“Utility billing” or “only pay for what you use” are often cited as cost-saving benefits of cloud computing. All that is fine and dandy, but it is still the consumer’s responsibility to turn any unneeded stuff, such as virtual machines, off. In fact, as most of you already know, turning virtual machines off is not enough. Unless you delete them, you will continue to accrue charges.
One way to make sure you don’t leave stuff running unnecessarily is to periodically check your current bill to make sure it is not out of line. Unfortunately, this means logging on to the billing portal, navigating to the page that displays the current balance etc., and doing so on a regular basis. Let’s be honest…we all know how likely that is.
Fortunately, products designed to alleviate the aforementioned challenge are beginning to be appear on the market — even though the market for cloud management tools is still fairly nascent. However, these solutions tend to be “enterprisy” (i.e. targeted towards enterprises that are running large cloud-based applications). We were looking for a simple tool that allowed us to keep an eye on the outstanding Windows Azure balance.
Enter Azure Ticker App.