Customers moving to allocation-based billing often ask how to control resource consumption for specific workloads. Custom SQL Pools offer a solution by providing workload isolation and governance, which directly impacts resource usage. These pools allow customers to intentionally trade off performance for a smaller resource footprint. For instance, a bursty reporting workload limited by a Custom SQL Pool might scale to fewer resources, run longer, but consume fewer billed resources. A real-world example involves an ETL process that was not latency-sensitive but needed controlled resource consumption. By restricting throughput, the ETL workload ran longer but consumed resources at a smoother rate. Custom SQL Pools are ideal for non-latency-sensitive workloads that can tolerate longer runtimes and compete for resources. They are particularly useful for ETL, background processing, and Power BI reporting to ensure predictable resource consumption. It's important to note that Custom SQL Pools are not direct spending limits or budget caps. Instead, they act as guardrails defining maximum resource access for each workload. Future enhancements include identity-based resource allocation and configurable built-in workload boundaries for greater flexibility. Ultimately, Custom SQL Pools empower customers with more explicit control over resource allocation and governance. The primary function is workload management, but in an allocation-based billing model, this indirectly helps manage consumption. If a workload can run longer, Custom SQL Pools can effectively reduce its resource consumption.