The other night, Carmina and I were at our computers taking care of business and stuff, when the following conversation took place.
Carmina: “James, what did you buy from Microsoft today?”
Me: “Um, nothing”
Carmina: “Microsoft just withdrew $315 from our checking account”
The transaction had a phone number so I called the next day. It was for my Azure account I had setup to play around with and do presentations on. When I started the account, I was asked to enter a credit card number as proof of identification, and since I have a MSDN account with my MVP, and that gives me 750 compute hours a month, I thought I was good.
Last month I received a notice from Microsoft Online Services that there had been a problem with my credit card. Wondering what that was all about, since I hadn’t been using the services I logged into the site to see what was going on. This is what I saw…
and I clicked on Subscriptions
then Actions, which had the following options, “View subscription details, Edit service details, Opt in to auto renew, and Edit billing information”. No where did I see anything to check on activity.
Back to the phone call. I was told in addition to Compute Hours there are also Upload charges and Storage charges, and even if an application is suspended on Azure, i.e. not active, it is still accruing storage charges. In addition, SQL Azure charges of $10 per month, are not included in the 750 hours/month which comes with my MSDN subscription.
Windows Azure Compute charges: $0.12 per hour
Windows Azure Storage charges: $0.15 per hour Yes, $0.15 per hour just to store the files even if the app is not running.
The moral of the story. Azure is a great platform, and I recommend you dive in and get comfortable with it. BUT, remember to take down your apps when you are done testing. Don’t leave them up there.
Oh yeah. Also take the time to look a little further on the portal. I didn’t see the tiny text the other times I was one the site.
Time to get a second job,
James