Recently, i have been introduced to Azure and i have an application that is using high CPU (almost 80%) during morning hours between 9 am to 1 pm. After that the CPU utilization is reduced to a minimal of 10% the whole day. So in order to reduce my cost i was thinking to implement vertical auto-scaling in my application. When i read more on this i could find automation account and RunBook as the only way but my need is that is there any other way to implement Vertical auto-scaling in Azure IaaS VM apart from automation account?
If Yes, please share the approach.
Yes you can use Azure PowerShell and/or the Azure CLI to execute scaling commands on a VM. Here are some PowerShell examples: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/resize-vm?toc=%2Fazure%2Fvirtual-machines%2Fwindows%2Ftoc.json
You would then just have to schedule the script to run either locally or in an Azure service like Functions, Container Instances or etc.
If you wanted to scale vertically a single VM based on a performance metric (CPU, memory, etc.) you can use the classic metric alerts system to do that. When those alerts fire based on thresholds you set you can invoke a webhook OR Logic App to trigger execution of a script or ARM Template.
Related
I have 4 VMs in azure and I am trying to set up a schedule to lower the RAMs and CPU cores for after-hours and revert them back to their original size during business hours.
can someone guide me through the steps or share a how-to resource, please? I can't find any documents and I am sure my search key is not correct.
Thanks
As suggested by #harshavmb, you can make use of VMSS.
In Azure, Auto-Scaling is possible if you make use of Virtual Machine Scale-Sets.
Virtual Machine Scale-Sets allows you to automatically scale as resource demand changes.
Based on schedules, you can create auto scale rules.
These schedule-based rules allow you to automatically scale the number of VM resources at fixed times.
To create the Auto-Scale rule, you can make use of following tools:
Azure PowerShell
Azure CLI
Azure template
Otherwise, you can create an automation account in Azure and execute runbooks as mentioned in below link if helpful:
Automatically Resize an Azure VM - Automation account
I have a .NET Core application currently running as an Azure App Service, and I need it to do a lot of 'work' only about a few times a day. In order to save on the hourly billing, this is the solution I developed:
Using a runbook (Azure Automation): scale the App Service Plan to the 'Free' tier at 7:00 PM
Using a runbook (Azure Automation): scale the App Service Plan back up to the premium tier at 8:00 AM
Hard-code my .NET Core application to ensure it only does the heavy 'work' between 8:00 AM and 7:00 PM
This is fine as it saves me a significant portion of cost, as I'm only paying for the hours in which the App Service Plan is scaled up to the premium tier. However it is definitely not ideal.
My question is - what design pattern should I implement in order to accomplish what I'm trying to do? I need a lot of compute resources but only for a few hours out of the day. I know AWS has 'spot' instances that you can configure - is there a similar mechanism in Azure?
Ideally I could implement a solution that involves me only paying for those heavy compute resources when I actually need it (e.g.: a few times a day, while the sun is up)
Thank you for any insight and help!
EDIT in regards to the type of computation, my summary is essentially a few ML.NET trainers running in parallel with some moderate Elasticsearch document writing
It is pretty tough to answer this with the whole description of your workload being a "lot" of "heavy compute".
If you can put your "compute" into Azure Functions, going serverless with a consumption plan will probably be the nicest solution. However, individual function executions have a given timeout, so you need to see if your app fits the bill.
As an alternative, you can put your application into an Azure Container Instance, and spin that up on demand.
If you have REALLY high workload, you can use Azure Batch. If your current workload can be done on an AppService plan, this may be "overkill".
The equivalent to AWS spot instances is called Azure Spot Virtual Machines. You can also use them with Azure Batch.
Yes, you can switch to Serverless. Host front end on Storage Accounts and back end move to Azure Functions (Consumption Plan).
PS: If it's a long running processing, it may not be the best solution unless you use Durable Functions.
Is there a way to script something using runbooks in Azure so that a script runs that checks the CPU Usage and if the average for two hours is less than 10% it shuts down the VM?
