Optimization FAQs

Overview

This article answers the most common questions about the Optimization section in Cost Analyzer — including schedules, rightsizing, reservations, savings plans, hybrid benefits, spot instances, and the Impact tracker.

Business value

Understanding how optimization tools work in Cost Analyzer helps teams act on cost reduction opportunities confidently, avoid commitment mistakes, and track the financial impact of every action taken.

How it works

The Optimization section in Cost Analyzer surfaces eight categories of cost reduction opportunities within each cost group. Some tools — schedules and workflows — automate resource actions directly. Others — rightsizing, reservations, savings plans, hybrid benefits, and spot instances — surface AI-powered or Azure Advisor-based recommendations for you to review and act on. The Impact tracker records the financial outcome of every optimization action taken.

FAQs

1. Where do I find the Optimization section in Cost Analyzer?
   The Optimization section is accessible as a tab within any cost management group. It contains eight sub-tabs: Schedules, Workflows, Rightsizing, Reservations, Savings plans, Hybrid benefits, Spot instances, and Other recommendations. The Impact tracker button is also available within the Optimization tab.

2. Will applying a schedule affect my production workloads?
   Schedules start and stop — or scale up and scale down — the targeted resource according to the configured time window. Applying a schedule to a production workload will cause it to be unavailable or scaled down outside the defined business hours. Before applying a schedule to any production resource, confirm with the resource owner that downtime is acceptable and that dependent services handle unavailability gracefully. Schedules are best suited for development, test, and non-production environments.

3. How are rightsizing recommendations generated?
   Rightsizing recommendations are generated using Azure Monitor utilization data for the connected subscription. Cost Analyzer analyzes CPU, memory, and disk utilization patterns over the observation period and recommends a smaller SKU when the resource is consistently underutilized. Basic mode uses average utilization; advanced mode accounts for peak utilization to reduce the risk of recommending a SKU that cannot handle burst workloads.

4. What is the difference between a Reservation and a Savings Plan?
   A Reservation commits to a specific resource SKU, region, and service (for example, a D4s_v3 Virtual Machine in East US) for 1 or 3 years in exchange for a discount of up to 72% compared to pay-as-you-go pricing. A Savings Plan commits to a consistent hourly compute spend (for example, $5/hour) across any eligible resource type, region, or service. Reservations offer deeper discounts for stable, predictable workloads. Savings Plans offer more flexibility for workloads that are consistent in spend but variable in resource type or region.

5. Can I undo a rightsizing action after applying it?
   Rightsizing actions resize the Azure resource to the recommended SKU. This change is applied directly in Azure and is not automatically reversible from within Cost Analyzer. To revert a rightsizing action, resize the resource manually in the Azure portal or using Azure CLI. Always validate rightsizing recommendations in a non-production environment before applying to production resources.

6. What does the Impact tracker measure?
   The Impact tracker records the financial impact of optimization actions taken within Cost Analyzer — including savings from scheduled resource downtime, rightsizing actions, and other completed recommendations. It provides a consolidated view of realized savings per cost group, which you can use to report cost reduction outcomes to finance and leadership. Impact tracker data is updated after each completed optimization action.

7. When should I use Spot Instances?
   Spot Instances are suitable only for fault-tolerant, interruptible workloads — such as batch processing jobs, rendering tasks, data transformation pipelines, or dev/test environments that can restart without data loss. Azure can reclaim Spot Instance capacity with short notice when demand is high. Never use Spot Instances for production workloads, latency-sensitive applications, stateful services, or any workload that cannot tolerate interruption.

Related articles

• Optimization opportunities
• Advanced Rightsizing recommendations
• Advanced Reservation recommendations
• Savings plans
• Impact tracker
• Cost optimization