Right-sizing resources in Azure - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Right-sizing Azure Virtual Machines

📖 Scenario: You are managing cloud costs for a small company using Azure. You want to analyze the current virtual machines (VMs) and decide which ones can be resized to save money without affecting performance.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple Azure resource configuration that lists VMs with their current sizes and CPU usage, then mark which VMs should be resized based on a CPU usage threshold.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary with VM names as keys and their current sizes as values

Add a dictionary with VM CPU usage percentages

Write logic to identify VMs with CPU usage below a threshold (30%)

Add a final dictionary marking VMs recommended for resizing

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Cloud administrators often need to analyze VM usage to reduce costs by resizing underused resources.

💼 Career

This project teaches skills useful for cloud cost optimization roles and Azure infrastructure management.

1

Create VM size dictionary

Create a dictionary called vm_sizes with these exact entries: 'vm1': 'Standard_D2s_v3', 'vm2': 'Standard_B1ms', 'vm3': 'Standard_D4s_v3'

Azure

# Create the vm_sizes dictionary with exact VM names and sizes
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces to create a dictionary with the exact VM names and sizes.

2

Add VM CPU usage dictionary

Create a dictionary called vm_cpu_usage with these exact entries: 'vm1': 25, 'vm2': 55, 'vm3': 15

Azure

vm_sizes = {'vm1': 'Standard_D2s_v3', 'vm2': 'Standard_B1ms', 'vm3': 'Standard_D4s_v3'}
# Create the vm_cpu_usage dictionary with exact VM names and CPU usage percentages
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Create a dictionary with VM names as keys and CPU usage as integer values.

3

Set CPU usage threshold and identify low usage VMs

Create a variable called cpu_threshold and set it to 30. Then create a list called low_usage_vms that contains VM names from vm_cpu_usage where the CPU usage is less than cpu_threshold using a list comprehension.

Azure

vm_sizes = {'vm1': 'Standard_D2s_v3', 'vm2': 'Standard_B1ms', 'vm3': 'Standard_D4s_v3'}
vm_cpu_usage = {'vm1': 25, 'vm2': 55, 'vm3': 15}
# Set cpu_threshold to 30 and create low_usage_vms list with VMs having CPU usage below threshold
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a list comprehension to filter VMs with CPU usage less than the threshold.

4

Create resize recommendation dictionary

Create a dictionary called resize_recommendations where keys are VM names from vm_sizes and values are true if the VM is in low_usage_vms, otherwise false. Use a dictionary comprehension.

Azure

vm_sizes = {'vm1': 'Standard_D2s_v3', 'vm2': 'Standard_B1ms', 'vm3': 'Standard_D4s_v3'}
vm_cpu_usage = {'vm1': 25, 'vm2': 55, 'vm3': 15}
cpu_threshold = 30
low_usage_vms = [vm for vm, usage in vm_cpu_usage.items() if usage < cpu_threshold]
# Create resize_recommendations dictionary marking true for VMs in low_usage_vms, else false
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a dictionary comprehension to assign true or false based on membership in low_usage_vms.