Three Things You Didn’t Know About Microsoft Cloud Optimization

Formatting can cost you!

Microsoft Azure quick format gives a representation that a disk is ready to use.  However, it does not truly prepare the disk, be it virtual or physical. It merely overwrites the index tables of the drive.  A full format however will write zeros across the entire drive to both overwrite any existing data as well as check the disk during the write process.

Microsoft charges for actual usage.  Since a quick format only affects the disk tables, there isn’t any disk usage.  A full format writes to the disk and, from Microsoft’s perspective, it doesn’t matter if there’s critical company information or nothing at all. Therefore, its disk usage is chargeable.

There are some cases where reserving the disk space with a full format is desirable but 90% of the time, a quick format will do the job and create a disk for you to use at no cost until you actually use the disk space.  Isn’t that what cloud is supposed to be all about?

A 3 putt is bad, A 3-Peat is good

In golf, trying 3 times to putt the ball is not a badge of honor (unless you play like I do and find it an accomplishment).  However, when it comes to Microsoft, they have you covered by having three copies of your data at all times, even at their lowest price tier.

Microsoft’s basic design will keep three copies of your data within its datacenter based on fault zones, so if they have a system outage or disk failure, your data will be accessible upon service restore.

But if Microsoft has three copies, do I need to do a backup?  YES.  The replicated files are not available for restore requests because you accidentally erased an important file. You still need to configure a sound backup and recovery plan so that if you corrupt your files, you can restore them.

Prepaying your Microsoft bill with an Enterprise Agreement doesn’t save you money anymore

Keeping up with Microsoft can be daunting at best.  Microsoft has leveled the playing field when it comes to Enterprise Agreements and Cloud Service Providers (CSP).  A CSP offers Microsoft customers a way to purchase Azure resources and pay for them monthly based on actual consumption rather than prepaying for expected usage in an Enterprise Agreement.

As Microsoft continues to mature their Azure offering, they recognize that businesses demand the flexibility to make manageable, monthly investments in their cloud infrastructure and reserve their capital for market growth.  In response, Microsoft has created a level pricing plan that offers similar cost models regardless if the business owner wants to recognize a prepaid capital expenditure or take advantage of an operating expense model.

BCM One is a direct CSP partner with Microsoft, which means we can service any Azure subscription or other licensing needs for our clients. BCM One also includes world class technical support to ensure the success of our business clients and partners. To read more tips on how to get the most out of your cloud applications, take a look at our latest cloud optimization white paper.