Windows Azure Pricing Estimates
Our preliminary estimates project the Energy Simulation system to ideally cost around $400 per
month (with a reasonable minimum of about $300 per month) for basic operation. The system can be
scaled up arbitrarily to support more intense computation loads.
Pricing Breakdown
The Windows Azure platform accrues monthly charges depending on the amount of computational
resources being consumed by an application. The single biggest contributor to cost is the number of
machines explicitly dedicated to the application.
OwlSim System Requirements
Our current implementation plan projects a minimum deployment size of:
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4+ compute instances (3 minimum)
o 1 web role instance
 Hosts the website
o 3+ worker role instances (2 minimum)
 1 worker role hosts the central control system
 2+ worker roles implement simulations (1 minimum)
< 10 GB of storage space
< 500,000 storage transactions / month
< 40 GB of data transferred from the cloud to users outside of the datacenter region
5 service bus connections
Unit Pricing
The results below are based on the Azure pricing calculator, which is publicly accessible at:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing-calculator/.
Table 1: Pricing Breakdown per Feature
Feature
4 small compute instances
10 GB storage space
500,000 storage transactions
40 GB data egress
5 service bus connections
Unit Price
$90 / 1 small compute instance / month
$0.15 / 1 GB / month
$0.01 / 10,000 transactions / month
$0.15 / 1 GB / month
$7.96 group price / month
Total Feature Price
$360 / month
$1.50 / month
$0.50 / month
$6.00 / month
$7.96 / month
Putting all of these values together, we estimate a monthly cost of $375.96 per month. Using minimum
resources reduces the monthly cost by $90 to a total of $285.96 per month.
Scalability
Storage space, transaction count, and data egress are difficult to predict at this stage, since these
parameters measure actual usage rather than capacity. However, our estimates for these values are
extremely generous and assume a large amount of users making heavy use of the system for a mere $10
per month.
Compute instances and service bus connections have a much more rigid cost. To some extent these
values can be manually adjusted to meet usage demand, but they do not dynamically scale with
increased system usage. As such, they are largely protected against accruing unexpected charges.
Note, however, that if compute instances and service bus connections are scaled up manually to meet
increased demand, they must be manually reduced again once demand has waned. Otherwise, they will
unnecessarily continue accruing increased charges.