Lights Out! 🌙 Your Dev VMs Run Full Power 24/7 But Your Devs Work 8 Hours. Scale Down and Stop Overpaying.

Dev and test VMs running at full capacity around the clock cost you 3x more than they should. Here's how to auto-scale Azure VMs to minimum during off hours with Terraform - saving 50-65% without blocking anyone. A 10-person dev team. 10 VMs running Standard_D4s_v5 at full power. All 24/7. Monthly cost: $1,382. What if they auto-scaled to Standard_B2s during off hours? Monthly cost: $594. That's $788/month saved and late-night devs can still work. 🌙 Here's the math: Standard_D4s_v5 (4 vCPU, 16 GB) = $0.192/hour (business hours SKU) Standard_B2s (2 vCPU, 4 GB) = $0.042/hour (off-hours minimum SKU) Business hours (10hrs x 22 weekdays): $0.192 x 220 = $42.24/VM/month Off hours (remaining 510 hours): $0.042 x 510 = $21.42/VM/month Total per VM: $63.66/month vs. 24/7 at full power: $0.192 x 730 = $140.16/VM/month 10 VMs: $636 vs $1,401 = $765/month saved Annual savings: $9,180 🤯 The key principle: never shut down to zero. Scale to minimum. Let's build it. ⚡ 🤖 Approach 1: Auto-Resize Individ