Monitoring costs

This page only applies to Azure labs. A Proxmox lab consumes quota on the cluster, not money on a bill.

Indicative budget

Around 200 CHF per month per lab. It is a sizing recommendation, not a hard cap, but it serves as the reference for the administrators’ budget alerts.

Beyond the indicative budget

A need whose cost consistently exceeds this reference doesn’t have to be trimmed down. That is what the Microsoft Azure Sponsorship partner subscription is for: larger in capacity, but with no guaranteed longevity and a possibly narrower catalog. See The two subscriptions.

What the administrators handle

• Budget alerts at the subscription and Resource Group level.
• The monthly review of each lab’s costs and usage.

What remains your responsibility

Spending starts with your first deployment, with no upfront approval.

• Size before you create. An oversized VM or a badly sized PaaS service eats through the budget in a few days.
• Check what is still running. Auto-shutdown covers VMs at 7 p.m. and on weekends, not managed services. A database, an AKS cluster or a gateway is billed 24/7 for as long as it exists.
• Stop or delete unneeded resources without waiting for the lab to end. See lifecycle, extension and closure.

Since the lab lives in its own Resource Group, the Cost analysis view filtered on that RG gives you the real cost in seconds.

Applicable rules

Indicative budget

Recommendation

Indicative budget of about 200 CHF per month per lab.

Not blockingPR-GOVCLOUDLAB-A-01

Pick the right subscription

My responsibility

Qim info Labs by default: it depends on no external condition, so a lab that has to last or be renewed stays in the same place. Microsoft Azure Sponsorship for a need whose cost or consumption goes beyond what an ordinary lab justifies: it has more capacity, but that capacity comes from the Microsoft partnership and can be reduced or withdrawn from one year to the next.

Not blockingPR-GOVCLOUDLAB-A-01

VM auto-shutdown

Technically enforced

VMs shut down automatically at 7 pm on weekdays and over the weekend.

MandatoryPR-GOVCLOUDLAB-A-01

Clean up and document

My responsibility

Stop or delete unused resources, and document the lab as you go.

Not blockingPR-GOVCLOUDLAB-A-01

Policies, alerts and review

Handled by administrators

Administrators manage Azure policies, budget alerts and the monthly lab review.

MandatoryPR-GOVCLOUDLAB-A-01