5 Azure Misconfigurations That Cost Companies Thousands

The cloud promises scalability and flexibility, but it also introduces the risk of "bill shock." Unlike an on-premise server room where capacity is fixed, the cloud allows you to provision unlimited resources—and spend unlimited money—with a few clicks.

At 143IT, we perform cloud audits regularly. Here are the top 5 Azure misconfigurations we see that drain budgets and expose security risks.

1. Orphaned Disks and Snapshots

The Problem: When you delete a Virtual Machine (VM) in Azure, the associated OS disk and data disks are not deleted by default. They remain in your resource group, incurring monthly storage costs.

The Cost: A single Premium SSD managed disk can cost $20-$150/month. Multiply that by dozens of deleted VMs over a year, and you're wasting thousands.

The Fix:

• Use Azure Policy to audit for unattached disks.
• Implement a cleanup script (PowerShell/CLI) to find and delete orphaned resources.

2. Over-Provisioned Virtual Machines

The Problem: "Just to be safe," engineers often select VM sizes that are far larger than necessary. A developer might spin up a D4s_v5 (4 vCPUs, 16GB RAM) for a simple web server that would run fine on a B2s.

The Cost: The difference between a D4s_v5 (~$140/mo) and a B2s (~$30/mo) is over $1,300 per year per VM.

The Fix:

• Use Azure Advisor to identify underutilized VMs.
• Implement Right-Sizing reviews monthly.
• Use B-series (burstable) VMs for non-production workloads.

3. Leaving Development Resources Running 24/7

The Problem: Dev and Test environments are often used only 8-10 hours a day, yet they are left running 24/7/365.

The Cost: You are paying for 168 hours a week when you only use 40. That's 76% wasted spend.

The Fix:

• Implement Auto-Shutdown policies on all non-production VMs.
• Use Azure Automation Runbooks to start VMs at 8 AM and stop them at 6 PM on weekdays.

4. Public IP Addresses on Everything

The Problem: Assigning a Public IP address to every VM for management access (RDP/SSH).

The Risk: This exposes your management ports to the entire internet. Brute-force attacks will start within minutes. The Cost: Standard Public IPs now have a cost associated with them, but the security risk is the real cost (ransomware, data breach).

The Fix:

• Use Azure Bastion for secure, browser-based access without public IPs.
• Use VPN Gateway or ExpressRoute for private connectivity.
• Use Just-In-Time (JIT) VM Access to open ports only when needed.

5. Unused App Service Plans

The Problem: An App Service Plan (ASP) is the underlying compute for Azure Web Apps. You pay for the ASP regardless of whether you have apps running on it. We often find empty ASPs or ASPs running stopped web apps.

The Cost: A Premium V3 App Service Plan can cost hundreds of dollars a month, even if it's doing nothing.

The Fix:

• Audit your App Service Plans.
• Consolidate multiple apps into a single, higher-density ASP.
• Delete empty plans.

How to Prevent These Issues

The solution isn't just "be more careful." It's Policy as Code.

Using Azure Policy, you can enforce rules like:

• "Require a 'Department' tag on all resources."
• "Deny creation of expensive G-series VMs."
• "Audit VMs that don't have a shutdown schedule."

At 143IT, we help companies implement Cloud Governance frameworks that prevent these misconfigurations before they happen. Don't let your cloud bill surprise you—automate your cost control today.