Here’s something that happens more often than people like to admit: a virtual machine gets spun up for a project, the project wraps up, and… the VM keeps running. And billing. For months.
It’s not negligence—it’s just that cloud resources are easy to create and easy to forget. This “cloud sprawl” quietly inflates your Azure or Amazon bill with resources nobody’s using anymore.
The fix? Build some simple automations that find this waste before it adds up. Microsoft Power Automate can handle the heavy lifting for Azure, checking for idle resources and either shutting them down or alerting you to take action.
Here are three practical workflows to get you started.
Why This Matters
Cloud costs can creep up faster than expected, and the culprit is often resources that are still running but no longer serving a purpose. One company reduced their non-production cloud spend by 40% simply by implementing automated shutdown policies for development environments outside business hours.
You don’t need that exact approach, but the principle is solid: automate the cleanup tasks that are easy for humans to overlook.
Workflow 1: Shut Down Idle Development VMs
Development and test environments are the usual suspects for cloud waste. Someone needs a VM for a short-term project, the project ends, and the VM keeps humming along.
Here’s a simple approach:
- Create a Power Automate flow that runs daily
- Query Azure for VMs tagged as “Environment: Dev” or similar
- Check CPU utilization over the past 72 hours
- If utilization has been below 5%, automatically shut down the VM
This doesn’t delete anything—it just powers off idle machines. Your developers can start them up again when needed, but you stop paying for idle time in the meantime.
Workflow 2: Find Orphaned Storage Disks
When you delete a virtual machine in Azure, you often have the option to delete its storage disk too. But that checkbox is easy to miss, and orphaned disks keep accruing storage charges month after month.
Build a weekly flow that:
- Lists all unattached managed disks in your subscription
- Calculates the estimated monthly cost for each
- Compiles a report with disk names, sizes, and costs
- Emails it to your IT manager or finance team
This gives you a clear, actionable list for cleanup without any automatic deletion—you stay in control of what gets removed.
Workflow 3: Auto-Delete Temporary Resources by Expiration Date
Some cloud resources have a natural lifespan. A storage container for a file migration project. A temporary database for a one-time analysis. These things have end dates, but those end dates don’t enforce themselves.
Here’s a better approach:
- When creating temporary resources, add a tag like “DeletionDate: 2026-02-15”
- Set up a daily Power Automate flow that checks for resources with this tag
- When the current date matches or exceeds the deletion date, the flow removes the resource
This hands-off cleanup prevents temporary items from becoming permanent expenses. You’re building expiration into the process from the start.
A Word of Caution
Automations that delete resources are powerful—which means they need guardrails. Before running any of these in production:
- Start in report-only mode. Have the flow send an email about what it would do, rather than actually doing it. Watch for a few weeks to make sure your logic is sound.
- Add approval steps for high-risk actions. Deleting a large storage disk? Require manual confirmation first.
- Tag carefully. Your automations are only as good as your tagging practices.
Getting Started
These three workflows are a solid foundation for controlling cloud costs. They shift you from reacting to surprise bills to proactively managing your environment.
The exact implementation depends on your Azure setup and Power Automate configuration, but the concepts apply broadly. Start with the one that matches your biggest pain point—usually idle VMs or orphaned storage—and expand from there.
Want help setting up cloud cost controls? We can walk you through the options and help you implement what makes sense for your environment. Reach out whenever it’s convenient.
Easier IT, Happier Employees.
