cost-analysis

name	cost-analysis
description	Break down VM cost in Cost Management — meters, grouping, KQL queries

Cost Analysis

When to use this skill

• Investigating a cost spike
• Producing a chargeback report

Key concepts

• Group cost by Meter Subcategory to separate compute, disk, bandwidth, license.
• Group by Tag to allocate to apps/environments — requires consistent tagging.
• KQL query in Cost Management exports → Log Analytics for ad-hoc analysis.
• Use Cost Anomaly Detection alerts for proactive spike detection.
• Combine with Reservation Utilization reports to find unused commits.

Azure CLI examples

# Export current month cost by service
az costmanagement query \
  --type ActualCost \
  --timeframe MonthToDate \
  --scope "/subscriptions/<sub>" \
  --dataset-grouping name=ServiceName type=Dimension

Common pitfalls

• Missing license cost — Windows/SQL meters are separate lines from compute.
• Missing bandwidth — egress isn't in the VM line item.
• Tag inconsistency makes per-app rollups misleading.

References

• Microsoft Learn: search for "Cost Analysis Azure VM" on https://learn.microsoft.com

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Validation-first: verify every Azure fact against the Microsoft Learn MCP server (cite the Learn URL); Learn overrides built-in knowledge. If no Learn MCP server is configured, flag the answer ⚠️ unverified and mark specs as indicative. Analysis only — verify against Microsoft documentation before applying.