Office Hours: December 2025 - VM cost optimization

This was a focused session on VM cost optimization best practices where we walked through practical strategies to help you maximize efficiency and reduce spend.

Key topics covered:

• Alternate schedules:

  • Scale resources based on defined work hours.

  • Automatically scale down during weekends, holidays, or non-peak hours.

• Disk swapping:

  • Move disks to lower-cost storage tiers when VMs are stopped.

• Power management:

  • Start/stop VMs: Automatically power off unused VMs and restart them when needed.

  • Idle detection: Identify idle session hosts and shut them down to reduce costs.

• VM right-sizing and usage:

  • Understand different VM sizes and families, as well as their intended use.

  • Review user performance and ensure proper placement in the right pools.

Learn how to fine-tune your environment for both performance and savings here!