as a report to the configured channels.

A bell icon will appear next to any recommendation for which a notification has been triggered. Clicking the icon will show the notification details.

The View Logs button, accessible when viewing a recommendation with an active notification, will also display the details of that notification.

Below is an image of recommendation report received via Teams channel after triggering it for a reservation recommendation:

Export Reservation recommendations

Reservation recommendations can be downloaded as an excel.

1. Go to Action dropdown in Reservation section
2. Click the Download as excel option

Downloaded excel file contains the basic details of the resources and its recommendation