Feature Request: Dedicated Plan Management charge is too high for simple workloads

[audunsolemdal]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
The container app costs for containers with 1 constant replica in consumption mode are relatively cheap if the container enter idle mode, however I am surprised with the management overhead cost, ref. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/container-apps/ and

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/container-apps/billing
"In addition, features such as private endpoints and planned maintenance are subject to a Dedicated Plan Management charge regardless of whether you are using the Consumption or Dedicated plans."

$0.10 per hour for management costs
"This meter applies to the Dedicated plan, private endpoint, and planned maintenance. Charges are additive, if multiple features are used within an environment, charges will apply to each feature individually"

I would like to have a private endpoint on my application for best networking practices. Paying $73/month extra just for a private endpoint in a small environments makes very little sense to me. For comparison - a simple Azure app service for containers on a B1 plan is $13 a month for 1vCPU + 1.75 gb memory without any management fee for private endpoints.

Please consider severely reducing the management fee or even removing it in some cases.

[XVII]

I find it quite unclear in the portal which items are considered "premium" features and the actual cost implications of enabling said features.

For example, planned maintenance is a premium feature yet no where on the blade does it mention that, nor does it provide any indication that the environment is suddenly going to start costing +0.10/hour from toggling this on.

Documentation says:

This meter also applies to other premium features like private endpoint. If multiple features are enabled in the same environment, charges are additive, each feature is billed separately.

Perhaps the features should be listed more clearly as it's very general and vague.

The pricing calculator page also has no check boxes for these premium features, under either consumption or dedicated product SKU, which makes calculating the total cost of ACA difficult and unpredictable.

[cachai2]

Thanks for the feedback Audun Solemdal (@audunsolemdal) and Jake Edwards (@XVII). We're currently not planning to reduce this cost. However, we will take this into consideration going forward. I agree that we should have more transparency around what features are premium and get the calculator updated. I've added these as work items on our backlog.

Audun Solemdal (@audunsolemdal) one question. Are you using private endpoints for private connectivity with Azure Front Door (AFD)? Azure Container Apps is a bit different from many other services since you don't need to create private endpoints to limit ingress to only your VNET. You can create a container app environment as internal only. This will create the environment without a public IP address, and the environment will only accept traffic that originates from within your VNET. The main scenario you'd want to use private endpoints for is private connectivity to AFD.

[audunsolemdal]

@audunsolemdal one question. Are you using private endpoints for private connectivity with Azure Front Door (AFD)?

I realized after the fact that private endpoints were just needed for AFD to work, and that the internal load balancer is enough for mey use case (We are using Azure Application Gateway). I can't rule out that I missed reading docs mentioning this.

[daanvinke]

I'm going to add to this that these costs are not clearly expressed in the pricing overview for Container Apps, and if the primary reasoning for this feature is connectivity from Front Door, it should also be taken into account that Private Link support in Front Door is already only available in Premium SKU.

As long as the cost for private link support on Container Apps comes at the current cost, I will advice against it's implementation in solutions. For most Consumption based workloads the cost of the Private Link connection is higher than the cost of running the App.

This feature is not priced according to its added value.

[maplt]

Cary Chai (@cachai2) are you able to give an explanation behind why you are not planning to reduce the ~$73/month cost of using a Private Endpoint with Container Apps? If it will not be reduced, it would at least be helpful to have an explanation to go along with it.

Currently, I can't find a clear description online or in the documentation about the logical reasons why this simple configuration requires ~$73/month of 'fuel' to operate.

Not only does this price's value cause confusion, but it is also likely to come as a surprise during implementation to projects that are planned around this configuration.