The Problem
A mid-size BFSI company in Mumbai approached us with a ₹38 lakh/month Azure bill that was growing 15% quarter-over-quarter with no corresponding business growth.
The Assessment (Week 1)
We ran Azure Advisor + custom scripts to analyze 90 days of utilization:
- 47 VMs running at < 15% CPU (oversized by 2-3 tiers)
- 23 unattached managed disks costing ₹1.2L/month
- Dev/test environments running 24/7 (used only during business hours)
- Zero Reserved Instances — everything on pay-as-you-go
- Premium SSD used for log storage (accessed weekly)
The Optimization (Week 2-6)
Right-Sizing (Saved ₹4.8L/month)
Example: Resize from D4s_v3 to B2ms based on utilization
az vm resize --resource-group prod-rg --name app-server-01 --size Standard_B2ms
Auto-Shutdown for Dev/Test (Saved ₹2.1L/month)
Implemented Azure Automation runbooks for 15 dev/test VMs — run 10am-8pm IST on weekdays only.
Reserved Instances (Saved ₹3.6L/month)
Purchased 1-year RIs for 28 production VMs at 40% discount.
Storage Optimization (Saved ₹1.8L/month)
Moved 12TB of log data from Premium SSD to Standard HDD, and archival data to Cool storage.
Cleanup (Saved ₹1.2L/month)
Deleted 23 orphaned disks, 8 unused public IPs, 4 empty App Service Plans.
Result
₹38L → ₹25L/month (34% reduction) with zero performance impact.
Key Takeaway
Cloud cost optimization is not a one-time activity. It requires monthly reviews, governance policies, and FinOps practices. If you're an Indian enterprise struggling with cloud costs, reach out for a free assessment.
Published by the cloud engineering team at Cloud 9 InfoSystems — Azure Expert MSP, India
Top comments (1)
One thing to watch on the D4s_v3 to B2ms moves: B-series is burstable, so sustained CPU like BFSI month-end batch can exhaust the credits and throttle, showing up as a performance regression weeks later when nobody is looking at the change. And rightsizing before buying RIs (your week 2 vs week 6 order) is the right sequence, since reserving first then rightsizing strands the commitment. Did the B-series hold through a monthend peak, or did the heavier prod VMs stay on D-series?