📝 Azure Virtual Machine is overutilized 🟢

• Contextual name: 📝 Virtual Machine is overutilized 🟢
• ID: /ce/ca/azure/virtual-machine/virtual-machine-overutilized
• Located in: 📁 Azure Virtual Machine

Flags

• 🟢 Policy with categories
• 🟢 Policy with type
• 🟢 Production policy

Our Metadata

• Policy Type: COMPLIANCE_POLICY
• Policy Category:
  • COST
  • PERFORMANCE

Logic

• 🧠 prod.logic.yaml 🟢
  • 📕 Azure Virtual Machine
  • 🔌 Azure Virtual Machine - object.extracts.yaml
  • 🧪 test-data.json

Description

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Description

Identify Azure Virtual Machines that exhibit signs of overutilization and initiate a scale-up (resize) action where appropriate. A VM is classified as overutilized if, over a 14-day period, its average CPU utilization exceeds 80% and its maximum CPU utilization consistently surpasses 95%.

Rational

Proactively detecting and addressing overutilized VMs is essential for ensuring optimal application performance and minimizing latency for services hosted on Azure.

Sustained high CPU utilization and frequent peak usage indicate that the current VM size is inadequate for the workload demands. Scaling up or enabling auto-scaling mechanisms ensures sufficient resource availability, mitigates performance degradation, and enhances system stability.

Impact

Resizing or scaling operations may incur additional Azure consumption costs. However, implementing auto scaling strategies provides the flexibility to respond to workload fluctuations, improving overall resource efficiency.

Audit

This policy evaluates an Azure Virtual Machine based on CPU performance data collected over a 14-day period.

... see more

Remediation

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Remediation

Considerations

1. Virtual machines (VMs) with local temporary disks cannot be resized to VM SKUs that do not support temporary disks, and vice versa.
2. Resizing from a SCSI-based VM SKU to a remote NVMe-enabled VM SKU is not supported.

Right-Sizing Overutilized Virtual Machine

Resizing a VM should be treated as a disruptive operation, particularly for stateful workloads. Ensure proper planning and downtime windows if required.

For VMs leveraging Premium Storage, it is critical to select an s-series SKU to retain support. For instance, use Standard_E4s_v3 instead of Standard_E4_v3 to maintain Premium disk compatibility.

Azure CLI

resourceGroup={{resource-group-name}}
vmName={{vm-name}}
newSize={{desired-vm-size}}

### Deallocate the VM
az vm deallocate --resource-group $resourceGroup --name $vmName

### Resize the VM
az vm resize --resource-group $resourceGroup --name $vmName --size $newSize

### Start the VM
az vm start --resource-group $resourceGroup --name $vmName

PowerShell

$resourceGroup = "{{resource-group-name}}"

... [see more](remediation.md)

policy.yaml

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Linked Framework Sections

Section	Sub Sections	Internal Rules	Policies	Flags
💼 Cloudaware Framework → 💼 Resource Right-Sizing			4
💼 Cloudaware Framework → 💼 Workload Efficiency			6