Estimate before you build, then tag what you build so the bill can be split

short · 30 min · Skills measured 3.1

Before you start — what this lab needs, and what it can cost

This lab runs in your own Azure subscription: an Azure free account or a pay-as-you-go subscription. Every command acts on something real and billed to you. Charges are possible, so finish the clean-up the same day; the Azure pricing calculator shows current rates. The lab relies on the budget alert you set in lesson 1's lab, which emails you if this subscription starts to cost money. Before you start, open Cost Management, choose Budgets and check that it is still listed.

Work with the least privilege the lab allows. Creating a resource group needs the Contributor role on the subscription; that is enough for every command here, and the pricing calculator needs no Azure role at all. Nothing here needs Global Administrator. On a brand-new account the first user is the subscription's Owner and the directory's Global Administrator, so if that is the only identity you have, use it carefully and only for the commands written here.

Work in Azure Cloud Shell, opened from the Cloud Shell icon in the Azure portal's top bar, in a Bash session. The first time it starts, choose No storage account required and your subscription, so Cloud Shell creates nothing billable; files you write there disappear when the session ends, which is fine for this lab. Cloud Shell is already signed in as you, so there are no credentials to handle. The commands use 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 as the subscription ID: put your own in its place (az account show --query id -o tsv prints it). Every lab in this course uses the region eastus. You may choose a nearer region, but then use it in every command.

This lab ends with a clean-up. Do it the same day: anything left running in your subscription is billed to you.

Task

Use the Azure pricing calculator, without signing in, to see three of lesson 12's cost factors move an estimate: region, redundancy and access tier. Then create one small, private storage account in a tagged resource group and prove two rules from the lesson for yourself: a tag on a resource group does not flow down to the resources inside it, and a tag added to the resource itself is what lets you find it, and later report its cost, by meaning rather than by location. Finally, look at the same subscription in Microsoft Cost Management, where actual spending is grouped by that tag, and tell the forward-looking tool from the backward-looking one.

Steps

Open Cloud Shell (Bash) and make sure you are working in the right subscription:

az account set --subscription 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
az account show --query name -o tsv

The second command prints your subscription's name. Nothing has been created yet. 2. Build an estimate before anything exists. In a new browser tab, search for Azure pricing calculator and open it; do not sign in, because lesson 12's point is that it works without a subscription. On the Products tab, choose Storage Accounts so it appears in your estimate. Set Region to East US, Redundancy to LRS, Access tier to Hot and a small capacity, and note the estimated monthly cost. Now change one setting at a time and watch the figure: set Redundancy to GRS, then set the access tier to Cool or Archive, then put the access tier back to Hot and pick a region on another continent. Write down which settings moved the figure. Changing the estimate's name moves nothing. You may use Export to download the estimate as a spreadsheet, but do not save or share it: it is a practice estimate and no Azure resource. 3. Create the lab's resource group, tagged with a cost centre and an environment, in the region you will use throughout:

az group create --name az900-lab12-rg --location eastus --tags CostCenter=CC-1001 Environment=Lab

Tags cost nothing and change nothing about how a resource runs. Never put a secret or personal data in a tag: anyone with read access, and every cost report, can see it. 4. Create one small, private storage account in that group. Storage account names are global, so replace the digits 48213 with four to six digits of your own, and use that same name everywhere below:

az storage account create --name az900lab1248213 --resource-group az900-lab12-rg --location eastus --sku Standard_LRS --kind StorageV2 --allow-blob-public-access false --min-tls-version TLS1_2

Standard_LRS is the cheapest redundancy option, which is one of the factors you just watched in the calculator. The account holds no data, so its charges stay minimal while it exists. 5. Check whether the group's tag reached the account:

az storage account show --name az900lab1248213 --resource-group az900-lab12-rg --query tags.CostCenter -o tsv

It prints an empty line. Tags are not inherited by default: the account sits inside a group tagged CC-1001 and carries no CostCenter tag of its own. Lesson 13's Azure Policy is the tool that can require or copy tags; here you add the tag yourself, merging it with any tags already there:

SA_ID=$(az storage account show --name az900lab1248213 --resource-group az900-lab12-rg --query id -o tsv)
az tag update --resource-id "$SA_ID" --operation Merge --tags CostCenter=CC-1001 Environment=Lab

Find resources by meaning rather than by location. This lists every resource in the subscription that carries the cost centre tag, whichever resource group it is in:

az resource list --tag CostCenter=CC-1001 --query '[].name' -o tsv

It prints the name of your storage account. A project whose resources are scattered across several groups is reported the same way, which is why tags, not moving resources around, are the simple answer to "what does this project cost?". 7. Look at actual spending in the portal. Open Cost Management, choose Cost analysis, and make sure the scope is your subscription. Set Group by to Tag and pick CostCenter. Your new account will not appear yet: cost data usually arrives within a day, and an empty account costs next to nothing. Then open Budgets and read lesson 1's budget and its alert conditions, without changing them. Note the difference: the calculator estimated a resource that did not exist; Cost Management reports, forecasts and budgets what actually runs.

Verify

The account now carries the cost centre tag itself, separately from its group:

az storage account show --name az900lab1248213 --resource-group az900-lab12-rg --query tags.CostCenter -o tsv

Expected output: CC-1001.

az group show --name az900-lab12-rg --query tags.CostCenter -o tsv

Expected output: CC-1001.

az storage account show --name az900lab1248213 --resource-group az900-lab12-rg --query allowBlobPublicAccess -o tsv

Expected output: false.

Cost and clean-up

A Standard_LRS storage account with no data costs next to nothing while it exists, but charges are possible, so delete it today. Resource groups and tags are free. The pricing calculator is free and creates nothing in your subscription.

Created by this lab: the resource group az900-lab12-rg with its tags; the storage account az900lab1248213 (with your own digits) and its tags.

Delete the resource group, which deletes the storage account az900lab1248213 and its tags with it. Leave lesson 1's budget exactly as it is: every later lab relies on it.

az group delete --name az900-lab12-rg --yes

If you exported the pricing calculator estimate, delete the downloaded spreadsheet from your computer. It is not an Azure resource and costs nothing.

Check it is gone

az group exists --name az900-lab12-rg

Expected output: false.

Notes

The factors you should have seen move the calculator's figure: region (the same account costs different amounts in different regions), redundancy (GRS keeps extra copies in a second region, so it costs more than LRS) and access tier (cooler tiers store data for less, but charge more to read it). The estimate's name and the order of its items changed nothing, and neither do the names of resource groups or the number of tags.

If az tag update reports that the resource was not found, run the SA_ID= line again: Cloud Shell variables are lost when an idle session times out.

This is an independent study companion for the Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) exam and is not produced by or endorsed by Microsoft. Microsoft, Azure and Microsoft Entra are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.

This is an independent study companion for Microsoft Azure Fundamentals AZ-900 and is not produced by or endorsed by CompTIA.