Azure.Pillar.CostOptimization
August 29, 2025 ยท View on GitHub
Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework - Cost Optimization pillar specific baseline.
Rules
The following rules are included within the Azure.Pillar.CostOptimization baseline.
This baseline includes a total of 19 rules.
| Name | Synopsis | Severity | Maturity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Azure.ACR.Usage | Regularly remove deprecated and unneeded images to reduce storage usage. | Important | - |
| Azure.ADX.Usage | Regularly remove unused resources to reduce costs. | Important | - |
| Azure.AKS.AuditAdmin | Use kube-audit-admin instead of kube-audit to capture administrative actions in AKS clusters. | Important | - |
| Azure.Alert.HighFrequencyQuery | High frequency scheduled queries are changed as a higher rate than low frequency queries. | Important | - |
| Azure.Alert.MetricAutoMitigate | Alerts that require manual intervention for mitigation can lead to increased personnel time and effort. | Important | - |
| Azure.DevBox.ProjectLimit | Limit the number of Dev Boxes a single user can create for a project. | Important | - |
| Azure.EventHub.Usage | Regularly remove unused resources to reduce costs. | Important | - |
| Azure.FrontDoor.State | Enable Azure Front Door Classic instance. | Important | - |
| Azure.ML.ComputeIdleShutdown | Configure an idle shutdown timeout for Machine Learning compute instances. | Critical | - |
| Azure.NIC.Attached | Network interfaces (NICs) that are not used should be removed. | Awareness | - |
| Azure.NSG.Associated | Network Security Groups (NSGs) should be associated to a subnet or network interface. | Awareness | - |
| Azure.Resource.UseTags | Azure resources should be tagged using a standard convention. | Awareness | - |
| Azure.ServiceBus.Usage | Regularly remove unused resources to reduce costs. | Important | - |
| Azure.VM.DiskAttached | Managed disks should be attached to virtual machines or removed. | Important | - |
| Azure.VM.DiskSizeAlignment | Align to the Managed Disk billing increments to improve cost efficiency. | Awareness | - |
| Azure.VM.MultiTenantHosting | Deploy Windows 10 and 11 virtual machines in Azure using Multi-tenant Hosting Rights to leverage your existing Windows licenses. | Awareness | - |
| Azure.VM.PromoSku | Virtual machines (VMs) should not use expired promotional SKU. | Awareness | - |
| Azure.VM.ShouldNotBeStopped | Azure Virtual Machines in a stopped state are still allocated and billed for compute usage. | Important | - |
| Azure.VM.UseHybridUseBenefit | Use Azure Hybrid Benefit for applicable virtual machine (VM) workloads. | Awareness | - |