Can I set a cap on costs in Windows Azure? - windows

I want to set up a Windows Azure account.
I'm an MSDN Subscriber so I get it for "free" the first 16 months.
Still, Microsoft want my credit card number just in case I go over the free limit.
In theory, this means I'm writing a carte blanche to MS to bill my credit card.
I want to know if anyone has been using Azure and if there's anyway of setting it to simply stop working if it gets near the cap where it would start to cost me something??

Today, there are no usage caps you can place on your account. Regarding the credit card and carte blanche ability to bill you: you'd only be billed for overage beyond the "free" stuff. Microsoft recently instituted an email-alert feature that lets you know when you've used 75% of your available resources. I believe that went live a few weeks ago.
Simply put: you get 750 compute-hours monthly (metered on a 1-hour boundary). This gives you enough hours to run a single, small instance 24x7, as there are just under 750 hours in a month. If you leave two instances running full-time, you'll go over your allotment and be charged.
If you're just learning, the MSDN account is fantastic. Just remember to delete your deployment at the end of the day (or when you're done trying something out), instead of letting it run 24x7. With a bit of prudence, you'll easily be able to test multi-instance applications and avoid ever being charged.
You can also log into the billing portal from the Azure portal. This shows a very detailed breakdown of your monthly usage, and with a quick scan you'll see how you're doing regarding compute-hours.
I keep mentioning compute-hours but not storage or bandwidth. Unless you're doing some extreme development, I doubt you'll run into any storage or bandwidth overruns. Same goes for SQL Azure - stick with Web Edition databases (and only 3 databases) and you'll have no issue there.
I wrote two blog posts that might also be helpful when thinking about how to manage cost so you don't get charged:
The True Cost of Web and Worker Roles
Staging and Compute-Hour Metering

In addition to David's answer, I would also suggest maximizing your use of the local Azure runtime that comes with the SDK. You can create web & worker roles and blobs/tables/queues. Iterate there until you are happy with how everything works - then publish to the public cloud.
There is no charge for the SDK or the local runtime.

The December 2011 release of Windows Azure introduced a much revamped billing portal which, amongst other things, introduced the ability to cap spend on introductionary accounts and MSDN accounts.
Whilst you still need to provide credit card for your MSDN Account, all accounts are automatically created with spending limit of $0; a limit one can remove from the billing portal.
See - http://www.brianhprince.com/post/2011/12/20/New-Sign-Up-for-Windows-Azure-and-Spending-Caps.aspx

Related

how to de-host a laravel app from google cloud platform?

I cannot access my heidisql database because my google cloud trial version is over so I want to de-host my laravel app from google cloud platform and want to develop only on localhost.
When a free trial ends, you have 30 days to restore your resources by upgrading to a paid account; otherwise, the data and resources are not longer available anymore. You can take a look on the End of the free trial section of the Billing FAQs to know more about this matter.
What happens when my free trial ends?
After your trial ends, the resources you created during the trial are stopped, but can
be restored if you upgrade to a paid account within 30 days.
Within that 30-day period, you can also contact Google Billing Support
to export any data you stored in Google GCP services (other than on
Compute Engine). After 30 days, your data and resources are not
available, even if you upgrade.
Caution: Because there is no automated way to export data from Compute
Engine, you are responsible for exporting any data stored on Compute
Engine before your free trial ends.

LUIS is no longer free?

Luis is no longer free ?
I didn't open LUIS dashboard for 10-11 days. I'm seeing this now. They changed a lot of things there.
I must get azure key to get my LUIS app works ?
According to the pricing details, LUIS is not free. You are able to make 10K calls per month without charge, after which you are charged $0.75 per 1000 calls. Without more detail I am unsure of your second question. An azure key may be used to link LUIS to your bot.
Just to clarify LUIS has the same model as before, the new portal just highlights this information in a different way that's a little more confusing (we're working on it).
No Azure Account; free for 1000 requests/month using programmatic api key
With Azure, free for 10,000 requests per month (F0 plan in Azure)
With Azure, $.75/1000 calls
The thing that's new and confusing is the programmatic key with the low quota isn't connected to your app by default. We're going to fix that shortly.
Same happened to me. I had to create LUIS app in Azure and then provide key to LUIS application on LUIS.ai. But in LUIS app on azure, you can select the pricing tier as free if 10k calls per month suffice your application usage or choose paid plan according to need.
A start-key is default available with each LUIS model which can be used upto 10k calls per month
LUIS is free for Testing and Educational use. It is about 10000 conversations per month. However in production environment it has to be paid.
The important this is you can access LUIS feature via Azure or can independently integrate it into your application. The method of costing will depend on that as well.

SharePoint Online integrated with CRM Online says, "We're sorry, we can't sync because you've run out of space."

I was trying to sync my document on SharePoint Online where I got an error saying, "we're sorry, we can't sync because you've run out of space."
I believe this is independent of the CRM storage space we get (which is still under 8% filled for my CRM organization)
How do I find how much and what is consumed?
What do i need to do to increase space?
Kindly Help.
Thanks.
You can find how much space is being consumed in a couple of ways.
If you are an Enterprise customer you will have 5TB in total and can use the Microsoft portal link to the portal
Small businesses have 35GB.
There should be a Storage Metrics function. Site Settings -> Site Collection Administration -> Storage Metrics which you need to start running, but a while later will have the data you need about where space is taken up.
There is also a third party utility by Quest Software (others are available but this is free) and it is called Site Administrator Reports.
link to the tool here
Of course you'll need Admin privileges to access the portal and run the tool.

