Shift Left: Azure Cost Management with Infracost

This article provides a technical tutorial on integrating Infracost, a free cost estimation tool, into Azure cloud management workflows. It explains how to install Infracost locally, authenticate, and run cost estimates on Terraform-defined Azure resources before committing code to a repository. The guide emphasizes a shift-left strategy to catch cost issues early in development, targeting DevOps engineers and cloud practitioners. It includes setup steps for macOS and Windows, example Terraform configurations for Azure SQL resources, and notes on the free plan's limits. The content is focused on IT/technology, specifically cloud cost optimization and infrastructure-as-code best practices.