Azure Regions, Availability Zones and Billing

Everything here is read-only except one empty resource group, so it costs nothing. Open Windows PowerShell, go to C:\azure-lab, and make sure az account show shows your subscription.

1List the regions in India and their pairs

Run this:

az account list-locations --query "[?contains(name,'india') && metadata.regionType=='Physical'].{name:name, display:displayName, paired:metadata.pairedRegion[0].name}" -o table

You should see something like this:

Name             Display            Paired
---------------  -----------------  ---------------
centralindia     Central India      southindia
southindia       South India        centralindia
westindia        West India         southindia
jioindiawest     Jio India West     jioindiacentral
jioindiacentral  Jio India Central  jioindiawest

The Jio regions are for specific customers, so most subscriptions can’t create resources there. The useful three are Central, South and West India. Notice that South India is the pair for both of the others.

2Check which regions have zones for your VM size

Run this:

foreach ($r in 'centralindia','southindia','westindia') {
    $z = az vm list-skus --location $r --size Standard_B2ats_v2 --query "[0].locationInfo[0].zones" -o tsv
    "{0,-13} zones: {1}" -f $r, ($z -join ' ')
}

You should see something like this (the order of the numbers may differ):

centralindia  zones: 1 2 3
southindia    zones:
westindia     zones:

Only Central India offers zones for this size. If a design says “spread the VMs across three zones” and someone picks West India because it’s in Mumbai, the design can’t work there.

3See how your zone numbers map to physical zones

Run this:

$sub = az account show --query id -o tsv
az rest --method get --url "https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/$($sub)/locations?api-version=2022-12-01" --query "value[?name=='centralindia'].availabilityZoneMappings[]" -o table

You should see something like this:

LogicalZone    PhysicalZone
-------------  ----------------
1              centralindia-az2
2              centralindia-az3
3              centralindia-az1

In this example, your zone 1 is physical zone az2. A partner company’s zone 1 could be az1. When two companies say “we’re both in zone 1”, they may be in different buildings.

This matters when you connect to a partner’s service or plan with a vendor across subscriptions.

4Create a tagged group and ask for cost by lesson

Run this:

az group create --name rg-saat-l04 --tags course=saatvedha-azure lesson=04 -o none
@'
{
  "type": "ActualCost",
  "timeframe": "MonthToDate",
  "dataset": {
    "granularity": "None",
    "aggregation": { "totalCost": { "name": "Cost", "function": "Sum" } },
    "grouping": [ { "type": "TagKey", "name": "lesson" } ]
  }
}
'@ | Set-Content C:\azure-lab\cost-by-lesson.json
az rest --method post --url "https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/$($sub)/providers/Microsoft.CostManagement/query?api-version=2023-03-01" --body "@C:\azure-lab\cost-by-lesson.json" --query "properties.rows"

You should see something like this:

[
  [
    0.0,
    "lesson",
    "",
    "USD"
  ]
]

Each row is cost, tag name, tag value and currency. So far you’ve only created things that cost nothing, so there is one row with zero cost and an empty tag value. As labs start creating VMs and disks, rows like [0.12, "lesson", "15", "USD"] will appear, a day or so after you use them.

Writing the JSON to a file and passing it with --body "@file" avoids PowerShell’s quoting problems with JSON on the command line. Keep this file: you’ll run it again in Lesson 44.

5Clean up

Run this:

az group delete --name rg-saat-l04 --yes
C:\azure-lab\Find-LabResources.ps1

You should see this:

Nothing tagged course=saatvedha-azure is left.

✅ Checkpoint: You can name the paired region for Central India, say which Indian region has zones, and you have cost-by-lesson.json saved in C:\azure-lab.