How do I calculate the cost of Azure Synapse Analytics?

Question

I need to calculate the cost of the Azure Synapse Analytics. I have used the Azure Pricing Calculator but I could not figure it out. It shows close to USD 2,100.

I have the following components as a part of the Azure Synapse Analytics

1. Synapse workspace
2. Self Hosted agent - Standard_B2s
3. Synapse SQL pool

How do I calculate the cost of Azure Synapse Analytics?

Answer 1

The cost drivers of using Synapse come from:

1. How you process data;
2. How much data you process;
3. How much data you integrate or ingest directly through Synapse;
4. Where you choose to store any additional data;
5. How much additional data you choose to store.

Processing data is done using one of three methods: a) Serverless SQL Pool (ad hoc or scripted queries of data – whether in a database or in flat files – done using SQL) – costs $8 USD per Tb of data processed b) Apache Spark Pool (ad hoc or scripted queries of data – usually flat files but can be sourced from a database – done using a wide range of scripting languages, AI or ML processes) – costs depending on the power of the processing pool you create and use (i.e. more power might take less time), with examples being (not prices are charged on a per-minute basis, default setting is for Pools to shutoff after 15 minutes of no use, can be shortened): a. “small” pool with 4 vCores costs $1.85 per hour b. “medium” pool with 8 vCores costs $3.70 per hour c. “large” pool with 16 vCores costs $7.40 per hour d. “XLarge” pool with 32 vCores costs $14.90 per hour e. ”XXLarge” bloody enormous pool with 64 vCores costs $29.70 per hour

($$ values are approximate but closer)

Answer 2

Here is a sample pricing calculator filled out to describe your situation. The assumptions are below.

• you are using a Dedicated SQL pool not a Serverless SQL pool
• you have scaled the dedicated SQL pool to DWU100c and left it running 24 hours a day (if you programmatically pause it then that would reduce the cost)
• you do not want to commit to running it 24 hours a day for 1 or 3 years and get reserved pricing discounts
• in the dedicated SQL pool you have under 1TB of data (compressed) and you have geo-redundant backups enabled
• you are running under 1,000 pipeline activities per month on the self-hosted integration runtime, copy activities run less than an hour per month, and other activity hours are less than 7 hours per month.
• you are not using other parts of Synapse like Spark pools, data flows, Data Explorer pools, Synapse Serverless SQL, etc.
• you are in the East US Azure region
• you have a B2s virtual machine with a 128GB premium SSD OS disk and no other attached disks where the self-hosted IR is installed. It is running 24 hours a day. (The VM cost but not storage cost could be lowered if you pause and resume it programmatically)
• on the B2s virtual machine you do not want to commit to running it 24 hours a day for 1 or 3 years to get a reserved pricing discount and you are renting the Windows license with the VM rather than bringing your license with Azure Hybrid Benefit
• this is retail pricing

Answer 3

This is a very difficult question to answer, because most of the costs are consumption/runtime oriented.

The pricing calculator defaults are not great, so you'll really want to fine tune it. For instance, you cannot remove Dedicated Pools, but you can set the Hours to 0. It also includes Data Explorer, which cannot be removed. To not include these prices in the calculator, deselect the "Auto select engine instances", and under both Engine V-Cores and Data Management V-Cores, set the hours to 0.

The calculator will NOT include any time for Spark pools (Notebooks) or Data Flows. These are both heavily consumption oriented which will vary greatly based on your runtime choices like pool size. Their costs are based on minutes of consumption, so good luck predicting that.