Azure real-time tracking of cloud spend broken until March, Microsoft warns

Microsoft Azure customers will have to manually track their cloud spending after Microsoft announced that the real-time tracking and notification feature will be unavailable until mid-March. In a statement to its Partners, Microsoft warned that users of the Azure savings plan won’t receive spending notifications that help them stay within their budget.

“Due to a technical problem with our internal processing system, if you bought Azure Savings Plans for your customers, even if you set budgets, you temporarily won’t get Azure spending notifications,” the company said.

“That means you won’t know how much your customers spend on Azure in real-time. Instead, you’ll have to keep track of how and how much your customers use Azure resources.”

The Azure Savings Plan is a package designed by Microsoft for cost-conscious users and sold through its partners. Users on the plan set a fixed hourly amount they want to spend on cloud computing services and according to Microsoft, users can save “up to 65%” on selected services. If users exceed their set hourly limit then they revert to a pay-as-you-go pricing model.

Now, with real-time tracking broken, businesses could find themselves having to pay extra after unknowingly exceeding their hourly limit.

“We're working hard to fix this problem and get spending alerts back as soon as possible. In the meantime, we encourage you to think of other ways to keep track of your customers’ usage on Azure,” Microsoft said.

Meanwhile, the company has advised its partners to manually track customer usage daily to ensure that customers do not go above their limits.

“Check unbilled daily rated usage data regularly to ensure that you know how much your customers are spending on Azure resources. You can access the data using APIs either synchronously or asynchronously, but we recommend that you use the asynchronous method for the fastest response,” the company said.

Partners have also been advised to set budgets using the Azure portal to prevent overspending until the notification feature is fixed.