Newest Azure (IaaS) Cost Estimator Tool is Available

It isn’t a brand-new tool, but it was updated to version 1.1 the other day, and definitely worth sharing.  The Microsoft Azure (IaaS) Cost Estimator Tool is now available.  It’s an installable tool that allows you to “profile [your] existing on-premises infrastructure and estimate cost of running it on Azure.”

“Sweet! So, it installs agents on servers and then..”

Whoa!  Lemme stop you right there!  No agents.  It’s agentless.  It does require you to supply administrative credentials that will apply to the machines you’re profiling, which make sense.

The first time you run it, you’ll see this screen.

As you can see, the description of what it does and how it can be used are clearly spelled out.

In my example, for example (?), I’m running the tool on a PC in my test network.  I’ve selected to profile physical machines, such as my domain controller named, surprisingly enough, “DC”.  I’ve supplied my credentials…

And clicking Add, plus adding a couple of other machines (whose names might give away their purpose) results in this:

Clicking Next brings me to the page where I can choose a profiling duration, scanning frequency, and a name for the generated report.

I’m going to scan only one time, so my results won’t be based on more accurate, actual traffic or performance of my machines.  But it’s good enough for a start.

I click Begin Profiling, and (in my case) after about 10-15 seconds my one-time scan is complete.  I click View Report, and after an informational pop-up describing what was done and what options I have to change values, I see this screen:

Notice that I can tweak values and select just some or all of the machine before clicking Get Cost.  I’ll just leave the values as determined, select all, and get my cost.  Here is the result:

Notice that I can tweak the pricing model, and change the size of the Compute Instance (the type/size of VM) to play with various values.  And when I’m done, I can export the results to a .CSV file (for use in Excel), or go back and try it all over again.  Pretty nice?

“Very nice! But, what does this tool cost?”

Nothing.  Nada.  Zilch.  Zero-dollar$.

“Sure. And I suppose once I run this tool I’m going to be bombarded with e-mails from Microsoft.”

Nope.  Not even a requirement for a Microsoft Account to download, and no information is ever sent from this app back to Microsoft.

Seriously, Microsoft hopes that this will be a good way to get an idea of what your existing machines, whether physical or already virtualized, will cost to run over time as VMs hosted in our Azure Infrastructure Services.  It’s all a part of helping you plan for an eventual migration of some of your local resources into Azure, to take advantage of the scale, capacity, security, and cost-benefits of the cloud.

In case you missed the link earlier, here it is again: Microsoft Azure (IaaS) Cost Estimator Tool