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FinOps best practices for Storage

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This article outlines a collection of proven FinOps practices for storage services. It provides strategies for optimizing costs, improving efficiency, and using Azure Resource Graph (ARG) queries to gain insights into your storage resources. By following these practices, you can ensure that your storage services are cost-effective and aligned with your organization's financial goals.


Backup

The following sections provide ARG queries for backup services. These queries help you gain insights into your backup resources and ensure they're configured with the appropriate settings. By analyzing backup items and identifying idle backups, you can optimize your backup services for cost efficiency.

Query: Idle backups

This ARG query analyzes backup items within Azure Recovery Services Vaults and identifies any that weren't backed up for over 90 days.

Category

Optimization

Query

recoveryservicesresources
| where type =~ 'microsoft.recoveryservices/vaults/backupfabrics/protectioncontainers/protecteditems'
| extend vaultId = tostring(properties.vaultId)
| extend resourceId = tostring(properties.sourceResourceId)
| extend idleBackup= datetime_diff('day', now(), todatetime(properties.lastBackupTime)) > 90
| extend  resourceType=tostring(properties.workloadType)
| extend protectionState=tostring(properties.protectionState)
| extend lastBackupTime=tostring(properties.lastBackupTime)
| extend resourceGroup=strcat('/subscriptions/',subscriptionId,'/resourceGroups/',resourceGroup)
| extend lastBackupDate=todatetime(properties.lastBackupTime)
| where idleBackup != 0
| project resourceId,vaultId,idleBackup,lastBackupDate,resourceType,protectionState,lastBackupTime,location,resourceGroup,subscriptionId

Query: List Recovery Services Vaults

This Azure Resource Graph (ARG) query retrieves details of Azure Recovery Services Vaults. The query also includes information on the SKU tier, redundancy settings, and other relevant metadata.

Category

Optimization

Query

resources
| where type == 'microsoft.recoveryservices/vaults'
| where resourceGroup in ({ResourceGroup})
| extend skuTier = tostring(sku['tier'])
| extend skuName = tostring(sku['name'])
| extend resourceGroup = strcat('/subscriptions/', subscriptionId, '/resourceGroups/', resourceGroup)
| extend redundancySettings = tostring(properties.redundancySettings['standardTierStorageRedundancy'])
| order by id asc
| project id, redundancySettings, resourceGroup, location, subscriptionId, skuTier, skuName

Disks

The following sections provide ARG queries for disk services. These queries help you gain insights into your disk resources and ensure they're configured with the appropriate settings. By analyzing disk snapshots and identifying idle disks, you can optimize your disk services for cost efficiency.

Query: Idle disks

This ARG query identifies idle or unattached managed disks within your Azure environment.

Category

Optimization

Query

resources
| where type =~ 'microsoft.compute/disks' and managedBy == ""
| extend diskState = tostring(properties.diskState)
| where managedBy == ""
    and diskState != 'ActiveSAS'
    and tags !contains 'ASR-ReplicaDisk'
    and tags !contains 'asrseeddisk'
| extend DiskId=id, DiskIDfull=id, DiskName=name, SKUName=sku.name, SKUTier=sku.tier, DiskSizeGB=tostring(properties.diskSizeGB), Location=location, TimeCreated=tostring(properties.timeCreated), SubId=subscriptionId
| order by DiskId asc 
| project DiskId, DiskIDfull, DiskName, DiskSizeGB, SKUName, SKUTier, resourceGroup, Location, TimeCreated, subscriptionId

Query: Disk snapshot older than 30 days

This ARG query identifies disk snapshots that are older than 30 days.

Category

Optimization

Query

resources
| where type == 'microsoft.compute/snapshots'
| extend TimeCreated = properties.timeCreated
| extend resourceGroup = strcat("/subscriptions/",subscriptionId,"/resourceGroups/",resourceGroup)
| where TimeCreated < ago(30d)
| order by id asc 
| project id, resourceGroup, location, TimeCreated, subscriptionId

Query: Snapshot using premium storage

This ARG query identifies disk snapshots that are utilizing premium storage.

Category

Optimization

Query

resources
| where type == 'microsoft.compute/snapshots'
| extend
    StorageSku = tostring(sku.tier),
    resourceGroup = strcat('/subscriptions/',subscriptionId,'/resourceGroups/',resourceGroup),
    diskSize = tostring(properties.diskSizeGB)
| where StorageSku == "Premium"
| project id, name, StorageSku, diskSize, location, resourceGroup, subscriptionId

Storage accounts

The following section provides an ARG query for storage accounts. It helps you gain insights into your storage resources and ensure they're configured with the appropriate settings. By analyzing storage accounts and identifying legacy storage account types, you can optimize your storage services for cost efficiency.

Query: Storage account v1

This ARG query identifies storage accounts that are still using the legacy v1 kind, which might not provide the same features and efficiencies as newer storage account types.

Category

Optimization

Query

resources
| where type =~ 'Microsoft.Storage/StorageAccounts'
    and kind !='StorageV2'
    and kind !='FileStorage'
| where resourceGroup in ({ResourceGroup})
| extend
    StorageAccountName = name,
    SAKind = kind,
    AccessTier = tostring(properties.accessTier),
    SKUName = sku.name,
    SKUTier = sku.tier,
    Location = location
| order by id asc
| project
    id,
    StorageAccountName,
    SKUName,
    SKUTier,
    SAKind,
    AccessTier,
    resourceGroup,
    Location,
    subscriptionId

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