I recently move some low end virtual machines from the rather low spec but cheap basic A series (A2, 2 CPU  AMD Opteron and 3.5 GB RAM) to the newer B-Series. These have better processors and better specs all over. I did not want to move to the standard A series A2 or A2v2 as those are more expensive. I had to needs: reduce costs, get better performance. I achieved real life cost savings with Azure IAAS B-Series virtual machines

The B-Series are burstable and offer better pricing if you can build up credits when the VM is not going over it’s base line. The B-series provides you with the ability to purchase a VM size with baseline performance and the VM instance builds up credits when it is using less than its baseline. When the VM has accumulated credit, the VM can burst above the baseline using up to 100% of the vCPU when your application requires higher CPU performance. So picking the VM size is key here. The B2S seemed the best option as the base line for the CPU is 40%. and we needed at least 2 CPU and 3.5GB of RAM. The CPU type is the Intel Broadwell or Haswell E5-2673 so these are also better than the AMD Opteron.

You can see a quick price comparison here. More on the B-Series can be found here: Introducing B-Series, our new burstable VM size

One concern was that we might not be under the base line enough to build up the credits for when we go over the base line. That might kill our cost reduction hopes. That concern was invalidated by the fact that the average vCPU usage % is lower anyway due to the fact the the processors are faster and better. This helps to stay below the vCPU base line and as a result gives me credits for when I need more CPU cycles.

Overall I now have better performance at lower costs. As you can see in the screenshot of 1 VM below the savings are real after swapping over from the basic A2 to the B2S size.

So, that’s an optimization that has worked out well for me. I suggest you check it out and see where you can reduce or optimize your spending in Azure.