What an Azure Administrator Really Does

A real request that lands on Azure admins all the time: the team wants a small Linux test server and asks what it will cost per month. They also ask whether a bigger D-series or E-series VM is much more expensive, and whether another region is cheaper.

Microsoft publishes all its prices through a public web address called the Azure Retail Prices API. You can read it without signing in, so it’s a good first lab. Prices come back in US dollars by default.

1Make a lab folder

Open Windows PowerShell from the Start menu and run this:

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path C:\azure-lab -Force | Out-Null
Set-Location C:\azure-lab
$PSVersionTable.PSVersion

You should see something like this:

Major  Minor  Build  Revision
-----  -----  -----  --------
5      1      26100  4202

Any 5.1 build is fine. We use C:\azure-lab for every lab in this course.

2Ask Microsoft for the price of one VM size

The course uses the size Standard_B2ats_v2 for most lab VMs: 2 vCPUs, 1 GiB of memory, and part of the Azure free account’s 12-month free services. Let’s see its price in Central India (Pune), whose short name is centralindia.

Run this:

$f = "armRegionName eq 'centralindia' and armSkuName eq 'Standard_B2ats_v2' and priceType eq 'Consumption'"
$url = 'https://prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices?$filter=' + [uri]::EscapeDataString($f)
$r = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $url
$r.Count
$r.Items | Select-Object productName, skuName, retailPrice

You should see something like this (prices change from time to time):

8
productName                           skuName               retailPrice
-----------                           -------               -----------
Virtual Machines Basv2 Series Windows B2ats v2                   0.0154
Virtual Machines Basv2 Series         B2ats v2 Spot            0.005535
Virtual Machines Basv2 Series Windows B2ats v2 Low Priority     0.00614
Basv2 Series Cloud Services           B2ats v2                   0.0154
Virtual Machines Basv2 Series         B2ats v2                  0.00615
Virtual Machines Basv2 Series         B2ats v2 Low Priority     0.00123
Virtual Machines Basv2 Series Windows B2ats v2 Spot             0.01386
Basv2 Series Cloud Services           B2ats v2 Low Priority     0.00614

Eight prices for one size? Each row is a different way to run it. The normal pay-as-you-go prices are the two plain “B2ats v2” rows: 0.00615 USD an hour for Linux and 0.0154 USD for Windows.

Windows costs more because the Windows Server licence is included. Spot and Low Priority are cheap, but Azure can take those VMs away at short notice, and “Cloud Services” is an older product you won’t use.

Notice the single quotes around $filter. Inside single quotes PowerShell leaves the dollar sign alone. You’ll see in “Break It” what happens if you forget.

3Turn it into a reusable price checker

Paste this whole block:

function Get-VmPrice {
    param([Parameter(Mandatory)][string]$Size, [string]$Region = 'centralindia')
    $f = "armRegionName eq '$Region' and armSkuName eq '$Size' and priceType eq 'Consumption'"
    $url = 'https://prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices?$filter=' + [uri]::EscapeDataString($f)
    $items = (Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $url).Items | Where-Object {
        $_.serviceName -eq 'Virtual Machines' -and
        $_.productName -notmatch 'Cloud Services' -and
        $_.skuName -notmatch 'Spot|Low Priority' }
    $linux = ($items | Where-Object productName -notmatch 'Windows').retailPrice
    $win   = ($items | Where-Object productName -match 'Windows').retailPrice
    [pscustomobject]@{
        Size = $Size; Region = $Region
        LinuxHour = $linux; LinuxMonth = [math]::Round($linux * 730, 2)
        WindowsHour = $win; WindowsMonth = [math]::Round($win * 730, 2)
    }
}
'Standard_B2ats_v2','Standard_D2s_v5','Standard_E2s_v5','Standard_F2s_v2' |
    ForEach-Object { Get-VmPrice -Size $_ } |
    Format-Table Size, LinuxHour, LinuxMonth, WindowsHour, WindowsMonth

You should see something like this:

Size              LinuxHour LinuxMonth WindowsHour WindowsMonth
----              --------- ---------- ----------- ------------
Standard_B2ats_v2   0.00615       4.49      0.0154        11.24
Standard_D2s_v5       0.101      73.73       0.193       140.89
Standard_E2s_v5        0.13       94.9       0.222       162.06
Standard_F2s_v2       0.085      62.05       0.177       129.21

Using PowerShell 7 instead? Its tables may round the hourly prices to two decimals, like 0.01. The function still keeps the full price; add | Format-List to see it.

Azure counts a month as 730 hours, so the function multiplies the hourly price by 730. Now you can answer the team in one line: the small B-series Linux VM is about 4.49 USD a month, while a D2s_v5 with the same 2 vCPUs is about 74 USD.

Why so different? The B-series is burstable: it runs at a low baseline and saves up credits for short bursts. The D-series is general purpose with full-time CPU and 8 GiB memory.

The E-series has the same 2 vCPUs with 16 GiB memory for databases and caches, and the F-series is compute-optimised. You’ll pick sizes properly in Lesson 17.

4Is another region cheaper?

Run this:

$regions = 'centralindia','southindia','westindia','eastus','southeastasia','westeurope'
$cmp = $regions | ForEach-Object { Get-VmPrice -Size 'Standard_B2ats_v2' -Region $_ }
$cmp | Sort-Object LinuxMonth | Format-Table Region, LinuxHour, LinuxMonth

You should see something like this:

Region        LinuxHour LinuxMonth
------        --------- ----------
centralindia    0.00615       4.49
eastus           0.0094       6.86
westeurope       0.0108       7.88
southeastasia    0.0118       8.61
westindia         0.012       8.76
southindia       0.0133       9.71

For this size, Central India is the cheapest region in the list. Its price is less than half of South India’s, even though both are in India. Prices are set per region, so never assume “nearest” or “biggest” means cheapest.

Always check.

Price isn’t the only thing that decides the region. You also think about where your users are, data rules (some data must stay in India), and which services and availability zones the region has. You’ll look at that in Lesson 4.

5Save the answer for the team

Run this:

$cmp | Export-Csv C:\azure-lab\b2ats-prices.csv -NoTypeInformation
(Import-Csv C:\azure-lab\b2ats-prices.csv).Count

You should see this:

6

✅ Checkpoint: C:\azure-lab\b2ats-prices.csv exists with 6 rows, and you can say what a Standard_B2ats_v2 Linux VM costs per month in Central India.

Keep the Get-VmPrice function in mind. Before you build anything costly later in the course, you can run it to see the hourly price first.