For companies using Azure virtual machines, there are many avenues to reduce costs. Historically many companies have focused on the compute aspects of virtual machines. This is the appeal of reservations; by committing to a machine series in a region a company can reduce the computer costs significantly.
While effective, many Microsoft customers overlook the costs of the operating systems which they are leasing per month. To explore this, let’s use Azure Price Calculator and examine the monthly cost of basic VM ( D2ds v4 ) noted in image 1 below: