Problem

Our customer has an issue with their cloud computing expense. They have allocated a VM with over specification with their budget. This is because the VM will work hard in specific time. The customer uses the VM in 09.00 AM and 5 PM. After that the VM is not used.

Requirements

The customer wants you to reduce the cost by downscaling and upscaling the VM based on the time.

• Workdays: 09.00 – 17.00 PM
• Weekend: Off

Solution

You have several solutions to accommodate this.

• Turn off the VM outside the workdays and turn of the VM in the workdays (Option A)
• Scale down the VM in non-workday, and scale up in the workday (Option B)

Well-Architecture Recommendation

• Choosing A, we will get better cost efficiency. However, there is some circumstance when the VM is misbehaving because the cold-start issue.
• Choosing B, we still get cost-saving. However, we still pay the downsizing cost

How to do that

We can use many ways to do that. In Azure, you can use Azure Automation. You can read here

• Azure Automation Start/Stop VMs during off-hours overview | Microsoft Docs
• Azure Automation: Scale-Down VM Size – Microsoft Tech Community
• Auto Scale Up and Down VM’s with Azure Automation (wordpress.com)