Skip to content

Blog

💰 Saving Azure Costs with Scheduled VM Start/Stop using Custom Azure Automation Runbooks

As part of my ongoing commitment to FinOps practices, I've implemented several strategies to embed cost-efficiency into the way we manage cloud infrastructure. One proven tactic is scheduling virtual machines to shut down during idle periods, avoiding unnecessary spend.

In this post, I’ll share how I’ve built out custom Azure Automation jobs to schedule VM start and stop operations. Rather than relying on Microsoft’s pre-packaged solution, I’ve developed a streamlined, purpose-built PowerShell implementation that provides maximum flexibility, transparency, and control.

⌚Enforcing Time Zone and DST Compliance on Windows Servers Using GPO and Scheduled Tasks

🛠️ Why This Matters

Time zone misconfigurations — especially those affecting Daylight Saving Time (DST) — can cause:

  • Scheduled tasks to run early or late
  • Timestamp mismatches in logs
  • Errors in time-sensitive integrations

Windows doesn’t always honour DST automatically, particularly in Azure VMs, automated deployments, or custom images.

⏲️ Configuring UK Regional Settings on Windows Servers with PowerShell

When building out cloud-hosted or automated deployments of Windows Servers, especially for UK-based organisations, it’s easy to overlook regional settings. But these seemingly small configurations — like date/time formats, currency symbols, or keyboard layouts — can have a big impact on usability, application compatibility, and user experience.

In this post, I’ll show how I automate this using a simple PowerShell script that sets all relevant UK regional settings in one go.

🕵️ Replacing SAS Tokens with User Assigned Managed Identity (UAMI) in AzCopy for Blob Uploads

Using Shared Access Signature (SAS) tokens with azcopy is common — but rotating tokens and handling them securely can be a hassle. To improve security and simplify our automation, I recently replaced SAS-based authentication in our scheduled AzCopy jobs with Azure User Assigned Managed Identity (UAMI).

In this post, I’ll walk through how to:

  • Replace AzCopy SAS tokens with managed identity authentication
  • Assign the right roles to the UAMI
  • Use azcopy login to authenticate non-interactively
  • Automate the whole process in PowerShell

🔑 Replacing SQL Credentials with User Assigned Managed Identity (UAMI) in Azure SQL Managed Instance

Storing SQL usernames and passwords in application configuration files is still common practice — but it poses a significant security risk. As part of improving our cloud security posture, I recently completed a project to eliminate plain text credentials from our app connection strings by switching to Azure User Assigned Managed Identity (UAMI) authentication for our SQL Managed Instance.

In this post, I’ll walk through how to:

  • Securely connect to Azure SQL Managed Instance without using usernames or passwords
  • Use a User Assigned Managed Identity (UAMI) for authentication
  • Test this connection using the new Go-based sqlcmd CLI
  • Update real application code to remove SQL credentials

Cloud Resume Challenge with Terraform: Final Reflections & Future Directions 🎯

Journey Complete: What We've Built 🏗️

Over the course of this blog series, we've successfully completed the Cloud Resume Challenge using Terraform as our infrastructure-as-code tool. Let's recap what we've accomplished:

  1. Set up our development environment with Terraform and AWS credentials
  2. Deployed a static website using S3, CloudFront, Route 53, and ACM
  3. Built a serverless backend API with API Gateway, Lambda, and DynamoDB
  4. Implemented CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions for automated deployments
  5. Added security enhancements like OIDC authentication and least-privilege IAM policies

The final architecture we've created looks like this:

Basic Project Diagram

The most valuable aspect of this project is that we've built a completely automated, production-quality cloud solution. Every component is defined as code, enabling us to track changes, rollback if needed, and redeploy the entire infrastructure with minimal effort.

Cloud Resume Challenge with Terraform: Introduction & Setup 🚀

Introduction 🌍

The Cloud Resume Challenge is a hands-on project designed to build a real-world cloud application while showcasing your skills in AWS, serverless architecture, and automation. Many implementations of this challenge use AWS SAM or manual setup via the AWS console, but in this series, I will demonstrate how to build the entire infrastructure using Terraform. 💡

My Journey to Terraform 🧰

When I first discovered the Cloud Resume Challenge, I was immediately intrigued by the hands-on approach to learning cloud technologies. Having some experience with traditional IT but wanting to transition to a more cloud-focused role, I saw this challenge as the perfect opportunity to showcase my skills.

I chose Terraform over AWS SAM or CloudFormation because:

  1. Multi-cloud flexibility - While this challenge focuses on AWS, Terraform skills transfer to Azure, GCP, and other providers
  2. Declarative approach - I find the HCL syntax more intuitive than YAML for defining infrastructure
  3. Industry adoption - In my research, I found that Terraform was highly sought after in job postings
  4. Strong community - The extensive module registry and community support made learning easier

This series reflects my personal journey through the challenge, including the obstacles I overcame and the lessons I learned along the way.

Copyright © 2026 Matthew Pollock