Optimizing VM Costs with Scaling

• Matching resource consumption to actual demand is an important part of controlling Azure VM costs.
• For variable workloads, allocating static resources (“set-it and forget-it”) can lead to overspending, outages, or both.
• Autoscaling provides a means to match resource consumption to actual demand and manage overall spend.

Matching resource consumption to actual demand is an important part of controlling Azure VM costs, particularly for workloads with highly variable demand, such as public-facing applications. Although it is tempting to adopt a set-it and forget-it approach to deploying Azure VMs, doing so can result in wasted resources and money, application instability, or both.

When the public cloud first emerged as a viable hosting environment, elasticity was touted as one of the key benefits, with the ability to turn off systems when not needed being a cornerstone feature. However, it is only a benefit if users take advantage of it. Because Azure VMs make up the backbone of most organizations’ costs, getting those systems to automatically scale can result in significant savings.