Explanation
Why the waste happens and who it affects.
Because hub costs scale with the number of configured scale units, overprovisioned hubs continue to incur higher charges even when traffic levels remain consistently low. This commonly happens when hubs are sized for peak or anticipated demand that never materializes, or when traffic patterns change over time without corresponding capacity adjustments.
Billing model
The pricing dimensions that drive this cost.
A Standard Virtual WAN hub is billed per deployment hour, plus a per-GB hub data processing charge for traffic that transits the hub. Capacity-based charges are added per deployment hour for routing infrastructure units beyond the default hub capacity, and for VPN (site-to-site and point-to-site) and ExpressRoute gateway scale units and connection units deployed in the hub. Overprovisioning drives the capacity-based items, which are charged for configured capacity rather than actual traffic volume.
How to detect
3 checks to find it in your estate.
- Review whether hub traffic levels remain consistently low relative to the configured capacity
- Identify Virtual WAN hubs sized for historical or projected peaks that are no longer relevant
- Assess whether capacity decisions were made conservatively without periodic re-evaluation
How to fix
3 ways to remove the waste.
- Reduce hub capacity to better align with observed traffic patterns
- Periodically reassess Virtual WAN hub sizing as network usage evolves
- Incorporate capacity reviews into regular network cost and architecture assessments
Documentation
Vendor references for pricing and configuration.