June 29, 2012 at 2:02 am
Hi,
Most of our web applications use a SQL Db and SSRS reporting to provide standard reports on demand. The volume is low for all our clients - some as low as 20-30 reports per month.
The pricing on Azure for SSRS seems to be telling me that if I deploy 1 report, no matter if its run or not, its going to cost me 0.88USD per hour. As this amounts to nearly 700USD per month verses the costs for everything else (roles, database, bandwidth) of about 200USD per month for a small application....
please can someone tell me that I need another coffee!!!
Cheers
Peter
I work for 1st Consulting, a small ISV based in the UK. We build web and desktop applications using the MSFT stack. Find us at www.1stconsulting.biz
December 21, 2012 at 9:49 am
Yeah it's completely ridiculous. They announced the new pricing plan today, but even with the new one it's still ridiculous:
Dear Customer,
Windows Azure SQL Reporting pricing is changing effective February 1, 2013.
We have received feedback from customers indicating that most usage of Windows Azure SQL Reporting is far below the allowance of 200 reports per hour minimum unit of scale. Based on that feedback, we are introducing a new pricing model.
Effective February 1, 2013, we are changing the price for SQL Reporting from $0.98 per hour for every 200 reports to $0.17 per hour for every 30 reports.
More specifically, you will be billed a minimum of $0.17 per hour while your SQL Reporting instance is deployed. This base charge covers up to 30 reports each clock hour. For each clock hour in which you generate more than 30 reports, you will be billed at $0.17 for each additional block of 30 reports, rounded up.
Most of our subscribers will benefit from this change in pricing. However, if you feel that based on your usage patterns, this negatively impacts your subscription, please contact us. For more details, see our Pricing Details webpage.
Thank you,
Windows Azure Team
Under the new plan it works out to being roughly 120$ per month. For a small business this is an unreasonable fee, especially considering there's no way that we'll be consuming the number of reports that it's allowing.
December 21, 2012 at 10:12 am
Hi,
just saw your post and thought I'd add my agreement to this - its not in proportion to the SQL side of things.
For us, given the low volume of report requests, we have rewriten the reports to run as RDLC using and XSD. Bit more work in the ftont end but time gains on deployment as its all bundled into the Azure deployment.
I hope MSFT sort this one out soon!
Cheers
Peter
I work for 1st Consulting, a small ISV based in the UK. We build web and desktop applications using the MSFT stack. Find us at www.1stconsulting.biz
December 27, 2012 at 4:13 am
I would echo the previous posters . . . this pricing model is nuts.
One of the big pluses of Azure is very fast provisioning of micro-developments to respond to specific business needs right now. Part of doing that is to provision a reports server quickly, even knowing it won't get used very much.
The pricing model for Azure SQL Database is brilliant . . . I can create a little SQL Database and upload it via SSDT the same day. (Haven't got a good fast solution for online data entry yet, though, any ideas?)
But the Reporting guys have gone squirrely! The pricing model of $/provisioned hour kills the whole concept of Azure SQL Reporting from little systems stone-dead.
Cheers,
Donna Kelly
December 9, 2013 at 2:06 pm
December 10, 2013 at 7:46 am
Incidentally, I recently got an alert from Azure - they are retiring this pricing model, and moving towards a new one that features a virtual server hosting Reporting Services instead. Not sure on the details of the new pricing model though.
December 10, 2013 at 8:04 am
Actually, it's quite a lot more than just retiring the pricing model.
They're retiring the entire SQL Reporting facility! Looks like either they couldn't find a way to change the model to something sensible, or (more likely) they rode the model down to crash and burn. :rolleyes:
Now, you gotta build your own Azure VM . . . which means your own SQL Server licence . . which means I can't see any advantage to Azure over (say) a VMware appliance. Can you?
I mean, this is a big change. I see it as giving up on PaaS and moving to IaaS. Or is there another way to look at it?
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