Are there any charges for affinity group in Windows Azure and how to move existing services together

Question

I came across with affinity group terms and it's tells that it will increase performance and reduce bill somehow. what i want to know that

Is there any charges for creating affinity group?

Is it desirable to user for Windows Azure Websites & Windows Azure SQL database? (I had found articles for only Virtual Machine & Virtual Network)

Is there any way to move existing services to newly created affinity group?

Answer 1

First I would highly recommend that you read this post from Neil about Affinity Groups: http://convective.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/affinity-groups-in-windows-azure/

Now to answer your questions:

Is there any charges for creating affinity group?

No. As far as I know there's no charge for creating an affinity group. Also there's no limit on how many affinity groups you could create.

Is it desirable to user for Windows Azure Websites & Windows Azure SQL database? (I had found articles for only Virtual Machine & Virtual Network)

As of today, the concept of affinity groups only apply for cloud services (and virtual machines) and storage. It does not apply for Windows Azure Websites and SQL Database. It is recommended that you create all related assets in same affinity group (if applicable) but at all cost in the same data center.

Is there any way to move existing services to newly created affinity group?

Unfortunately no. You would have to delete existing services and recreate them and while you're recreating, you can assign them to the desired affinity groups.