How to disable Amazon EC2 charging?

I currently try to implement amazon ec2 and I read that after one year they charge you. I used google app engine before(using java) and there is the feature that you can enable/disable charging. I just want to try the free ec2 instance, so here are my questions:
Does Amazon EC2 AUTOMATICALLY charge you after one year?
How to disable the automatically charging function?
I ended up closing my account by visiting the account page
At the bottom of the page you will find "close account"
It is currently not possible to disable charging. You might need to go over the free tier (for example if you setup a production environment, you might not want it to be killed automatically by amazon). Google App engine is a bit different because it is free if you have zero http requests, so it will just stop serving your app.
If you delete your credit card on your account, amazon will still charge it if there is an unpaid balance.
Amazon will not remind you that you will go over your free tier, so I would recommend to put a little reminder in one year on your calendar in one year to not forget to shutdown your server.
There is no way to control how much you will have to pay on AWS, that's why I wouldn't use it.
Amazon is really vague on the free tier (for instance it's not very clear whether the storage volume comes with the instance is counted against free EB2 storage quota). There are so many ways you can get a bill for using the free tier.
Yes you will be billed after 12 months, if you don't terminate all the instances and detach all storage volumes.
So many people have complained about Amazon's billing practice. Amazon has never changed. I guess this is the way Amazon decided to make $. Let you in for "free" but you will most likely accidentally spend some money. If you decide to use it, you won't know how much you will have to pay. If you have the capability to use colo/dedicated server, you might find out it's actually so much cheaper to go with a fixed monthly payment instead of billing based on usage.
With Amazon EC2, you are billed per hour of usage. If you are a new user, your account is credited with something like 8,760 free hours (24*365) which expire after 1 year. (I'm working from fuzzy memory here, so double-check the official terms instead of taking my word for it.)
After your free hours expire or are otherwise used up, Amazon EC2 will begin billing for normal hours (which can be as cheap as 2 cents per hour -- http://ec2instances.info). There is no such thing as a "free" EC2 instance.
So, to answer your questions:
Does Amazon EC2 AUTOMATICALLY charge you after one year?
Once your free hours are used up or expire, then you are automatically billed for normal hourly usage.
How to disable the automatically charging function?
You can't. All EC2 instances cost money. You are responsible for keeping an eye on your account and ensuring that you don't go over your free hours if you don't want to pay anything.
I was charged for a service that practically i never used.
a) Its true that Amazon never told you that the free tier is done. However, Amazon is prompty to charges you. Its my mistake but i admit that a little advice doesn't hurt, specially since practicaly everybody do that.
b) Even for a free tier, i wasn't impressed with the performance. I am owned a shared-hosting that are more powerful.
c) As some comments said, you can't delete your credit card, neither you can cancels the service. Its really low.
d) Finally,as some comment said, i closed my account. As far i can remember, its not tied with your Amazon (not cloud) account.
The service its so convoluted and overly complex, its filled with paid-traps and i am not impressed at all. Thanks Amazon but not thanks, i will stick with VPS/Dedicated.
You get 1 year of free usage http://aws.amazon.com/free/ .
Try reading AWS Free Usage Tier: http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Guide-Usage-ebook/dp/B007Q4JESC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343213452&sr=8-1&keywords=aws+free+tier .

I need some guidance and help from pros to host my new app .(please read everything)

I have been making Desktop applications for last few years. but now i have quite that job and thinking about doing working for myself. I have gone through many ideas. finally i decided to develop Online billing application . Since i am new in web application i know very little about web technologies.
I am thinking about developing that application in php or asp.net with mysql database. I don't know which one is better.(you can guide me here). I don't know whether its good idea or not.but i don't want to do job and work for myself that's for sure.
its going to be a big project so I was making budget for this whole project but i don't know what kind of hosting i will need for this app because database load will be very high because its billing application. i don't know how much it will cost me.I will give user free trial for 30 days to use application and if they like they can upgrade their accounts.
So i need your help to decide what kind of hosting will be appropriate.is this ok if i use webhosting that we use to host website which will cost me $10 to $15 a month or i will have to use cloud hosting which will cost me a lot?
I hope this link will give you idea. I want to make application like this : http://www.rapid-billing.com .
pls help me out. it might me small things for you but to me it matters a lot. Thanks
Initially, you won't have very high traffic, so using a cheap, shared server should be fine. If you outgrow it, then you must have some money coming in, so the added expense of cloud hosting will be more tolerable. There's no need to go all-in before you even get going.
That said, many cloud hosts offer some amount of hosting free, which would probably suit you just as well during initial development. An added plus of starting in the cloud is that you won't have to migrate later. Off the top of my head, Google App Engine and Heroku come to mind as well-known cloud hosts with a free tier. Microsoft Azure also provides a free 3 month trial, and I imagine they'd be a good host if you choose to go with ASP.

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