Microsoft Azure Architect Technologies (AZ-300) Practice Exam

What would be a recommended action if your cloud bill is unexpectedly high while VM utilization is satisfactory?

1. Continue without making any changes

2. Increase the amount of manual processing

3. Add monitoring and instrumentation

4. Downgrade your VM immediately

The correct answer is: Add monitoring and instrumentation

Adding monitoring and instrumentation is the most effective action to take when facing unexpectedly high cloud bills, despite satisfactory VM utilization. This approach allows you to gain greater visibility into resource usage, identify inefficiencies, and uncover potential cost drivers within your cloud infrastructure. With monitoring tools, you can track various metrics such as CPU and memory usage, network traffic, and storage access, providing insights into how resources are allocated and utilized. This can help pinpoint areas where you may be overspending, such as underutilized services or redundant resources that are contributing to your bill without adding significant value. Effective monitoring can also alert you to unexpected spikes or patterns in usage that would not be obvious without close observation. By putting in place comprehensive monitoring and instrumentation, you can make data-driven decisions on optimizing costs while maintaining adequate performance and availability for your applications. In contrast, continuing without making any changes ignores the underlying issue, while increasing manual processes may lead to operational inefficiencies. Downgrading your VM without a proper analysis could limit performance and doesn't address the root of the cost problem. Hence, establishing proper monitoring systems is the proactive and informed approach to managing cloud expenditures.