The Imperfect Lab: There's No Such Thing as a Free Gateway

Sometimes I forget that the internet isn't really free.  I have the convenience of having a MDSN subscription from work, so I enjoy the access to a set amount of Azure credits each month to spend.  However, some things are more "spendy" than others and gateways fall into that category for me, particularly for a testing scenario that doesn't have a "real" business need behind it.

MSDN users of Azure do get some discounted rates. All instances for Windows and Windows Server Virtual Machines, Cloud Services, Websites, and HDInsight are discounted up to 40% off our Pay-as-you-go rates. The MSDN rate on these services is equal to the rate for a Linux virtual machine of the same size and type. (For more details about MSDN benefits visit http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/member-offers/msdn-benefits-details/)

But all the other things are billed at regular rate, for gateways that rate is about $.05 per hour, a tad over one dollar a day.  When connecting a VNET to a VNET you are paying for two gateways, so my costs just to keep that running for my Imperfect Lab will eat up about a third of my monthly credits.  Take note, even gateways you aren't actively using are charged. So if you have a point-to-site gateway setup for clients to connect with but no clients are connecting, that's being charged too, just to keep it available. 

So with the holidays coming and my growing list of things I'd like to do in the lab, I'm going to rip down the VNET-to-VNET connectivity for the time being.  I'm going to build out my little infrastructure in one VNET to start and then extend it to the second VNET once I really have a set plan in place.

Onward to my domain controller creation and tying that into Azure Active Directory. Stay tuned.