By name: azure-cost-management description: This skill should be used when the user asks about "Azure Advisor", "cost recommendations", "savings plans", "reservations", "reserved instances", "RI", "Azure budgets", "cost exports", "anomaly alerts", "MACC", "Azure credits", "Azure Prepayment", "commitment discounts", "cost optimization", "reservations vs savings plans", "which commitment discount", or any Azure Cost Management operations. license: MIT compatibility: Requires Azure CLI authentication (az login) and appropriate RBAC permissions for Cost Management APIs. metadata: author: microsoft version: "1.0"
Azure Cost Management
Azure Cost Management and optimization skills. Provides recommendations, budget management, exports, alerts, and commitment tracking capabilities.
Domain Knowledge
| Domain | Purpose | Key Operations |
|---|---|---|
| azure-advisor | Cost recommendations | Query, suppress, manage recommendations |
| azure-savings-plans | Savings plan analysis | Benefit recommendations, coverage, ROI |
| azure-budgets | Budget management | Create budgets, notifications, action groups |
| azure-cost-exports | Scheduled exports | FOCUS exports, backfill, troubleshooting |
| azure-anomaly-alerts | Cost anomaly detection | Bulk alert deployment across subscriptions |
| azure-reservations | Reserved instance analysis | Reservation recommendations, utilization, coverage, exchange/return |
| azure-commitment-discount-decision | Commitment discount framework | Reservations vs savings plans decision criteria, hybrid strategy |
| azure-credits | Credit tracking | Azure Prepayment balance, expiration risk |
| azure-macc | MACC commitment tracking | Balance, decrements, milestone tracking |
Cost Optimization
Azure Advisor Recommendations
az advisor recommendation list --category Cost --output table
Suppression: Up to 90-day TTL, bulk suppression via management groups.
For detailed documentation: references/azure-advisor.md
Savings plans and reservations
Benefit Recommendations API for:
- Savings plan purchase recommendations (up to 65% savings)
- Reservation recommendations (up to 72% savings)
- Coverage analysis and utilization monitoring
- Decision framework: when to use which commitment type
For detailed documentation:
references/azure-savings-plans.md— savings plan analysis and scriptreferences/azure-reservations.md— reserved instance analysisreferences/azure-commitment-discount-decision.md— decision framework
Budget & Alerts
Budgets
- Up to 5 notifications per budget
- Action Groups at Subscription/Resource Group scope only
- Threshold types: Actual, Forecasted
az consumption budget list --output table
For detailed documentation: references/azure-budgets.md
Anomaly Alerts
Enterprise-scale deployment with pagination for large environments.
For detailed documentation: references/azure-anomaly-alerts.md
Cost Exports
FOCUS format exports to storage accounts with backfill support.
For detailed documentation: references/azure-cost-exports.md
Commitment Tracking
Azure Credits (Prepayment)
Track EA/MCA credit balances, expiration dates, consumption history.
For detailed documentation: references/azure-credits.md
MACC (Azure Consumption Commitment)
Track MACC balance, decrements, milestone progress, eligible spend.
For detailed documentation: references/azure-macc.md
Reference documentation
- Optimization:
references/azure-advisor.md,references/azure-savings-plans.md,references/azure-reservations.md - Decision framework:
references/azure-commitment-discount-decision.md - Budgets and alerts:
references/azure-budgets.md,references/azure-anomaly-alerts.md,references/azure-cost-exports.md - Commitments:
references/azure-credits.md,references/azure-macc.mdLoad the appropriate reference file when detailed workflows, API examples, or troubleshooting are needed.