# Overprovisioned Azure Virtual WAN hub capacity Canonical: https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/overprovisioned-azure-virtual-wan-hub-capacity-a123 An Azure Virtual WAN hub is provisioned with more capacity than required to support real network traffic. By: Aaran Bhambra Updated: 2026-09-28 [Cloud Efficiency Hub](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub) # Overprovisioned Azure Virtual WAN Hub Capacity The short version An Azure Virtual WAN hub is provisioned with more capacity than required to support real network traffic. [Aaran Bhambra](https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaran-bhambra/) FinOps Engineer / DevOps Engineer @ WTW Azure service [Azure Virtual WAN](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/cloud-services/azure-virtual-wan) Category [Networking](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/service-category/networking) Reference CER-0300 Type Overprovisioned Resource ## 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. - [What is Azure Virtual WAN? learn.microsoft.com](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-wan/virtual-wan-about) - [About Virtual WAN pricing learn.microsoft.com](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-wan/pricing-concepts) - [Virtual WAN pricing azure.microsoft.com](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-wan/) - [About virtual hub settings learn.microsoft.com](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-wan/hub-settings) ## Related inefficiencies [Browse the library](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub) - Azure Firewall CER-0313 ### [Azure Firewall Premium SKU Deployed Without Using Premium Features](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/azure-firewall-premium-sku-deployed-without-using-premium-features) Azure Firewall is available in three SKUs - Basic, Standard, and Premium - each designed for different security requirements and priced accordingly. The Premium SKU includes advanced threat protection capabilities such as TLS inspection,... Networking - Azure Application Gateway CER-0411 ### [Overprovisioned Minimum Instance Count on Application Gateway v2](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/overprovisioned-minimum-instance-count-on-application-gateway-v2) Application Gateway v2 (Standard\_v2 and WAF\_v2) bills reserved capacity for every instance in the manual instance count or the autoscale minimum. Each such instance reserves 10 capacity units, and those units are billed every hour the... Networking - Azure NAT Gateway CER-0319 ### [Idle Azure NAT Gateway Attached to Subnet Without Active Workloads](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/idle-azure-nat-gateway-attached-to-subnet-without-active-workloads) Azure NAT Gateways are commonly deployed to provide outbound internet connectivity for resources within virtual network subnets. Over time, the workloads that originally required this outbound access may be scaled down, migrated, or... Networking --- Source: the public page above. Product screenshots and illustrative interfaces are examples, not live customer data.