1. Leaving Resources Running Unused VMs, disks, and test environments running 24/7 = silent cost leak. Stop, deallocate, or schedule shutdowns. 2. Overprovisioning Using large VM sizes “just in case” wastes money. Start small, monitor usage, then scale. 3. No Cost Visibility If you don’t track it, you can’t control it. Use Azure Cost Management for budgets and alerts. 4. Ignoring Storage Costs Snapshots, backups, and logs grow silently over time. Apply lifecycle policies and clean up regularly. 5. No Auto-Scaling Fixed resources can’t adapt to real demand. Enable auto-scale to match usage dynamically. 6. Paying Pay-As-You-Go for Everything Long-running workloads on PAYG = expensive. Use Reserved Instances or Savings Plans. 7. Unused Public IPs & Load Balancers Even idle networking components can cost money. Remove or consolidate unused resources. 8. Poor Tagging Strategy No tags = no accountability or visibility. Use tags for cost allocation and tracking. 9.…