Basic billing details
In this section, we will learn the basics of the billing model of Windows Azure. We will see that not everything is billed in the same way and that there are differences between the features of the platform.
Compute
We are charged for the compute hours when our application is deployed on Azure. The hours are calculated in clock hours, for example, from 10:00 pm till 10:59 pm. Keep in mind that we are billed for the hours our services are deployed and not for the hours our services are running. Suspended cloud services still appear on the bill.
Don't assume we are only billed for the running hours, because a lot of my colleagues were unhappily surprised by a bill even when their web role instances were in suspended mode. Remember that even when our application is not running, it is still deployed and Microsoft has to create a virtual machine for the designated role. It is always a good practice to make sure our roles are undeployed if we do not need them. This can reduce...