Has anyone got an example script?
I do not have example code, but would start with Azure Monitor. Using Azure Monitor you can create an alerts with specific criteria such as CPU usage and a time slice.
Create, view, and manage alerts using Azure Monitor
On alert you can engage an Azure Automation Web-hook to perform the remediation action.
Webhook actions for alert rules
Azure alert rules are probably the way to go here. Here's an end-to-end solution with that.
A simpler way to do it is using a tool like VMPower which isn't free but is inexpensive and works best when you need to do this across multiple VMs with different auto-stop configurations.
Can we use Azure Functions along with Azure Batch? Please Advise.
I am working on a POC to decide which one to use for our background processes.
I too was in similar dilemma till I tried both of them for my use case.
The major difference between the two is that Azure Function has a hard timeout limit of I guess 10 minutes which you can not exceed. What I mean is that if your script/execution runs beyond 10 minutes then Azure function will kill it automatically.
Whereas Azure batch is essentially a configuration of pools or VMs in which you can run long running jobs where you are not bothered about the time of its execution. Essentially they are old VMs (low costs too). Difference between batch and Azure VMs is that Azure VMs have high speed VMs but in batch you can configure the periodic jobs where in Azure VMs you need to code in such a way that it executed like a periodic job
And yes it is possible to use Functions with Azure batch. You can configure your script as HTTP trigger in Function which you can call (get/post) through Azure Batch VMs.
Hope it helps.
May be we should expand this topic to Azure services for Batch processing in general. I did come across an article from Microsoft that goes through these options in general (which includes Web Jobs, and Kubernetes options).
But, frankly, even after reading the article; the confusion remains. For example, Azure Batches can be scheduled; but not sure if they can be triggered based on other Azure services like how Azure web jobs handles it. I get a feeling that Azure Batch is pitched where you need high + parallel computing at low costs. Because, none of the other options directly allow you to low-priority and low-cost compute instances. Correct me please!
#AzureBatch #AzureWebJobs #AzureAKS #AzureFunctions
How to autoscale virtual machines(IaaS approach) in azure instead of web/worker role autoscaling in azure?
You can now Autoscale Virtual machines in Azure directly in the Azure Management Portal. ScottGu has a post about it on his blog.
The important thing to autoscale VM's is you must proactively provision the Max # of VM's you think you'll need to handle your peak capacity, and add them to the same availability set.
For example, if on the busiest day of the week it takes 6 machines to handle all of your traffic, then you need to create 6 instances and install your application on it, configure it to handle traffic etc.... and then add it to an availability set with the other 5 machines.
Once you've done this, you can navigate to the Cloud Service that contains all of your virtual machines and click on the Scale tab. You should see a list of your availability sets, and it should tell you the # of machines you can scale over. Choose a metric (either CPU or Queue today), and then range of machines you want to scale between. You can scale between 1 and the total # of machines.
When load is low -- Azure will turn off machines (so you don't have to pay for them), and when load is high, Azure will turn those machines back on.
Auto-scaling on the IaaS level doesn't really make sense. Even if azure could detect high CPU usage and start a new VM based on it, what then? you still need to install your application on that VM automatically somehow.
What you are looking for is something that runs your app on azure, and installs new instances on new VM's if necessary. That "something" is called PaaS enabler. Basically it is another abstraction level between your app and the azure IaaS.
there are a couple of them out there :
Cloudify, CloudFoundary, Juju
as far as i know, only one that supports Azure is Cloudify. you can check out how to configure azure using Cloudify here : Configuring Azure
you can also check out the community - Cloudify Forum, or post questions here for assistance.
Disclaimer: I work for Gigaspaces, developing the Cloudify product line.
According to this it's possible to scale out IaaS with Availability sets by pre-provisioning the number of boxes: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/kaevans/2015/02/20/autoscaling-azurevirtual-machines/