Azure Supported Services

NightOps supports scheduling for Microsoft Azure compute services.

Supported Services

Virtual Machines

Stop (deallocate) and start Azure VMs on schedule. When deallocated, you don't pay for compute—only storage. All disks and configuration are preserved.

• Standard and Spot VMs
• VMs in Availability Sets
• VMs in Scale Sets (handled separately)

Azure SQL Database

Pause and resume Azure SQL Database (serverless tier) and Azure Synapse SQL pools. Standard tier databases cannot be paused but can be scaled down.

• Serverless compute tier (pause/resume)
• Provisioned tier (scale down to minimum DTUs/vCores)
• Synapse SQL pools (pause/resume)

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Scale AKS node pools to zero nodes during off-hours. Your control plane remains running (free tier available). System node pools require at least one node, so use user node pools for schedulable workloads.

VM Scale Sets

Set VM Scale Set capacity to zero during off-hours and restore to your configured capacity when needed.

App Services

Stop and start App Service apps. Note that you're still billed for the App Service Plan even when apps are stopped. Consider scaling the plan down instead for cost savings.

Quick Start

1. Tag your resources: Add nightops-managed: true to any resources you want NightOps to manage.
2. Set up a Service Principal: Create a service principal with the required RBAC roles.
3. Connect your subscription: Add your Azure subscription in the NightOps dashboard using the service principal credentials.
4. Create a schedule: Define when your resources should be running.

Tagging Best Practices

We recommend using consistent tags across your resources:

Pricing Impact

When NightOps stops your Azure resources, you stop paying for compute. You continue to pay for:

• Managed disks attached to deallocated VMs
• Azure SQL Database storage while paused
• AKS cluster management (free tier available)
• App Service Plans (even when apps are stopped)
• Public IP addresses (if reserved)