Explanation
This inefficiency occurs when production and non-production applications are hosted within the same App Service Plan. Production workloads often require higher availability, performance, or scaling characteristics, driving the plan toward larger or higher-cost SKUs. When non-production workloads share that plan, they inherit the higher cost structure even though their availability and performance requirements are typically much lower, resulting in unnecessary spend.
Relevant Billing Model
All applications within an App Service Plan share the same SKU and instance cost, regardless of individual workload criticality.
Detection
- Identify App Service Plans hosting a mix of production and non-production applications
- Review whether non-production workloads are constrained by production-level sizing decisions
- Assess whether environment separation is preventing appropriate right-sizing
Remediation
- Separate production and non-production applications into different App Service Plans
- Size non-production plans independently using lower-cost SKUs aligned with reduced requirements
- Align App Service Plan design with environment criticality and lifecycle expectations