In its second month, Nordlicht Reisen GmbH, a fictional travel agency, gets a bill that is higher than expected: Somebody created a large virtual machine for testing and never switched it off. Only a rule (lesson 1.5) would have prevented that. A budget with an alert would have noticed it sooner, and Azure Advisor would have suggested the underutilized machine.
Prior knowledge. What influences cost and what Cost Management is, is explained in "AZ-900 compact", lesson 3.1. How to create a budget as a script, with an estimate in the pricing calculator, checking the delays and clean-up as a habit, is taught in full by K3 in lesson 3.1.2. This lesson doesn't repeat that. Before the exercises, a look at lesson 0.1 of this course is worthwhile (test account, spending limit, clean-up).
Cost analysis at a glance
Cost analysis is part of Cost Management in the portal. You first choose the Scope, such as a subscription or a resource group, and then group by service, resource group, resource or tag. According to Microsoft, cost data is usually available after 8 to 24 hours, and budgets are checked against it every 24 hours. If you have a new subscription, you may, according to Microsoft, not be able to use Cost Management fully until up to 48 hours have passed.
For troubleshooting cost spikes, Microsoft describes three kinds of changes: new cost (a resource was added), removed cost (a resource went away) and changed cost (a different size, for example, which appears as a new meter). The way to the cause: narrow down the time range, group by resource group, then by resource, then by meter. Who created the resource is shown by the activity log; tags (lesson 1.5) often name the owner.