Vertical autoscale with virtual machine scale sets

This article describes how to vertically scale Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets with or without reprovisioning. For vertical scaling of VMs that are not in scale sets, refer to Vertically scale Azure virtual machine with Azure Automation.


Reprovisioning means removing an existing VM and replacing it with a new one. When you increase or decrease the size of VMs in a virtual machine scale set, in some cases you want to resize existing VMs and retain your data, while in other cases you need to deploy new VMs of the new size. This document covers both cases.

Vertical scaling can be useful when:

  • A service built on virtual machines is under-utilized (for example at weekends). Reducing the VM size can reduce monthly costs.
  • Increasing VM size to cope with larger demand without creating additional VMs.

You can set up vertical scaling to be triggered based on metric based alerts from your virtual machine scale set. When the alert is activated, it fires a webhook that triggers a runbook that can scale your scale set up or down. Vertical scaling can be configured by following these steps:

  1. Create an Azure Automation account with run-as capability.
  2. Import Azure Automation Vertical Scale runbooks for virtual machine scale sets into your subscription.
  3. Add a webhook to your runbook.
  4. Add an alert to your virtual machine scale set using a webhook notification.


Because of the size of the first Virtual Machine, the sizes it can be scaled to, may be limited due to the availability of the other sizes in the cluster current Virtual Machine is deployed in. In the published automation runbooks used in this article we take care of this case and only scale within the below VM size pairs. This means that a Standard_D1v2 Virtual Machine will not suddenly be scaled up to Standard_G5 or scaled down to Basic_A0. Also constrained Virtual Machine sizes scale up/down is not supported. You can choose to scale between the following pairs of sizes:

VM sizes scaling pair
Basic_A0 Basic_A4
Standard_A0 Standard_A4
Standard_A5 Standard_A7
Standard_A8 Standard_A9
Standard_A10 Standard_A11
Standard_A1_v2 Standard_A8_v2
Standard_A2m_v2 Standard_A8m_v2
Standard_B1s Standard_B2s
Standard_B1ms Standard_B8ms
Standard_D1 Standard_D4
Standard_D11 Standard_D14
Standard_DS1 Standard_DS4
Standard_DS11 Standard_DS14
Standard_D1_v2 Standard_D5_v2
Standard_D11_v2 Standard_D14_v2
Standard_DS1_v2 Standard_DS5_v2
Standard_DS11_v2 Standard_DS14_v2
Standard_D2_v3 Standard_D64_v3
Standard_D2s_v3 Standard_D64s_v3
Standard_DC2s Standard_DC4s
Standard_E2_v3 Standard_E64_v3
Standard_E2s_v3 Standard_E64s_v3
Standard_F1 Standard_F16
Standard_F1s Standard_F16s
Standard_F2sv2 Standard_F72sv2
Standard_G1 Standard_G5
Standard_GS1 Standard_GS5
Standard_H8 Standard_H16
Standard_H8m Standard_H16m
Standard_L4s Standard_L32s
Standard_L8s_v2 Standard_L80s_v2
Standard_M8ms Standard_M128ms
Standard_M32ls Standard_M64ls
Standard_M64s Standard_M128s
Standard_M64 Standard_M128
Standard_M64m Standard_M128m
Standard_NC6 Standard_NC24
Standard_NC6s_v2 Standard_NC24s_v2
Standard_NC6s_v3 Standard_NC24s_v3
Standard_ND6s Standard_ND24s
Standard_NV6 Standard_NV24
Standard_NV6s_v2 Standard_NV24s_v2

Create an Azure Automation Account with run-as capability

The first thing you need to do is create an Azure Automation account that hosts the runbooks used to scale the virtual machine scale set instances. Recently Azure Automation introduced the "Run As account" feature that makes setting up the Service Principal for automatically running the runbooks on a user's behalf. For more information, see:

Import Azure Automation Vertical Scale runbooks into your subscription

The runbooks needed to vertically scale your virtual machine scale sets are already published in the Azure Automation Runbook Gallery. To import them into your subscription follow the steps in this article:

Choose the Browse Gallery option from the Runbooks menu:

Runbooks to be imported

The runbooks that need to be imported are shown. Select the runbook based on whether you want vertical scaling with or without reprovisioning:

Runbooks gallery

Add a webhook to your runbook

Once you've imported the runbooks, add a webhook to the runbook so it can be triggered by an alert from a virtual machine scale set. The details of creating a webhook for your Runbook are described in this article:


Make sure you copy the webhook URI before closing the webhook dialog as you will need this address in the next section.

Add an alert to your virtual machine scale set

Below is a PowerShell script that shows how to add an alert to a virtual machine scale set. Refer to the following article to get the name of the metric to fire the alert on: Azure Monitor autoscaling common metrics.

$actionEmail = New-AzAlertRuleEmail -CustomEmail
$actionWebhook = New-AzAlertRuleWebhook -ServiceUri <uri-of-the-webhook>
$threshold = <value-of-the-threshold>
$rg = <resource-group-name>
$id = <resource-id-to-add-the-alert-to>
$location = <location-of-the-resource>
$alertName = <name-of-the-resource>
$metricName = <metric-to-fire-the-alert-on>
$timeWindow = <time-window-in-hh:mm:ss-format>
$condition = <condition-for-the-threshold> # Other valid values are LessThanOrEqual, GreaterThan, GreaterThanOrEqual
$description = <description-for-the-alert>

Add-AzMetricAlertRule  -Name  $alertName `
                            -Location  $location `
                            -ResourceGroup $rg `
                            -TargetResourceId $id `
                            -MetricName $metricName `
                            -Operator  $condition `
                            -Threshold $threshold `
                            -WindowSize  $timeWindow `
                            -TimeAggregationOperator Average `
                            -Actions $actionEmail, $actionWebhook `
                            -Description $description


It is recommended to configure a reasonable time window for the alert in order to avoid triggering vertical scaling, and any associated service interruption, too often. Consider a window of least 20-30 minutes or more. Consider horizontal scaling if you need to avoid any interruption.

For more information on how to create alerts, see the following articles:


This article showed simple vertical scaling examples. With these building blocks - Automation account, runbooks, webhooks, alerts - you can connect a rich variety of events with a customized set of actions.