API Management and cost optimization

  • Article

Learn how to use API Management to publish APIs to external, partner, and employee developers securely and at scale. This networking service is a hybrid, multicloud management platform for APIs across all environments.

Components include:

For more information, reference About API Management.

To understand how API Management supports cost optimization for your workload, reference the following topics:

Checklist

Have you configured API Management with cost optimization in mind?

  • Configure autoscaling where appropriate.
  • Consider which features you need all the time.

Configuration recommendations

Consider the following recommendations to optimize reliability when configuring your API Management service:

Recommendation Description
Configure autoscaling where appropriate. Consider scaling your API Management instance up or down to control costs. You can configure API Management with Autoscale based on a metric or a specific count. Costs depend upon the number of units, which determines throughput in requests per seconds (RPS). An autoscaled API Management instance switches between scale units appropriate for RPS numbers during a specific time window. Autoscaling helps to achieve balance between cost optimization and performance.
Consider which features you need all the time. Consider switching between Basic, Standard, and Premium tiers. If a workload does not need features available in higher tiers, then consider switching to a lower tier. As an example, a workload may need just 1GB of cache during off-peak periods compared to 5GB of cache during peak periods. Costs associated with such a workload can be reduced by switching from a Premium to Standard tier during off-peak periods and back to a Premium tier during peak periods. This process can be automated as a job using Set-AzApiManagement cmdlet. Refer to API Management pricing about features available in different API Management tiers.

Next step

API Management and operational excellence