08Oct 2013 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

Azure Account and Spending Limits

Azure
If you've been working with Azure for a while you probably signed up before they had the ability to create an account with spending limits. Even worse, you couldn't switch an unlimited account to a limited account. I have great news. Sometime between June (last time I was messing with my accounts) and now, Microsoft made it possible to put a spending limit on those accounts. It's incredibly easy. Just get to the account management screen like this one: Click on the link and you'll get a pop-up window that lets you modify your choices. Once you've implemented a spending limit you will get shut down when you reach the limit. So, if you want, you can turn it off. It depends on the account type what you'll see. This…
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27Aug 2013 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

Check Your Azure Account Usage

Azure
It is absolutely not cool or fun to pay money to learn new technology. One of the main complaints people had for learning Azure (and AWS for that matter) is that they had to register with a credit card and actually put their own money on the line to try stuff out. One could argue that maybe a cost to learning isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, there were a number of horror stories of people inadvertently being charged hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars because they didn't track their usage. If you register your Azure account through MSDN, that problem is completely eliminated.  No credit card at all, and a free account that can never cost you money. But, there is a budget, a cost limit, that you have…
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