Cost estimation of runtime in the Azure Container Instances¶

As long the IoTC is running in the ACI it is subject to repeated cost. The fee depends on the kind of Azure Subscription you have and the consumed resources of the IoTC.

Azure subscriptions¶

Azure offers different subscription models. It is important to consider the correct model for your operation as there are considerable differences in the cost model.

The pay-as-you-go subscription lets you pay for the services and resources that you use on a monthly basis. A credit or debit card must be attached to the account, and billing for this account is on a monthly basis.

Microsoft has many types of member offers that offer reduced rates for Azure services, like MSDN Platform subscribers and Visual Studio subscribers, to name a few. These types of subscriptions offer substantial discounts over a pay-as-you-go subscription, so it is highly recommended that businesses review and take advantage of any offers for which they may qualify.

Limits of websocket connections¶

Based on the selected subscription model, there might be set limits for maximum parallel websocket connections (APs). Please confirm the quotas for your deployment with Microsoft when planning a commercial usage.

Specify consumed resources¶

In the docker compose files, you can specify the reserved (minimum) and the limits (maximum) of resources allocated for containers inside your group at deployment.

Example:

    version: "3.9"
    services:
    redis:
        image: redis:alpine
        deploy:
        resources:
            limits:
                cpus: '0.50'
                memory: 50M
            reservations:
                cpus: '0.25'
                memory: 20M

ACI will consider this deploy features.

We have entered the typical values in the azure deployment file /deploy/azure_deployment/docker-compose.yml. Feel free to edit them based on your considerations. A benchmark for performance tests at specified values can be found here

Track consumption of resources¶

You can track the actual consumption of your resources with the Azure container monitor and adjust it for your use case and cost plans accordingly. Using the Azure CLI you can also get individual container consumption from the container group, which is much more precise. e.g., use the following command for average CPU Usage:

az monitor metrics list --resource (az container show --resource-group **your-resource-group** --name **your-container-group-name** --query id --output tsv) --metric CPUUsage --dimension containerName --output table

Read the Azure documentation for detailed options on the command.

Azure cost calculation¶

When running the IoTC in Azure, the costs can be evaluated with the Azure cost calculator for Azure Container Instances.

Permanent storage or additional components, e.g., Azure Io Hub, need to be considered in pricing separately.

Typical Parameters for calculation¶